urged before the Lord in your comings-together; and forget not your
brethren in bonds. Love him much for the work’s sake, who labours over
you in the word and doctrine. Let no man despise his youth.[147] Muzzle
not the mouth of the ox that treads out the corn to you. Search the
Scriptures; let some of them be read to you about this thing. If your
teacher at any time be laid aside, you ought to meet together as a
church, and build up one another. If the members at such a time will go
to a public ministry, it must first be approved of by the church.
Farewell; exhort, counsel, support, reprove one another in love.
Finally, brethren, be all of one mind, walk in love one to another,
even as Christ Jesus hath loved you, and given himself for you. Search
the Scriptures for a supply of those things wherein I am wanting. Now
the God of peace, who raised up our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead,
multiply his peace upon you, and preserve you to his everlasting
kingdom by Jesus Christ. Stand fast: the Lord is at hand.
That this was written by me, I have set my name to it, in the presence
of two of the brethren of the church.
John Gifford.[148]
Bunyan was now settled under the happiest circumstances, and doubtless
looked forward to much religious enjoyment. A pious wife—peace in his
soul—a most excellent pastor, and in full communion with a Christian
church. Alas! his enjoyments were soon interrupted; again a tempest was
to agitate his mind, that he might be more deeply humbled and prepared
to become a Barnabas or son of consolation to the spiritually
distressed.
It is a remarkable fact, that upon the baptism of our Lord, after that
sublime declaration of Jehovah—‘this is my beloved Son,’ ‘Jesus was led
into the wilderness, to be tempted of the devil.’ As it was with their
leader, so it frequently happens to his followers. After having
partaken, for the first time, of the holy enjoyments of the Lord’s
table—tending to exalt and elevate them, they are often abased and
humbled in their own esteem, by the assaults of Satan and his
temptations, aided by an evil heart of unbelief. Thus Christian having
been cherished in the house called Beautiful, and armed for the
conflict, descended into the Valley of Humiliation, encountered
Apollyon in deadly combat, and walked through the Valley of the Shadow
of Death. ‘For three quarters of a year, fierce and sad temptations did
beset me to blasphemy, that I could never have rest nor ease. But at
last the Lord came in upon my soul with that same scripture, by which
my soul was visited before; and after that, I have been usually very
well and comfortable in the partaking of that blessed ordinance; and
have, I trust, therein discerned the Lord’s body, as broken for my
sins, and that his precious blood hath been shed for my
transgressions.’[149] This is what Bunyan calls, ‘the soul killing to
itself its sins, its righteousness, wisdom, resolutions, and the things
which it trusted in by nature’; and then receiving ‘a most glorious,
perfect, and never-fading life.’ The life of Christ in all its purity
and perfections imputed to me—‘Sometimes I bless the Lord my soul hath
had this life not only imputed to me, but the very glory of it upon my
soul—the Son of God himself in his own person, now at the right hand of
his Father representing me complete before the mercy-seat in his
ownself.’ ‘There was my righteousness just before the eyes of Divine
glory.’[150]
About this period his robust hardy frame gave way under the attack of
disease, and we have to witness his feelings when the king of terrors
appeared to be beginning his deadly work. Whether the fiery trials, the
mental tempest through which he had passed, were too severe for his
bodily frame, is not recorded. His narrative is, that, ‘Upon a time I
was somewhat inclining to a consumption, wherewith, about the spring I
was suddenly and violently seized, with much weakness in my outward
man; insomuch that I thought I could not live.’[151] This is slightly
varied in his account of this illness in his Law and Grace. He there
says, ‘having contracted guilt upon my soul, and having some distemper
of body upon me, I supposed that death might now so seize upon, as to
take me away from among men.[152] These serious considerations led to a
solemn investigation of his hopes. His having been baptized, his union
to a church, the good opinion of his fellow-men, are not in the
slightest degree relied upon as evidences of the new birth, or of a
death to sin and resurrection to holiness.’ ‘Now began I afresh to give
myself up to a serious examination after my state and condition for the
future, and of my evidences for that blessed world to come: for it
hath, I bless the name of God, been my usual course, as always, so
especially in the day of affliction, to endeavour to keep my interest
in the life to come, clear before my eye.
‘But I had no sooner began to recall to mind my former experience of
the goodness of God to my soul, but there came flocking into my mind an
innumerable company of my sins and transgressions: amongst which these
were at this time most to my affliction, namely, my deadness, dullness,
and coldness in holy duties; my wanderings of heart, my wearisomeness
in all good things, my want of love to God, his ways and people, with
this at the end of all, “Are these the fruits of Christianity? Are
these the tokens of a blessed man?”
‘At the apprehension of these things my sickness was doubled upon me,
for now was I sick in my inward man, my soul was clogged with guilt;
now also was my former experience of God’s goodness to me quite taken
out of my mind, and hid as if it had never been, nor seen. Now was my
soul greatly pinched between these two considerations, “Live I must
not, die I dare not.” Now I sunk and fell in my spirit, and was giving
up all for lost; but as I was walking up and down in my house, as a man
in a most woeful state, that word of God took hold of my heart, Ye are
“justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Jesus
Christ” (Rom 3:24). But O! what a turn it made upon me!
‘Now was I as one awakened out of some troublesome sleep and dream; and
listening to this heavenly sentence, I was as if I had heard it thus
expounded to me:—“Sinner, thou thinkest, that because of thy sins and
infirmities, I cannot save thy soul; but behold my Son is by me, and
upon him I look, and not on thee, and will deal with thee according as
I am pleased with him.” At this I was greatly lightened in my mind, and
made to understand, that God could justify a sinner at any time; it was
but his looking upon Christ, and imputing of his benefits to us, and
the work was forthwith done.’[153]
‘Now was I got on high, I saw myself within the arms of grace and
mercy; and though I was before afraid to think of a dying hour, yet now
I cried, Let me die. Now death was lovely and beautiful in my sight,
for I saw that we shall never live indeed, till we be gone to the other
world. I saw more in those words, “Heirs of God” (Rom 8:17), than ever
I shall be able to express. “Heirs of God,” God himself is the portion
of his saints.’[154]
As his mental agitation subsided into this delicious calm, his bodily
health was restored; to use his own figure, Captain Consumption, with
all his men of death, were[155] routed, and his strong bodily health
triumphed over disease; or, to use the more proper language of an
eminent Puritan, ‘When overwhelmed with the deepest sorrows, and that
for many doleful months, he who is Lord of nature healed my body, and
he who is the Father of mercies and God of all grace has proclaimed
liberty to the captive, and given rest to my weary soul.’[156] Here we
have a key to the most eventful picture in the Pilgrim’s Progress—The
Valley of the Shadow of Death—which is placed in the midst of the
journey. When in the prime of life, death looked at him and withdrew
for a season. It was the shadow of death that came over his spirit.
The church at Bedford having increased, Bunyan was chosen to fill the
honourable office of a deacon. No man could have been better fitted for
that office than Bunyan was. He was honesty itself, had suffered severe
privations, so as to feel for those who were pinched with want; he had
great powers of discrimination, to distinguish between the poverty of
idleness, and that distress which arises from circumstances over which
human foresight has no control, so as to relieve with propriety the
pressure of want, without encouraging the degrading and debasing habit
of depending upon alms, instead of labouring to provide the necessaries
of life. He had no fine clothes to be spoiled by trudging down the
filthiest lanes, and entering the meanest hovels to relieve suffering
humanity. The poor—and that is the great class to whom the gospel is
preached, and by whom it is received—would hail him as a brother.
Gifted in prayer, full of sound and wholesome counsel drawn from holy
writ, he must have been a peculiar blessing to the distressed, and to
all the members who stood in need of advice and assistance. Such were
the men intended by the apostles, ‘men of honest report, full of the
Holy Ghost and wisdom’ (Acts 6:3), whom the church were to select, to
relieve the apostles from the duties of ministration to the wants of
the afflicted members, in the discharge of which they had given
offence.
While thus actively employed, he was again visited with a severe
illness, and again was subject to a most searching and solemn
investigation as to his fitness to appear before the judgment-seat of
God. ‘All that time the tempter did beset me strongly, labouring to
hide from me my former experience of God’s goodness; setting before me
the terrors of death, and the judgment of God, insomuch that at this
time, through my fear of miscarrying for ever, should I now die, I was
as one dead before death came; I thought that there was no way but to
hell I must.’[157]
‘A wounded spirit who can bear.’ Well might the apostle say, ‘If in
this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most
miserable’ (1 Cor 15:19). Bunyan had enjoyed holy emotions full of
glory, and now the devil was threatening him, not only with the loss of
heaven, but the terrors of hell. The Puritan, Rogers, describes
religious melancholy as ‘the worst of all distempers, and those sinking
and guilty fears which it brings along with it are inexpressibly
dreadful; what anguish, what desolation! I dare not look to heaven;
there I see the greatness of God, who is against me. I dare not look
into his Word; for there I see all his threats, as so many barbed
arrows to strike me to the heart. I dare not look into the grave;
because thence I am like to have a doleful resurrection; in this
doleful night the soul hath no evidence at all of its former
grace.’[158] Bunyan’s experience reminds us of the impressive language
of Job—a book full of powerful imagery and magnificent ideas, in which
Bunyan delighted, calling it ‘that blessed book.’[159] Job goes on,
from step to step, describing his mental wretchedness, until he rises
to a climax, God ‘runneth upon me like a giant’ (16:7-22). ‘Thou
huntest me as a fierce lion’ (10:16). ‘The arrows of the Almighty are
within me; they drink up my spirit: the terrors of God do set
themselves in array against me’ (6:4). Poor Bunyan, in the depth of his
distress, cried unto God, and was heard and relieved from these soul
troubles. He recollected the joyful ascent of Lazarus from the extreme
of human misery to the height of celestial enjoyments. His spirit was
sweetly revived, and he was enabled, with delight, to hope yet in God,
when that word fell with great weight upon his mind, ‘O death, where is
thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?’ ‘At this he became both well
in body and mind at once; his sickness did presently vanish, and he
again walked comfortably in his work for God.’[160] The words, ‘by
grace are ye saved,’ followed him through the rest of his pilgrimage.
His consolation was, that ‘a little true grace will go a great way;
yea, and do more wonders than we are aware of. If we have but grace
enough to keep us groaning after God, it is not all the world that can
destroy us.’[161] He had now become deeply instructed in the school of
Christ, and was richly furnished with the weapons of spiritual warfare;
‘a scribe instructed into the kingdom of heaven, like unto a man that
is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new
and old’ (Matt 13:12). Or, as ‘the man of God, perfected, thoroughly
furnished unto all good works’ (2 Tim 3:17). It was powerfully
impressed upon his mind that all his inward conflicts were to be made
use of in preparing him to instruct others. All the events of his
Saviour’s life passed before his mind as if he had stood by as a
witness to his birth—his walking with his disciples; his wondrous
parables and stupendous miracles; his mental and bodily sufferings; his
sacrifice, burial, ascension, intercession, and final judgment; all
passed in vivid review before the eye of his mind; and then, he says,
‘as I was musing with myself what these things should mean, methought I
heard such a word in my heart as this, I have set thee down on purpose,
for I have something more than ordinary for thee to do’; which made me
the more to marvel, saying, ‘What, my Lord, such a poor wretch as
I?’[162] Such was his inward call to the ministry; and it being
attended with the three requisites usually insisted on among
Dissenters—ability, inclination, and opportunity—he was sent out as an
itinerant preacher in the surrounding villages in 1655, and laid the
foundation of many churches, which now flourish to the praise of the
glory of Divine grace. In some of these villages the gospel had never
before been preached; they were strongholds of Satan. These were fit
places for the full display of his intrepid energy.
After thus preaching and much suffering, for fifteen years, he was
appointed to the pastoral office, or eldership.[163] Can a man enter
upon the work of the ministry from a better school than this? Deeply
versed in scriptural knowledge; thoroughly humbled by the assaults of
sin and Satan; aware of his devices; with a keen perception of the
value of the soul; its greatness; and, if lost, the causes and the
unspeakable extent of its loss. Solemnly devout and fluent in prayer;
ready in conversation upon heavenly things; speaking the truth without
fear of consequences, yet avoiding unnecessary offence; first speaking
in the church-meeting, and then more extensively in barns, or woods, or
dells, to avoid the informers.[164] Such was his training; and the
result was, that, when permitted to proclaim the gospel publicly,
thousands hung upon his words with intense feeling; numerous converts
were by his means added to the church; the proud became broken-hearted,
and the lowly were raised, and blessings abounded; the drunkards were
made sober; thieves and covetous were reclaimed; the blasphemers were
made to sing the praises of God; the desert bid fair to blossom and
bring forth fruit as a garden. But, alas! his early labours were
contrary to acts of parliament; the spirit of intolerance and
persecution soon troubled, and eventually consigned him to a prison.
Before we bid a final farewell to Bunyan’s extraordinary mental
struggles with unbelief, it may be well to indulge in a few sober
reflections. Are the narratives of these mighty tempests in his spirit
plain matters of fact? No one can read the works of Bunyan and doubt
for a moment his truthfulness. His language is that of the heart,
fervent but not exaggerated, strong but a plain tale of real feelings.
He says, and he believed it, ‘My sins have appeared so big to me, that
I thought one of my sins have been as big as all the sins of all the
men in the nation; ay and of other nations too, reader; these things be
not fancies, for I have smarted for this experience. It is true that
Satan has the art of making the uttermost of every sin; he can blow it
up, make it swell, make every hair of its head as big as a cedar;[165]
but yet the least stream of the heart blood of Jesus hath vanished all
away and hath made it to fly, to the astonishment of such a poor
sinner, and hath delivered me up into sweet and heavenly peace and joy
in the Holy Ghost.’[166] Some have supposed the narrative to be
exaggerated, while others have attributed the disturbed state of his
mind to disease; my humble belief is that the whole is a plain
unvarnished account of facts; that those facts occurred while he was in
full possession of all the faculties of his mind. To ascribe such
powers to the invisible world by which we are constantly surrounded,
does not agree with the doctrines of modern philosophers. Those holy or
unholy suggestions suddenly injected, would by the world be set down as
the hallucinations of a distempered imagination. Carnal relations
attributed Christian’s alarm to ‘some frenzy distemper got into his
head,’ and Southey, following their example, ascribes Bunyan’s hallowed
feelings to his want of ‘sober judgment,’ ‘his brutality and extreme
ignorance,’ a ‘stage of burning enthusiasm,’ and to ‘an age in which
hypocrisy was regnant, and fanaticism rampant throughout the
land.’[167] What a display of reigning hypocrisy and rampant fanaticism
was it to see the game at cat openly played by men on Sunday, the
church bells calling them to their sport!!! Had Southey been
poet-laureate to Charles II, he might with equal truth have concealed
the sensuality, open profaneness, and debauchery of that profligate
monarch and his court of concubines, and have praised him as ‘the
Lord’s anointed.’ Bunyan was an eye-witness of the state of the times
in which he lived, and he associated with numbers of the poor in
Bedfordshire and the adjoining counties. So truthful a man’s testimony
is of great value, and he proves that no miraculous reformation of
manners had taken place; no regnant hypocrisy nor rampant fanaticism.
In 1655, that being the brightest period of the Commonwealth, he thus
‘sighs’ over the state of his country:—‘There are but a few places in
the Bible but there are threatenings against one sinner or another;
against drunkards, swearers, liars, proud persons, strumpets,
whoremongers, covetous, railers, extortioners, thieves, lazy persons.
In a word, all manner of sins are reproved, and there is a sore
punishment to be executed on the committers of them; and all this made
mention of in the Scriptures. But for all this, how thick, and by
heaps, do these wretches walk up and down our streets? Do but go into
the ale-houses, and you shall see almost every room besprinkled with
them, so foaming out their own shame that it is enough to make the
heart of a saint to tremble.’[168] This was a true character of the
great masses of the labouring and trading portions of the commonwealth.
Let us hear his testimony also as to the most sacred profession, the
clergy, in 1654:—
‘A reason why delusions do so easily take place in the hearts of the
ignorant, is, because those that pretend to be their teachers, do
behave themselves so basely among them. And indeed I may say of these,
as our Lord said of the Pharisees in another case, the blood of the
ignorant shall be laid to their charge. They that pretend they are sent
of the Lord, and come, saying, Thus saith the Lord; we are the servants
of the Lord, our commission is from the Lord by succession; I say,
these pretending themselves to be the preachers of truth, but are not,
do, by their loose conversation, render the doctrine of God, and his
Son Jesus Christ, by whom the saints are saved, contemptible, and do
give the adversary mighty encouragement, to cry out against the truths
of our Lord Jesus Christ, because of their wicked waling. For the most
part of them, they are the men that at this day do so harden their
hearers in their sins by giving them such ill examples, that none goeth
beyond them for impiety. As, for example, would a parishioner learn to
be proud, he or she need look no farther than to the priest, his wife,
and family; for there is a notable pattern before them. Would the
people learn to be wanton? they may also see a pattern among their
teachers. Would they learn to be drunkards? they may also have that
from some of their ministers; for indeed they are ministers in this, to
minister ill example to their congregations. Again, would the people
learn to be covetous? they need but look to their minister, and they
shall have a lively, or rather a deadly resemblance set before them, in
both riding and running after great benefices, and parsonages by night
and by day. Nay, they among themselves will scramble for the same. I
have seen, that so soon as a man hath but departed from his benefice as
he calls it, either by death or out of covetousness of a bigger, we
have had one priest from this town, and another from that, so run, for
these tithe-cocks and handfuls of barley, as if it were their proper
trade, and calling, to hunt after the same. O wonderful impiety and
ungodliness! are you not ashamed of your doings? Read Romans 1 towards
the end. As it was with them, so, it is to be feared, it is with many
of you, who knowing the judgments of God, that they who do such things
are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure also in
them that do them. And now you that pretend to be the teachers of the
people in verity and truth, though we know that some of you are not, is
it a small thing with you to set them such an example as this? Were
ever the Pharisees so profane; to whom Christ said, Ye vipers, how can
ye escape the damnation of hell? Doth not the ground groan under you?
surely, it will favour you no more than it favoured your fore-runners.
Certainly the wrath of God lies heavy at your doors, it is but a very
little while, and your recompense shall be upon your own head. And as
for you that are indeed of God among them, though not of them, separate
yourselves. Why should the righteous partake of the same plagues with
the wicked? O ye children of the harlot! I cannot well tell how to have
done with you, your stain is so odious, and you are so senseless, as
appears by your practices.’[169]
The testimony of George Fox as to England’s fashions in 1654, is very
pointed and extremely droll:—Men and women are carried away with
fooleries and vanities; gold and silver upon their backs,[170] store of
ribbands hanging about the waist, knees, and feet—red or white, black
or yellow; women with their gold; their spots on their faces, noses,
cheeks, foreheads; rings on their fingers, cuffs double, like a
butcher’s white sleeves; ribbands about their hands, and three or four
gold laces about their clothes; men dressed like fiddlers’ boys or
stage players; see them playing at bowls, or at tables, or at
shovel-board, or each one decking his horse with bunches of ribbands on
his head, as the rider hath on his own. These are gentlemen, and brave
fellows, that say pleasures are lawful, and in their sports they should
like wild asses. This is the generation carried away with pride,
arrogancy, lust, gluttony, and uncleanness; who eat and drink and rise
up to play, their eyes full of adultery, and their bodies of the
devil’s adorning.[171] Such quotations from the writings of men of
undoubted veracity, and who lived during that period, might be
multiplied to fill a volume.
Is this the regnant hypocrisy and rampant fanaticism which prevailed in
England, and which Southey supposes to have influenced Bunyan and
deranged his sober judgment? It is true that the Protector and his
council discountenanced vice and folly, and that there was more piety
and virtue in the kingdom at that time than it had ever before
witnessed. But it would have been the greatest of miracles, had the
people been suddenly moralized, after having been baptized in brutality
for ages. Not a century had elapsed since the autos da fe had blazed
throughout the country, burning the most pious, moral, and enlightened
of her citizens. A century of misery to the professors of religions had
passed, in which the persecutions of Papists and Puritans, hanging,
transporting, murdering by frightful imprisonments all those who dared
to dissent from the church of England. All this must have produced a
debasing effect upon public morals. Even among professors Bunyan
discovered pride, covetousness, impiety and uncleanness.[172]