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

everlasting bliss. But on the contrary, let men walk with God, and there they shall be excused; the blood of them that perish shall lie at their own door, and thou shalt be clear. ‘I am pure from the blood of all men,’ saith Paul (Acts 20:26). And again, ‘your blood be upon your own heads, I am clean’ (Acts 18:6). Yea, he that doth thus, shall leave in them that perish an accusing conscience, even begotten by his good conversation, and by that they shall be forced to justify God, his people, and way, in the day of their visitation; in the day when they are descending into the pit to the damned (1 Peter 2:12).

4. This is the way to maintain always the answer, the echoing answer of a good conscience in thy own soul. Godliness is of great use in this way; for the man that hath a good conscience to Godward, hath a continual feast in his own soul: while others say there is casting down, he shall say there is lifting up; for he shall save the humble person (Job 22:23-30). Some indeed, in the midst of their profession, are reproached, smitten, and condemned of their own heart, their conscience still biting and stinging of them, because of the uncleanness of their hands, and they cannot lift up their face unto God; they have not the answer of a good conscience toward him, but must walk as persons false to their God, and as traitors to their own eternal welfare; but the godly upright man shall have the light shine upon his ways, and he shall take his steps in butter and honey. ‘The work of righteousness shall be peace, and the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance for ever’ (Isa 32:17). ‘If our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things; beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God’ (1 John 3:20-22).

5. The godly man that walketh with God, that chiefly careth to do the work that God hath allotted him to do for his name in this world, he hath not only these advantages, but further, he hath as it were a privilege of power with God, he can sway much with him; as it is said of Jacob, as a prince he had power with God to prevail in times of difficulty (Gen 32:28). And so again, it is said of Judah, being faithful with the saints, he ruled with God (Hosea 11:12). How many times did that good man Moses turn away the wrath of God from the many thousands of Israel; yea, as it were, he held the hands of God, and staved off the judgments not once nor twice; the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much (2

Sam 5:10). One man that walketh much with God, may work wonders in this very thing; he may be a means of saving whole countries and kingdoms from those judgments their sins deserve. How many times, when Israel provoked the Lord to anger, did he yet defer to destroy them? and the reason of that forbearance, he tells them it was for David’s sake; for my servant David’s sake I will not do it. As the Lord said also concerning Paul, ‘Lo, God hath given thee all them that sail with thee’; that is, to save their lives from the rage of the sea (Acts 27:24). Yea, when a judgment is not only threatened, but the decree gone forth for its execution, then godly upright men may sometimes cause the very decree itself to cease without bringing forth (Zech 2:1-3). Or else may so time the judgment that is decreed, that the church shall best be able to bear it (Matt 24:20).

6. The man that is tender of God’s glory in this world, still ruling and governing his affairs by the Word, and desirous to be faithful to the work and employment that God hath appointed him to do for his name; that man shall still be let into the secrets of God; he shall know that which God will reserve and hide from many; ‘Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do,’ saith the Lord?—‘For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord,’ &c. (Gen 18:17,19). So again, ‘The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him; and he will shew them his covenant’ (Psa 25:14). ‘And to him that ordereth his conversation aright, will I shew the salvation of God’ (Psa 50:23). Such a man shall have things new as well as old. His converse with the Father, and the Son, and the Spirit, shall be turned into a kind of familiarity; he shall be led into the Word, and shall still increase in knowledge: when others shall be stinted and look with old faces, being black and dry as a stick, he shall be like a fatted calf, like the tree that is planted by the rivers of water, his flesh shall be fresh as the flesh of a child, and God will renew the face of his soul.

7. If any escape public calamities, usually they are such as are very tender of the name of God, and that make it their business to walk before him. They either escape by being mercifully taken away before it, or by being safely preserved in the midst of the judgment, until the indignation be overpast. Therefore God saith in one place, the ‘righteous are taken away from the evil to come’

(Isa 57:1). But if not so, as all be not, then they shall have their life for a prey (Jer 39:15-18). Caleb and Joshua escaped all the plagues that befel to Israel in the wilderness, for they followed God (Num 14:24). Somewhat of this you have also in that scripture, ‘Seek ye the Lord all ye meek of the earth, which have wrought his judgment; seek righteousness, seek meekness, it may be, ye shall be hid in the day of the Lord’s anger’ (Zeph 2:3). According to this is that in Luke, ‘Watch ye, therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man’ (Luke 21:36). When a man’s ways please the Lord, he will make his enemies to be at peace with him. Marvellous is the work of God in the preservation of his saints that are faithful with him, when dangers and calamities come; as Joseph, David, Jeremiah, and Paul, with many others, may appear. ‘He shall deliver thee in six troubles; yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee. In famine he shall redeem thee from death; and in war from the power of the sword. Thou shalt be hid from the scourge of the tongue; neither shalt thou be afraid of destruction when it cometh’ (Job 5:19-21).

8. If afflictions do overtake thee, for whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth, yet those afflictions shall not befal thee for those causes for which they befal the slothful and backsliding Christian; neither shall they have that pinching and galling operation upon thee, as on those who have left their first love and tenderness for God’s glory in the world.

(1.) Upon the faithful upright man, though he also may be corrected and chastised for sin, yet, I say, he abiding close with God, afflictions come rather for trial and for the exercise of grace received, than as rebukes for this or that wickedness; when upon the backsliding heartless Christian these things shall come from fatherly anger and displeasure, and that for their sins against him. Job did acknowledge himself a sinner, and that God therefore might chastise him: but yet he rather believed it was chiefly for the trial of his grace, as indeed, and in truth, it was (Job 7:20, 23:10). ‘He is a perfect man,’ saith God to Satan, ‘and one that feareth God, and escheweth evil, and still he holdeth fast his integrity, although thou movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause’ (Job 2:3). God will not say thus of every one when affliction is laid upon them, though they yet may be his children; but rather declareth and pronounceth that it is for their transgressions, because they have wickedly departed from him (Psa 39:11, 38:1-4).

(2.) Now, affliction arising from these two causes, their effects in the manner of their working, though grace turns them both for good, is very different one from the other; he who hath been helped to walk with God, is not assaulted with those turnings and returnings of guilt when he is afflicted, as he who hath basely departed from God; the one can plead his integrity, when the other blusheth for shame. See both these cases in one person, even that goodly beloved David. When the Lord did rebuke him for sin, then he cries, O blood guiltiness, O ‘cast me not away from thy presence’

(Psa 51:11). But when he at another time knew himself guiltless, though then also sorely afflicted, behold with what boldness he turns his face unto God; ‘O Lord, my God,’ saith he, ‘if I have done this; if there be iniquity in my hands; if I have rewarded evil unto him that was at peace with me; [yea, I have delivered him that without cause is mine enemy] let the enemy persecute my soul, and take it; yea, let him tread down my life upon the earth, and lay mine honour in the dust. Selah,’ &c. (Psa 7:3-5).

This, therefore, must needs be a blessed help in distress, for a man to have a good conscience when affliction hath taken hold on him; for a man then, in his looking behind and before, to return with peace to his own soul, that man must needs find honey in this lion, that can plead his innocency and uprightness. All the people curse me, saith Jeremiah, but that without a cause, for I have neither lent nor taken on usury; which it seems was a sin at that day (Jer 15:10).

9. When men are faithful with God in this world, to do the work he hath appointed for them, by this means a dying bed is made easier, and that upon a double account. (1.) By reason of that present peace such shall have, even in their time of languishing. (2.) By reason of the good company such shall have at their departure.

(1.) Such souls usually abound in present peace; they look not back upon the years they have spent with that shame as the idle and slothful Christian does. ‘Remember now, Lord,—how I have walked before thee in truth, and with a perfect heart’ (Isa 38:3). Blessed is the man that considereth the poor, the Lord will deliver him in time of trouble. The Lord will preserve him, and keep him alive, and he shall be blessed upon the earth; and thou wilt not deliver him unto the will of his enemies. The Lord will strengthen him upon the bed of languishing; thou wilt make all his bed in his sickness (Psa 41:1-3).

Ah! when God makes the bed,[27] he must needs lie easy that weakness hath cast thereon; a blessed pillow hath that man for his head, though to all beholders it is hard as a stone. Jacob, on his deathbed, had two things that made it easy:—(a) The faith of his going to rest, ‘I am to be gathered unto my people’; that is, to the blessed that have yielded up the ghost before me (Gen 49:29).

(b) The remembrance of the sealings of the countenance of God upon him, when he walked before him in the days of his pilgrimage: when Joseph came to