John Bunyan

“ Faith shines, when it worketh towards Christ, through the sides of many and great transgressors, and so does love, for that much is forgiven. And what matter can be found in the soul for humility to work by so well, as by a sight that I have been and am an abominable sinner? And the same is to be said of patience, meekness, gentleness, self-denial, or of any other grace. Grace takes occasion by the vileness of the man to shine the more; even as by the ruggedness of a very strong distemper or disease, the virtue of the medicine is best made manifest. Where sin abounds, grace much more abounds ”

“ Despair undervalues the promise, undervalues the invitation, undervalues the proffer of grace. Despair undervalues the ability of God the Father, and the redeeming blood of Christ his Son. Oh unreasonable despair!
Despair makes man God’s judge; it is a controller of the promise, a contradicter of Christ in his large offers of mercy: and one that undertakes to make unbelief the great manager of our reason and judgment, in determining about what God can and will do for sinners.
Despair! It is the devil’s fellow, the devil’s master ”

“ The design of Satan is to tell the presumptuous, that their presuming on mercy is good; but to persuade the believer, that his believing is impudent bold dealing with God. I never heard a presumptuous man in my life say that he was afraid that he presumed; but I have heard many an honest humble soul say, that they have been afraid that their faith has been presumption. Why should Satan molest those whose ways he knows will bring them to him? And who can think that he should be quiet when men take the right course to escape his hellish snares? ”

“ And this vileness, that at present does so much swallow up our youth, is one cause of my thinking so: for out of them, for from among them, when God sets to his hand, as of old, you shall see what penitent ones, what trembling ones, and what admirers of grace, will be found to profess the gospel to the glory of God by Christ.
Alas! we are a company of worn-out Christians, our moon is in the wane; we are much more black than white, more dark than light; we shine but a little; grace in the most of us is decayed. ”

“ Why not familiar with sinners, provided we hate their spots and blemishes, and seek that they may be healed of them?
Why not fellowly with our carnal neighbours? If we do take occasion to do so, that we may drop, and be yet distilling some good doctrine upon their souls? Why not go to the poor man’s house, and give him a penny, and a Scripture to think upon? Why not send for the poor to fetch away at least the fragments of thy table, that the bowels of thy fellow-sinner may be refreshed as well as thine? ”

“ Peter. There is for every one of you. “Repent and be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.” Oh! what a blessed “Every one of you,” is here! How willing was Peter, and the Lord Jesus, by his ministry, to catch these murderers with the word of the gospel, that they might be made monuments of the grace of God! How unwilling, I say, was he, that any of these should escape the hand of mercy! ”

“ Secondly, Art thou weary of them?
Thirdly, Wouldst thou with all thy heart be saved by Jesus Christ? I dare say no less, I dare say no more. But if it be truly thus with thee, how great soever thy sins have been, how bad soever thou feelest thy heart, how far soever thou art from thinking that God has mercy for these: thou art the man, the Jerusalem sinner, that the Word of God has conquered, and to whom it offereth free remission of sins, by the redemption that is in Jesus Christ. ”

“ Ay, but sinner, Christ Jesus here calls thee fool for not believing all. Believe all, and despair if thou canst. He that believes all, believes that text that saith, Christ would have mercy preached first to the Jerusalem sinners. He that believeth all, believeth all the promises and consolations of the word; and the promises and consolations of the word weigh heavier than do all the curses and threatenings of the law; and mercy rejoiceth against judgment. Wherefore believe all, and mercy will to thy conscience weigh judgment down, and so minister comfort to thy soul. ”

“ Who deserveth our heart, our mouth, our life, our goods, so much as Jesus Christ, who has bought us to himself by his blood, to this very end, that we should be a peculiar people, zealous of good works?
There is nothing more seemly in the world, than to see a Christian walk as becomes the Gospel; nor any thing more unbecoming a reasonable creature, than to hear a man say, I believe in Christ, and yet see in his life debauchery and profaneness. Might I, such men should be counted the basest of men ”

“ Despair! when we have a God of mercy, and a redeeming Christ alive! For shame, forbear: let them despair that dwell where there is no God, and that are confined to those chambers of death which can be reached by no redemption.
A living man despair when he is chid for murmuring and complaining! Lam. iii. 39. Oh! so long as we are where promises swarm, where mercy is proclaimed, where grace reigns, and where Jerusalem sinners are privileged with the first offer of mercy, it is a base thing to despair. ”

“ Candles that burn not bright, we like not: wood that is green will rather smother, and sputter, and smoke, and crack, and flounce, than cast a brave light and a pleasant heat: wherefore great folks care not much, not so much for such kind of things, as for them that will better answer their ends.
Hence Christ desires the biggest sinner; in him there is matter to work by, to wit, a great deal of sin; for as by the tallow of the candle, the fire takes occasion to burn the brighter; so by the sin of the soul, grace takes occasion to shine the clearer. ”

“ How shall I deliver thee, Israel? How shall I make thee as Admah? How shall I set thee as Zeboim? (and yet thou art worse than they: nor has Samaria committed half thy sins) ; Ezek. xvi. 46–51. My heart is turned within me, and my repentings are kindled together;” Hos. xi. 8.
But where do you find that ever the Lord did thus yearn in his bowels for and after any self-righteous man? No, no; they are the publicans and harlots, idolaters and Jerusalem sinners, for whom his bowels thus yearn and tumble about within him: for, alas! poor worms, they have most need of mercy. ”

“ Yea, it is impossible that thou shouldst have done it, if indeed thou wouldst be saved by him.
No man can desire to be saved by him, whom he yet judgeth to be an impostor, a magician, a witch. No man can hope for redemption by that blood which he yet counteth an unholy thing. Nor will God ever suffer such an one to repent, who has, after light and profession of him, thus horribly and devil-like contemned and trampled upon him.
True, words and wars and blasphemies against this Son of man are pardonable; but then they must be done ignorantly and in unbelief. ”

“ Men that are at the point to die have more need of the physician than they that are but now and then troubled with an heart-fainting qualm. The publicans and sinners were, as it were, in the mouth of death; death was swallowing of them down: and therefore the Lord Jesus receives them first, offers them mercy first. “The whole have no need of the physician, but the sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” The sick, as I said, is the biggest sinner, whether he sees his disease or not. ”

“ I wonder how far a man might go among the converted sinners of the smaller size, before one could find one that so much as looked any thing this wayward. Where is he that is thus under pangs of love for the grace bestowed upon him by Jesus Christ? Excepting only some few, you may walk to the world’s end, and find none. But, as I said, some there are, and so there has been in every age of the church, great sinners, that have had much forgiven them; and they love much upon this account.
Jesus Christ therefore knows what he doth, when he lays hold on the hearts of sinners of the biggest size. ”

“ Little sinner, when therefore thou goest to God, though thou knowest in thy conscience that thou, as to acts, art no thief, no murderer, no whore, no liar, no false swearer, or the like, and in reason must needs understand that thus thou art not so profanely vile as others; yet when thou goest to God for mercy, know no man’s sins but thine own, make mention of no man’s sins but thine own. ”

“ I call it wild faith, because God never placed it in his garden, his church; it is only to be found in the field, the world. I also call it wild faith, because it only grows up and is nourished where other wild notions abound. ”

“ Also there is the child in sin, and a man in sin that has his hairs gray, and his skin wrinkled for very age. And we must put a difference betwixt these sinners also. For can it be that a child of seven, or ten, or sixteen years old, should be such a sinner—a sinner so vile in the eye of the law as he is who has walked according to the course of this world, forty, fifty, sixty, or seventy years? ”

“ Alas if at any time any of them are mentioned, how seemingly coldly doth the record of scripture present them to us? Nicodemus, a night professor, and Simon the pharisee, with his fifty pence; and their great ignorance of the methods of grace, we have now and then touched upon.
Mercy seems to be out of his proper channel, when it deals with self-righteous men; but then it runs with a full stream when it extends itself to the biggest sinners. As God’s mercy is not regulated by man’s goodness, nor obtained by man’s worthiness ”

“ Faith is that without which it cannot be received at all; and repentance that without which it cannot be received unfeignedly. When therefore Christ says, he would have repentance and remission of sins preached in his name among all nations, it is as much as to say, I will that all men every where be sorry for their sins, and accept of mercy at God’s hand through me, lest they fall under his wrath in the judgment. For as I had said, without repentance, what pretence soever men have of faith, they cannot escape the wrath to come. ”

“ And I say again, since the Lord Jesus mounts thus high at the first, and sends to the Jerusalem sinners, that they may come first to partake of his mercy, it follows, that either he has unsearchable riches of grace and worth in himself, or else he must straiten his hand, or his grace and merits will be spent before the world is at an end. But let it be believed, as surely as spoken, he is still as full as ever. He is not a jot the poorer for all the forgivenesses that he has given away to great sinners. ”

“ I would not for all the world but be placed by mine own conscience in the very front of the biggest sinners, that I might be one of the first that are beckoned by the gracious hand of Jesus the Saviour, to come to him for mercy. ”

“ Christ Jesus, as you may perceive, has put himself under the term of a physician, a doctor for curing of diseases: and you know that applause and fame, are things that physicians much desire. That is it that helps them to patients, and that also that will help their patients to commit themselves to their skill for cure, with the more confidence and repose of spirit. And the best way for a doctor or physician to get himself a name, is, in the first place, to take in hand, and cure some such as all others have given off for lost and dead. ”

“ After Martha had waited long, tried many ways to bring her sister to good, and all proved ineffectual, at last she comes upon her thus: “Sister,” quoth she, “I pray thee go with me to the temple to-day, to hear one preach a sermon.” “What kind of preacher is he?” said she. Martha replied, “It is one Jesus of Nazareth; he is the handsomest man that ever you saw with your eyes. Oh! he shines in beauty, and is a most excellent preacher.” ”