The Works of John Bunyan, vol 1 by John Bunyan (best book clubs txt) 📖

bestowed, in 1545, upon the citizens of London, who appropriated it to the reception of lunatics. It being the only public hospital for that class of the afflicted in England, it gave the name of “bedlam” to all whose conduct could only be accounted for on the score of madness.—Ed.

4 The person who writes this, was a singular instance of the truth of our author’s remark; having been twice providentially preserved from drowning, and once from the fatal effects of a violent fever, before effectual saving grace had reached his soul. The same rich and abundant mercy follows all the elect, quickens them when dead, saves them when lost, and restores them when ruined. God hath chosen us unto salvation, and enables us to live holily on earth, in order to a life of happiness in heaven. The Father’s good will and pleasure is the only fountain from whence the salvation of believers flows; and such as are given to Christ by the Father he considers as his charge, and stands engaged for their preservation; and the death of Christ for sinners, is an evident demonstration of the love of God the Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ, towards them; this love manifested in time was in and upon the heart of God before the world began.—Mason. What a multitude of unseen dangers, both spiritual and temporal, the Christian escapes before he is called!—Ed.

5 “Rarely,” finely, nicely.

6 A safe-conduct is a military term, either a convoy or guard for protection in an enemy’s land, or a passport, by the sovereign of a country, to enable a subject to travel with safety.—Imperial Dict.—Ed.

7 What amazing love! Christ visited this poor beggar, yea, was formed in him the hope of glory; his body, so miserable in the sight of man, was a temple of the Holy Ghost, and the angels carry his soul to heaven. O the riches of grace!—Ed.

8 What heart can conceive the glorious worship of heaven? The new song shall be as the voice of many waters, and a great thunder, when the “ten thousand times ten thousand and thousand of thousands”

shall sing, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and blessing.”

O that my poor voice may join that celestial choir!—Ed.

9 The fear of the Lord—an ornament of grace unto thy head, and chains about thy neck, and life unto thy soul.—Solomon.

10 “Their appearance and themselves”; this beautiful illustration might escape the reader’s notice, unless specially directed to it.

The living creatures were always the same, although seen under different circumstances, and in diverse places. Inside and out they were the same; without deviation or turning, they went straight forward. It is well said that Bunyan has here snatched a grace beyond the reach of art, and has applied it to exalt and beautify consistency of Christian character.—Ed.

11 This is one of Bunyan’s peculiarly affecting representations, which in preaching went to the heart, producing intense interest, and tears of contrition over the stubbornness of human nature.

Reader, Bunyan, being dead, yet speaketh; can you feel unaffected under such an appeal?—Ed.

12 “To stave,” to thrust, to push, to delay.—Ed.

13 These terms are taken from Foxe’s Martyrology. It was frequently the brutal remark of the Judges, You must turn or burn. Bunyan here applies it to turning from sin or burning in hell.—Ed.

14 This treatise having been written some years after the Pilgrim’s Progress, Bunyan very naturally refers to the well-known scene in the Interpreter’s House, where the fire is kept burning by oil from behind the wall, in spite of all the water thrown upon its flames.—Ed.

15 “To tend,” to watch, to guard, to attend.—Ed.

16 How pointedly, how admirably, does this illustrate the fond absurdities, the extreme follies of the human heart! “To serve God with such dainty dishes,” the cleanest being befouled with sin. “A cleaner way to hell than our neighbours!”—Ed.

17 O how humbling a consideration! Our sins are numberless, of omission, of commission, openly and secretly; nay, in a thousand cases they escape the sinner’s observation. “Cleanse thou me from secret faults.”—Ed.

18 “Shuck,” to shake or start back.—Ed.

19 In Bunyan’s time, the saints of God were sorely tormented by penalties, fines, and imprisonments. It required great faith in a mother, who saw all her goods seized, for not going to church, the incarnate devils throwing the milk that was warming for her infant on the dunghill, and the skillet in which it was contained into the cart, answering her prayers for mercy on her babe. Let the brat of a heretic starve.—Ed.

20 How abasing and humbling to human pride is it thus to conceive, that all have sinned, and, in the sight of God, are hell-deserving.

What! says the honourable man, must I take mercy upon no higher consideration than the thief on the cross? Or the highly virtuous dame, Must I sue for mercy upon the same terms as the Magdalene?

The faithful answer to both is, YES, or you must perish.—Ed.

21 “False apostles,” mentioned in Acts 15, who would have blended Jewish observances with Christianity, and have brought the converts into misery and thraldom. They are specially referred to in 2

Corinthians 11:13, “false apostles,” deceitful workers, that devour you and take from you (verse 20). In contradistinction to Paul, who was “chargeable to no man” (verse 9).—Ed.

22 We must not for a moment imagine that Bunyan was afraid of temporal consequences, which prevents his enlarging upon this part of his subject. His contemptuous answer to Fowler for attacking the doctrine of justification, although a great man with the state, and soon afterwards made a bishop, is a proof that he was a stranger to the fear of man. He had said enough, and therefore there was no need to enlarge.—Ed.

23 How does Bunyan here exhibit the perfection as well as the freeness of the pardon that Micah celebrates! That which is sunk in the depths of the sea is lost for ever.—Ed.

24 “Tang,” taste, touch, savour, flavour, relish, tone, sound.

A word of extensive meaning, but now nearly obsolete. “No tang of prepossession or fancy appears in the morality of our Saviour or his apostles.”—Locke.—Ed.

25 What can I render unto thee, my God, for such unspeakable blessedness? The cattle upon a thousand hills, yea, all creation, all that I have and am, is thine: all that I can do is “to take the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord.” Not unto us, but unto thy name, be all the praise and honour of salvation!—Ed.

26 In the edition of 1692, this sentence is “subject to the Father of spirits and love.” It is a very singular mode of expression to call God “the Father of love.” God is love, and that author and source of all holy love. Bunyan was at all times governed by Scripture phrases, with which his mind was so richly imbued as to cause him, if we may so speak, to live in a scriptural atmosphere; and this sentence bears a great affinity to Hebrews 12:9, “Shall we not much rather be in subjection to the Father of spirits, and live.”

I have been, for these reasons, induced to consider the letter o in “love” a typographical error, and have altered the word to “live,”

but could not take such a liberty without a public notice.—Ed.

***

THE STRAIT GATE;

OR,

GREAT DIFFICULTY OF GOING TO HEAVEN:

PLAINLY PROVING, BY THE SCRIPTURES, THAT NOT ONLY THE RUDE AND

PROFANE, BUT MANY GREAT PROFESSORS, WILL COME SHORT OF THAT KINGDOM.

“Enter ye in at the strait gate; for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.”—Matthew 7:13, 14

ADVERTISEMENT BY THE EDITOR.

If any uninspired writer has been entitled to the name of Boanerges, or a son of thunder, it is the author of the following treatise.

Here we have a most searching and faithful display of the straitness or exact dimensions of that all-important gate, which will not suffer many professors to pass into the kingdom of heaven, encumbered as they are with fatal errors. Still “it is no little pinching wicket, but wide enough for all the truly gracious and sincere lovers of Jesus Christ; while it is so strait, that no others can by any means enter in.” This is a subject calculated to rouse and stimulate all genuine professors to solemn inquiry; and it was peculiarly intended to dart at, and fix convictions upon, the multitudes of hypocritical professors who abounded in Bunyan’s time, especially under the reigns of the later Stuarts.

During the Protectorate, wickedness was discountenanced, and skulked in the holes and corners of Mansoul; but when a debauched monarch, who had taken refuge in the most licentious court in Europe, was called to occupy the throne of his fathers, the most abandoned profligacy and profaneness were let loose upon the nation. Vice was openly patronized, while virtue and religion were as openly treated with mockery and contempt. Bunyan justly says, “The text calls for sharpness, so do the times.” “With those whose religion lieth in some circumstantials, the kingdom swarms at this day.”

When they stand at the gate, they will “shake like a quagmire—their feigned faith, pretended love, shows of gravity, and holiday words, will stand them in little stead; some professors do with religion just as people do with their best apparel—hang it on the wall all the week, and put it on on Sundays; they save it till they go to a meeting, or meet with a godly chapman.” This state of society called for peculiar sharpness, and Bunyan preached and published, in 1676, this awful alarm to professors. No subject could be more peculiarly applicable than “The Gate of heaven,” and “the difficulties of entering in thereat”; a subject of the deepest interest to all mankind—to stimulate the careless to find, and to enter the gate of this the only city of refuge from eternal misery—to fill the heart of God’s children with love and joy in their prospects of a blessed immortality—and to sting the hypocrites with the awful thought of finding the gate shut against them for ever. Their cries and tears will be too late; they will stand without and vehemently cry, “Lord, Lord, open unto us”; in vain will be their outcry, “the devils are coming; Lord, Lord, the pit opens her mouth upon us; Lord, Lord, there is nothing but hell and damnation left us, if thou hast not mercy upon us.” These were professors who pretended to have found the gate and way to heaven; who passed for pilgrims who were seeking a better, even a heavenly country; such deluded victims must be, of all men, the most miserable.

Faithfulness becomes the ministers of Christ in dealing with the souls of men; and preeminently faithful is John Bunyan in this treatise. Reader, he will be clear of thy blood. Enter upon the solemn inquiry, Have I sought the gate? Shall I be admitted into, or shut out from, that blessed kingdom? The openly profane can have no hope. Are you a professor?—there is danger sill. In vain will it be to urge, “We have prophesied in thy name, and in thy name cast out devils.” To the secretly profane, whatever may be their profession, there can be no well-grounded hope of entrance in at this gate. Those only will be admitted whom the Lord knows to be his—the sheep of his pasture, who have heard his voice, and obeyed it. Against all others the door will be shut, and the awful words, “I know