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

They are Christ’s love when hated of the world; 4. Christ’s love when under temptation and under desertion; 5. Christ’s love from first to last.[93] Now was his heart filled with comfort and hope.

‘I could believe that my sins should be forgiven me’; and, in a state of rapture, he thought that his trials were over, and that the savour of it would go with him through life. Alas! his enjoyment was but for a season—the preparation of his soul for future usefulness was not yet finished. In a short time the words of our Lord to Peter came powerfully into his mind—‘Satan hath desired to have you’; and so strong was the impression they made, that he thought some man addressed them to him; he even turned his head to see who it was that thus spoke to him. This was the forerunner of a cloud and a storm that was coming upon him. It was the gathering up of Satan’s mighty strength, to have, if possible, overwhelmed him. His narrative of this internal tempest in his soul—this last great struggle with the powers of darkness—is very striking.

‘About the space of a month after, a very great storm came down upon me, which handled me twenty times worse than all I had met with before; it came stealing upon me, now by one piece, then by another. First, all my comfort was taken from me; then darkness seized upon me; after which, whole floods of blasphemies, both against God, Christ, and the Scriptures, were poured upon my spirit, to my great confusion and astonishment. These blasphemous thoughts were such as also stirred up questions in me against the very being of God, and of his only beloved Son. As, whether there were in truth a God or Christ, or no? And whether the Holy Scriptures were not rather a fable, and cunning story, than the holy and pure Word of God.

‘These suggestions, with many others, which at this time I may not, dare not utter, neither by word nor pen, did make such a seizure upon my spirit, and did so overweigh my heart, both with their number, continuance, and fiery force, that I felt as if there were nothing else but these from morning to night within me, and as though indeed there could be room for nothing else; and also concluded, that God had, in very wrath to my soul, given me up unto them, to be carried away with them as with a mighty whirlwind.

‘Only by the distaste that they gave unto my spirit, I felt there was something in me that refused to embrace them.’[94]

Here are the facts which are allegorized in the history of Christian, passing through the Valley of Humiliation, and fighting with the Prince of the power of the air. ‘Then Apollyon, espying his opportunity, began to gather up close to Christian, and wrestling with him, gave him a dreadful fall; and with that Christian’s sword flew out of his hand.’ This was the effect of his doubts of the inspiration of the Scriptures—the sword of the Spirit. ‘I am sure of thee now, said Apollyon; and with that he had almost pressed him to death, so that Christian began to despair of life; but as God would have it, while Apollyon was fetching of his last blow, Christian nimbly stretched out his hand for his sword, and caught it, saying, “Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy, when I fall I shall arise” (Matt 7:8), and with that gave him a deadly thrust, which made him give back as one that had received his mortal wound.

Christian perceiving that, made at him again, saying, “Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us”; and with that Apollyon spread forth his dragon wings, and sped him away.’[95] What an awful moment, when he fell unarmed before his ferocious enemy! ‘Faith now has but little time to speak to the conscience—it is now struggling for life—it is now fighting with angels—with infernals—all it can do now is to cry, groan, sweat, fear, fight, and gasp for life.’[96] How desperate the conflict—the mouth of hell yawning to swallow him—man cannot aid the poor warrior, all his help is in God. Is it not a wonder to see a poor creature, who in himself is weaker than the moth, to stand against and overcome all devils—all the world—all his lusts and corruptions; or, if he fall, is it not a wonder to see him, when devils and guilt are upon him, to rise again, stand upon his legs, walk with God again, and persevere in faith and holiness?[97]

This severe conflict lasted for about a year. He describes his feelings at times as resembling the frightful pangs of one broken on the wheel. The sources of his misery were fears that he had sinned against the Holy Ghost; and that through his hardness of heart and impatience in prayer—he should not persevere to the end. During all this time, occasional visits of mercy kept him from despair; and at some intervals filled him with transports of joy. At one time so delightfully was his burden removed that he could not tell how to contain himself. ‘I thought I could have spoken of his love and of his mercy to me, even to the very crows that sat upon the ploughed lands before me, had they been capable to have understood me.’[98] Thus his feelings were controlled by reason, very different to the poor madman who, in olden time, is represented as preaching to the fish. With Bunyan it was a hallowed joy—a gush of holy gladness, in which he wished all creation to participate. his heart was baptized in hope. ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’; and with holy Job, he wished to perpetuate his joy by a memorial not in rock, but in a book of resemblance. ‘I would I had a pen and ink here to write it down.’ This is the first desire that he expressed to proclaim or publish to others the great Saviour he had found: but he was not yet prepared; he must pass through deeper depths, and possess a living knowledge of Divine truth, burnt into his soul by satanic fires.

Very soon after this, he was harassed with fear lest he should part with Christ. The tempter, as he did with Christian in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, suggested blasphemies to him, which he thought had proceeded from his own mind. ‘Satan troubled him with his stinking breath. How many strange, hideous, and amazing blasphemies have some that are coming to Christ had injected upon their spirits against him.’[99] ‘The devil is indeed very busy at work during the darkness of a soul. He throws in his fiery darts to amazement, when we are encompassed with the terrors of a dismal night; he is bold and undaunted in his assaults, and injects with a quick and sudden malice a thousand monstrous and abominable thoughts of God, which seem to be the motions of our own minds, and terribly grieve and trouble us.’[100]

What makes those arrows more penetrating and distressing is, that Satan, with subtle art, tips them with sentences of Scripture. ‘No place for repentance’; ‘rejected’; ‘hath never forgiveness,’ and other passages which, by the malignant ingenuity of the fiend, are formed by his skill as the cutting and barbed points of his shafts.

At one time Bunyan concluded that he was possessed of the devil; then he was tempted to speak and sin against the Holy Ghost. He thought himself alone in such a tempest, and that no one had ever felt such misery as he did. When in prayer, his mind was distracted with the thought that Satan was pulling his clothes; he was even tempted to fall down and worship him. Then he would cry after God, in awful fear that eventually Satan would overcome him. During all this time he was struggling against the tempter; and, at length, the dayspring visited him in these words, ‘I am persuaded that nothing shall separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.’

Again he was cast down with a recollection of his former blasphemies.

What reason can I have to hope for an inheritance in eternal life?

The questions was answered with that portion of Scripture, ‘If God be for us, who can be against us?’ These were visits which, like Peter’s sheet, of a sudden were caught up to heaven again.[101]

At length the Sun of Righteousness arose, and shone upon him with healing influence. ‘He hath made peace through the blood of his cross,’ came with power to his mind, followed by the consoling words of the apostle, ‘Forasmuch, then, as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage’ (Heb 2:14,15). This was the key that opened every lock in Doubting Castle. The prisoner escaped to breathe the air of hope, and joy, and peace. ‘This,’ said he, ‘was a good day to me, I hope I shall not forget it.’ ‘I thought that the glory of those words was then so weighty on me, that I was, both once and twice, ready to swoon as I sat, not with grief and trouble, but with solid joy and peace.’

His mind was now in a fit state to seek for church fellowship, as a further means of advance in his knowledge of Divine love. To effect this object, he was naturally led to the Baptist church at Bedford, to which those pious women belonged whose Christian communion had been blessed to him. I sat under the ministry of holy Mr. Gifford, whose doctrine, by God’s grace, was much for my stability.[102]

Although his soul was led from truth to truth, his trials were not over—he passed through many severe exercises before he was received into communion with the church.[103]

At length he determined to become identified with a body of professed Christians, who were treated with great scorn by other sects because they denied infant baptism, and he became engaged in the religious controversies which were fashionable in those days.

We have noticed his encounter with the Ranters, and he soon had to give battle to persons called Quakers. Before the Society of Friends was formed, and their rules of discipline were published, many Ranters and others, some of whom were bad characters and held the wildest opinions, passed under the name of Quakers. Some of these denied that the Bible was the Word of God; and asserted that the death of Christ was not a full atonement for sin—that there is no future resurrection, and other gross errors. The Quakers, who were afterwards united to form the Society of Friends, from the first denied all those errors. Their earliest apologist, Barclay, in his theses on the Scriptures, says, ‘They are the doctrines of Christ, held forth in precious declarations, spoken and written by the movings of God’s Spirit.’ Whoever it was that asserted the heresies, to Bunyan the investigation of them, in the light of Divine truth, was attended with great advantages. It was through ‘this narrow search of the Scriptures that he was not only enlightened, but greatly confirmed and comforted in the truth.’[104]

He longed to compare his experience with that of some old and eminent convert, and ‘God did cast into his hand’ Luther On the Galatians, ‘so old that it was ready to fall piece from piece, if I did but turn it over.’[105] The commentary of this enlightened man was a counterpart to his own feelings. ‘I found,’ says Bunyan, ‘my condition, in