The Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan [most popular novels .txt] 📗

that if it be possible he will make thee despair, and make away thyself as did Judas.” —⁠Vol. 2, p.132 Sin, when seen in its colours, and 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. This is manifest by Cain, Judas, Saul, and others. They fly from before God, one to one fruit of despair, and one to another. —⁠Pharisee and Publican, vol. 2, p. 260 ↩

An admirable chain of reasoning, pointing out the evils of despair, is to be found in the Jerusalem Sinner Saved (vol. 1, pp. 91, 92), under the head Fifthly. “It will make a man his own tormentor, and flounce and fling like a wild bull in a net (Isaiah 51:20). Despair! it drives a man to the study of his own ruin, and brings him at last to be his own executioner” (2 Samuel 17:3⁠–⁠5). —⁠Editor ↩

Alas, how chang’d! Expressive of his mind,
His eyes are sunk, arms folded, head reclin’d;
Those awful syllables, hell, death, and sin,
Though whisper’d, plainly tell what works within.

—⁠Cowper’s Hope

“A wounded spirit who can bear?” ↩

To bring the state of Christian’s mind before us, read the lamentations of the Psalmist, when he was a prisoner in Doubting Castle, under Giant Despair, in Psalm 88; and Bunyan’s experience, as narrated in No. 163 of Grace Abounding. Despair swallowed him up, and that passage fell like a hot thunderbolt upon his conscience, “He was rejected, for he found no place for repentance.” —⁠Ivimey ↩

Dr. Donne, the celebrated Dean of St. Paul’s, had recently published a thesis, to prove that suicide, under some circumstances, was justifiable. Hopeful answers all his arguments, and proves it to be the foulest of murders. Bunyan, in his treatise on Justification, volume 1, page 314, thus notices the jailer’s intent to commit suicide, when the doors of the prison in which Paul was confined were thrown open⁠—“Even now, while the earthquake shook the prison, he had murder in his heart⁠—murder, I say, and that of a high nature, even to have killed his own body and soul at once.” —⁠Editor ↩

Here is the blessing of a hopeful companion; here is excellent counsel. Let vain professors say what they may against looking back to past experiences, it is most certainly good and right so to do; not to encourage present sloth and presumption, but to excite fresh confidence of hope in the Lord. We have David’s example, and Paul’s word to encourage us to this, “The Lord that delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear, he will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine” (1 Samuel 17:37); and says Paul, “We had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:9). —⁠Mason ↩

It is a curious picture which Bunyan has drawn of the intercourse between the giant and his wife Diffidence. They form a very loving couple in their way; and the giant takes no new step in the treatment of the pilgrims without consulting Mrs. Diffidence over night, so that the curtain lectures to which we listen are very curious. But Mrs. Diffidence ought rather to have been called Dame Desperation, or Desperate Resolution; for she seems, if anything, the more stubborn genius of the two. —⁠Cheever By these conversations between Diffidence and Despair, after they had retired to bed, Bunyan perhaps designed to intimate that, as melancholy persons seldom get rest at night, the gloominess of the season contributes to the distress of their minds. So Asaph complains: “My sore ran in the night, and ceased not: my soul refused to be comforted” (Psalms 67:2). —⁠Ivimey ↩

How would the awful lesson of the man in the iron cage, at the Interpreter’s house, now recur to poor Christian’s mind: “I cannot get out, O now I cannot! I left off to watch, and am shut up in this iron cage, nor can all the men in the world let me out.” Christian’s answer to the despairing pilgrim now soon broke upon his memory: “The Son of the Blessed is very pitiful.” —⁠Editor ↩

What! Pray in the custody of Giant Despair, in the midst of Doubting Castle, and when their own folly brought them there too? Yes; mind this, ye pilgrims, ye are exhorted, “I will that men pray everywhere, without doubting” (1 Timothy 2:8). We can be in no place but God can hear, nor in any circumstance but God is able to deliver us from. And be assured, that when the spirit of prayer comes, deliverance is nigh at hand. —⁠Mason Perhaps the author selected Saturday at midnight for the precise time when the prisoners began to pray, in order to intimate that the preparation for the Lord’s day, which serious persons are reminded to make for its sacred services, are often the happy means of recovering those that have fallen into sin and despondency. —⁠Scott ↩

All at once, by a new revelation, which none but the Saviour could make, Christian finds the promises. Christ had been watching over his erring disciples⁠—He kept back the hand of Despair from destroying them⁠—He binds up the broken heart, and healeth all their wounds. —⁠Cheever As a key enters all the intricate wards of a lock, and throws back its bolts, so the precious promises of God in his Word, if turned by the strong hand of faith, will open all the doors which unbelief and despair have shut upon us. —⁠Burder ↩

Bunyan was a plainspoken man, and feared not to offend delicate ears when truth required honest dealing. In his treatise on the Law and Grace,