prevent their making a public profession of Christ by uniting with one
of his churches; represented in the Pilgrim’s Progress by the palace
justly called Beautiful. Many were then kept back, to their serious
injury or ruin, by fear of enormous penalties or imprisonment, but NOW,
what keeps you back, O Christian. Fears for the loss of property,
liberty, or life, would have been a wretched plea for the loss of the
soul, how much less the fear of ridicule from ungodly friends or
relatives.—Ed.
[5] A familiar expression; ‘rub up,’ prepare for action. ‘Put on thy
harness,’ an obsolete term for armour, weapons, and habiliments of war;
the spiritual warfare, ‘put on the whole armour of God.’—Ed.
[6] Would you be ready to die in peace? then seek a close walk and
communion with God in time of health. A life of faith ensures a life of
glory. Live and walk in the Spirit; as strangers and pilgrims abstain
from fleshly lusts. To live thus is Christ; to die is gain, the more
sudden the more joyful and glorious.—Ed.
[7] This meaning of the word ‘touch’ is now obsolete. It refers to
touching the seal on a deed, called sealing it; a solemn, deliberate
pledge to keep close to your covenants. ‘I keep touch with my promise.’
Sir Thomas More.—Ed.
[8] ‘To make both ends meet,’ is a proverbial expression, meaning that
our expenses should not exceed our income; but, in this more solemn
sense we should fulfil our daily duties as they approach, as all our
moments have duties assigned to them. Omissions can never be recovered;
hence the necessity of forgiveness for Christ’s sake, who fulfilled
every duty, and hence the necessity of perpetual watchfulness.—Ed.
[9] How delightfully does this exclamation flow from the lips of the
pious patriarch, overcome by his exertion in this solemn death-bed
scene. He pauses, and then, with his recovering breath, appeals to
heaven—‘I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord.’ Poor old man, the
cold sweat of death is on thy brow, the angels stand ready to open the
gate of the celestial city; finish thy solemn instructions to thy
children, and then thou shalt enter upon the fruition of all thy
patient waiting, thy fearing, fighting, trembling, doubting, shall be
absorbed in immeasurable, eternal bliss.—Ed.
[10] This is a very illustrative allusion. When a spinner has wound up
all his material, the technical term is, ‘The bottom is wound.’ When a
poor spinner by age or infirmity, is incapable of work, it would be
said, ‘Ah! his bottom is wound.’ In this text, Jacob had finally made
an end of all his earthly duties, and had now only to close his eyes
for the last time upon the world.—Ed.
[11] These are solemn and most weighty arguments to press upon us the
fulfilment of our daily duties. How incomprehensible are the ways of
God. His love is proved by bitterly convicting us of sin, of
righteousness, and of judgment. Like Christian and Hopeful in Doubting
Castle, sometimes so overwhelming as to drive us to the verge of
despair and self-destruction. We fall not down the precipice, for still
there is hope and pardon in his bosom, and at the proper time it will
be revealed.—Ed.
[12] That preventeth; ‘letteth’ is from the old verb to let or hinder,
as used Romans 1:13.—Ed.
[13] This language is probably founded on Revelation 22:14, ‘Blessed
are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree
of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.’ Until the
work that is assigned to us is done, we cannot cross the river and
ascend to the New Jerusalem. ‘He which testifieth these things saith,
Surely I come quickly. Amen.’ He who is diligent to finish his work may
reply with truth, ‘Even so, come, Lord Jesus.’—Ed.
[14] Bunyan was in his politics a thorough loyalist. When a young man
he even fought at the siege of Leicester, when it was besieged by the
royal army. Probably the horrible cruelties practised upon the peaceful
inhabitants, by the cavaliers, at the taking of that city, induced him
to leave the service. His pastor, J. Gifford, had also served in the
royal army as an officer; both of them narrowly escaped. This may
account for Bunyan’s high monarchial principles, they appear very
prominently in many of his works.—Ed.
[15] Many extraordinary tales are told of the nightingale, as to their
great memory, and facility in imitating the human voice. Sitting in
thorns is more for protection than penance. See Goldsmith’s Animated
Nature. It was a generally received opinion that the nightingale, to
keep himself awake in the night, sat on a tree of thorn, so that if he
nodded he would be pricked in the breast. The learned and witty Dr.
Thomas Fuller thus alludes to it:—‘I am sure the nightingale which
would wake will not be angry with the thorn which pricketh her breast
when she noddeth.’ How useful would it be if a thorn could be so placed
as to prick those who nod at church!—Ed.
[16] A painted figure of a horse, behind which the sportsman stealthily
approaches the game.
‘One underneath his horse, to get a shoot doth stalk
Another over dykes upon his stilts doth walk.’
—Drayton’s Polyolbion, vol. iii. p. 25.—Ed.
[17] So dress as to pass without being noticed; neither precise nor
formal, slovenly nor dandyish; dress like a man or woman. Conduct
yourself as one that fears God.—Ed.
[18] The head having been crowned with thorns, it is unsuitable that
the feet should tread on rose leaves.—Mason.
[19] How very striking is this expression. O! that it may assist in
riveting upon our souls a vivid remembrance of the Saviour’s
sufferings.—Ed.
[20] Some Pharisees, falsely called by the Romish churches ‘saints,’
have claimed merit from associating with dirt and filth, and vermin,
beggars, and vagabonds, upon dunghills, to show their contempt of the
world! All this was to gain the applause of the world. God’s saints
will associate with the salt of the earth, with God’s fearers, who
whether rich or poor, are equally despised by the world.—Ed.
[21] Reader, do not mistake this to mean a piece of wood shaped as a
cross. It means cherish, love, be conformed to the conduct or image of
Christ, follow him in reproaches and revilings, and count it your
honour to suffer for his sake. ‘Kiss it,’ has the same meaning as the
words of the Psalmist, ‘Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish.’
It is the soul mentally kissing the Saviour, and not a bit of wood,
which would then be an idol, inflicting the deep guilt of idolatry.—Ed.
[22] Upon the opening of the sixth seal in the book of Revelation,
there was ‘a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth of
hair, and the moon as blood.’ A preternatural and awful darkness broods
over nature, preparatory to its final dissolution. Thus Satan darkens
the things above to the natural man, so that he cannot discern
spiritual things, while those of time and sense are magnified and
multiplied in his estimation.—Ed.
[23] This refers to the phylacteries worn by every Jew while in his
daily prayers. These are long strips of leather, having small boxes
containing the law minutely written in Hebrew, worn upon the forehead
and wrist, and bound round the fingers. A custom founded on Exodus
13:9, 16; Proverbs 7:3. That the Divine law should direct the head and
fingers, as representing the mind and conduct, so would Bunyan have all
Christians carry, at all times, in the mind and conduct, the riches and
righteousness of Christ.—Ed.
[24] There are no idlers in God’s Israel, every one has his appointed
work to fulfil against his appointed day. Christian, watch against
idleness.
‘For Satan has some mischief still
For idle hands to do.’—Ed.
[25] Godliness, saith Paul, has the ‘promise of the life that now is,
and of that which is to come.’ This should be more dwelt upon by our
ministers, as Bunyan sets the example. The mind of a Christian has the
richest enjoyments, however his body may be persecuted, for over that
only the enemy has power. A prison may be the gate of heaven. With God
as our Father, a wall of fire round about, and the glory in our midst,
‘what can we want beside?’—Ed.
[26] To tender; to care for, to guard. ‘He had provoked others to
tender and seek the glory of God.’—Udal. Not frequently used in this
sense.—Ed.
[27] How tenderly does the Psalmist exhibit the love of God to his
chosen under this figure, ‘Thou wilt make all his bed in his sickness.’
He will never leave nor forsake them; and, when heart and flesh shall
fail, he will guide them and receive them to his glory. ‘Wonders of
grace to God belong.’ Christian women! with such an example, can you
hesitate to go and make the bed of a poor sick and afflicted
neighbour?—Ed.
[28]
‘Jesus can make a dying bed
Feel soft as downy pillows are,
While on his breast I lean my head,
And breath my life out sweetly there.’—Dr. Watts.
THE DESIRE OF THE RIGHTEOUS GRANTED;
OR,
A DISCOURSE OF THE RIGHTEOUS MAN’S DESIRES.
ADVERTISEMENT BY THE EDITOR
As the tree is known by its fruit, so is the state of a man’s heart
known by his desires. The desires of the righteous are the touchstone
or standard of Christian sincerity—the evidence of the new birth—the
spiritual barometer of faith and grace—and the springs of obedience.
Christ and him crucified is the ground of all our hopes—the foundation
upon which all our desires after God and holiness are built—and the
root by which they are nourished. It is from this principle of Divine
life which flows from Christ to his members, that these desires and
struggles after holiness of thought and conduct arise, and are kept
alive. They prove a fountain of consolation to the harassed and tried
believer; for if we are in the sense of this scripture ‘righteous,’ we
shall have those desires to enjoy the presence of God on earth, and
with him felicity in heaven, which the voice of the Omnipotent
declareth SHALL be granted. O! the blessedness of those in whose hearts
are planted ‘the desires of the righteous.’
This brings us to the most important of all the subjects of
self-examination—am I one of the ‘righteous’? or, in other words, ‘am I
born again?’ Upon this solemn heart-trying inquiry hangs all our hopes
of escape from misery and ascension to glory—a kingdom, a crown, a
bright, a happy, an eternal inheritance, on the one hand, or the gloomy
abodes of wretchedness on the other hand, are for ever to be decided.
What are our desires? To guide our anxious inquiries into this
all-important subject, our author unlocks the heavenly treasures, and
in every point furnishes us with book, and chapter, and verse, that we
may carefully and prayerfully weigh all that he displays in the
unerring scales of the sanctuary. A desire after the presence of God—of
conformity to his image and example—for a greater hatred of sin—yea, as
Bunyan expresses it, a desire to desire more of those blessed fruits of
the Spirit, inspires the inquirer with the cheering hope that he has
passed from death unto life—that he has been born again, and has been
made righteous. And if, as we progress in the Divine life, our
experience of the delights of communion with God enables us to say with
David, ‘My soul panteth,’ or crieth, or, as the margin of our Bibles
have, brayeth, ‘yea, thirsteth after God,’ however we may be assaulted
by the enemies within and without, we may say with confidence, ‘Why art
thou disquieted, O my soul? hope thou in God, for I SHALL yet praise
him.’
Deeply are the churches of Christ indebted to the Holy Spirit for
having assisted his honoured servant to write this treatise; and we are
under great obligation to his friend, Charles Doe, for having handed it
down to us, as he found it prepared for the press, with other excellent
treatises, among the author’s papers after his decease. It abounds with
those striking ideas peculiar to the works of the author of the
Pilgrim’s Progress; most faithful home thrusts at conscience, which
those who really desire to know themselves will greatly prize. It has
been very properly observed that the words used by the author, as
descriptive of the text, may, with great propriety, be applied to this
treatise—‘It is a sharp and smart description’ of the desires of a
righteous man.
The desires of the righteous are very graphically impersonated and
described. They reach beyond time and peep into eternity. ‘The
righteous have desires that reach further than this world, desires that
have so long a neck as to look into the world to come.’ ‘So forcible
and mighty are they in operation’; ‘is there not life and mettle in
them? They loose the bands of nature—harden the soul against
sorrow—they are the fruits of an eagle-eyed confidence.’ They enable
the soul ‘to see through the jaws of death—to see Christ preparing
mansion-houses for his poor ones that are now kicked to and fro, like
footballs in the world!’ ‘A desire will take a man upon its back and
carry him away to God, if ten thousand men oppose it.’ ‘It will carry
him away after God to do his will, let the work be never so hard.’ The
new man is subject to transient sickness, during which desire fails in
its power when the inner man has caught a cold.
Bunyan’s views of church fellowship are always lovely; they are
delightfully expressed. He also introduces us to the unsearchable
riches of Christ. ‘The righteous desire a handful, God gives them a
seaful; they desire a country, God prepares for them a city.’ Wonders
of grace to God belong.
Bunyan’s pictures of the natural man are equally faithful and
striking—when guilt and conviction take hold on him—when pestilence
threatens to break up his house-keeping—and death takes him by the
throat and hauls him down stairs to the grave; then he, who never
prayed, crieth, Pray for me, and the poor soul is as loath to go out of
the body for fear the devil should catch it, as the poor bird is to go
out of the bush while she sees the hawk waiting to receive her. But I
must not detain the reader longer from entering on this solemn and
impressive treatise, but commend it to the Divine blessing.
GEO. OFFOR.
THE DESIRE OF THE RIGHTEOUS GRANTED.
‘The desire of the righteous is only good.’—Proverbs 11:23
‘The fear of the wicked, it shall come upon him; but the desire of the
righteous shall be granted.’—Proverbs 10:24
This book of the Proverbs is so called because it is such as containeth
hard, dark, and pithy sentences of wisdom, by which is taught unto
young men knowledge and discretion (1-6). Wherefore this book is not
such as discloseth truths by words antecedent or subsequent to the
text, so as other scriptures generally do, but has its texts or
sentences more independent; for usually each verse standeth upon its
own bottom, and presenteth by itself some singular thing to the
consideration of the reader; so that I shall not need to bid my reader
go back to what went before, nor yet to that which follows, for the
better opening of the text; and shall therefore come immediately to the
words, and search into them for what hidden treasures are contained
therein.
[First.] The words then, in the first place, present us with the
general condition of the whole world; for all men are ranked under one
of these conditions, the wicked or the righteous; for he that is not
wicked is righteous, and he that is not righteous is wicked. So again,
‘Lay not wait, O wicked man, against the dwelling of the righteous,
spoil not his resting-place.’ I might give you out of this book many
such instances, for it flows with such; but the truth hereof is plain
enough.
The world is also divided by other general terms, as by
these—believers, unbelievers; saints, sinners; good, bad; children of
God, and children of the wicked one, &c. These, I say, are general
terms, and comprehend not this or that sect, or order of each, but the
whole. The believer, saint, good, and child of God, are one—to wit, the
righteous; the unbeliever, the sinner, the bad, and the child of the
devil, is one—to wit, the wicked; as also the text expresses it. So
that I say, the text, or these two terms in it, comprehend all men; the
one all that shall be saved, the other all that shall be damned for
ever in hell-fire (Psa 9:17, 11:6). The wicked; who is he but the man
that loves not God, nor to do his will? The righteous; who is he but
the man that loveth God, and his holy will, to do it?
Of the wicked there are several sorts, some more ignorant, some more
knowing; the more ignorant of them are such as go to be executed, as
the ox goes to the slaughter, or as a fool to the correction of the
stocks; that is, as creatures whose ignorance makes them as
unconcerned, while they are going down the stairs to hell. But, alas!
their ignorance will be no plea for them before the bar of God; for it
is written, ‘It is a people of no understanding; therefore he that made
them will not have mercy on them, and he that formed them will show
them no favour’ (Isa 27:11; Prov 7:22).
Though, I must confess, the more knowing the wicked is, or the more
light and goodness such a one sins against, the greater will his
judgment be; these shall have greater damnation: it shall be more
tolerable at the judgment for Sodom than for them (Luke 10:12, 20:47).
There is a wicked man that goes blinded, and a wicked man that goes
with his eyes open to hell; there is a wicked man that cannot see, and
a wicked man that will not see the danger he is in; but hell-fire will
open both their eyes (Luke 16:23). There are that are wicked, and cover
all with a cloak of religion, and there are that proclaim their
profaneness; but they will meet both in the lake that burns with fire
and brimstone; ‘The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the
nations that forget God’ (Psa 9:17).
There are also several sorts, if I may so express myself, of those that
are truly righteous, as children, young men, fathers, or saints that
fear God, both small and great (Rev 11:18; 1 John 2). Some have more
grace than some, and some do better improve the grace they have than
others of their brethren do; some also are more valiant for the truth
upon the earth than others of their brethren are; yea, some are so
swallowed up with God, and love to his word and ways, that they are fit
to be a pattern or example in holiness to all that are about them; and
some again have their light shining so dim, that they render themselves
suspicious to their brethren, whether they are of the number of those
that have grace or no.[1] But being gracious they shall not be lost,
although such will at the day of reward suffer loss; for this is the
will of the Father that sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world,
‘That of all which he had given him he should lose nothing, but should
raise it up again at the last day’ (John 6:37-39; 1 Cor 3:15).
[Second.] In the next place, we are here presented with some of the
qualities of the wicked and the righteous; the wicked has his fears,
the righteous has his desires. The wicked has his fears. ‘The fear of
the wicked, it shall come upon him; but the desire of the righteous
shall be granted.’ Indeed, it seems to the godly that the wicked
feareth not, nor doth he after a godly sort; for he that feareth God
aright must not be reputed a wicked man. The wicked, through the pride
of his countenance, declareth that he feareth not God aright, because
he doth not graciously call upon him; but yet for all that, the wicked
at times are haunted, sorely haunted, and that with the worst of fears.
‘Terrors,’ says Bildad, ‘shall make him afraid on every side.’ And
again, ‘His confidence shall be rooted out of his tabernacle, and it
shall bring him to the king of terrors’ (Job 18:11-14).
A wicked man, though he may hector it at times with his proud heart, as
though he feared neither God nor hell, yet again, at times, his soul is
even drowned with terrors. ‘The morning is to them even as the shadow
of death; if one knew them, they are in the terrors of the shadow of
death’ (Job 24:14-17). At times, I say, it is thus with them,
especially when they are under warm convictions that the day of
judgment is at hand, or when they feel in themselves as if death was
coming as a tempest, to steal them away from their enjoyments, and
lusts, and delights; then the bed shakes on which they lie, then the
proud tongue doth falter in their mouth, and their knees knock one
against another; then their conscience stares, and roars, and tears,
and arraigns them before God’s judgment-seat, or threatens to follow
them down to hell, and there to wreck its fury on them, for all the
abuses and affronts this wicked wretch offered to it in the day in
which it controlled his unlawful deeds. O! none can imagine what
fearful plights a wicked man is in sometimes; though God in his just
judgment towards them suffers them again and again to stifle and choke
such awakenings, from a purpose to reserve them unto the day of
judgment to be punished (2 Peter 2:7-9).
[Third.] In the third place, as the wicked has his fears, so the
righteous has his desires. ‘The desire of the righteous shall be
granted’; but this must not be taken exclusively, as if the wicked had
nothing but fears, and the righteous nothing but desires. For, both by
Scripture and experience also, we find that the wicked has his desires,
and the righteous man his fears.
1. For the wicked, they are not without their desires. ‘Let me die the
death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his,’ was the
desire of wicked Balaam (Num 23:10), and another place saith, ‘the
wicked boasteth of his heart’s desire’; that he is for heaven as well
as the best of you all, but yet, even then, ‘he blesseth the covetous,
whom the Lord abhorreth’ (Psa 10:3). Wicked men have their desires and
their hopes too, but the hope and desire of unjust men perisheth (Prov
11:7, 14:32). Yea, and though they look and long, too, all the day
long, with desires of life and glory, yet their fears, and them only,
shall come upon them; for they are the desires of the righteous that
shall be granted (Psa 112:10).
The desires of the wicked want a good bottom; they flow not from a
sanctified mind, nor of love to the God, or the heaven now desired; but
only from such a sense as devils have of torments, and so, as they,
they cry out, ‘I beseech thee torment me not’ (Luke 8:28, 16:24). But
their fears have a substantial foundation, for they are grounded upon
the view of an ill-spent life, the due reward of which is hell-fire;
‘the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God,’ their place is
without; ‘for without are dogs and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and
murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie’ (1 Cor
6:9,10; Rev 22:15).
Their fears, therefore, have a strong foundation; they have also matter
to work upon, which is guilt and justice, the which they shall never be
able to escape, without a miracle of grace and mercy (Heb 2:3).
Therefore it saith, and that with emphasis, ‘The fear of the wicked it
shall come upon him’; wherefore his desires must die with him: for the
promise of a grant of that which is desired is only entailed to
righteousness. ‘The desire of the righteous shall be granted,’ but
‘grant not, O Lord, the desires of the wicked,’ saith David (Psa
140:8).
2. Nor are the righteous without their fears, and that even all their
life long. Through fear of death, they, some of them, are all their
life time subject to bondage (Heb 2:15). But as the desires of the
wicked shall be frustrate, so shall also the fears of the godly; hence
you have them admonished, yea commanded, not to be afraid neither of
devils, death, nor hell; for the fear of the righteous shall not come
upon them to eternal damnation (Isa 35:4, 41:10-14, 43:1, 44:28; Luke
8:50, 12:32; Rev 1:17).
‘The desire of the righteous shall be granted.’ No, they are not to
fear what sin can do unto them, nor what all their sins can do unto
them; I do not say they should not be afraid of sinning, nor of those
temporal judgments that sin shall bring upon them, for of such things
they ought to be afraid, as saith the Psalmist, ‘My flesh trembleth for
fear of thee, and I am afraid of thy judgments’ (Psa 119:120). But of
eternal ruin, of that, they ought not to be afraid of with slavish
fear. ‘Wherefore should I fear,’ said the prophet, ‘in the days of
evil, when the iniquity of my heels shall compass me about?’ (Psa
49:5). And again, ‘Ye have done all this wickedness, yet turn not aside
from following the Lord;—for the Lord will not forsake his people, for
his great name’s sake’ (1 Sam 12:20-22).