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Rev. James Hamilton >> Life of Bunyan
Relief came slowly but steadily, and was the more abiding, because he
had learned by experience to distrust any comfort which did not come
from the word of God. Such passages as these, "My grace is
sufficient for thee," and "Him that cometh unto me I will in no wise
cast out," greatly lightened his burden; but he derived still
stronger encouragement from considering that the Gospel, with its
benignity, is much more expressive of the mind and disposition of God
than the law with its severity. "Mercy rejoiceth over judgment. How
shall not the ministration of the Spirit be rather glorious? For if
the ministration of condemnation be glory, much more doth the
ministration of righteousness exceed in glory. For even that which
was made glorious, had no glory in this respect, by reason of the
glory that excelleth." Or, as the same truth presented itself to his
mind in an aspect more arresting to a mind like his, "And Peter said
unto Jesus, Master, it is good for us to be here; and let us make
three tabernacles, one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for
Elias. For he wist not what to say, for he was sore afraid. And
there was a cloud overshadowed them, and a voice came out of the
cloud, saying, This is my beloved Son, hear him." "Then I saw that
Moses and Elias must both vanish, and leave Christ and his saints
alone."
We have now arrived at the happy time when these doubts and
distractions were exchanged for songs of deliverance. We relate it
in the words of Bunyan's own narrative: "One day as I was passing
into the field, and that too with some dashes on my conscience,
fearing lest yet all was not right, suddenly this sentence fell upon
my soul, 'Thy righteousness is in heaven;' and methought withal, I
saw with the eyes of my soul, Jesus Christ at God's right hand;
there, I say, was my righteousness; so that wherever I was, or
whatever I was doing, God could not say of me, 'He wants my
righteousness,' for that was just before him. I also saw, moreover,
that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness
better, nor my bad frame that made my righteousness worse; for my
righteousness was Jesus Christ himself, 'the same yesterday, to-day,
and for ever.' Now did my chains fall off my legs indeed; I was
loosed from my afflictions and my irons; my temptations also fled
away; so that from that time those dreadful scriptures of God left
off to trouble me. Now went I also home rejoicing for the grace and
love of God; so when I came home I looked to see if I could find that
sentence, 'Thy righteousness is in heaven,' but could not find such a
saying; wherefore my heart began to sink again, only that was brought
to my remembrance, 'He is made unto us of God, wisdom, righteousness,
sanctification, and redemption;' by this word I saw the other
sentence true. For, by this scripture, I saw that the man Christ
Jesus, as he is distinct from us as touching his bodily presence, so
he is our righteousness and sanctification before God. Here,
therefore, I lived for some time very sweetly at peace with God
through Christ. Oh! methought, Christ, Christ! There was nothing
but Christ that was before my eyes. I was not now for looking upon
this and the other benefits of Christ apart, as of his blood, burial,
or resurrection, but considering him as a whole Christ, as he is when
all these, and all other his virtues, relations, offices, and
operations met together, and that he sat on the right hand of God in
heaven. 'Twas glorious to me to see his exaltation, and the worth
and prevalency of all his benefits; and that because now I could look
from myself to him, and would reckon that all those graces of God
that now were green on me, were yet but like those cracked groats and
fourpence-halfpennies that rich men carry in their purses, when their
gold is in their trunks at home: Oh! I saw my gold was in my trunk
at home! in Christ my Lord and Saviour. Now Christ was all; all my
RIGHTEOUSNESS, all my SANCTIFICATION, and all my REDEMPTION.
"Further, the Lord did also lead me into the mystery of union with
the Son of God; that I was joined to him, that I was 'flesh of his
flesh, and bone of his bone' (Eph. v. 30); and now was that word of
St Paul sweet to me. By this also was my faith in him as my
righteousness the more confirmed in me; for if he and I were one,
then his righteousness was mine, his merits mine, his victory also
mine. Now could I see myself in heaven and earth at once: in heaven
by my Christ, by my head, by my righteousness and life; though on
earth by my body or person. Now I saw Christ Jesus was looked upon
of God, and should also be looked upon by us, as that common or
public person, in whom all the whole body of his elect are always to
be considered and reckoned; that we fulfilled the law by him, rose
from the dead by him, got the victory over sin, death, the devil, and
hell by him; when he died, we died; and so of his resurrection. 'Thy
dead men shall live; together with my dead body shall they arise,'
saith he: and again, 'After two days he will revive us, and the
third day we shall live in his sight:' which is now fulfilled by the
sitting down of the Son of Man on the right hand of the Majesty in
the heavens, according to that to the Ephesians, 'He heath raised us
up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ
Jesus.' Ah! these blessed considerations and scriptures, with many
others of like nature, were in those days made to spangle in mine
eye, so that I have cause to say, 'Praise ye the Lord God in his
sanctuary; praise him in the firmament of his power; praise him for
his mighty acts: praise him according to his excellent greatness.'"
Extricated from the Slough of Despond, Bunyan went on his way
rejoicing; and though sometimes interrupted by disquieting thoughts
and strong temptations, his subsequent career was a path of growing
comfort and prevailing peace. At the age of twenty-six he was
admitted a member of that Baptist church of which Mr Gifford was the
faithful pastor,--a rare man, who, in angry times, and in a small
communion, preserved his catholicity. Holding that "union with
Christ," and not agreement concerning any ordinances or things
external, is the foundation of Christian fellowship, with his dying
hand he addressed a letter to his beloved people, in which the
following sentence occurs, the utterance of a heart enlarged by
Christian magnanimity, and bent on those objects which alone look
important when the believer is waiting on the top of Pisgah: --
"Concerning separation from the Church about baptism, laying on of
hands, anointing with oil, psalms, or any other externals, I charge
every one of you respectively, as you will give an account of it to
our Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge both quick and dead at his
coming, that none of you be found guilty of this great evil, which
some have committed, and that through a zeal for God, yet not
according to knowledge. They have erred from the law of the love of
Christ, and have made a rent in the true Church, which is but one."
If our Baptist brethren are justly proud that the burning and shining
light of Bunyan was set upon their candlestick, they have equal
reason to boast of the torch at which his bland and diffussive light
was kindled. John Bunyan doubtless owed to John Gifford the peculiar
type of his Christianity, its comprehensiveness, and its sect-
forgetting zeal for the things of Jesus Christ.
He had not long been a member of the church when he was called to
exercise its actual ministry. Gifford was gone to his everlasting
rest; and as a substitute for his labours, it was put upon a few of
the brethren to speak the word of exhortation to the rest. Of these
Bunyan was one. At first he did not venture farther than to address
his friends in their more private meetings, or to follow up, with a
brief application, the sermons delivered by others in their village-
preaching. But these exercises having afforded the utmost
satisfaction to his judicious though warm-hearted hearers, he was
urged forward to more public services. These he was too humble to
covet, and too earnest to refuse. Though his education was
sufficiently rude, God had given him from the first a strong athletic
mind and a glowing heart,--that downright logic and teeming fancy,
whose bold strokes and burning images heat the Saxon temper to the
welding point, and make the popular orator of our English multitude.
Then his low original and rough wild history, however much they might
have subjected him to scorn had he exchanged the leathern apron for a
silken one, or scrambled from the hedge-side into the high-places of
the church, entailed no suspicion, and awakened much surprise, when
the Bedford townsmen saw their blaspheming neighbour a new man, and
in a way so disinterested preaching the faith which he once
destroyed. The town turned out to hear, and though there was some
mockery, many were deeply moved. His own account of it is: --"At
first I could not believe that God should speak by me to the heart of
any man, still counting myself unworthy; yet those who were thus
touched, would love me, and have a particular respect for me; and
though I did put it from me, that they should be awakened by me,
still they would confess it and affirm it before the saints of God .
. . Wherefore, seeing them in both their words and deeds to be so
constant, and also in their hearts so earnestly pressing after the
knowledge of Jesus Christ, rejoicing that ever God did send me where
they were, then I began to conclude it might be so, that God had
owned in his work such a foolish one as I; and then came that word of
God to my heart with such sweet refreshment: 'The blessing of them
that were ready to perish is come upon me; yea, I caused the widow's
heart to sing for joy.' At this, therefore, I rejoiced; yea, the
tears of those whom God had awakened 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!' 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.'"
There was a solemnizing and subduing power in Bunyan's ministry,
because it was heart-felt. So far as the truths he uttered were
capable of becoming subjects of personal consciousness, he had
experienced them; and so far as they were subjects of intellectual
conviction, he was not only fully persuaded of them, but saw them so
clear and evident, that his realizations were continually quickening
into sensations. He thus began with a John-Baptist ministry, to
which succeeded a Pentecostal evangel; and at last it grew into the
Pauline amplitude and completeness, "the whole counsel of God." "In
my preaching of the word, I took special notice of this one thing,
namely, that the Lord did lead me to begin where the 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 sense; for the terrors of the law, and guilt for
my transgressions, lay heavy on my 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 be aware of . . . Thus I went on for the space of
two years, crying out against men's sins, and their fearful state
because of them. After which the Lord came in upon my own soul with
some sure peace and comfort through Christ; for he did give me many
sweet discoveries of his blessed grace through him. Wherefore now I
altered in my preaching (for still I preached what I saw and felt).
Now, therefore, I did much labour to hold forth Jesus Christ in all
his offices, relations, and benefits, unto the world, and did strive
also to discover, to condemn, and remove those false supports and
props on which the world doth both lean, and by them fall and perish.
On these things also I staid as long as on the other. After this,
God led me into something of the mystery of union with Christ;
wherefore, that I discovered and shewed to them also. And when I had
travelled through these three chief points of the word of God, I was
caught in my present practice, and cast into prison, where I have
lain alone as long again to confirm the truth by way of suffering, as
I was before in testifying of it, according to the scriptures, in a
way of preaching."
Bunyan's preaching was no incoherent rant. Words of truth and
soberness formed the staple of each sermon; and his burning words and
startling images were only the electric scintillations along the
chain of his scriptural eloquence. Though the common people heard
him most gladly, he had occasional hearers of a higher class. Once
on a week-day he was expected to preach in a parish church near
Cambridge, and a concourse of people had already collected in the
churchyard. A gay student was riding past, when he noticed the
crowd, and asked what had brought them together. He was told that
the people had come out to hear one Bunyan, a tinker, preach. He
instantly dismounted, and gave a boy twopence to hold his horse, for
he declared he was determined to hear the tinker PRATE. So he went
into the church, and heard the tinker; but so deep was the impression
which that sermon made on the scholar, that he took every subsequent
opportunity to attend Bunyan's ministry, and himself became a
renowned preacher of the gospel in Cambridgeshire. Still he felt
that his errand was to the multitude, and his great anxiety was to
penetrate the darkest places of the land, and preach to the most
abandoned people. In these labours of unostentatious heroism, he
sometimes excited the jealousy of the regular parish ministers, and
even under the tolerant rule of the Protector, was in some danger of
imprisonment. However, it was not till the Restoration that he was
in serious jeopardy; but thereafter he was among the first victims of
the grand combination betwixt priests and rulers to exterminate the
gospel in England.
On the 12th of November 1660, he had promised to meet a little
congregation in a private house at Samsell in Bedfordshire. Before
the hour of meeting he was apprised that a warrant was out to seize
him; but he felt that he owed it to the gospel not to run away at
such a time. Accordingly when the people were assembled with no
weapons but their Bibles, the constable entered and arrested the
preacher. He had only time to speak a few words of counsel and
encouragement to his hearers, "You see we are prevented of our
opportunity to speak and hear the word of God, and are likely to
suffer for the same. But be not discouraged. It is a mercy to
suffer for so good a cause. We might have been apprehended as
thieves or murderers, or for other wickedness; but blessed be God, it
is not so. We suffer as Christians for well doing; and better be the
persecuted than the persecutors." After being taken before a
justice, he was committed to gaol till the ensuing sessions should be
held at Bedford. There an indictment was preferred--"That John
Bunyan, of the town of Bedford, labourer, being a person of such and
such conditions, he hath since such a time devilishly and
perniciously abstained from coming to church to hear divine service;
and is a common upholder of several unlawful meetings and
conventicles, to the great disturbance and distraction of the good
subjects of this kingdom, contrary to the laws of our sovereign lord
the King," &c. Of course he was convicted, and sentenced to
imprisonment, with certification, that if he did not conform within a
given period, he would he banished out of the kingdom.
After Bunyan ceases to be his own biographer, our materials become
exceeding scanty. This is the less to be lamented when we reflect
that the history of his "hidden life" is already told. The processes
have now been related which formed and developed the inner man; and
the few external events that befel him, and the few important things
that he did, during the remaining eight-and-twenty years of his
mortal pilgrimage, may be recorded in a single page.
His imprisonment was protracted from sessions to sessions, till he
had measured out twelve weary years in Bedford gaol. Perhaps we
should not call them WEARY. They had their alleviations. His wife
and children were allowed to visit him. His blind and most beloved
daughter was permitted to cheer his solitude and her own. He had his
Bible, and his "Book of Martyrs." He had his imagination, and his
pen. Above all, he had a good conscience. He felt it a blessed
exchange to quit the "iron cage" of despair for a "den" oft visited
by a celestial comforter; and which, however cheerless, did not lack
a door to heaven.
Whether it was the man's own humanity, or whether it was that God who
assuaged Joseph's captivity, gave Bunyan special favour in the eyes
of the keeper of his prison, the fact is certain, that he met with
singular indulgence at the least likely hands. Not only was he
allowed many a little indulgence in his cell, but he was suffered to
go and come with a freedom which could hardly have been exceeded had
the county gaol been his own hired house. For months together he was
a constant attender of the church-meetings of his brethren in
Bedford, and was actually chosen pastor during the period of his
incarceration. On one occasion some of the bishops who had heard a
rumour of the unusual liberty conceded to him, sent a messenger from
London to Bedford to ascertain the truth. The officer was instructed
to call at the prison during the night. It was a night when Bunyan
had received permission to stay at home with his family; but so
uneasy did he feel, that he told his wife he must go back to his old
quarters. So late was it that the gaoler blamed him for coming at
such an untimely hour; but a little afterwards the messenger arrived.
"Are all the prisoners safe?" "Yes." "Is John Bunyan safe?" "Yes."
"Let me see him." Bunyan was called, and the messenger went his way;
and when he was gone the gaoler told him, "Well, you may go out again
just when you think proper; for you know when to return better than I
can tell you."
But the best alleviations of his captivity were those wonderful works
which he there projected or composed. Some of these were
controversial; but one of them was his own life, under the title,
"Grace abounding to the Chief of Sinners," and another was the
"PILGRIM'S PROGRESS."
In 1672 he obtained his liberty, and his friends immediately built
for him a large meeting-house, where he continued to preach with
little interruption till his death. Once a year he visited London,
and was there so popular, that twelve hundred people would gather
together at seven in the morning of a winter's working-day to hear
him. Amongst the admiring listeners, Dr Owen was frequently found;
and once when Charles the Second asked how a learned man like him
could sit down to hear a tinker prate, the great theologian is said
to have answered, "May it please your Majesty, could I possess the
tinker's abilities for preaching, I would most gladly relinquish all
my learning." But popular as he was, he was not fond of praise. One
day after he had concluded an impressive discourse, his friends
pressed round to thank him for his "sweet sermon." "Aye," he bluntly
answered, "you need not remind me of that; for the devil told me as
much before I left the pulpit."
He had numbered sixty years, and written as many books, when he was
released from his abundant labours. A young gentleman, his
neighbour, had fallen under his father's displeasure, and was much
concerned at his father's estrangement as well as at the prospect of
being disinherited. He begged Mr Bunyan's friendly interposition to
propitiate his father, and prepare the way for his return to parental
favour and affection. The kind-hearted man undertook the task, and
having successfully achieved it, was returning from Reading to London
on horseback, when he was thoroughly drenched with excessive rains.
He arrived cold and wet at the house of Mr Strudwick, a grocer on
Snow Hill. Here he was seized with fits of shivering, which passed
off in violent fever, and after ten days' sickness, on the 31st of
August 1688, his pilgrimage ended, and he went in by the gate into
the city.
As the most appropriate introduction to the following selections from
the practical writings of Bunyan, we would chose this rapid history
of the MAN, with a few remarks on the THEOLOGIAN and the AUTHOR.
I. Bunyan's theological merits we rank very high. No one can turn
over his pages without noticing the abundance of his Scriptural
quotations; and these quotations no one can examine without
perceiving how minutely he had studied, and how deeply he had
pondered, the word of God. But it is possible to be very TEXTUAL,
and yet by no means very scriptural. A man may heave an exact
acquaintance with the literal Bible, and yet entirely miss the great
Bible message. He may possess a dexterous command of detached
passages and insulated sentences, and yet be entirely ignorant of
that peculiar scheme which forms the great gospel revelation. But
this was Bunyan's peculiar excellence. He was even better acquainted
with the Gospel as the scheme of God, than he was familiar with the
Bible-text; and the consequence is, that though he is sometimes
irrelevant in his references, and fanciful in interpreting particular
passages, his doctrine is almost always according to the analogy of
faith. The doctrine of a free and instant justification by the
imputed righteousness of Christ, none even of the Puritans could
state with more Luther-like boldness, nor defend with an affection
more worthy of Paul. In his last and best days, Coleridge wrote, "I
know of no book, the Bible excepted, as above all comparison, which
I, according to my judgment and experience, could so safely recommend
as teaching and enforcing the whole saving truth, according to the
mind that was in Christ Jesus, as the Pilgrim's Progress. It is in
my conviction the best Summa Theologiae Evangelicae ever produced by
a writer not miraculously inspired." {3} Without questioning this
verdict, we would include in the encomium some of his other writings,
which possibly Coleridge never saw. Such as the Tracts contained in
this volume. {4} They exhibit Gospel-truths in so clear a light, and
state them in such a frank and happy tone, that he who runs may read,
and he who reads in earnest will rejoice. The Pilgrim is a peerless
guide to those who have already passed in at the wicket-gate; but
those who are still seeking peace to their troubled souls, will find
the best directory in "The Jerusalem Sinner Saved."
II. Invaluable as a theologian, Bunyan stands alone as a contributor
to theological literature. In recent times no man has done so much
to draw the world's delighted attention to the subjects of supreme
solicitude. No production of a mortal pen has found so many readers
as one work of his; and none has awakened so frequently the sighing
behest, "Let me die the death of the righteous."
None has painted the beauty of holiness in taints more lovely, nor
spoken in tones more thrilling to the heart of universal humanity.
At first the favourite of the vulgar, he is now the wonder of the
learned; and from the obscurity, not inglorious, of smoky cupboards
and cottage chimneys, he has been escorted up to the highest places
of classical renown, and duly canonized by the pontiffs of taste and
literature. The man, whom Cowper praised anonymously,
"Lest so despised a name should move a sneer,
has at last extorted emulous plaudits from a larger host of writers
than ever conspired to praise a man of genius, who was also a man of
God. Johnson and Franklin, Scott, Coleridge, and Southey, Byron and
Montgomery, Macintosh and Macaulay, have exerted their philosophical
acumen and poetic feeling to analyze his various spell, and account
for his unequalled fame; and though the round-cornered copies, with
their diverting woodcuts, have not disappeared from the poor man's
ingle, illustrated editions blaze from the shelves of every sumptuous
library, new pictures, from its exhaustless themes, light up the
walls of each annual exhibition; and amidst the graceful litter of
the drawing-room table, you are sure to take up designs from the
Pilgrim's Progress. So universal is the ascendancy of the tinker-
teacher, so world-wide the diocese of him whom Whitefield created
Bishop Bunyan, that probably half the ideas which the outside-world
entertains regarding experimental piety, they have, in some form or
other, derived from him. One of the most popular preachers in his
day, in his little treatises, as well as in his longer allegories, he
preaches to countless thousands still. The cause of this unexampled
popularity is a question of great practical moment.