The Works of John Bunyan, vol 1, John Bunyan [reading like a writer TXT] 📗

‘At this therefore I rejoiced; yea, the tears of those whom God did awaken by my preaching would be both solace and encouragement to me. I thought on those sayings, “Who is he that maketh me glad, but the same that is made sorry by me” (2 Cor 2:2). And again, “Though I be not an apostle to others, yet doubtless I am unto you: for the seal of my apostleship are ye in the Lord” (1 Cor 9:2).

These things, therefore, were as an another argument unto me, that God had called me to, and stood by me in this work.

‘In my preaching of the Word I took special notice of this one thing, namely, that the Lord did lead me to begin where his Word begins with sinners; that is, to condemn all flesh, and to open and allege, that the curse of God by the law doth belong to, and lay hold on all men as they come into the world, because of sin.

Now this part of my work I fulfilled with great feeling, for the terrors of the law, and guilt for my transgressions, lay heavy on my own conscience. I preached what I felt, what I smartingly did feel, even that under which my poor soul did groan and tremble to astonishment. Indeed, I have been as one sent to them from the dead; I went myself in chains to preach to them in chains; and carried that fire in my own conscience that I persuaded them to beware of.[175] I can truly say, that when I have been to preach, I have gone full of guilt and terror even to the pulpit-door, and there it hath been taken off, and I have been at liberty in my mind until I have done my work, and then, immediately, even before I could get down the pulpit stairs, I have been as bad as I was before: yet God carried me on with a strong hand, for neither guilt nor hell could take me off my work. Thus I went on for the space of two years, crying out against men’s sins, and their fearful state because of them.’[176]

A man so much in earnest soon became a most acceptable and popular preacher. He studied his sermons carefully, and wrote such memorandums and notes as might refresh his memory before going into the pulpit, although his intensity of feeling, his ready utterance, and natural eloquence which charmed his hearers, and his extensive usefulness as a preacher, render it quite improbable that he restricted himself to notes while publicly engaged in sacred services. They must have aided him when he did not enjoy liberty of utterance. ‘At times when I have begun to speak the Word with much liberty, I have been presently so straitened in speech that I scarcely knew what I was about, or as if my head had been in a bag.’[177] They were valuable, also, as a proof that all he said had its exclusive reference to the world to come, without the mixture of politics, which might have given offence to the Government. Thus, when he was apprehended for neglecting to attend the church service and for preaching the gospel, in his conversation with Mr. Cobb, the magistrate’s clerk, he said ‘that, to cut off all occasions of suspicion from any, as touching the harmlessness of my doctrine, in private I would willingly take the pains to give any one the notes of all my sermons, for I do sincerely desire to live quietly in my country, and to submit to the present authority.’[178] In such troublesome times these would afford abundant proof that he was desirous of submitting to all the political institutions of his country, while he dared not conform to human laws affecting his faith or his mode of worshipping God, for which he alone was to stand answerable at the great day.

The employment of his time in earning a maintenance for his family, and his constant engagements to preach, interfered with the proper fulfillment of his duties as a deacon of the church. His resignation of this important office is thus recorded in the minutes of the church—‘At a meeting held on the 27th of the 6th month, 1657, the deacon’s office was transferred from John Bunyan to John Pernie, because he could no longer discharge its duties aright, in consequence of his being so much employed in preaching.’

We cannot wonder that his time was incessantly employed. His was no ordinary case. He had to recover and improve upon the little education he had received, and lost again by dissipated habits. He must have made every effort, by his diligent study of the Bible, to gain that spiritual knowledge which alone could enable him to proclaim the unsearchable riches of Christ, and that profound internal converse with the throne of God which appears in all his writings. In addition to all this, he was engaged in continual controversy with a variety of sects, which, in his sober judgment, opposed the simplicity of the gospel. Among these the Ranters, or Sweet Singers, were very conspicuous. It is difficult to discover what were their opinions, but they appear to have been nearly like the Dutch Adamites; they were severely persecuted, by public authority, under the Commonwealth, for blasphemy. George Fox found some of them in prison at Coventry in 1649, and held a short disputation with them. They claimed each one to be GOD, founding their notion on such passages as 1 Corinthians 14:25, ‘God is in you of a truth.’ Fox quaintly asked them whether it would rain the next day; and upon their answering that they could not tell, ‘Then said I unto them, God can tell.’[179] Strange as it may appear, the Ranters had many followers, while numerous pious people were troubled by their impudence and perversion of Scripture, but more especially by their being a persecuted people. Taking advantage of the inquiries that were excited by these strange doctrines, Bunyan determined to become an author, that he might set forth more extensively than he could do by preaching, the truths of the gospel in their native purity, simplicity, and beauty, as an antidote to fanaticism. The learned and eloquent looked with contempt upon the follies of the Ranters, Familists, and some loose Quakers, ‘and only deigned to abuse them with raillery, while the poor unlettered tinker wrote against them.’ To indite a work would be to him a pleasant recreation, but writing a book must have been extremely difficult, and have required extraordinary patience. This will be better seen by a specimen of his handwriting, now in the Bedford Library, found in Fox’s Book of Martyrs, the three volumes of which beguiled many of his tedious hours when in prison.

To write a volume, containing about twenty-five thousand words, must have been a serious task to such a scribe.

It is interesting to trace his improvement in calligraphy while recovering his lost education, and advancing in proficiency in an art so essential to his constantly extending usefulness. The next is a more useful running hand, however defective in orthography and grammar; it is from the first page of a copy of Bishop Andrews’

sermons[180]—

The inscription in a copy of his Holy City, 1665, in Dr. Williams’

or the Dissenter’s Library, Red Cross Street, is in a still more useful hand, as good as that of most authors of that day—

The autograph in Powell’s Concordance, in the library of the Baptist Academy, Bristol, is in a fair hand—

His autograph is in possession of the Society of Antiquaries. The document to which it is subscribed is written in a remarkably neat hand, addressed to the Lord Protector. The signatures appear to be written as if in the writer’s best style.[181]

Signature to the deed of gift[182]—

In addition to the motives which have been noticed as inducing him to become an author, it appears, that in the course of his itinerating labours, he was much grieved with the general depravity which had overspread all classes of society. Evil communications had corrupted the great mass, and occasioned an aversion to hear the gospel, which plunged the people into carnal security. When roused by his preaching they too often found refuge in despair, or in vain attempts to impose upon God their unholy self-righteousness, endeavouring ‘to earn heaven with their fingers’ ends’;[183]

anything rather than submit to receive salvation as the free gift of God, and thus be led to consecrate all their powers to his glory and the comfort of society. A few who appeared to have thought on this solemn subject, without any change of conduct, are called by Bunyan ‘light notionists, with here and there a legalist,’[184] or those who relied upon a creed without the fruits of righteousness, and some of these imbibed notions of the strangest kind—that the light within was all-sufficient, without any written revelation of the will of God—that the account of Christ’s personal appearance on earth was a myth, to represent his residence in the persons of believers, in whom he suffers, is crucified, buried, and raised again to spiritual life—that such persons might do whatever their inclinations led them to, without incurring guilt or sin; in short, many sinned that grace might abound!! Some of them professed to be the Almighty God manifest in the flesh. All this took place in what was called a Christian country, upon which millions of treasure had been spent to teach religion by systems, which had persecuted the honest, pious professors of vital Christianity to bonds, imprisonment, and death. This had naturally involved the kingdom in impiety and gross immorality. The discovery of the awful state of his country, while he was engaged in preaching in the villages round Bedford induced him, in the humble hope of doing good, to become an author, and with trembling anxiety he issued to the world the first production of his pen, in 1656, under the title of Some Gospel Truths Opened According to the Scriptures; and, as we shall presently find, it met with a rough reception, plunging him into controversy, which in those days was conducted with bitter acrimony.

Before it was published, he sought the approbation and protection of Mr. John Burton, who had been united with Mr. Gifford in the pastoral charge of the church to which Bunyan belonged. The testimony that he gives is very interesting:—

‘Here thou hast things certain and necessary to be believed, which thou canst not too much study. Therefore pray that thou mayest receive it, so it is according to the Scriptures, in faith and love, not as the word of man but as the word of God, and be not offended, because Christ holds forth the glorious treasure of the gospel to thee in a poor earthen vessel, by one who hath neither the greatness nor the wisdom of this world to commend him to thee; for as the Scriptures saith, Christ, who was low and contemptible in the world himself, ordinarily chooseth such for himself and for the doing of his work. “Not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called: but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world.” This man [Bunyan] is not chosen out of an earthly, but out of the heavenly university, the church of Christ, furnished with the Spirit, gifts, and graces of Christ—out of which, to the end of the world, the word of the Lord and all true gospel ministers must proceed. And, though this man hath not the learning or wisdom of man; yet, through grace, he hath received the teaching of God, and the learning of the Spirit of Christ. He hath taken these three heavenly degrees—union with Christ, the anointing