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

woman into the dirt; but because her faith and love to her husband remains, she turns again, and pleads by her titles, her features, and ornaments, that she, and she only, is she whose square answereth to the square of her figure, and to the character which her Lord hath given of his own, and so the game began. For so soon as this mistress became a dame in the world, and found that she had her stout abettors, she attempts to turn all things topsy-turvy, and to set them and to make of them what she lists. And now she will have an altar like that which was Tiglath-pileser’s. Now must the Lord’s brazen altar be removed from its place, the borders of the basis must be cut off, and the laver removed from off them; the molten sea must also now be taken off the backs of the brazen oxen, where Solomon set it, and be set on a pavement of stone (2 Kings 16:10-17).

Solomon! alas, Solomon’s nobody now; this woman is wiser in her own conceit than seven men that can render a reason. Now also the covert for the Sabbath must be turned to the use of the king of Assyria, &c. (2 Kings 16:18). Thus has the beauty of God’s church betrayed her into the hands of her lovers, who loved her for themselves, for the devil, and for the making of her a seat, a throne for the man of sin. And poor woman, all her struggling and striving, and crying out under the hands of these ravishers, has not, as yet, delivered her, though it has saved her life (Deut 22:25-27).

But though thus it has been with Christ’s true church, and will be as long as his enemy Antichrist reigns, yet the days will come when her God will give her her ornaments, and her bracelets, and her liberty, and her joy, that she had in the day of her espousals.

CHAPTER VII.

OF THE REPETITION OF LIGHT AGAINST LIGHT IN THE HOUSE OF THE FOREST

OF LEBANON.

To be sure it was not superfluously done of the Holy Ghost to make repetition of these words, ‘And light was against light in three ranks,’ therefore something is intended in the adding of them again that was not intended by the first mentioning of them (1

Kings 7:4,5).

I have told you what I thought was intended by the first rehearsal of them, namely, to show how Antichrist got in with his sensuality, and opposed it to the true light of the Word of God, exalting himself above God, and also above all Divine revelation; this was his light against light. But, I say, why is it repeated? For he saith, ‘Light was against light in three ranks’ again. Truly, I think it is repeated to show the evil effects the first antichristian opposition would have in the church of God, towards the end of her wilderness state. For, ‘light against light’ now, for that it is here repeated, is to show us some new thing, or, as far as wood and windows can speak, to let us understand what would be the consequence of those antichristian figments11 that were brought into the church at first by him.

For can it be imagined but that, since so much confusion was brought into the church, some of the truly godly themselves would be much damnified thereby? The apostle says, ‘Evil communication corrupts good manners’ (1 Cor 15:33). And that ‘their word will eat as doth a canker’ (1 Tim 2:17). Mischief therefore must needs follow this ugly deed of the man of sin. If a house be on fire, though it is not burnt down, the smell of the flame may long remain there; also we count it no wonder to see some of the effects upon the rafters, beams, and some of the principal posts thereof. The calf that was set up at Dan defiled that people until the captivity of the land (Judg 18:30).

And I say again, since light against light was so early in the church in the wilderness, and has also been there so long, and again, since many in this church were both born and bred there under these oppositions of light, it is easy to conclude that something of the enemy’s darkness might be also called light by the sincere that followed after. For by antichristian darkness, though they might call it light, the true light was darkened, and so the eye made dim, even the eye of the truly godly. Also the Holy Ghost did much withdraw itself from the church, so the doctrines, traditions, and rudiments of the world took more hold there, and spread themselves more formidably over the face of that whole church. For after the first angel had sounded, and the star was fallen from heaven to the earth, and had received the key of the bottomless pit, and had opened the mouth thereof, the smoke came out amain. This angel was one of the first dads of antichristianism, and this smoke was that which they call light, but it was ‘light against light.’ ‘And he opened the bottomless pit, and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened, by reason of the smoke of the pit’

(Rev 9:1,2).

The sun I take to be the gospel of God, and the air a type of the breathings of the Holy Ghost. The smoke I take to be the doctrines and traditions of Antichrist; that which was, as I said before, put for light against the true light of the Word. Now, since the sun and the air were darkened by this smoke, yea, and so darkened as that the sun, nor moon, nor stars, nor day, nor night, could shine for a third part of them; no marvel though the true worshippers here were benighted, or, at least, had but little light to walk by; yea, I have known some that have been born and bred up in smokey holes, that have been made, both in smell and sight, to carry the tokens of their so being bred about them.

And I say again, as to what is now under our consideration, no marvel if they that breathed in this church in the wilderness, after the smoke came out of this pit, sucked in the smoke with the air until it became natural to them. A house annoyed with smoke is a great offence to the eyes, whose light being thereby impaired, the judgment also, since that, as to visibles, is guided by the eye, must needs be in danger of being in part misled. And this being the effect of light against light at first, is the cause of what to this day we see in the church among the true brotherhood.

For as a cause produceth an effect, so oftentimes an effect sets on foot another cause.

Now, therefore, we have light against light among the godly, as afore there was antichristian against the Christian light.

Not that light against light is now godly in the all of it. It is antichristian that opposes the Christian light still. But, as before, the darkness that opposed the light was in the antichristians, now that darkness is got into the Christians, and has set them against one another. Light therefore against light now is in the Christians, truly prefigured by that which was in the house of the forest of Lebanon. Witness the jars, the oppositions, the contentions, emulations, strifes, debates, whisperings, tumults, and condemnations that, like cannon-shot, have so frequently on all sides been let fly against one another.

Shall I need to mention particularly contests many years past, and presented to us in print? Words and papers now in print, as also the many petty divisions and names amongst us, sufficiently make this manifest. Wherefore light against light in this last place, or where it is thus repeated, cannot, I think, be more fitly applied than to that now under our consideration; that is to say, than to the opposite persuasions, different apprehensions, and thwart conclusions, that are constantly drawn from the same texts to maintain a diverse practice. Though we are to acknowledge with thankfulness that this opposition lies not so much in fundamentals as in things of a lesser import.

The godly all hold the head, for there Antichrist could never divide them; their divisions therefore are, as I said, only about smaller things. I do not say that the antichristian darkness has done nothing in the church as to the hurting it in the great things of God. But, I say, it has not been able to do that which could sever their Head from them, otherwise there appears even too much of the effect of his doings there. For even, as to the offices of our Lord, some will have his authority more large, some more strait. Some confine his rules to themselves and to their more outward qualification, and some believe they are extended further. Some will have his power in his church purely spiritual, others again would have it mixed. Some count his Word perfect and sufficient to guide in all religious matters, others again hold that an addition of something human is necessary. Some are for confining of his benefits, in the saving effects of them, only to the elect, others are for a stretching of them further. I might here multiply things, but that light against light is now among the godly as light against light was in the house of the forest of Lebanon, is not at all to be questioned.

This therefore may stand for another argument to prove that the house of the forest of Lebanon was a type of the church in the wilderness. As to the number here, that is to say, in three ranks, it is also, as I think, to show that, though, as was said afore, this darkness could not sever the true church from her Head, yet it has eclipsed the glory of things. By two lights a man cannot see this or that thing so exactly as by one single light; no, they both make all confused though they make not all invisible (Matt 6:22,23).

As, for instance, sun-light and moon-light together, fire-light and sun-light together, candle-light and moon-light together, make things more obscure than to look on them by a single light. The Word reflecting upon the understanding, without the interposing of man’s traditions, makes the mind of God to a man more clear than when attended with the other. How much more then when light shall be against light in three ranks? Christ in his offices, blessed be God, is to this day known in his church, notwithstanding there is yet with us light against light in three ranks. But in these things he is not so distinctly, fully, and completely known, as he was before the church went into the wilderness. No, that knowledge is lost to a ‘third part’ of it, as was also showed before (Rev 8:12).

Things therefore will never be well in the church of God so long as there is thus light against light therein. When there is but one Lord among us and his name One, and when divisions, by the consent of the whole, are banished, I mean, not persecuted, but abandoned in all by a joint consent, and when every man shall submit his own single opinion to those truths, that by their being retained are for the health of all, then look for good days, and not until then. For this house of the forest of Lebanon, in which, as you see, there is ‘light against light in three ranks,’ was not built to prefigure the church in her primitive state, but to show us how we should be while standing before