During all this time
he was struggling against the tempter; and, at length, the day-spring visited
him in these words, 'I am persuaded that nothing shall separate us from the
love of God in Christ Jesus.' Again he was cast down with a recollection of his
former blasphemies. What reason can I have to hope for an inheritance in
eternal life? The question was answered with that portion of Scripture, 'If
God be for us, who can be against us?' These were visits which, like Peter's
sheet, of a sudden were caught up to heaven again. At length, the Sun of Righteousness
arose and shone upon him with healing influence.
'He hath made peace through the blood of his
cross,' came with power to his mind, followed by the consoling words of the
apostle, 'Forasmuch, then, as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he
also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might
destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver them
who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage' (Heb
2:14,15). This was the key that opened every lock in Doubting Castle. The
prisoner escaped breathing the air of hope, and joy, and peace. 'This,' said
he, 'was a good day to me, I hope I shall not forget it.' 'I thought that the
glory of those words was then so weighty on me, that I was, both once and
twice, ready to swoon as I sat, not with grief and trouble, but with solid joy
and peace.'
His mind was now in a
fit state to seek for church fellowship, as a further means of advance in his
knowledge of Divine love. To effect this object, he was naturally led to the
Baptist church at Bedford, to which those pious women belonged whose Christian communion
had been blessed to him. I sat under the ministry of holy Mr. Gifford, whose
doctrine, by God's grace, was much for my stability. Although his soul was led
from truth to truth, his trials were not over—he passed through many severe
exercises before he was received into communion with the church.
At length, he determined to become identified with a body of professed Christians, who were treated with great scorn by other sects because they denied infant baptism, and he became engaged in the religious controversies which were fashionable in those days. We have noticed his encounter with the Ranters, and he soon had to give battle to persons called Quakers. Before the Society of Friends was formed, and their rules of discipline were published, many Ranters and others, some of whom were bad characters and held the wildest opinions, passed under the name of Quakers. Some of these denied that the Bible was the Word of God; and asserted that the death of Christ was not a full atonement for sin—that there is no future resurrection and other gross errors. The Quakers, who were afterward united to form the Society of Friends, from the first, denied all those errors.
Their
earliest apologist, Barclay, in his theses on the Scriptures, says, 'They are
the doctrines of Christ, held forth in precious declarations, spoken and
written by the moving of God's Spirit.' Whoever it was that asserted the
heresies, to Bunyan the investigation of them, in the light of Divine truth,
was attended with great advantages. It was through 'this narrow search of the
Scriptures that he was not only enlightened but greatly confirmed and
comforted in the truth.'