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

Which they by dint of sword have won, From their most daring foe;

While he lies by as still as stone,

Not knowing what they do.’[34]

‘The king’s forces having made their batteries, stormed Leicester; those within made stout resistance, but some of them betrayed one of the gates; the women of the town laboured in making up the breaches, and in great danger. The king’s forces having entered the town, had a hot encounter in the market-place; and many of them were slain by shot out of the windows, that they gave no quarter, but hanged some of the committee, and cut others to pieces. Some letters say that the kennels ran down with blood; Colonel Gray the governor, and Captain Hacker, were wounded and taken prisoners, and very many of the garrison were put to the sword, and the town miserably plundered. The king’s forces killed divers who prayed quarter, and put divers women to the sword,[35] and other women and children they turned naked into the streets, and many they ravished. They hanged Mr. Reynor and Mr. Sawyer in cold blood; and at Wighton they smothered Mrs. Barlowes, a minister’s wife, and her children.’[36]

Lord Clarendon admits the rapine and plunder, and that the king regretted that some of his friends suffered with the rest.[37]

Humphrey Brown deposed that he was present when the garrison, having surrendered upon a promise of quarter, he saw the king’s soldiers strip and wound the prisoners, and heard the king say—‘cut them more, for they are mine enemies.’ A national collection was made for the sufferers, by an ordinance bearing date the 28th October, 1645, which states that—‘Whereas it is very well known what miseries befell the inhabitants of the town and county of Leicester, when the king’s army took Leicester, by plundering the said inhabitants, not only of their wares in their shops, but also all their household goods, and their apparel from their backs, both of men, women, and children, not sparing, in that kind, infants in their cradles; and, by violent courses and tortures, compelled them to discover whatsoever they had concealed or hid, and after all they imprisoned their persons, to the undoing of the tradesmen, and the ruin of many of the country.’

Can we wonder that ‘the king was abused as a barbarian and a murderer, for having put numbers to death in cold blood after the garrison had surrendered; and for hanging the Parliament’s committee, and some Scots found in that town?’ The cruelties practiced in the king’s presence were signally punished. He lost 709 men on that occasion, and it infused new vigour into the Parliament’s army. The battle of Naseby was fought a few days after; the numbers of the contending forces were nearly equal; the royal troops were veterans, commanded by experienced officers; but the God of armies avenged the innocent blood shed in Leicester, and the royal army was cut to pieces; carriages, cannon, the king’s cabinet, full of treasonable correspondence, were taken, and from that day he made feeble fight, and soon lost his crown and his life. The conquerors marched to Leicester, which surrendered by capitulation. Heath, in his Chronicle, asserts that ‘no life was lost at the retaking of Leicester.’ Many of Bunyan’s sayings and proverbs are strongly tinged with the spirit of Rupert’s dragoons—‘as we say, blood up to the ears.’[38] ‘What can be the meaning of this (trumpeters), they neither sound boot and saddle, nor horse and away, nor a charge?’[39] In his allegories when he alludes to fighting, it is with the sword and not with the musket;[40] ‘rub up man, put on thy harness.’[41] ‘The father’s sword in the hand of the sucking child is not able to conquer a foe.’[42]

Considering his singular loyalty, which, during the French Revolution, was exhibited as a pattern to Dissenters by an eminent Baptist minister; [43] considering also his profligate character and military sayings, it is very probable that Bunyan was in the king’s army in 1645, being about seventeen years of age. It was a finishing school to the hardened sinner, which enabled him, in his account of the Holy War, so well to describe every filthy lane and dirty street in the town of Mansoul.

Whether Bunyan left the army when Charles was routed at the battle of Naseby, or was discharged, is not known. He returned to his native town full of military ideas, which he used to advantage in his Holy War. He was not reformed, but hardened in sin, and, although at times alarmed with convictions of the danger of his soul, yet in the end, the flesh pleading powerfully, it prevailed; and he made a resolution to indulge himself in such carnal delights and pleasures as he was accustomed to, or that fell in his way. ‘His neglecting his business, and following gaming and sports, to put melancholy thoughts out of his mind, which he could not always do, had rendered him very poor and despicable.’[44]

In this forlorn and miserable state, he was induced, by the persuasion of friends, under the invisible guidance of God, to enter into the marriage state. Such a youth, then only twenty years of age, would naturally be expected to marry some young woman as hardened as himself, but he made a very different choice. His earliest biographer says, with singular simplicity, ‘his poverty, and irregular course of life, made it very difficult for him to get a wife suitable to his inclination; and because none that were rich would yield to his allurements, he found himself constrained to marry one without any fortune, though very virtuous, loving, and conformably obedient and obliging, being born of good, honest, godly parents, who had instructed her, as well as they were able, in the ways of truth and saving knowledge.’[45] The idea of his seeking a rich wife is sufficiently droll; he must have been naturally a persuasive lover, to have gained so good a helpmate. They were not troubled with sending cards, cake, or gloves, nor with the ceremony of receiving the visits of their friends in state; for he says, that ‘This woman and I came together as poor as poor might be, not having so much household stuff as a dish or spoon betwixt us both.’[46] His wife had two books, The Plain Man’s Pathway to Heaven, and The Practice of Piety; but what was of more importance than wealth or household stuff, she had that seed sown in her heart which no thief could steal.[47] She enticed and persuaded him to read those books. To do this he by application ‘again recovered his reading, which he had almost lost.’ His wife became an unspeakable blessing to him.

She presents a pattern to any woman, who, having neglected the apostolic injunction not to be unequally yoked, finds herself under the dominion of a swearing dare devil. It affords a lovely proof of the insinuating benign favour of female influence. This was the more surprising, as he says, ‘the thoughts of religion were very grievous to me,’ and when ‘books that concerned Christian piety were read in my hearing, it was as it were a prison to me.’ In spite of all obstacles, his rugged heart was softened by her tenderness and obedience, he ‘keeping on the old course,’[48] she upon every proper season teaching him how her father’s piety secured his own and his family’s happiness. Here was no upbraiding, no snubbing, no curtain lectures; all was affectionate, amiable mildness. At first, he became occasionally alarmed for his soul’s salvation; then with the thought of having sinned away the day of grace, he plunged again into sin with greediness; anon a faint hope of mercy would fill him with fear and trembling. But this leads us to the wondrous narrative of his new birth.

THE SECOND PERIOD.

THE INTERNAL CONFLICT, OR BUNYAN’S CONVICTIONS AND CONVERSION.

All nature is progressive; if an infant was suddenly to arrive at manhood, how idiotic and dangerous he would be! A long training is essential to fit the human being for the important duties of life; and just so is it in the new birth to spiritual existence—first a babe, then the young man; at length the full stature, and at last the experienced Christian.

The narrative of Bunyan’s progress in his conversion is, without exception, the most astonishing of any that has been published. It is well calculated to excite the profoundest investigation of the Christian philosopher. Whence came those sudden suggestions, those gloomy fears, those heavenly rays of joy? Much learning certainly did not make him mad. The Christian dares not attribute his intense feelings to a distempered brain. Whence came the invisible power that struck Paul from his horse? Who was it that scared Job with dreams, and terrified him with visions? What messenger of Satan buffeted Paul? Who put ‘a new song’ into the mouth of David? We have no space in this short memoir to attempt the drawing a line between convictions of sin and the terrors of a distempered brain.

Bunyan’s opinions upon this subject are deeply interesting, and are fully developed in his Holy War. The capabilities of the soul to entertain vast armies of thoughts, strong and feeble, represented as men, women, and children, are so great as almost to perplex the strongest understanding. All these multitudes of warriors are the innumerable thoughts—the strife—in ONE soul. Upon such a subject an interesting volume might be written. But we must fix our attention upon the poor tinker who was the subject of this wondrous war.

The tender and wise efforts of Mrs. Bunyan to reclaim her husband, were attended by the Divine blessing, and soon led to many resolutions, on his part, to curb his sinful propensities and to promote an outward reformation; his first effort was regularly to attend Divine worship.

He says, ‘I fell in very eagerly with the religion of the times, to wit, to go to church twice a-day, and that too with the foremost; and there should very devoutly both say and sing as others did, yet retaining my wicked life; but withal, I was so overrun with a spirit of superstition, that I adored, and that with great devotion, even all things, both the high-place, priest, clerk, vestment, service, and what else belonging to the Church; counting all things holy that were therein contained, and especially, the priest and clerk most happy, and without doubt greatly blessed, because they were the servants, as I then thought,[49] of God, and were principal in the holy temple, to do his work therein. This conceit grew so strong in little time upon my spirit, that had I but seen a priest, though never so sordid and debauched in his life,[50] I should find my spirit fall under him, reverence him, and knit unto him; yea, I thought, for the love I did bear unto them, supposing they were the ministers of God, I could have lain down at their feet, and have been trampled upon by them; their name, their garb, and work did so intoxicate and bewitch me.’

All this took place at the time when The Book of Common Prayer, having been said to occasion ‘manifold inconveniency,’ was, by an Act of Parliament, ‘abolished,’[51] and by a subsequent Act[52]

prohibited, under severe penalties, from being publicly used.

The ‘manifold inconveniences’ to which the Act refers, arose from differences of opinion as to the propriety of the form which had been enforced, heightened by the enormous cruelties practiced upon multitudes who refused to use it. Opposition to the English Liturgy as more combined in Scotland, by a covenant entered into, June 20, 1580, by the king, lords, nobles, and people, against Popery; and upon Archbishop Laud’s attempt, in 1637, to impose the service-book upon our northern neighbours, tumults and bloodshed ensued; until, in 1643, a new and very solemn league and covenant was entered