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

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 said 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 mercyseat 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 trimphed 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