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

be replenished with milk and wine. This was held forth by the memorial that the Israelites were to wear, at God’s command, between their eyes; which memorial was the doctrine of unleavened bread and of the paschal lamb, the doctrine of faith and holiness (Exo 13:6-9; 1 Cor 5:8). Wherefore, by name here, he means the faith and holiness of the gospel, which in those days shall walk openly with honour, with reverence, and esteem before all men. At this day the world will, as I have said, be so far off from opposing and persecuting, that they shall wonder, and tremble, and fear before this people; yea, be taken, affected, and pleased with the welfare of this beloved. ‘The mountains and the hills shall break forth before her into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands’ (Isa 55:12). ‘All nations shall call them blessed, for they shall be a delightsome land, saith the Lord of hosts’ (Mal 3:12).

The waters of Noah shall now be no more, the tumultuous multitudes shall now be gone, and there will be no more sea (Isa 54:9; Psa 65:7; 89:9; Rev 21:1,2). Now therefore the doves may be gathering their olive-branches, and also find rest for the soles of their feet, while the ark shall rest upon the mountains of Ararat (Gen 8:4,5).

‘The wolf also shall [now] dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; the calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.—The lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the suckling shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’ den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the Lord’ (Isa 11:6-9; 56:2-5).

Blessed is he whose lot it will be to see this holy city descending and lighting upon the place that shall be prepared for her situation and rest! Then will be a golden world; wickedness shall then be ashamed, especially that which persecutes the church. Holiness, goodness, and truth, shall then, with great boldness, countenance, and reverence, walk upon the face of all the earth. ‘From the rising of the sun, even unto the going down of the same, my name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place incense shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering: for my name shall be great among the heathen, saith the Lord of hosts’ (Mal 1:11). It will be then always summer, always sunshine, always pleasant, green, fruitful, and beautiful to the sons of God. ‘And it shall come to pass in that day that the mountains shall drop down new wine, and the hills shall flow with milk, and all the rivers of Judah shall flow with waters, and a fountain shall come forth of the house of the Lord, and shall water the valley of Shittim.—And Judah shall dwell for ever, and Jerusalem from generation to generation’ (Joel 3:18,20). ‘And the name of the city from that day shall be, The Lord is there’ (Eze 48:35). O blessedness! ‘And he said unto me, These sayings are faithful and true: and the Lord God of the holy prophets sent his angel to show unto his servants the things that must shortly be done’ (Rev 22:6).

I conclude therefore with that earnest groan of Moses, the man of God, ‘O satisfy us early with thy mercy, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.—Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil.

Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children. And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us; and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it’ (Psa 90:14-17). Amen.

FOOTNOTES:

1. The note upon this passage in the Genevan or Puritan version, with which Bunyan was familiar, is, ‘God will raise up in his church such as shall rule and govern for the defence of the same, and instruction of his enemies, under Messiah, whom the prophet calleth here the Lord and Head of this kingdom.’-Ed.

2. From the Genevan or Puritan version.

3. ‘Set out’ render prominent, plain, or conspicuous.-Ed.

4. In Bunyan’s days, a few fanatics from among the Fifth Monarchy men conceived that the millennium had arrived, and that it was their duty to take possession of the kingdom for Jesus. They were mad enough, like the late Mr. Courtnay, to imagine that their bodies were invulnerable, and they marched out to seize London.

A few of the trained bands soon encountered them, some were shot and the rest were punished, and this absurd attempt was at an end in a few hours. This gave the enemies of true religion a pretext, which they eagerly seized, of charging these absurd notions upon all who feared God, and a severe persecution followed. To deprecate and counteract these reports, Bunyan is very explicit in noting the difference between a spiritual and a temporal kingdom.-Ed.

5. ‘Spices’ is from the Genevan version; our authorized text has ‘powders.’-Ed.

6. Referring to the attempts made in Bunyan’s days to introduce Popery.

It is admirably shown in the Pilgrim’s Progress, p. 193-‘This is the spring that Christian drank of; then it was clear and good, but now it is dirty with the feet of some that are not desirous that pilgrims here should quench their thirst.’-Ed.

7. All authority in the church is strictly limited to the written Word. Throw away then to the owls and the bats all tradition, and the power of the church to decree rites and ceremonies. It is treason against God to suppose that he omitted anything from his Bible that his church ought to do, or commanded that which may be neglected, although human laws may authorize such deviation.-Ed.

8. The walls do not go from or leave the foundations, but, resting upon them, they gradually ascend to perfection.-Ed.

9. Anabaptist was the name given to those who submitted to be baptized upon a profession of faith, because, having been christened when infants, it was called re-baptizing.-Ed.

10. ‘Hub’; an obstruction, a thick square sod, the mark or stop at the game of quoits.-Ed.

11. These observations apply to such churches as admit to the Lord’s table unconverted persons, because they have passed through certain outward ceremonies; and to those who refused to admit the most godly sayings, because they had not submitted to an outward ceremony.-Ed.

12. See Isaiah 8:19. ‘To peep and mutter,’ as pretended sorcerers or magicians attempting their incantations against the truth.-Ed.

13. This is an allusion to the ancient English pastime of combat, called quarterstaff.-Ed.

14. Bunyan most accurately traces the pedigree of God’s fearers, who, at the expense of life, maintained the spirituality of divine worship. He commences with our early Reformers, Wickliff and Huss, to the later ones who suffered under Mary; continues the line of descent through the Puritans to Bunyan’s brethren, the Nonconformists.

All these were bitterly persecuted by the two lions-Church and Sate. The carnal gospellers, that confused heap of rubbish that crawled up and down the nation like locusts and maggots, refers to the members of a hierarchy which were ready to go from Popery to Protestantism, and back again to Popery, or to any other system, at the bidding of an Act of Parliament.-Ed.

15. ‘Virtue’; strength, efficacy, power.-Ed.

16. ‘To travel and trade,’ means to pursue or labour in an habitual course, exercise, or custom, as, ‘Thy sin’s not accidental but a trade.’-Shakespeare. Or, trade wind.-Ed.

17. The perfect unity of the Christian world is not likely to take place before the glorious meeting in the holy city, under the personal reign of Christ. The divisions among Christians arise, as Bunyan justly says, from antichristian rubbish, darkness, and trumpery; the great evil arising from difference of opinion, is that lust of domination over the faith of others which naturally leads to bitterness and persecution. In the earliest days one was of Paul, another of Apollos, and another of Cephas. The exercise of Christian forbearance was not an act of uniformity, but a declaration of the Holy Ghost. ‘Who art thou that judgest another man’s servant?’ ‘Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind’

(Rom 14:4,5).-Ed.

18. As the leaven goes on imperceptibly until the whole is leavened, so the kingdom of our Lord must increase. How extraordinary has been the progress of Divine truth since Bunyan’s days! and who can predict what it will be in another century?-Ed.

19. There being no night there but perpetual day.-Ed.

20. A ‘gold angel’ was an early English coin, valued at one-third of a pound, afterwards increased to ten shillings. The ‘twenty-shilling piece’ was the old sovereign. The comparison between them and the silver pence and halfpennies was made by Bunyan in respect to their rarity and not their purity.-Ed.

21. ‘To stoop or lower the top-gallant’ is a mode of salutation and respect shown by ships at sea to each other.-Ed.

22. This quotation is taken from that excellent translation of the Bible made by the reformers at Geneva, and which was much used in Bunyan’s time. He preferred the word pour to that of sprinkle, used in the present version.-Ed.

23. How beautifully is the Christian’s growth in grace here pictured by Bunyan from Ezekiel 47:3-12. So imperceptibly by Divine power, without the aid of man, that the partaker often doubts his own growth. The water rises higher and higher, until at length there is no standing for his feet-the earth and time recedes, and he is plunged into the ocean of eternal grace and glory.-Ed.

24. ‘To the one, the savour of death unto death; and to the other, the savour of life unto life’ (2 Cor 2:16).-Ed.

Solomon’s Temple Spiritualized

or,

Gospel Light Fetched out of the Temple at Jerusalem, to Let us More Easily into the Glory of New Testament Truths.

‘Thou son of man, shew the house to the house of Isreal;—shew them the form of the house, and the fashion thereof, and the goings out hereof, and the comings in thereof, and all the forms thereof, and all the ordinances thereof, and all the forms thereof, and all the laws thereof.’—Ezekiel 43:10, 11

London: Printed for, and sold by George Larkin, at the Two Swans without Bishopgate, 1688.

[ADVERTISEMENT BY THE EDITOR]

Of all the wonders of the world, the temple of Solomon was beyond comparison the greatest and the most magnificent. It was a type of that temple not made with hands, eternal in the heavens, of that city whose builder and maker is God, and which, at the consummation of all things, shall descend from heaven with gates of pearl and street of pure gold as shining glass, and into which none but the ransomed of the Lord shall enter. Jesus, the Lamb of God, shall be its light and glory and temple; within its walls the Israel of God, with the honour of the Gentiles, shall be brought in a state of infinite purity. No unclean thing will be able to exist in that dazzling and refulgent brightness which will arise from the perfection of holiness in the immediate presence of Jehovah; and of this, as well as of the whole Christian dispensation, the temple of Solomon was a type or figure. It would have been impossible for the united ingenuity of all mankind, or the utmost stretch of human pride, to have devised such a building, or to have conceived the possibility of its erection. The plan, the elevation, the whole arrangement of this gorgeous temple, proceeded from the Divine Architect. He who created the wondrous universe of nature condescended to furnish the plan, the detail, the ornaments, and even the