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.' 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 own self.' 'There
was my righteousness just before the eyes of Divine glory.'
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.' 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. 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!
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