The Works of John Bunyan, vol 3 by John Bunyan (types of ebook readers .TXT) 📖

FOOTNOTES:

[1]General Doctrine of Toleration, 8vo, 1781.

[2] This awful destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans is narrated by Josephus in his sixth book of the Jewish Wars, in language that makes nature shudder. Multitudes had assembled to celebrate the passover when the invading army beleaguered the city; a frightful famine soon filled it with desolation: this, with fire and sword, miserably destroyed one million, three hundred and thirty-seven thousand, four hundred and ninety Jews, while the Christians fled before the siege, and escaped to the mountains.

Well might the sun vail his face at that atrocious deed, which was so quickly followed by such awful punishment.—Ed.

[3] Reader, do not imagine that this was peculiar to Bunyan’s days; look not upon your neighbours to find an example, but search your own heart—‘Lord, is it I?’ and strive and pray that you may bring forth more fruit.—Ed.

[4] The mode of admitting a member to church-fellowship, among the Baptists, was and now is by introducing the trembling convert to a private meeting of the whole church, that they may hear why the union is sought, how the soul became alarmed, and fled for refuge to Christ, with the grounds of hope; inquiries having been previously made into Christian character and godliness. If, with all these precautions, a barren professor gains admittance, the punishment is not upon the garden, but upon the barren tree.—Ed.

[5] ‘Humour,’ the temper or disposition of mind. Not out of love to humility, but these creeping things pretend to be humble, to gain some sinister end.—Ed.

[6] However strange it may appear, it is true that the Ranters, in Bunyan’s time, used these arguments, and those so graphically put into the mouth of Bye-ends, in the Pilgrim, to justify their nonconformity to Christ. The tom-fooleries and extravagancies of dress introduced by Charles II, are here justly and contemptuously described. The ladies’ head-dresses, called ‘frizzled fore-tops,’

became so extravagant, that a barber used high steps to enable him to dress a lady’s head!—Ed.

[7] A word not to be found in our dictionaries, being local and almost obsolete. It means a division, end, or border of a town or village.—Ed.

[8] See the character of Talkative, in the Pilgrim’s Progress.

‘His house is as empty of religion as the white of an egg is of savour. There is in his house neither prayer, nor sign of repentance for sin. He is the very stain, reproach, and shame of religion.

Thus say the common people that know him, A saint abroad and a devil at home.’—Ed.

[9] How great is the mercy that those horrid barbarities, perpetrated upon peaceful Christians, are now only heard of in those distance parts of Satan’s empire, China and Madagascar! Has the enmity of the human heart by nature changed? No; but the number of Christians has so vastly increased with a civilizing influence, as to change the face of society. What a paradise will this earth become when Christ shall reign in every heart!—Ed.

[10] In the midst of these faithful admonitions, we venture to remark that, according to Lightfoot, so valuable was the fig-tree that it was never destroyed until means were carefully used to restore its fruitfulness, and that the use of these means occupied a period of three years. This illustrates the wisdom of our Lord in selecting the fig-tree as the principal object presented to view in his parable. It is a most valuable tree—capable of bearing much fruit; still, after every trial, if it remains barren, it must be cut down as a cumber-ground, and sent to the fire.—Ed.

[11] A ‘hit,’ in some parts of the country, is used to express a good crop. A ‘hitting season’ means a fruitful season.—Ed.

[12] This mode of infusing new vigour into plants and trees is thus described in the Gemara—‘They lay dung in their gardens, to soften the earth. They dig about the roots of their trees, and sprinkle ashes, and pluck up suckers, and make a smoke beneath to kill vermin.’—Ed.

[13] Among the superstitions of the ancients, Michaelis states that both the Greeks and Asiatics had a superstition that a tree might be rendered fruitful by striking it, at the intercession of a friend, three times with the back of an axe.—Ed.

[14] However painfully unpleasant these terms may appear to eyes or ears polite, it is a homely but just representation, and calculated to make a lasting impression on every reader.

Afflictions, trials, crosses, are used as a means of creating or reviving spiritual life, as manure is applied to vegetation.—Ed.

[15] Mahomet professed descent from Ishmael, and that he came to revive the religion which God had revealed to Abraham, who taught it to Ishmael. Mahometanism is the religion of the outcast of God.—Ed.

[16] Bunyan had been haunted with the temptation ‘to sell and part with Christ,’ and, under a fear that he had fallen under that temptation, the case of Esau made a dreadful impression upon his soul; extreme horror and anguish seized upon his spirit; ‘he was like a man bereft of life and bound over to eternal punishment,’

for two years. At length, after an awful storm, he found peace in the promise, ‘his blood cleanseth from ALL sins,’ and a proof that he had not sold Christ.—See Grace Abounding, No. 139-160.

[17] How solemn a thought! What an appeal to perpetual watchfulness.

Why have I not made shipwreck of faith? Most emphatically may we reply, Because God has sustained my soul.—Ed.

[18] Bunyan’s tongue and pen are here fired by his vivid imagination of eternal realities. With such burning words, we need no messenger from the invisible world to alarm the consciences of sinners. What angel could arouse more powerfully, alarmingly, convincingly, the poor sinner, than the whole of this chain of reasoning.—Ed.

[19] This picture is drawn by a master hand: the master is laid by for a season; or, as Bunyan quaintly expresses it, ‘a little a to side’: when raised from affliction earthly affairs absorb his attention, and he forgets his good resolves. According to the old rhyme:—

‘The devil was sick, the devil a saint would be The devil to well, the devil a saint was he.’—Ed.

[20] This is referred to in the Pilgrim, at the Interpreter’s house, by the representation of a man in an iron cage, who says, ‘I cannot get out, O now I cannot!’ The awful account of Spira’s despair must have made a strong impression upon Bunyan’s mind. It commences with a poem.

‘Here see a soul that’s all despair; a man All hell; a spirit all wounds; who can

Reader, would’st see, what may you never feel Despair, racks, torments, whips of burning steel!

Behold, the man’s the furnace, in whose heart Sin hath created hell; O in each part

His thoughts all stings; words, swords;

His eyes flames; wishes curses, life a death; A thousand deaths live in him, he not dead; A breathing corpse in living, scalding lead.’

—Fearful Estate of Francis Spira.—Ed.

The Life and Death of Mr. Badman,

Presented to the World in a Familiar Dialogue Between Mr. Wiseman and Mr. Attentive.

By John Bunyan

ADVERTISEMENT BY THE EDITOR.

The life of Badman is a very interesting description, a true and lively portraiture, of the demoralized classes of the trading community in the reign of King Charles II; a subject which naturally led the author to use expressions familiar among such persons, but which are now either obsolete or considered as vulgar. In fact it is the only work proceeding from the prolific pen and fertile imagination of Bunyan, in which he uses terms that, in this delicate and refined age, may give offence. So, in the venerable translation of the holy oracles, there are some objectionable expressions, which, although formerly used in the politest company, now point to the age in which it was written. The same ideas or facts would now be expressed by terms which could not give offence; and every reader must feel great pleasure in the improvement of our language, as seen in the contrast between the two periods, and especially in the recollection that the facts might be stated with equal precision, and reflections made with equal force, in terms at which the most delicate mind could not be offended.

Those who read the writings of Bunyan must feel continually reminded of his ardent attachment to his Saviour, and his intense love to the souls of sinners. He was as delicate in his expressions as any writer of his age, who addressed the openly vicious and profane—calling things by their most forcible and popular appellations. A wilful untruth is, with him, ‘a lie.’ To show the wickedness and extreme folly of swearing, he gives the words and imprecations then commonly in use; but which, happily for us, we never hear, except among the most degraded classes of society. Swearing was formerly considered to be a habit of gentility; but now it betrays the blackguard, even when disguised in genteel attire. Those dangerous diseases which are so surely engendered by filth and uncleanness, he calls not by Latin but by their plain English names. In every case, the Editor has not ventured to make the slightest alteration; but has reprinted the whole in the author’s plain and powerful language.

The life of Badman forms a third part to the Pilgrim’s Progress, not a delightful pilgrimage to heaven, but, on the contrary, a wretched downward journey to the infernal realms. The author’s object is to warn poor thoughtless sinners, not with smooth words, to which they would take no heed; but to thunder upon their consciences the peril of their souls, and the increasing wretchedness into which they were madly hurrying. He who is in imminent, but unseen danger, will bless the warning voice if it reach his ears, however rough and startling the sound may be.

The life of Badman was written in an age when profligacy, vice, and debauchery, marched like a desolating army through our land, headed by the king, and officered by his polluted courtiers; led on with all the pomp and splendour which royalty could display.

The king and his ministers well knew that the most formidable enemies to tyranny, oppression, and misgovernment, were the piety and stern morality of the Puritans, Nonconformists, and the small classes of virtuous citizens of other denominations; and therefore every effort was made by allurements and intimidation to debauch and demoralize their minds. Well does Bunyan say that ‘wickedness like a flood is like to drown our English world. It has almost swallowed up all our youth, our middle age, old age, and all are almost carried away of this flood. It reels to and fro like a drunkard, it is like to fall and rise no more.’ ‘It is the very haunts and walks of the infernal spirits.’ ‘England shakes and makes me totter for its transgressions.’

The gradations of a wicked man in that evil age, from his cradle to his grave, are graphically set before the reader; it is all drawn from reality, and not from efforts of imagination. Every example is a picture of some real occurrence, either within the view of the author, or from the narratives of credible witnesses.

‘All the things that here I discourse of, have been acted upon the stage of this world, even many times before mine eyes.’ Badman is represented as having had the very great advantage of pious parents, and a godly master, but run riot in wickedness from his childhood. Lying and pilfering mark his early days; followed in after life by swearing, cheating, drunkenness, hypocrisy, infidelity and atheism. His conscience became hardened to that awful extent, that he had no bands in his death. The career