being granted, this unavoidably follows, there was no Father to beget a Son, no Son to be sent to save us, no Holy Ghost to be sent to comfort us, and to guide us into all the truth of the Father and Son, etc. The most amounts but to this, a notion sent a notion, a distinction sent a distinction, or one manifestation sent another. Of this error, these are the consequences; we are only to believe in notions and distinctions, when we believe in the Father and the Son; and so shall have no other heaven and glory than notions and nominal distinctions can furnish us withal.

"3. If Father and Son, etc., be no otherwise three than as notions, names, or nominal distinctions, then to worship these distinctly, or together, as such, is to commit most gross and horrible idolatry; for albeit we are commanded to fear that great and dreadful name, 'The Lord our God;' yet to worship a Father, a Son, and Holy Spirit, in the Godhead, as three, as really three as one, is by this doctrine to imagine falsely of God, and so to break the second commandment: but to worship God under the consideration of Father, and Son, and Holy Ghost, and to believe them as really three as one when I worship, being the sum and substance of the doctrine of the Scriptures of God, there is really substantially three in the eternal Godhead.

"But to help thee a little in thy study on this deep.

"1. Thou must take heed when thou readest, there is in the Godhead, Father and Son, etc., that thou do not imagine about them according to thine own carnal and foolish fancy; for no man can apprehend this doctrine but in the light of the word and Spirit of God: 'No man knoweth the Son but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father save the Son; and he to whom the Son will reveal him.' If, therefore, thou be destitute of the Spirit of God, thou canst not apprehend the truth of this mystery as it is in itself, but will either by thy darkness be

driven to a denial thereof; or if thou own it, thou wilt (notwithstanding thy acknowledgment) falsely imagine about it.

"2. If thou feel thy thoughts begin to wrestle about this truth, and to struggle concerning this, one against another, take heed of admitting of such a question, How can this thing be? for here is no room for reason to make it out; here is only room to believe it is a truth. You find not one of the prophets propounding an argument to prove it, but asserting it; they let it lie, for faith to take it up and embrace it.

"The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen."

I preserve this document, to prove how well Bunyan could define and compress, even upon the most difficult of all subjects. This characteristic of his power is the more interesting, because he always approached the doctrine of the Trinity with awful solemnity as well as modesty. He did not reckon the doctrine “unwordable" exactly; but he did better: he cherished the habitual conviction, that the Mystery is "enough to crush the spirit, and stretch the strings of the most capacious and widened soul that breatheth on this side of Glory, even if exceedingly enlarged by revelation."-Works, vol. ii., p. 1107.

CHAPTER XL.

BUNYAN'S CATHOLICITY.

WHEN one of the strict Baptists told Bunyan, that "as great men's servants are known by their livery, so are gospel Believers by the livery of water-baptism," Bunyan said, "Go you but ten doors from where men know you,-and see how many of the world, or Christians, will know you by this goodly livery. What!-known by water-baptism to be one who hath put on Christ, as a servant by the gay livery his master gave him? Away, fond man; you do quite forget the text,-'By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye Love one another!"-Works, vol. ii., p. 1238. This Text was Bunyan's watchword; and he gave all men the full benefit of it, who held the great doctrines of the Reformation, however they might differ from him as to discipline or forms. His love of the Brethren was not, indeed, confined to Protestants. It embraced all who loved the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. Where he saw love to Him, he thought of nothing else. Accordingly, in his review of the character and spirit of the Martyrs, he names nothing else. What they thought of Christ, regulated all his thoughts of them. This maxim makes his sketches of them brief; but it renders them highly characteristic of his own spirit; as will be seen by the following specimens of his review.

"Ignatius found that in Christ that made him choose to go through the torments of the Devil and hell itself, rather than not to have him.

"What saw Romanus in Christ when he said to the raging Emperor, who threatened him with fearful torments, Thy sentence, O Emperor, I joyfully embrace, and refuse not to be sacrificed-by as cruel torments as thou canst invent?'

"What saw Menas the Egyptian in Christ when he said under most cruel torments, 'There is nothing in my mind that can be compared to the kingdom of heaven; neither is all the world, if it was weighed in a balance, to be preferred with the price of one soul. Who is able to separate us from the love of Jesus Christ our Lord? And I have learned of my Lord and King not to fear them that kill the body.'

"What did Eulaliah see in Christ when she said, as they were pulling her one joint from another, Behold, O Lord, I will not forget thee: What a pleasure is it for them, O Christ, that remember thy triumphant victory?'

"What think you did Agnes see in Christ when rejoicingly she went to meet the soldier, that was appointed to be her executioner? 'I will willingly,' said she, 'receive into my heart the length of this sword, and into my breast will draw the force thereof, even to the hilts; that thus I, being married to Christ my spouse, may surmount and escape all the darkness of this world.'

"What do you think did Julitta see in Christ, when at the Emperor's telling her, that except she would worship the gods, she should never have protection, laws, judgments, nor life, she replied, 'Farewell life, welcome death; farewell riches, welcome poverty. All that I have, if it were a thousand times more, would I give, rather than to speak one wicked and blasphemous word against my Creator?'

"What did Marcus Arethusius see in Christ when after his enemies did cut his flesh, anointed it with honey, and hanged up in a basket for flies and bees to feed on, he would not give (to uphold idolatry) one halfpenny to save his life?

him

"But what need I give thus particular instances of words and smaller actions, when by their lives, their blood, their enduring hunger, sword, fire, pulling asunder, and all torments that the Devil and hell could devise, they showed their love to Christ, after they were come to him?"—Works, vol. i., p. 418.

The man who loved the Dead according to this rule, was not likely to draw nice distinctions amongst "the living in Jerusalem." He did not, although long and often tempted by the close Communionists to do so. For they did more than abuse him publicly for his catholicity. They tampered privately with him and others, "for no less than sixteen or eighteen years." He was not willing to reveal this inconsistency of the men who reviled him. But when they affected to despise him too, he told all the truth. "What kind of a you am I," he says, "that you thus trample my person, my gifts and grace (if I have any) so disdainfully under your feet? Myself they have sent for, and evdeavored to persuade me to break communion with my brethren. Also with many others have they often tampered, if haply their seeds of division might take."—Vol. ii., p. 1205. Bunyan pleaded the cause of all Pædobaptists as firmly as he did his own. He would "know no man after the flesh," when liberty of conscience, or the right of private judgment, was invaded. Then he could cast John of Leyden in the teeth of the strict Baptists, as openly as Gunning or Featley quoted John against all Baptists:-not, indeed, in order to bring odium upon them; but to make them ashamed of themselves for their approaches to the Leyden spirit. "What say you," he asks, "to John of Leyden? What work did he make by the abuse of the ordinance of Baptism? I wish that this age had not given cause, through the church-rending spirits some possess, for making complaint in this matter; who also had for their engine the baptism with water. You yourself, Sir, would not stick to make inroads, and outroads too, in all the Churches in