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

WISE. I am satisfied in it, for my part, and that from the necessity and nature of repentance. It is necessary, because God calls for it, and will not pardon sin without it. ‘Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish?’ (Luke 13:1-7). This is that which God hath said, and he will prove but a foolhardy man that shall yet think to go to heaven and glory without it. Repent, for ‘the axe is laid unto the root of the trees, therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit,’ but no good fruit can be where there is not sound repentance, shall be ‘hewn down, and cast into the fire’

(Matt 3:10). This was Mr. Badman’s case, he had attending of him a sinful life, and that to the very last, and yet died quietly, that is, without repentance; he is gone to hell and is damned.

For the nature of repentance, I have touched upon that already, and showed that it never was where a quiet death is the immediate companion of a sinful life; and therefore Mr. Badman is gone to hell.

Secondly. My second argument is drawn from that blessed word of Christ. While the strong man armed keeps the house, ‘his goods are in peace,’ till a stronger than he comes (Luke 11:21). But the strong man armed kept Mr. Badman’s house, that is, his heart, and soul, and body, for he went from a sinful life quietly out of this world. The stronger did not disturb by intercepting with sound repentance betwixt his sinful life and his quiet death.

Therefore Mr. Badman is gone to hell.

The strong man armed is the devil, and quietness is his security.

The devil never fears losing of the sinner, if he can but keep him quiet. Can he but keep him quiet in a sinful life, and quiet in his death, he is his own. Therefore he saith, ‘his goods are in peace’; that is, out of danger. There is no fear of the devil’s losing such a soul, I say, because Christ, who is the best judge in this matter, saith, ‘his goods are in peace,’ in quiet, and out of danger.

ATTEN. This is a good one too; for, doubtless, peace and quiet with sin is one of the greatest signs of a damnable state.

WISE. So it is. Therefore, when God would show the greatness of his anger against sin and sinners in one word, he saith, They are ‘joined to idols; let them alone’ (Hosea 4:17). Let them alone, that is, disturb them not; let them go on without control; let the devil enjoy them peaceably, let him carry them out of the world unconverted quietly. This is one of the sorest of judgments, and bespeaketh the burning anger of God against sinful men. See also when you come home, the fourteenth verse of the fourth chapter of Hosea, ‘I will not punish your daughters when they commit whoredom.’ I will let them alone, they shall live and die in their sins. But,

Thirdly. My third argument is drawn from that saying of Christ, ‘He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart; that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them’ (John 12:40). There are three things that I will take notice of from these words.

1. The first is, that there can be no conversion to God where the eye is darkened, and the heart hardened. The eye must first be made to see, and the heart to break and relent under and for sin, or else there can be no conversion. ‘He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart, lest they should see, and understand and’ so ‘be converted.’ And this was clearly Mr. Badman’s case; he lived a wicked life, and also died with his eyes shut, and heart hardened, as is manifest, in that a sinful life was joined with a quiet death; and all for that he should not be converted, but partake of the fruit of his sinful life in hell-fire.

2. The second thing that I take notice of from these words is, that this is a dispensation and manifestation of God’s anger against a man for his sin. When God is angry with men, I mean, when he is so angry with them, this among many is one of the judgments that he giveth them up unto, to wit, to blindness of mind, and hardness of heart, which he also suffereth to accompany them till they enter in at the gates of death. And then, and there, and not short of then and there, their eyes come to be opened.[79] Hence it is said of the rich man mentioned in Luke, ‘He died, and in hell he lifted up his eyes’ (Luke 16:22). Implying that he did not lift them up before; he neither saw what he had done, nor whither he was going, till he came to the place of execution, even into hell. He died asleep in his soul; he died besotted, stupefied, and so consequently for quietness like a child or lamb, even as Mr. Badman did. This was a sign of God’s anger; he had a mind to damn him for his sins, and therefore would not let him see nor have a heart to repent for them, lest he should convert; and his damnation, which God had appointed, should be frustrate. ‘Lest they should be converted, and I should heal them.’

3. The third thing I take notice of from hence is, that a sinful life and a quiet death annexed to it is the ready, the open, the beaten, the common highway to hell: there is no surer sign of damnation than for a man to die quietly after a sinful life. I do not say that all wicked men that are molested at their death with a sense of sin and fears of hell do therefore go to heaven, for some are also made to see, and are left to despair, not converted by seeing, that they might go roaring out of this world to their place. But I say there is no surer sign of a man’s damnation than to die quietly after a sinful life; than to sin and die with his eyes shut; than to sin and die with an heart that cannot repent.

‘He hath blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart’

(John 12:40). No not so long as they are in this world, ‘Lest they should see with their eyes, and understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them’ (Acts 28:26,27; Rom 2:1-5).

God has a judgment for wicked men; God will be even with wicked men. God knows how to reserve the ungodly to the day of judgment to be punished (2 Peter 2). And this is one of his ways by which he doth it. Thus it was with Mr. Badman.

4. Fourthly, it is said in the book of Psalms, concerning the wicked, ‘There are no bands in their death, but their strength is firm’ (Psa 73:4-6). By no bands he means no troubles, no gracious chastisements, no such corrections for sin as fall to be the lot of God’s people for theirs; yea, that many times falls to be theirs at the time of their death. Therefore he adds concerning the wicked, ‘They are not in trouble [then] as other men, neither are they plagued like other men’; but go as securely out of the world as if they had never sinned against God, and put their own souls into danger of damnation. ‘There is no bands in their death.’ They seem to go unbound, and set at liberty out of this world, though they have lived notoriously wicked all their days in it. The prisoner that is to die at the gallows for his wickedness, must first have his irons knocked off his legs; so he seems to go most at liberty, when indeed he is going to be executed for his transgressions. Wicked men also have no bands in their death, they seem to be more at liberty when they are even at the wind-up of their sinful life, than at any time besides.

Hence you shall have them boast of their faith and hope in God’s mercy when they lie upon their death-bed; yea, you shall have them speak as confidently of their salvation as if they had served God all their days; when the truth is, the bottom of this their boasting is because they have no bands in their death. Their sin and base life comes not into their mind to correct them, and bring them to repentance; but presumptuous thoughts, and a hope and faith of the spider’s, the devil’s, making, possesseth their soul, to their own eternal undoing (Job 8:13,14).

CHAPTER XX.

[WITHOUT GODLY REPENTANCE, THE WICKED MAN’S HOPE AND LIFE DIE

TOGETHER.]

Hence wicked men’s hope is said to die, not before, but with them; they give up the ghost together. And thus did Mr. Badman. His sins and his hope went with him to the gate, but there his hope left him, because he died there; but his sins went in with him, to be a worm to gnaw him in conscience for ever and ever.

The opinion, therefore of the common people concerning this kind of dying is frivolous and vain; for Mr. Badman died like a lamb, or, as they call it, like a chrisom-child,[80] quietly and without fear. I speak not this with reference to the struggling of nature with death, but as to the struggling of the conscience with the judgment of God. I know that nature will struggle with death. I have seen a dog and sheep die hardly. And thus may a wicked man do, because there is an antipathy betwixt nature and death. But even while, even then, when death and nature are struggling for mastery, the soul, the conscience, may be as besotted, as benumbed, as senseless and ignorant of its miserable state, as the block or bed on which the sick lies. And thus they may die like a chrisom-child in show, but indeed like one who by the judgment of God is bound over to eternal damnation; and that also by the same judgment is kept from seeing what they are, and whither they are going, till they plunge down among the flames.

And as it is a very great judgment of God on wicked men that so die, for it cuts them off from all possibility of repentance, and so of salvation, so it is as great a judgment upon those that are their companions that survive them, for by the manner of their death, they dying so quietly, so like unto chrisom-children, as they call it, they are hardened, and take courage to go on in their course.

For comparing their life with their death, their sinful, cursed lives, with their childlike, lamblike death, they think that all is well, that no damnation is happened to them; though they lived like devils incarnate, yet they died like harmless ones. there was no whirlwind, no tempest, no band or plague in their death. They died as quietly as the most godly of them all, and had as great faith and hope of salvation, and would talk as boldly of salvation as if they had assurance of it. But as was their hope in life, so was their death; their hope was without trial, because it was none of God’s working, and their death was without molestation, because so was the judgment of God concerning them.

But I say, at this their survivors take heart to tread their steps, and to continue to