Works of John Bunyan —BUNYAN IS BAPTIZED, AND ENTERS INTO COMMUNION WITH A CHRISTIAN CHURCH AT BEDFORD- 2nd Period

 

Before we bid a final farewell to Bunyan's extraordinary mental struggles with unbelief, it may be well to indulge in a few sober reflections. Are the narratives of these mighty tempests in his spirit plain matters of fact? No one can read the works of Bunyan and doubt for a moment his truthfulness. His language is that of the heart, fervent but not exaggerated, strong but a plain tale of real feelings. He says, and he believed it, 'My sins have appeared so big to me, that I thought one of my sins have been as big as all the sins of all the men in the nation; ay and of other nations too, reader; these things be not fancies, for I have started for this experience. It is true that Satan has the art of making the uttermost of every sin; he can blow it up, make it swell, make every hair of its head as big as a cedar; but yet the least stream of the heart blood of Jesus hath vanished all away and hath made it to fly, to the astonishment of such a poor sinner, and hath delivered me up into sweet and heavenly peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.'

 Some have supposed the narrative to be exaggerated, while others have attributed the disturbed state of his mind to disease; my humble belief is that the whole is a plain unvarnished account of facts; that those facts occurred while he was in full possession of all the faculties of his mind. To ascribe such powers to the invisible world by which we are constantly surrounded, does not agree with the doctrines of modern philosophers. Those holy or unholy suggestions suddenly injected, would by the world be set down as the hallucinations of a distempered imagination. Carnal relations attributed Christian's alarm to 'some frenzy distemper got into his head,' and Southey, following their example, ascribes Bunyan's hallowed feelings to his want of 'sober judgment,' 'his brutality and extreme ignorance,' a 'stage of burning enthusiasm,' and to 'an age in which hypocrisy was regnant, and fanaticism rampant throughout the land.'

What a display of reigning hypocrisy and rampant fanaticism was it to see the game at cat openly played by men on Sunday, the church bells calling them to their sport!!! Had Southey been poet-laureate to Charles II, he might with equal truth have concealed the sensuality, open profaneness, and debauchery of that profligate monarch and his court of concubines, and have praised him as 'the Lord's anointed.' Bunyan was an eye-witness of the state of the times in which he lived, and he associated with numbers of the poor in Bedfordshire and the adjoining counties. So truthful a man's testimony is of great value, and he proves that no miraculous reformation of manners had taken place; no regnant hypocrisy nor rampant fanaticism. 

In 1655, that being the brightest period of the Commonwealth, he thus 'sighs' over the state of his country:—' There are but a few places in the Bible but there are threatening's against one sinner or another; against drunkards, swearers, liars, proud persons, strumpets, whoremongers, covetous, railers, extortioners, thieves, lazy persons. In a word, all manner of sins are reproved, and there is a sore punishment to be executed on the committers of them, and all this is made mention of in the Scriptures. But for all this, how thick, and by heaps, do these wretches walk up and down our streets? Do but go into the alehouses, and you shall see almost every room besprinkled with them, so foaming out their own shame that it is enough to make the heart of a saint to tremble.' This was a true character of the great masses of the laboring and trading portions of the Commonwealth. Let us hear his testimony also as to the most sacred profession, the clergy, in 1654:—