CHAPTER XV.

BUNYAN'S BAPTISM.

1653.

AFTER having been thus extricated again from the horrible pit and miry clay of despair, Bunyan joined Gifford's Church in Bedford. This was in 1653. He was then, says Ivimey, "about twenty-five years of age."

It was, it will be recollected, whilst worshiping with this little Church, that the promise, "My grace is sufficient for thee," seemed to him written in capital letters, and spoken to him through the tiles from heaven, by Jesus Christ. This, had there been no other strong associations between his mind and the Meeting, would have endeared both the place and the people to him. Even Elstow Church would have been more sacred to him in the days of his superstition than it was, had he known that it was founded in honor of Helena, the mother of Constantine. Any thing ancient or extraordinary had a magnetic charm for his taste. He had, however, other and better reasons for uniting himself with Gifford's flock, "to walk in the order and ordinances of Christ with them;" as he well describes Church fellowship. The Minister and the people had been his best friends. They had been unable to cheer him for years; but they watched over him, and wept with him, all the time. Neither by word or look had they ever betrayed, as he sometimes suspected, a fear to pray for him. In like manner, when he offered himself to their fellowship, they welcomed him sooner than Gifford himself had been, and manifested none of

those doubts of his sanity which philosophy has insinuated, although they had witnessed all his wildest moods. "After I propounded to the Church my desire to walk with them, I was admitted by them," is all the account he gives of his reception; but it tells much, highly to their credit. Well might Dr. Southey say, "had it not been for the encouragement Bunyan received from the Baptists, he might have lived and died a Tinker."

It was not, however, because they were Baptists, but because they were serious Christians also, that they took so much interest in him. Any orthodox Congregational or Presbyterian Church of that day, would have treated him with equal tenderness. So would pious Episcopalians, had they known him as well as the Baptists did. I much doubt, however, if any other orthodox body would have followed up his welcome into their fellowship, by calling him out to the ministry. In throwing out this passing hint, I do not forget that the Church at Bedford was not wholly a Baptist Church. Its pastor, however, was a Baptist; and the majority seem to have been the same. But they were not strict Baptists. Bunyan himself is a fine specimen of their spirit. He did not think it necessary even to mention his baptism, when he wrote for them, and dedicated to them his Auto-biography. He passes by in silence, his initiation in the river OuSE: but in reference to the Sacrament he exclaims," That Scripture, Do this in remembrance of Me,' was made a very precious word unto me, when I thought of that blessed ordinance, the Last Supper: for by it, the Lord did come down upon my conscience, with the discovery of his death for my sins." Even this is not all the singularity of his own account of his joining the Church: he connects with the Lord's Supper, not with Baptism, the only word by which any one could discover him to be a Baptist then, viz.-" plunged." "I felt as if he plunged me in the virtue of" his death.

Is this accident or design? Whichever it may be, the passage is curious. It runs thus;-" The Lord did come down upon my conscience with the discovery of his death for my sins; and, as I then felt, plunged me in the virtue of the same." There seems to me in this passage, an intended use of terms which should express the views of both classes in his Church, on the mode of baptism; and yet remind both at the same time, that neither mode was the meaning, or the exact emblem, of being "buried with Christ by baptism into death." I am led to this conclusion, not merely because I find words equivalent to both immersion and pouring, transferred from Baptism to the Lord's Supper; but chiefly because this use of them agrees with Bunyan's doctrinal theology. For although he gave many hard hits at those of "the baptized way," as he calls the strict Baptists, this is not one of them. It is an illustration of his favorite doctrine, "That Jesus Christ is looked upon by God, and should be looked upon by us, as that Public Person (or Representative) in whom the whole body of His elect are always to be considered and reckoned, as having died with him, and risen from the dead with him;" not when they were baptized, but as Bunyan expresses it, "when He died we died, and so of His resurrection."

The Reader need not fear to go through this Chapter. It will not touch the Baptismal Controversy; but merely bring out Bunyan's opinion and spirit, in a light they have never been placed before. Ivimey explains Bunyan's studied silence, in both the Pilgrim and Grace Abounding, on the subject of his baptism, by saying, that he made "no allusion to the event," because "the constitution of the Church at Bedford did not consider baptism by immersion, upon a personal profession of faith, as an essential requisite for communion at the Lord's Table." This is true; but it is not half the truth. He did not consider Baptism as even an initiatory ordinance. He reckoned

himself, as a Believer, to have been put to death, buried, and raised again, with Christ, representatively; and thus as having a right to Church membership, before he was baptized. This was his cardinal point; a it astounded and well as offended those of the "water-baptism way," as he calls them. They saw the meaning of Paul's doctrine of Representation chiefly, if not only, in baptism. Bunyan saw it chiefly in the Lord's Supper, because that plunged him deepest into fellowship with the sufferings and death of Christ.

Bunyan's doctrine of the Saviour's representative character, although Paul's, in both its letter and spirit, is almost obsolete now; and this is not the place in which it can be revived. I once thought, indeed, that this was just the place, in which to bring it out with some effect, and free from the mysticism of the old writers: but I have not room. I regret this: for pracical dying and rising with Christ will never be sufficiently bound upon the conscience of Christians, until they see that they were put to death, and laid in the grave, representatively, on the great day of Atonement. For, all the ignominy and shame of the Cross and the Grave, belong to us, as much as all the agony and merit of them belong to Christ. It was our desert which was exhibited in His sufferings. He was treated as we deserve; that we might be treated as He deserves. Whoever will "unloose" this Angel of the River of the water of Life, the Pauline doctrine of Representation by both the first and second Adam,-will both speed the flight of "the mighty Angel" of the everlasting gospel, and help to bind Satan up from perverting the doctrine of original sin. This will not be done, however, by republishing Riccalton on the Galatians. Even Luther mistook Paul on this point.

But to return to Bunyan's own baptism. No one, surely, can regret that he was baptized by immersion! That was just the mode calculated to impress him,-practiced as it usually

was then in rivers. He felt the sublimity of the whole scene at the OUSE, as well as its solemnity. Gifford's eye may have realized nothing on the occasion, but the meaning of the ordinance; but Bunyan saw Jordan in the lilied Ouse, and John the Baptist in the holy Minister, and almost the Dove in the passing birds; whilst the sun-struck waters flashed around and over him, as if the Shechinah had descended upon them. For let it not be thought, that he was indifferent about his baptism, because he was indignant against strict Baptists, and laid more stress upon the doctrine it taught than upon its symbolic significancy. He loved Immersion, although he hated the close communion of the Baptist Churches. The fact is,-and I mention it with more than complacency, he always looked back upon this voluntary act of obedience to Christ, just as those do upon parental dedication, who, like myself, have the high and hallowed consciousness, that we could not, by any personal submission to baptism now, exceed, in faith or devotion, the intense solicitude of a holy mother, or the solemn faith of godly father, who with united hands and hearts baptized us into the "one body" of the Church of their "God and our God." Bunyan could not look back upon his baptism. in infancy (if he was baptized then?) with either our emotions or convictions. We think, therefore, that he did wisely in being re-baptized. I think he did right in preferring Immersion to sprinkling; not, however, that I believe Immersion to be right, or Sprinkling wrong, according to any scriptural rule; for there is none; but because the former suited his temperament best, inasmuch as it gave him most to do, and thus most to think of and feel. For that is the best mode of Baptism to any man, which most absorbs his own mind with its meaning and design; now that no man can tell another (for God has not told us) what was done by John and the Apostles, in the interval between going down to the water, and coming up from the