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felt, what I smartingly did feel; even that under which my poor soul did groan and tremble to astonishment.

"Indeed I have been as one sent to them from the dead; I went myself in chains, to preach to them in chains; and carried that fire in my own conscience, that I persuaded them to be aware of. I can truly say, and that without dissembling, that when I have been to preach, I have gone full of guilt and terror even to the pulpit-door, and there it hath been taken off, and I have been at liberty in my mind until I have done my work; and then immediately, even before I could get down the pulpit-stairs, I have been as bad as I was before; yet God carried me on, but surely with a strong hand, for neither guilt nor hell could take me off my work.

"Thus I went on for the space of two years, crying out against men's sins, and their fearful state because of them. After which, the Lord came in upon my own soul, with some sure peace and comfort through Christ; for he did give me many sweet discoveries of his blessed grace through him: wherefore now I altered in my preaching, (for still I preached what I saw and felt ;) now therefore I did much labour to hold forth Jesus Christ in all his offices, relations, and benefits unto the world, and did strive also to discover, to condemn, and remove those false supports and props on which the world doth both lean, and by them fall and perish. On these things also I staid as long as on the other."

CHAPTER XVIII.

BUNYAN AND THE.

1656..

QUAKERS..

IN reading this chapter, it will be as useless to remember, as it is impossible to forget, the present form of the Quaker controversy. The Quakers who assailed Bunyan, and those who were assailed by him, must be estimated here by what they did and said then, and not by the sayings or doings of the Society of Friends now. It was not with Hicksites, Tukeites, nor Gurneyites, Bunyan had to deal. His opponents had none of Hicks' scepticism, and but little of Tuke's prudence, and still less of Gurney's scriptural orthodoxy. They must, therefore, be taken and treated just as we find them upon the page of contemporary history, and not as they are caricatured by the New Lights, nor as they are complimented by the Old Lights of modern Quakerism. No caricature, however ludicrous, can render George Fox, or Edward Burroughs contemptible; and no pleading, however special, can redeem their memory from the charge of fanaticism.

The Quakerism which Bunyan found in Bedfordshire, he thus describes :

"The errors that this people then maintained, were,

"1. That the Holy Scriptures were not the word of God. "2. That every man in the world hath the spirit of Christ, grace, faith, &c.

"3. That Christ Jesus, as crucified, and dying sixteen hundred years ago, did not satisfy divine justice for the sins of the people.

"4. That Christ's flesh and blood were within the saints. "5. That the bodies of the good and bad, that are buried in the churchyard, shall not rise again.

"6. That the resurrection is past with good men already. "7. That the man Jesus, that was crucified between two thieves on Mount Calvary, in the land of Canaan, by Jerusalem, was not ascended above the starry heavens.

"8. That the same Jesus that died by the hands of the Jews, would not come again at the last day and as man, judge all nations, &c."

This is not modern Quakerism; nor was primitive Quakerism, as that is explained and defended in the writings of its authors, chargeable with all this error. This is, however, the Quakerism which Bunyan met with whilst going his rounds as a travelling tinker. These were the startling assertions flung in his face, by ordinary Quakers, when their tongue and his hammer happened to sound in the same streets, or when they contradicted his barn-sermons in the villages. Then, whatever may have been the key-note given by their ministers, the burden of their vociferated song was, "Christ is a Christ crucified within, dead within, risen again within, and ascended within!" It was, therefore, to what he saw and heard, that Bunyan addressed himself, when he first became a writer. his first treatise, he named neither a minister nor a book of the Quakers. With the exception of seven questions to them, at the end of it, he does not even plead with them, but with those who "listened" to them.

In

His maiden work is entitled "Gospel Truths opened;" and it well deserves the name! It is a fine specimen of the apostolic mode of" opening and alleging, that Jesus is the Christ." Apollos may have been more eloquent than Bunyan, but he could not have been mightier in the Scriptures. There is no extravagance in this compliment. It is confined to his reasonings, of course. His occasional railing is like that of his times, severe. It is not, however, bitter, even when most

severe.

Dr. Southey says of Bunyan's Treatise, that although "little wisdom and less moderation might be expected in a polemical discourse," which professedly assails "scorpions broken loose from the bottomless pit," it is yet "a calm, well-arranged and well-supported statement of the scriptural doctrines on some momentous points, which the primitive Quakers were understood by others to deny; and which, in fact, (though they did not understand themselves,) they did deny, both vir tually and explicitly, when in the heat and acerbity of oral disputation they said they knew not what." This testimony is strong. I must, however, go beyond it. The book was written in 1656, when Bunyan began to preach. It must, therefore, have been thrown off on the spur of the moment, and at one heat. And yet it sweeps the whole circle of the

question of the Messiahship of Jesus; and that with a strict logic, and a pure taste. I can never read it without thinking of Dr. Smith's "Scripture Testimony." It has all the con

vincing power of that masterly work, although it acquires that power from common-sense alone. This may seem an extravagant statement to those who have only skimmed the Treatise; but it will be acknowledged as the words of truth and soberness, by all who have studied the work with an ex. press reference to the class it was addressed to. I shall tempt some to do so, when I add, that, for ordinary readers, it is perhaps the best thing against Socinianism they could read. this point of view, it deserves to be republished, and circulated amongst the poor; for its bearings against old Quakerism are its least merit.

In

Dr. Southey is, no doubt, right, in saying, that "Burton may have corrected some vulgarisms," and mended the “tinkerly appearance" of the spelling, as well as prefaced the work. "Other corrections," he justly says, "it would not need." If it had, Burton could not have supplied them; for neither his style nor his vein would have chimed in with Bunyan's. The good man must, however, have been both amazed and delighted, when he prepared Bunyan's manuscript for the Press! I can now see Burton's face lighted up with complacency, when he said of his friend and brother, "He hath through Grace, taken three heavenly Degrees, viz. union with Christ, the anointing of the Spirit,-experience of Temptation; which do more fit a man for the weighty work of preaching the gospel, than all the University learning and degrees that can be had." But if his friend felt thus-what must his wife have enjoyed when she saw her husband writing a book! She deserved the joy of that event, after having seen him so often and long sitting, like the Man in the IRON CAGE, "with his eyes looking down to the ground, his hands folded together, and sighing as if he would break his heart." Pil. grim. She who watched over him then, would work for him now, and take care that neither pan nor kettle should thrust the pen out of his hand, whilst he was getting on, whenever her own hand could clench a rivet or solder a crack.

There is a peculiarity about his "Gospel Truths Opened," which proves more against the Quakerism he was surrounded by, than any of his charges against it. He almost invariably calls the Jesus Christ, "the Son of Mary." One part of the title is, "The Doctrine of Jesus the Son of Mary." Bunyan

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was driven to this phraseology, by the clamour of Quakerism against preaching the outward Christ, and by the identification of the inward light with Christ. In no other way could he have exposed or detected the glib pretence of the Quakers around him, when they boasted of making Christ "all in all." This, however, brought them to a test they could not flinch from; and accordingly, they charged him to his face with setting up an idol in Heaven, because he taught the people, that the Son of Mary was in Heaven with the same body that was crucified on the Cross."

Edward Burroughs felt that Quakerism was endangered by Bunyan's dexterity. He could not conceal his suspicions, nor suppress his fears of the Tinker, although remonstrating at the time with the PROTECTOR. This is a curious coincidence. Burroughs testified against Cromwell and Bunyan at the same time, and much in the same style; and both answered him; the former by sending for him, and the latter by writing to him. Cromwell had rather a high opinion of him notwithstanding all the home truths as well as extravagancies, he uttered. Indeed, he was evidently a clever man, although somewhat crazed about prophecy. Sewell, the Quaker historian, maintained that Burroughs predicted the fate of Richard Cromwell: and it is an odd coincidence, that Richard resigned soon after he read the prophecy.-Sewell, vol. i. p. 326.

I have not room to characterize Burroughs at full length: but a pretty good idea of him may be formed from the fact, that he publicly shouted, "Plagues, plagues, and vengeance," against the friends of Oliver, when he met them escorting, with heraldic pomp and blazonry, the image of the Protector to Westminster. Sewell says, "he thus raised for himself a more lasting monument, than the Statue erected to his quondam friend, O. Cromwell."-Ibid.

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What kind of statue he raised for himself by writing against Bunyan, will be seen from the following " Rabshaking," as Dr. Southey well calls the tirade. "John Bunyan, your spirit is tried, and your generation is read at large, and your stature and countenance is clearly described to me, to be of the stock of Ishmael, and of the seed of Cain,-whose line reacheth unto the murthering Priests, Scribes, and Pharisees. O thou blind Priest, whom God hath confounded in thy language,the design of the Devil in deceiving souls is thine own, and I turn it back to thee.-Thou directest altogether to a thing without, despising the Light within, and worshipping the

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