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cations; and so far as Scripture throws any light upon the awful fact, it would appear that Satanic inspiration is, in like manner, congenial with the character of its victims; that it is in every case a concurrent impulse, and not either compulsive or repugnant. It may be urged, that our blessed Lord was himself tempted by the suggestions of Satan; suggestions infinitely repugnant to his holy nature; but these were both external to his mind, and such as partook of the nature of rational inducements to specific actions. The force of the temptation lay in the apparent reasonableness of the insidious counsel, and in the strength of the inducements; and where there is no appeal to rational motives, there can be no temptation. Nothing can surely be more improper, than to confound, under a common term, the mere phantasmagoria of the imagination, and the real transactions of the evangelical history.

Bunyan, in his auto-biographical narrative, does indeed describe the horrible but irrational thought that was ever running in his mind, as "a temptation:" but where was the bait? Had the prospect of worldly advantage been held out to him on the condition of renouncing his creed, or violating his allegiance to the Saviour; had he, in the face of worldly scorn or fiery persecution, been prompted to deny the faith; or had some dishonest gain been within his reach while struggling with penury;-here would have been a temptation. But in the case described, the assault, the suggestion, and the seeming compliance with the abhorred blasphemy, were all ideal, without motive, and contrary to reason. The suffering and distress only were real; and these constituted a trial of the sharpest kind, a discipline of fearful severity; just as any other species of physical or mental suffering might have proved.

We see no reason, then, to deny, that the state of darkness into which Bunyan was plunged, arose from that distempered action of the imagination which is the ordinary effect of over-excitement. Nothing is a more common characteristic of bodily disease, than that the parts affected shall take on an action the very reverse of their natural

and healthful condition. Something analogous to this has been observed in cases of mental disorder. It is, therefore, quite conceivable, that the distempered mind should give birth to monstrous thoughts, irrational, abhorrent, yet on that very account the more fixed and unmanageable, burning themselves into the memory by the pain they inflict, and possessing the imagination as with an external presence. In cases of decided insanity, this is known to take place. But there are diseased conditions of the frame, not amounting to insanity, in which the imagination is distempered, but there is no delirium; in which unreasonable ideas have hold of the mind, but there is no eclipse of the controlling judgment; there are involuntary impressions, but no involuntary decisions: in such conditions, which, how nearly soever they approximate to insanity, are clearly distinguishable from it, a morbid action of the thoughts, such as Bunyan describes, would be the natural effect of physical causes. How far bodily disease, and especially mental distemper, may be the result of the malignant agency of that being to whom Bunyan ascribed his "temptation," is a distinct question. The history of the patriarch Job, and some intimations in other parts of the inspired volume, have led many learned and pious persons to entertain the belief that, with the Divine permission, evil spirits may be the instruments of immediately afflicting those whom they cannot tempt or morally injure. We make no concession to the infidel, when we refuse to ascribe to supernatural suggestions, phenomena which admit of a simpler explanation, and which it is most important to distinguish from the moral conflict that every Christian is called to sustain with the seductions of the world and the temptations of the great Enemy.

"Had it been the Romish superstition which Bunyan had imbibed," remarks Dr. Southey, "he might have vied with P. Dominic the Cuirassier, or the Jesuit Joam d'Almeida, in inflicting torments upon his own miserable body." But Bunyan was never a self-tormentor; his mind was free from superstition; and the sound views of the

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Christian doctrine which he had embraced, and to which he adhered through this long ordeal of suffering, at once attested the sanity of his judgment, and preserved it. During the two years and a half of almost incessant agitation and despondency that he passed, the Scriptures afforded the only balm to his wounded spirit; and he recounts, among the advantages which he gained by this "temptation," that he was "made to see more into the nature of the promises" than ever he had seen before. "The Scriptures also were wonderful things to me: I saw that the truth and verity of them were the keys of the kingdom of heaven. . . . Now I saw the apostles to be the elders of the city of refuge. Those that they were to receive in, were received to life; but those that they shut out, were to be slain by the avenger of blood. . . . Woe be to him against whom the Scriptures bend themselves!" Thus was he led to search the Bible, and to dwell upon it, with an earnestness and intensity of feeling which no determination of a calmer mind could have commanded. remarks Dr. Southey, "in the other writings of Bunyan, and especially in that which has made his name immortal, we discover none of that fervid language in which his confessions and self-examination are recorded,-none of those thoughts that breathe, and words that burn,'-none of that passion, in which the reader so far participates as to be disturbed and distressed by it,-here we perceive how he acquired that thorough and familiar acquaintance with the Scriptures, which in those works is manifested."

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Even the strongest constitution would be likely to give way under the effects of such long-continued mental excitement and suffering; and not unfrequently, as the mind recovers its tone, the body begins to betray the insidious mischief. Symptoms of a pulmonary kind appeared in Bunyan, shortly after he had attained to a happier state of feeling, and had been admitted to fellowship with the congregation at Bedford under Mr. Gifford's pastoral care. The weakness to which he was suddenly reduced by a violent increase of these symptoms, was so extreme, that

he thought he could not live. Again the clouds returned, and darkened his spirit; but he was soon waked out of his despondency by the voice of the Scripture, and the fear of death vanished before the assurance of the free mercy of God. "Now," he says, "death was lovely and beautiful in my sight; for I saw we shall never live indeed, till we be gone to the other world. Oh! methought this life is but a slumber in comparison with that above. At this time also, I saw more in these words, Heirs of God,' (Rom. viii. 17,) than ever I shall be able to express while I live in this world." At another time, when he was extremely ill and weak, those words in the fifteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, "O death! where is thy sting?" &c., fell with such force upon his mind, that he "became well both in body and mind at once;" his sickness did presently vanish, and he "walked comfortably again in" his "work for God." The close connexion between these returns of gloom and seizures of physical weakness, is evident from his own narrative; but there is nothing very uncommon in the cure of physical malady by moral remedies. Joy is a powerful restorative to the animal spirits; and this is emphatically true of spiritual joy.

Bunyan was admitted a member of the Baptist church at Bedford, in the year 1653, when he was only twenty-five years of age. Mr. Gifford, the pastor, died in 1655. It would appear that, prior to his decease, Bunyan had been prevailed upon, once or twice, to address a few words of exhortation to the members of the society at their private assemblies. After this, he was induced, occasionally, to accompany some of them that went into the adjacent villages to teach; "where," he says, "though as yet I did not, nor durst not, make use of my gift in an open way, yet more privately, still, as I came amongst the good people in those places, I did sometimes speak a word of admonition unto them also. At last, being still desired by the church, after some solemn prayer with fasting, I was more particularly called forth and appointed to a more ordinary and public preaching of the word, not only to and amongst

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them that believed, but also to offer the gospel to those who had not yet received the faith thereof." Bunyan cannot be charged with having thrust himself into notoriety, nor with having rashly assumed the function of a public teacher. He entered upon the probationary exercise of his "gift in a public way," with diffidence and fear; and only by degrees acquired that consciousness of his qualifications which led him to believe that he was called to the work. In this, as in all other matters, he was not satisfied till he had ascertained that his conduct had the sanction of scriptural directions; and he has specified the passages of the New Testament which animated and encouraged him in complying with the desires of his pious friends.* His preaching could not fail to attract great attention; and no sooner had the rumour spread, than, as he tells us, 66 they came in to hear the word by hundreds, and that from all parts, though upon divers and sundry accounts." He was now so constantly employed in these itinerant labours, that, upon being nominated as deacon of the Bedford congregation in the ensuing year, the church declined to elect him to that office, on the ground that he was thus too much engaged to attend to its duties. In the mean time, he continued to work with his own hands for his living and the maintenance of his family, as he had opportunity. While he was thus usefully and disinterestedly employed, "the doctors and priests of the country," he says, "did open wide against me;" and towards the close of the year 1657, an indictment was preferred against him for preaching at Eaton. Of the result we are not informed; but, as he was present at a meeting of the Baptist church in February, 1658, as well as in the July following, it may be inferred, either that the action was not supported, or that it failed to have the effect of silencing the unordained preacher who had awakened the jealousy of the Presbyterian clergy. Some surprise may be felt The following are the passages cited in his own narrative:-1 Cor. xvi. 15, 16. Acts viii. 4; xviii. 24, 25. 1 Pet. iv. 10. Rom. xii. 6. Also, subsequently to his meeting with instances of success, 2 Cor. ii. 2, and 1 Cor. ix 2.

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