Works of John Bunyan — Complete. John Bunyan
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be all of one mind, walk in love one to another, even as Christ Jesus hath loved you, and given himself for you. Search the Scriptures for a supply of those things wherein I am wanting. Now the God of peace, who raised up our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead, multiply his peace upon you, and preserve you to his everlasting kingdom by Jesus Christ. Stand fast: the Lord is at hand.
That this was written by me, I have set my name to it, in the presence of two of the brethren of the church.
John Gifford.[148]
Bunyan was now settled under the happiest circumstances, and doubtless looked forward to much religious enjoyment. A pious wife—peace in his soul—a most excellent pastor, and in full communion with a Christian church. Alas! his enjoyments were soon interrupted; again a tempest was to agitate his mind, that he might be more deeply humbled and prepared to become a Barnabas or son of consolation to the spiritually distressed.
It is a remarkable fact, that upon the baptism of our Lord, after that sublime declaration of Jehovah—'this is my beloved Son,' 'Jesus was led into the wilderness, to be tempted of the devil.' As it was with their leader, so it frequently happens to his followers. After having partaken, for the first time, of the holy enjoyments of the Lord's table—tending to exalt and elevate them, they are often abased and humbled in their own esteem, by the assaults of Satan and his temptations, aided by an evil heart of unbelief. Thus Christian having been cherished in the house called Beautiful, and armed for the conflict, descended into the Valley of Humiliation, encountered Apollyon in deadly combat, and walked through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. 'For three quarters of a year, fierce and said temptations did beset me to blasphemy, that I could never have rest nor ease. But at last the Lord came in upon my soul with that same scripture, by which my soul was visited before; and after that, I have been usually very well and comfortable in the partaking of that blessed ordinance; and have, I trust, therein discerned the Lord's body, as broken for my sins, and that his precious blood hath been shed for my transgressions.'[149] This is what Bunyan calls, 'the soul killing to itself its sins, its righteousness, wisdom, resolutions, and the things which it trusted in by nature'; and then receiving 'a most glorious, perfect, and never-fading life.' The life of Christ in all its purity and perfections imputed to me—'Sometimes I bless the Lord my soul hath had this life not only imputed to me, but the very glory of it upon my soul—the Son of God himself in his own person, now at the right hand of his Father representing me complete before the mercy-seat in his ownself.' 'There was my righteousness just before the eyes of Divine glory.'[150]
About this period his robust hardy frame gave way under the attack of disease, and we have to witness his feelings when the king of terrors appeared to be beginning his deadly work. Whether the fiery trials, the mental tempest through which he had passed, were too severe for his bodily frame, is not recorded. His narrative is, that, 'Upon a time I was somewhat inclining to a consumption, wherewith, about the spring I was suddenly and violently seized, with much weakness in my outward man; insomuch that I thought I could not live.'[151] This is slightly varied in his account of this illness in his Law and Grace. He there says, 'having contracted guilt upon my soul, and having some distemper of body upon me, I supposed that death might now so seize upon, as to take me away from among men.[152] These serious considerations led to a solemn investigation of his hopes. His having been baptized, his union to a church, the good opinion of his fellow-men, are not in the slightest degree relied upon as evidences of the new birth, or of a death to sin and resurrection to holiness.' 'Now began I afresh to give myself up to a serious examination after my state and condition for the future, and of my evidences for that blessed world to come: for it hath, I bless the name of God, been my usual course, as always, so especially in the day of affliction, to endeavour to keep my interest in the life to come, clear before my eye.
'But I had no sooner began to recall to mind my former experience of the goodness of God to my soul, but there came flocking into my mind an innumerable company of my sins and transgressions: amongst which these were at this time most to my affliction, namely, my deadness, dullness, and coldness in holy duties; my wanderings of heart, my wearisomeness in all good things, my want of love to God, his ways and people, with this at the end of all, "Are these the fruits of Christianity? Are these the tokens of a blessed man?"
'At the apprehension of these things my sickness was doubled upon me, for now was I sick in my inward man, my soul was clogged with guilt; now also was my former experience of God's goodness to me quite taken out of my mind, and hid as if it had never been, nor seen. Now was my soul greatly pinched between these two considerations, "Live I must not, die I dare not." Now I sunk and fell in my spirit, and was giving up all for lost; but as I was walking up and down in my house, as a man in a most woeful state, that word of God took hold of my heart, Ye are "justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ" (Rom 3:24). But O! what a turn it made upon me!
'Now was I as one awakened out of some troublesome sleep and dream; and listening to this heavenly sentence, I was as if I had heard it thus expounded to me:—"Sinner, thou thinkest, that because of thy sins and infirmities, I cannot save thy soul; but behold my Son is by me, and upon him I look, and not on thee, and will deal with thee according as I am pleased with him." At this I was greatly lightened in my mind, and made to understand, that God could justify a sinner at any time; it was but his looking upon Christ, and imputing of his benefits to us, and the work was forthwith done.'[153]
'Now was I got on high, I saw myself within the arms of grace and mercy; and though I was before afraid to think of a dying hour, yet now I cried, Let me die. Now death was lovely and beautiful in my sight, for I saw that we shall never live indeed, till we be gone to the other world. I saw more in those words, "Heirs of God" (Rom 8:17), than ever I shall be able to express. "Heirs of God," God himself is the portion of his saints.'[154]
As his mental agitation subsided into this delicious calm, his bodily health was restored; to use his own figure, Captain Consumption, with all his men of death, were[155] routed, and his strong bodily health trimphed over disease; or, to use the more proper language of an eminent Puritan, 'When overwhelmed with the deepest sorrows, and that for many doleful months, he who is Lord of nature healed my body, and he who is the Father of mercies and God of all grace has proclaimed liberty to the captive, and given rest to my weary soul.'[156] Here we have a key to the most eventful picture in the Pilgrim's Progress—The Valley of the Shadow of Death—which is placed in the midst of the journey. When in the prime of life, death looked at him and withdrew for a season. It was the shadow of death that came over his spirit.
The church at Bedford having increased, Bunyan was chosen to fill the honourable office of a deacon. No man could have been better fitted for that office than Bunyan was. He was honesty itself, had suffered severe privations, so as to feel for those who were pinched with want; he had great powers of discrimination, to distinguish between the poverty of idleness, and that distress which arises from circumstances over which human foresight has no control, so as to relieve with propriety the pressure of want, without encouraging the degrading and debasing habit of depending upon alms, instead of labouring to provide the necessaries of life. He had no fine clothes to be spoiled by trudging down the filthiest lanes, and entering the meanest hovels to relieve suffering humanity. The poor—and that is the great class to whom the gospel is preached, and by whom it is received—would hail him as a brother. Gifted in prayer, full of sound and wholesome counsel drawn from holy writ, he must have been a peculiar blessing to the distressed, and to all the members who stood in need of advice and assistance. Such were the men intended by the apostles, 'men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom' (Acts 6:3), whom the church were to select, to relieve the apostles from the duties of ministration to the wants of the afflicted members, in the discharge of which they had given offence.
While thus actively employed, he was again visited with a severe illness, and again was subject to a most searching and solemn investigation as to his fitness to appear before the judgment-seat of God. 'All that time the tempter did beset me strongly, labouring to hide from me my former experience of God's goodness; setting before me the terrors of death, and the judgment of God, insomuch that at this time, through my fear of miscarrying for ever, should I now die, I was as one dead before death came; I thought that there was no way but to hell I must.'[157]
'A wounded spirit who can