The Works of John Bunyan, vol 3, John Bunyan [ebook reader color screen TXT] 📗

Reader, wouldst see what you may never feel, Despair, racks, torments, whips of burning steel?

Behold this man, this furnace, in whose heart Sin hath created hell. O! in each part

What flames appear?

His thoughts all stings; words, swords;

Brimstone his breath;

His eyes, flames; wishes, curses; life, a death, A thousand deaths live in him, he not dead—

A breathing corpse in living scalding lead.’—Ed.

[7] How plain and important is this direction. Saul the persecutor ran fast, but the faster he ran in his murderous zeal the further he ran from the prize. Let every staunch sectarian examine prayerfully his way, especially if the sect he belongs to is patronized by princes, popes, or potentates, and endowed with worldly honours.

He may be running from and not to heaven.—Ed.

[8] He that trusts in the sect to which he belongs is assuredly in the wrong way, whether it be the Church of Rome or England, Quaking, Ranting, Baptists, or Independents. Trust in Christ must be all in all. First be IN Christ, then run for heaven, looking unto Christ. Keep fellowship with those who are the purest, and run fastest in the ordinances of the gospel which are revealed in the Word. Follow no human authority nor craft, seek the influence of the Holy Spirit for yourself, that you may be led into all truth, then you will so run as to obtain.—Ed.

[9] How plain is this direction, and how does it commend itself to our common-sense; lumpish shoes, and pockets filled with stones, how absurd for a man who is running a race!! Stop, my dear reader, have you cast away all useless encumbrances, and all easily besetting sins? Is your heart full of mammon, or pride, or debauchery? if so, you have no particle of strength to run for heaven, but are running upon swift perdition.—Ed.

[10] This is one of those beautiful ideas which so abound in all Bunyan’s works. Our way to the kingdom is consecrated by the cross of Christ, and may be known throughout by the sprinkling of his blood, his groans, his agonies. All the doctrines that put us in the way are sanctified by the atonement; all the spurs to a diligent running in that way are powerful as motives, by our being bought with that precious price, the death of Emmanuel. O! my soul, be thou found looking unto Jesus, he is THE WAY, the only way to heaven.—Ed.

[11] Strange infatuation, desperate pride, that man should reject the humbling simplicity of Divine truth, and run so anxiously, greedily, and in hosts, in the road to ruin, because priestcraft calls it ‘the way of God’; preferring the miserable sophistry of Satan and his emissaries to the plain directions of Holy Writ.

O! reader, put not your trust in man, but, while God is ready to direct you, rely solely on his Holy Word.—Ed.

[12] ‘Happily,’ or haply, were formerly used to express the same meaning.—Ed.

[13] ‘Sink-souls’ is one of Bunyan’s strong Saxonisms, full of meaning, ‘Sink’ is that in which filth or foulness is deposited.

‘She poured forth out of her hellish sink, Her fruitful cursed spawn.’—Spencer.—Ed.

[14] This is one of Bunyan’s most deeply expressive directions to the heaven-ward pilgrim; may it sink into our hearts. Christ is the way, the cross is the standing way-mark throughout the road, never out of sight. In embracing the humbling doctrines of grace, in sorrow for sin, in crucifying self, in bearing each other’s burdens, in passing through the river that will absorb our mortality—from the new birth to our inheritance—the cross is the way-mark.—Ed.

[15] Our holiest, happiest duties, IF they interfere with a simple and exclusive reliance upon Christ for justification, must be accursed in our esteem; while, if they are fulfilled in a proper spirit of love to him, they become our most blessed privileges.

Reader, be jealous of your motives.—Ed.

[16] This is very solemn warning. But is it asked how are we to see that that is invisible, or to imagine bliss that is past our understanding? The reply is, treasure up in your heart those glimpses of glory contained in the Word. Be daily in communion with the world of spirits, and it may be your lot, with Paul, to have so soul-ravishing a sense of eternal realities, as scarcely to know whether you are in the body or not.—Ed.

[17] How characteristic of Bunyan is this sentence, ‘the rich voyage.’ God environing us about with his presence in time, and eternal felicity in the desired haven: ‘the lumpish heart’ at times apparently indifferent to the glorious harvest: ‘a pair of spurs’ to prick us on in the course. The word voyage (from via, a way) was in Bunyan’s time equally used for a journey by sea or land, it is now limited to travelling by sea.—Ed.

[18] ‘Scrubbed’; worthless, vile, insignificant in the sight of man, who judges from the outward, temporal condition; but, in the case of Lazarus, precious in the sight of God.—Ed.

[19] What an inexhaustible source of comfort is contained in this passage. Blessed carriage, in which the poorest, weakest of Christ’s flock shall ride. Millions of gold could not purchase the privilege thus to ride in ease and safety, supported and guarded by Omnipotence, and guided by Omniscience.—Ed.

[20] Summed up by the Psalmist, ‘Happy is that people that is in such a case. Happy is that people whose God is the Lord’ (Psa 144:15).—Ed.

[21] How severe and cutting, but how just, is this reflection upon many, that wicked men, for the gratification of destructive propensities, should evince greater zeal and perseverance to light up the fire of hell in their consciences, than some professing Christians do in following after peace and holiness, ‘Go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways and be wise.’—Ed.

[22] How awful a warning is this to the backslider. A wicked professor is a practical atheist and a contemptible hypocrite.

But the backslider is worse, he proclaims, in his downward course, the awful blasphemy that ‘sin is better than Christ’; ‘hell is preferable to heaven.’ O! that some poor bewildered backslider may, by a Divine blessing upon the voice of Bunyan, be arrested in his mad career.—Ed.

[23] ‘Passions’; the old English term for sufferings. It is used in Acts 1 emphatically, to express the last sufferings of the Saviour; as also in what is called ‘passion week.’—Ed.

THE HOLY CITY; OR, THE NEW JERUSALEM:

WHEREIN ITS GOODLY LIGHT, WALLS, GATES, ANGELS, AND THE MANNER

OF THEIR STANDING, ARE EXPOUNDED: ALSO HER LENGTH AND BREADTH, TOGETHER WITH THE GOLDEN MEASURING-REED EXPLAINED: AND THE GLORY

OF ALL UNFOLDED.

AS ALSO THE NUMEROUSNESS OF ITS INHABITANTS; AND WHAT THE TREE AND

WATER OF LIFE ARE, BY WHICH THEY ARE SUSTAINED.

‘Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God.’-Psalm 87:3

‘And the name of the city from that day shall be, THE LORD IS

THERE.’-Ezekiel 48:35

London: Printed in the year 1665

ADVERTISEMENT BY THE EDITOR

Reader, it will require the utmost effort of your powers of faith in perfectly well authenticated history to believe an almost incredible fact, but which certainly took place in England, under the reformed church in 1665. It is, however, true, that a number of eminently pious, loyal, sober, industrious citizens were immured, by the forms of law, within the walls of a small prison on Bedford Bridge, over the river Ouse, for refusing to attend the parish church or join in the service prescribed by Acts of Parliament, according to the Book of Common Prayer. The Ruler of the universe deigned to approve their conduct, and to visit these prisoners with his peculiar approbation. He made their prison a Bethel, the house of God, and the very gate of heaven-thus richly blessing their souls for refusing to render unto man the things that are God’s.

On the Lord’s day they were in the habit of uniting in Divine worship.

Their prison chamber had received no prelatic consecration, but God was in their midst to bless them. It happened one morning that it came to the turn of a poor itinerant tinker, of extraordinary ability, to address his fellow-prisoners-he had neither written nor even prepared a sermon, and felt, for a time, at a loss for a text or subject. At length, while turning over the sacred pages, his eye was directed to the description of the Holy City-New Jerusalem, which in the latter day will gloriously descend from heaven. His soul was enlarged and enlightened with the dazzling splendour of that sacred city-his heart, which had felt ‘empty, spiritless, and barren,’ was baptized into his subject-‘with a few groans, he carried his meditations to the Lord Jesus for a blessing, which he did forthwith grant according to his grace, and then the preacher did set before his brethren the spiritual meat, and they did all eat and were well refreshed. While distributing the truth, it did so increase in his hand, that of the fragments he gathered up a basket full, and furnished this heavenly treatise.’ Such, in substance, is the author’s interesting account of the circumstances under which he wrote this book. He adds, with humility, that the men of this world would laugh, in conceit, that one so low, contemptible, and inconsiderable should busy himself with so hard and knotty a subject, but humbly hopes, that though but a babe in Christ, these truths were revealed to him. To the real followers of the lowly Jesus, the poor carpenter’s son, ‘who had not where to lay his head’-of whom the Jews said, ‘How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?’ (John 7:15)-despised by princes, prelates, scribes, and Pharisees-to such, the poverty, the occupation, and the want of book-learning of our author needs no apology. It is all-sufficient to know that he was mighty in the Scriptures, and deeply taught of the Holy Spirit. These are the only sources of information relative to the New Jerusalem; and in this treatise the author has richly developed the treasures of the Bible in reference to this solemn subject. To the same prison discipline to which we are indebted for the Pilgrim’s Progress, we owe this, and other of the labours of that eminent servant of Christ, John Bunyan. Little did the poor tyrants who sent him to jail think that, in such a place, he would have this blessed vision of the heavenly city, or that his severe sufferings would materially aid in destroying their wicked craft.

The subject is one of pure revelation. The philosopher-the theologian-the philologist-the historian, and the antiquarian, are utterly unable to grapple with that which is here so admirably handled by a poor unlettered prisoner for Christ, who, from the inexhaustible storehouse of God’s Word, brings forth things new and old to comfort the pilgrim, whether in a prison or a palace, and to enliven his prospects on his way to this celestial city.

The New Jerusalem is a sublime object, and we are bound humbly to adore that majestic mercy which has condescended to give us such a glimpse of the glory which, in its unbounded extent, passeth all the powers of our earth-bound souls to conceive.

It is a city whose builder and maker is God-perfect as his infinite wisdom-strong as his omnipotence-eternal as his existence. Who by searching can find out the perfections of the Almighty-they can only be traced by his revealed will, and with our poor powers, even then but faintly. No man ever possessed a more intimate knowledge of the Bible, nor greater aptitude in quoting it than Bunyan: he must have meditated in it day and night; and in this treatise his biblical treasures are wisely used. He begins with the foundation of the walls, and shows that they are based upon the truths taught to the twelve tribes, and by the twelve apostles of the Lamb. All