John Bunyan

“ Our main object is to give a simple and coherent account of a most unusual man—and then we should like to turn to some instructive purpose the peculiarities of his singular history, and no less singular works.
John Bunyan was born at Elstow, near Bedford, in 1628. His father was a brazier or tinker, and brought up his son as a craftsman of like occupation. There is no evidence for the gipsy origin of the house of Bunyan; and though extremely poor, John’s father gave his son such an education as poor men could then obtain for their children. He was sent to school and taught to read and write. ”

“ Thou hast paid for me ten thousand times more than I am worth. No marvel that this made the water stand in my husband's eyes, and that it made him trudge so nimbly on. I am persuaded he wished me with him; but, vile wretch that I was! I let him come all alone. Oh, Mercy, that thy father and mother were here! yea, and Mrs. Timorous also! Nay, I wish now with all my heart that here was Madam Wanton too. Surely, surely, their hearts would be affected; nor could the fear of the one, nor the powerful passions of the other, prevail with them to go home again, and refuse to become good pilgrims. ”

“ One thing the life-long admiration of John Bunyan’s books has helped to kindle and burn into my mind and my imagination is this: What a universe of things is the heart of man! Were there nothing else in the heart of man but all the places and all the persons and all the adventures that John Bunyan saw in his sleep, what a world that would open up in all our bosoms! ”

“ I am not the man. If all the fornicators and adulterers in England were hanged by the neck till they be dead, John Bunyan, the object of their envy, would be still alive and well. I know not whether there be such a thing as a woman breathing under the copes of the whole heaven, but by their apparel, their children, or by common fame, except my wife. ”

“ But behold, he doth again begin to see his own nakedness, and he perceives that the law is whetting his axe: as for the world, he perceives it is a bubble; he also smells the smell of brimstone, for God hath scattered it upon his tabernacle and it begins to burn within him. "Oh," saith he, "I am deluded; Oh, I am ensnared. My first sight of things was true. I see it so again." Now he begins to be for flying again to his first refuge: "O God," saith he, "I am undone; I have turned from thy truth to lies; I believed them such at first, and find them such at last: have mercy upon me, O God." ”

“ John Bunyan cannot set forth divine truth in an orderly method and in a built-up body like John Owen. He cannot Platonize divine truth like his Puritan contemporary, John Howe. He cannot soar high as heaven in the beauty and the sweetness of gospel holiness like Jonathan Edwards. He has nothing of the philosophical depth of Richard Hooker, and he has nothing of the vast learning of Jeremy Taylor. But when John Bunyan’s mind and heart begin to work through his imagination, then—
‘His language is not ours. ”

“ But it is even more dreadful than a slough in a man’s way to have a slough in his mind, as both Bunyan himself and Mr. Fearing, his exquisite creation, had. After the awful-enough slough, filled with the guilt and fear of actual sin, had been bridged and crossed and left behind, a still worse slough of inward corruption and pollution rose up in John Bunyan’s soul and threatened to engulf him altogether. So terrible to Bunyan was this experience, that he has not thought it possible to make a parable of it, and so put it into the Pilgrim ”

“ Then they set forward, and began to go up the hill; and up the hill they went. But, before they got to the top, Christiana began to pant, and said, "I dare say this is a breathing hill: no marvel if they that love their ease more than their souls choose to themselves a smoother way." Then said Mercy, "I must sit down;" also the least of the children began to cry. "Come, come," said Great-heart, "sit not down here, for a little above is the Prince's arbor." Then took he the little boy by the hand, and led him up thereto. ”

“ Truly, but a poor beginning for a pious life was the youth of John Bunyan. As might have been expected, he was a wild, reckless, swearing boy, as his father doubtless was before him. "It was my delight," says he, "to be taken captive by the devil. I had few equals, both for cursing and swearing, lying and blaspheming." Yet, in his ignorance and darkness, his powerful imagination early lent terror to the reproaches of conscience. He was scared, even in childhood, with dreams of hell and apparitions of devils. ”

“ Then said her mother, "I will mention thy wants to the shepherds, and they will not deny it thee." But she said, "I am ashamed that these men should know that I longed." "Nay, my daughter," said she, "it is no shame, but a virtue, to long for such a thing as that." So Mercy said, "Then, mother, if you please, ask the shepherds if they are willing to sell it."
Now, the glass was one of a thousand. It would present a man, one way, with his own features exactly; and, turn it but another way, and it would show one the very face and likeness of the Prince of pilgrims Himself. ”

“ Yea, I dare say it, and stand to it, that if a man will but use this physic as he should, it will make him live for ever. But, good Christiana, thou must give these pills no other way than as I have prescribed; for if you do, they will do no good. So he gave unto Christiana physic for herself and her boys, and for Mercy; and bid Matthew take heed how he ate any more green plums; and kissed them and went his way.
It was told you before, that Prudence bid the boys, if at any time they would, they should ask her some questions that might be profitable, and she would say something to them. ”

“ No man was as yet ever rid of his burden by him; no, nor ever is like to be: ye cannot be justified by the works of the law; for by the deeds of the law no man living can be rid of his burden: therefore, Mr. Worldly-wiseman is an alien, and Mr. Legality is a cheat; and for his son Civility, notwithstanding his simpering looks, he is but a hypocrite, and cannot help thee. Believe me, there is nothing in all this noise, that thou hast heard of these sottish men, but a design to beguile thee of thy salvation, by turning thee from the way in which I had set thee. ”

“ Now, as they were going along and talking, they espied a boy feeding his father's sheep. The boy was in very mean clothes, but of a very fresh and well-favoured countenance; and as he sat by himself, he sang. Hark, said Mr. Great-heart, to what the shepherd's boy saith. So they hearkened, and he said—
He that is down needs fear no fall;
He that is low, no pride;
He that is humble, ever shall
Have God to be his guide. (Phil. 4:12, 13)
I am content with what I have,
Little be it, or much;
And, Lord, contentment still I crave,
Because Thou savest such.
Fullness to such a burden is,
That go on pilgrimage; ”

“ Now, in all this John Bunyan speaks as a child to children; but, of such children as John Bunyan and his readers is the kingdom of heaven. My very youngest hearer here to-night knows quite well, or, at any rate, shrewdly suspects, that Knowledge was not a shepherd going about with his staff among woolly sheep; nor would the simplest-minded reader of John Bunyan’s book go to seek the Delectable Mountains and Immanuel’s Land in any geographer’s atlas, or on any schoolroom map. ”

“ It would be insufferably pragmatic in me to begin to set John Bunyan right in his English; but I had rather offend the shades of a hundred John Bunyans than leave my most unlettered hearer without his full and proper Sabbath-night lesson. The third armed thief, then, that fell upon Valiant was, under other names, Impertinence, Meddlesomeness, Officiousness, Over-Interference. Pragmatic,—by whatever name he calls himself, there is no mistaking him. He is never satisfied. He is never pleased. He is never thankful. He is always setting his superiors right. ”

“ and the very sight of him made my burden fall off my back, (for I groaned under a very heavy burden,) but then it fell down from off me. It was a strange thing to me, for I never saw such a thing before; yea, and while I stood looking up, for then I could not forbear looking, three Shining Ones came to me. One of them testified that my sins were forgiven me; another stripped me of my rags, and gave me this broidered coat which you see; and the third set the mark which you see in my forehead, and gave me this sealed roll. ”

“ At this, Little-Faith looked as white as a sheet and had neither power to fight nor fly. Then said Faint-heart, 'Deliver thy purse;' but, he making no haste to do it (for he was loth to lose his money) Mistrust ran up to him, and, thrusting his hand into his pocket, pulled out thence a bag of silver. Then he cried out, 'Thieves! thieves!' With that. Guilt, with a great club that was in his hand, struck Little-Faith on the head, and with that blow felled him flat to the ground, where he lay bleeding as one that would bleed to death. All this while the thieves stood by. ”

“ Replies. JOHN BUNYAN AND HIS PORTRAIT.—DID BUNYAN KNOW HOBBES? (Vol. ii., pp. 476. 518.; Vol. iii., p. 70.)
The best portrait of John Bunyan was drawn and engraved by White, to the Holy War, 1682. The original drawing, and a fine impression of the engraving, is preserved in the illustrated Grainger's History of England, in the print-room at the British Museum. It was copied in folio for Bunyan's Works. It has been recently copied for Mr. Bogue's elegant edition of the Pilgrim, and for the first complete edition of Bunyan's Works, now publishing by Messrs. Blackie and Sons, Glasgow. ”

“ True Puritan as the author of The Pilgrim’s Progress is, he is no Procrustes. He does not cut down all his pilgrims to one size, nor does he clip them all into one pattern. They are all thinking men, but they are not all men of one way of thinking. John Bunyan is as fresh as Nature herself, and as free and full as Holy Scripture herself in the variety, in the individuality, and even in the idiosyncrasy of his spiritual portrait gallery.
Vanity Fair is one of John Bunyan’s universally-admitted masterpieces. The very name of the fair is one of his happiest strokes. ”

“ Great-heart, We need not to be so afraid of this Valley, for here is nothing to hurt us, unless we procure it to ourselves. It is true, Christian did here meet with Apollyon, with whom he also had a sore combat; but that fray was the fruit of those slips that he got in his going down the hill; for they that get slips there, must look for combats here. And hence it is, that this Valley has got so hard a name. For the common people, when they hear that some frightful thing has befallen such a one in such a place, are of an opinion, that that place is haunted with some foul fiend, or evil spirit ”

“ They added, moreover, and prayed his Majesty to consider thereof; 'for,' said they, 'if now, after all this grace bestowed upon us thy miserable town of Mansoul, thou shouldest withdraw, thou and thy captains from us, the town of Mansoul will die. [213] Yea,' said they, 'our blessed Emmanuel, if thou shouldest depart from us now thou hast done so much good for us, and showed so much mercy unto us; what will follow but that our joy will be as if it had not been, and our enemies will a second time come upon us with more rage than at the first. ”

“ In regard to what might be called the “nationality” of John Bunyan I said, in my letter of the 5th May, that “the question at issue is really not one of evidence, but of an unfortunate feeling of caste that bars the way against all investigation and proof.” I do not know what the congregation of Bunyan’s Church at Bedford consists of, but I presume it is composed of humble people, engaged in making a living and bringing up their children becomingly, and indulging in the simple conventionalities suitable to their positions in life. ”

“ In 1327, the first year of Edward III., one of the same name, probably his descendant, William Boynon, is found actually living at Harrowden, close to the spot which popular tradition names as John Bunyan’s birthplace, and was the owner of property there. We have no further notices of the Bunyans of Elstow till the sixteenth century. We then find them greatly fallen. ”

“ I should think that God did mock at these, my prayers, saying, and that in the audience of the holy angels, This poor simple wretch doth hanker after me as if I had nothing to do with my mercy but to bestow it on such as he. Alas, poor fool! [29] how art thou deceived! It is not for such as thee to have a favour with the Highest.
110. Then hath the tempter come upon me, also, with such discouragements as these—You are very hot for mercy, but I will cool you; this frame shall not last always; many have been as hot as you for a spirit, but I have quenched their zeal. ”

“ GRACE ABOUNDING TO THE CHIEF OF SINNERS: A BRIEF AND FAITHFUL RELATION OF THE EXCEEDING MERCY OF GOD IN CHRIST TO HIS POOR SERVANT, JOHN BUNYAN; WHEREIN IS PARTICULARLY SHOWED THE MANNER OF HIS CONVERSION, HIS SIGHT AND TROUBLE FOR SIN, HIS DREADFUL TEMPTATIONS, ALSO HOW HE DESPAIRED OF GOD’S MERCY, AND HOW THE LORD AT LENGTH THROUGH CHRIST DID DELIVER HIM FROM ALL THE GUILT AND TERROR THAT LAY UPON HIM.
Whereunto is added a brief relation of his call to the work of the ministry, of his temptations therein, as also what he hath met with in prison. ”