The Works of John Bunyan, vol 1 - John Bunyan (best self help books to read TXT) 📗

his experience so largely and profoundly handled, as if his book had been written out of my own heart. I prefer the book before all others as most fit for a wounded conscience.’ This was the ‘voice of a man’ that Christian ‘heard as going before him in the Valley of the Shadow of Death,’ and was glad that some who feared God were in this valley as well as himself, who could say, ‘I will fear no evil for thou art with me.’[106] In many things Luther and Bunyan were men of similar temperament. Like Emmanuel’s captains, in the Holy War, they were ‘very stout rough-hewn men; men that were fit to break the ice, and to make their way by dint of sword.’[107] They were animated by the same principles, and fought with the same weapons; and although Luther resided in a castle protected by princes, was furnished with profound scholastic learning, and became a terror to Popery; yet the voice of the unlettered tinker, issuing from a dreary prison, bids fair to be far more extensively heard and blessed than that of this most illustrious reformer.[108]

Bunyan’s happiness was now very great; his soul, with all its affections, clave unto Christ: but lest spiritual pride should exalt him beyond measure, and lest he should be scared to renounce his Saviour, by the threat of transportation and death, his heart was again wounded, and quickly after this his ‘love was tried to purpose.’

The tempter came in upon him with a most grievous and dreadful temptation; it was to part with Christ, to exchange him for the things of this life; he was perpetually tormented with the words ‘sell Christ.’ At length, he thought that his spirit gave way to the temptation, and a dreadful and profound state of despair overpowered him for the dreary space of more than two years.[109]

This is the most extraordinary part of this wonderful narrative, that he, without apparent cause, should thus be tempted, and feel the bitterness of a supposed parting with Christ. There was, doubtless, a cause for every pang; his heavenly Father afflicted him for his profit. We shall soon have to follow him through fiery trials.

Before the justices, allured by their arguments, and particularly by the sophistry of their clerk, Mr. Cobb, and then dragged from a beloved wife and from children to whom he was most fondly attached—all these fiery trials might be avoided, if he would but ‘sell Christ.’

A cold damp dungeon was to incarcerate his body for twelve tedious years of the prime of his life, unless he would ‘sell Christ.’ His ministering brother and friend, John Child, a Bedford man, who had joined in recommending Bunyan’s Vindication of Gospel Truths,[110]

fell under this temptation, and fearing temporal ruin and imprisonment for life, conformed, and then fell into the most awful state of despair, suffering such agonies of conscience, that, to get rid of present trouble, he hurried himself into eternity. Probably Bunyan alludes to this awful instance of fell despair in his Publican and Pharisee: ‘Sin, when appearing in its monstrous shape and hue, frighteth all mortals out of their wits, away from God; and if he stops them not, also out of the world.’[111] To arm Bunyan against being overcome by a fear of the lions in the way to the house Beautiful—against giving way, under persecution—he was visited with terrors lest he should sell or part with Christ. During these sad years he was not wholly sunk in despair, but had at times some glimmerings of mercy. In comparing his supposed sin with that of Judas, he was constrained to find a difference between a deliberate intention to sell Christ and a sudden temptation.[112] Through all these searchings of heart and inquiries at the Word, he became fixed in the doctrine of the final perseverance of God’s saints. ‘O

what love, what care, what kindness and mercy did I now see mixing itself with the most severe and dreadful of all God’s ways to his people; he never let them fall into sin unpardonable.’ ‘But these thoughts added grief and horror to me; I thought that all things wrought for my eternal overthrow.’ So ready is the tender heart to write bitter things against itself, and as ready is the tempter to whisper despairing thoughts. In the midst of this distress he ‘saw a glory in walking with God,’ although a dismal cloud enveloped him.

This misery was aggravated by reading the fearful estate of Francis Spira, who had been persuaded to return to a profession of Popery, and died in a state of awful despair.[113] ‘This book’ was to his troubled spirit like salt rubbed into a fresh wound.

Bunyan now felt his body and mind shaking and tottering under the sense of the dreadful judgment of God; and he thought his sin—of a momentary and unwilling consent to give up Christ—was a greater sin than all the sins of David, Solomon, Manasseh, and even than all the sins that had been committed by all God’s redeemed ones.

Was there ever a man in the world so capable of describing the miseries of Doubting Castle, or of the Slough of Despond, as poor John Bunyan?

He would have run from God in utter desperation; ‘but, blessed be his grace, that Scripture, in these flying sins, would call, as running after me, “I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins: return unto me, for I have redeemed thee”’ (Isa 44:22).Still he was haunted by that scripture, ‘You know how that afterwards, when he would have inherited the blessing, he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.’ Thus was he tossed and buffeted, involved in cloudy darkness, with now and then a faint gleam of hope to save him from despair. ‘In all these,’ he says, ‘I was but as those that justle against the rocks; more broken, scattered, and rent.

Oh! the unthought of imaginations, frights, fears, and terrors, that are effected by a thorough application of guilt.’[114] ‘Methought I saw as if the sun that shineth in the heavens did grudge to give light, and as if the very stones in the street, and tiles upon the houses, did bend themselves against me.’[115] Here we find him in that doleful valley, where Christian was surrounded by enemies that ‘cared not for his sword,’ he put it up, and places his dependence upon the more penetrating weapon, ‘All Prayer.’ Depending upon this last resource, he prayed, even when in this great darkness and distress. To whom could he go? his case was beyond the power of men or angels. His refuge, from a fear of having committed the unpardonable sin, was that he had never refused to be justified by the blood of Christ, but ardently wished it; this, in the midst of the storm, caused a temporary clam. At length, he was led to look prayerfully upon those scriptures that had tormented him, and to examine their scope and tendency, and then he ‘found their visage changed, for they looked not so grimly on him as before he thought they did.’[116] Still, after such a tempest, the sea did not at once become a calm. Like one that had been scared with fire, every voice was fire, fire; every little touch hurt his tender conscience.[117]

All this instructive history is pictured by a few words in the Pilgrim’s Progress. At the Interpreter’s house the pilgrim is shown ‘a fire burning against a wall, and one standing by it, always casting much water upon it, to quench it; yet did the fire burn higher and hotter.’[118] As Esau beat him down, Christ raised him again. The threatening and the promise were like glittering swords clashing together, but the promise must prevail.

His entire relief at last was sudden, while meditating in the field upon the words, ‘Thy righteousness is in heaven.’ Hence he drew the conclusion, that his righteousness was in Christ, at God’s right hand, ever before him, secure from all the powers of sin and Satan. Now his chains fell off; he was loosed from his affliction and irons; his temptation fled away. His present supply of grace he compared to the cracked groats and fourpence halfpennies,[119]

which rich men carry in their pockets, while their treasure is safe in their trunks at home, as his was in the storehouse of heaven.

This dreary night of awful conflict lasted more than two years; but when the dayspring from on high visited him, the promises spangled in his eyes, and he broke out into a song, ‘Praise ye the Lord.

Praise God in his sanctuary: praise him in the firmament of his power. Praise him for his mighty acts: praise him according to his excellent greatness.’[120]

Bunyan’s opinion as to the cause of this bitter suffering, was his want of watchfulness, his not coming boldly to the throne of grace, and that he had tempted God. The advantages he considered that he had gained by it were, that it confirmed his knowledge of the existence of God, so that he lost all his temptations to unbelief, blasphemy, and hardness of heart, Doubts as to the truth of the Word, and certainty of the world to come, were gone for ever.

He found no difficulty as to the keys of the kingdom of heaven.

‘Now I saw the apostles to be the elders of the city of refuge, those that they were to receive in, were received to life, but those that they were to shut out, were to be slain by the avenger of blood.’ Those were to enter who, with Peter, confessed to Jesus, ‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God’ (Matt 16:16).

This is simply an authority to proclaim salvation or condemnation to those who receive or reject the Saviour. It is upon his shoulder the key of the house is laid (Isa 22:22). Christ only has the key, no MAN openeth or shutteth (Rev 1:18, 3:7). All that man can do, as to binding or loosening, is to warn the hardened and to invite the contrite.

By these trials, the promises, became more clear and invaluable than ever. He never saw those heights and depths in grace, and love, and mercy, as he saw them after this severe trial—‘great sins drew out great grace’; and the more terrible and fierce guilt was, the more high and mighty did the mercy of God in Christ appear.

These are Bunyan’s own reflections; but may we not add to them, that while he was in God’s school of trial, every groan, every bitter pang of anguish, and every gleam of hope, were intended to fit him for his future work as a preacher and writer? Weighed in the balances of the sanctuary, there was not a jot too little, or an iota too much. Every important subject which embarrasses the convert, was most minutely investigated, especially faith, the sin against the Holy Ghost, the divinity of Christ, and such essential truths. He well knew every dirty lane, and nook, and corner of Mansoul, in which the Diabolonians found shelter, and well he knew the frightful sound of Diabolus’ drum.[121] Well did his pastor, John Burton, say of him, ‘He hath through grace taken these three heavenly degrees, to wit, union with Christ, the anointing of the Spirit, and experience of the temptations of Satan, which do more fit a man for that mighty work of preaching the gospel, than all the university learning and degrees that can be had.’[122]

Preserved in Christ Jesus, and called—selected from his associates in sin, he was taken into this school, and underwent the strictest religious education. It was here alone that his rare talent could be cultivated, to enable him, in two immortal allegories, to narrate the internal discipline he underwent. It was here he attained that