66 which, he says, are not to be expressed, he cried on Christ to call him, being "all on a flame” to be in a converted state; . . "Gold! could it have been gotten for gold, what could I have given for it! Had I had a whole world, it had all gone ten thousand times over for this." Much as he had formerly respected and venerated the ministers of the Church, with higher admiration he now regarded those who, he thought, had attained to the condition for which he was longing. They were lovely in his eyes; they shone, they walked, like a people that carried the broad seal of Heaven about them." When he read of those whom our Saviour called when he was upon earth to be his disciples, the wishes which his heart conceived were-"Would I had been Peter:.. would I had been John: . . or would I had been by and heard Him when He called them! How would I have cried, O Lord, call me also!" In this state of mind, but comforting himself with hoping that, if he were not already converted, the time might come when he should be so, he imparted his feelings to those poor women whose conversation had first brought him into these perplexities and struggles. They reported his case to Mr. Gifford, and Gifford took occasion to talk with him, and invited him to his house, where he might hear him confer with others "about the dealings of God with their souls.” This course was little likely to compose a mind so agitated. What he heard in such conferences rather induced fresh disquiet and misery of another kind. The inward wretchedness of his wicked heart, he says, began now to be discovered to him, and to work as it had never done before: he was now conscious of sinful thoughts and desires which he had not till then regarded ; and in persuading him that his heart was innately and wholly wicked, his spiritual physician had well nigh made him believe that it was hopelessly and incurably so. In vain did those to whom he applied for consolation tell him of the promises; they might as well have told him to reach the sun as to rely upon the promises, he says: original and inward pollution was the plague and affliction which made him loathsome in his own eyes, and, as in his dreadful state of mind he believed, in the eyes of his Creator also. Sin and corruption, he thought, would as naturally bubble out of his heart as water from a fountain. None but the devil, he was persuaded, could equal him for inward wickedness! 66 Sure," thought he, "I am forsaken of God; sure I am given up to the Devil and to a reprobate mind.—I was sorry that God had made me man.-I counted myself alone, and above the most of men, unblessed." These were not the torments of a guilty conscience; for he observes that "the guilt of the sins of his ignorance was never much charged upon him ;” and as to the act of sinning, during the years that he continued in this pitiable state, no man could more scrupulously avoid what seemed to him sinful in thought, word, or deed. "Oh," he says, "how gingerly did I then go, in all I did or said! I found myself as in a miry bog, that shook if I did but stir, and was as there left, both of God and Christ, and the Spirit, and all good things." False notions of that corruption of our nature, which it is almost as perilous to exaggerate as to dissemble, had laid upon him a burden heavy as that with which his own Christian begins his pilgrimage. 66 my The first comfort which he received, and which, had there not been a mist before his understanding, he might have found in every page of the Gospel, came to him in a sermon, upon a strange text, strangely handled:* Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair." The preacher made the words Love" his chief and subject matter; and one sentence fastened upon Bunyan's mind. "If," said the preacher, "it be so, that the saved soul is Christ's love, when under temptation and destruction, then, poor tempted soul, when thou art assaulted and afflicted with temptations, and the hidings of God's face, yet think on these two words, 'My Love,' still." "What shall I get by thinking on these two words?" said Bunyan to himself, as he returned home ruminating upon this discourse. And then twenty times together-"Thou art my love, thou art my love," recurred in mental repetition, kindling his spirit; and still, he says, 66 as they ran in my mind they waxed stronger and warmer, began to make me look up. But being as yet between hope and fear, I still replied in my heart, 'But is it true? but is it true?' At which that sentence fell upon me,† 'He wist not that it was true which was come unto him of the Angel.' Then I began to give place to the Word; and now I could believe that my sins should be forgiven me: yea, I was now taken with the love and * Solomon's Song, iv. 1. † Acts xii. 9. and mercy of God, that, I remember, I could not tell how to contain until I got home: I thought I could have spoken of his love, and have told of his mercy to me, even to the very crows that sat upon the ploughed lands before me, had they been capable to have understood me. Wherefore I said in my soul with much gladness, Well, I would I had a pen and ink here, I would write this down before I go any farther, for surely I will not forget this forty years hence. But, alas! within less than forty days I began to question all again." Shaken continually thus by the hot and cold fits of a spiritual ague, his imagination was wrought to a state of excitement, in which its own shapings became vivid as realities, and affected him more forcibly than impressions from the external world. He heard sounds as in a dream; and as in a dream held conversations which were inwardly audible, though no sounds were uttered, and had all the connexion and coherency of an actual dialogue. Real they were to him in the impression which they made, and in their lasting effect; and even afterwards, when his soul was at peace, he believed them, in cool and sober reflection, to have been more than natural. Some few days after the sermon, he was much "followed," he says, by these words of the Gospel,* "Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you." He knew that it was a voice from within; and yet it was so articulately distinct, so loud, and called, as he says, so strongly after him, that once in particular when the words "Simon! Simon!" rung in his ears, he verily thought some man had called to him from a distance behind; and though it was not his name, supposed nevertheless that it was addressed to him, and looked round suddenly to see by whom. As this had been the loudest, so it was the last time that the call sounded in his ears; and he imputes it to his ignorance and foolishness at that time that he knew not the reason of it; for soon, he says, he was feelingly convinced that it was sent from Heaven as an alarm for him to provide against the coming storm,—a storm which "handled him twenty times worse than all he had met with before." Fears concerning his own state had been the trouble with which he had hitherto contended: temptations of a different, and even more distressful, kind assailed him now,-blasphemies and * Luke xxii. 31. suggestions of unbelief, which, when he recorded the history of his own soul, he might not and dared not utter, either by word or pen; and no other shadow of consolation could he find against them than in the consciousness that there was something in him that gave no consent to the sin. He thought himself surely possessed by the Devil: he was "bound in the wings of the temptation, and the wind would carry him away." When he heard others talk of the sin against the Holy Ghost, discoursing what it might be, "then would the Tempter," he says, “provoke me to desire to sin that sin, that I was as if I could not, must not, neither should be, quiet until I had committed it :-no sin would serve but that. If it were to be committed by speaking of such a word, then I have been as if my mouth would have spoken that word, whether I would or no. And in so strong a measure was this temptation upon me, that often I have been ready to clap my hand under my chin, to hold my mouth from opening; and to that end also I have had thoughts at other times to leap with my head downward into some muckhill-hole or other, to keep my mouth from speaking.” Gladly now would he have been in the condition of the beasts that perish; for he counted the estate of everything that God had made far better than his own, such as it had now become. While this lasted, which was about a year, he was most distracted when attending the service of his meeting, or reading the Scriptures, or when in prayer. He imagined that at such times he felt the Enemy behind him pulling his clothes; that he was continually at him, to have done ;—-break off-make haste-you have prayed enough!” The more he strove to compose his mind and fix it upon God, the more did the Tempter labour to distract and confound it, "by presenting," says he, "to my heart and fancy the form of a bush, a bull, a besom, or the like, as if I should pray to these. To these he would also (at some times especially) so hold my mind, that I was as if I could think of nothing else, or pray to nothing else but to these, or such as they." Wickeder thoughts were sometimes cast in-such as* "if thou wilt fall down and worship me." 66 But while Bunyan suffered thus grievously under the belief that these thoughts and fancies were the immediate suggestions * Matt. iv. 9. of the evil Spirit, that belief made him at times more passionate in prayer; and then his heart "put forth itself with inexpressible groanings," and his whole soul was in every word. And although he had not been taught in childhood to lay up the comfortable promises of the Gospel in his heart and in his soul, that they might be as a sign upon his hand and as a frontlet between his eyes, yet he had not read the Bible so diligently without some profit. When he mused upon these words in the Prophet Jeremiah,* "Thou hast played the harlot with many lovers; yet return again to me, saith the Lord," he felt that they were some support to him, as applying to his case; and so also was that saying of the same Prophet, that† though we have done and spoken as evil things as we could, yet shall we cry unto God, "My Father, thou art the guide of my youth," and return unto him. More consolation he derived from the Apostle who says, "He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." And again,§ "If God be for us, who can be against us?" And again,|| “For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." This also was a help to him ; "Because I live, ye shall live also!" These, he says, were but hints, touches, and short visits; very sweet when present, only they lasted not.” Yet after a while he felt himself not only delivered from the guilt which these things laid upon his conscience, "but also from the very filth thereof;" the temptation was removed, and he thought himself "put into his right mind again." 66 At this time he "sat (in puritanical language) under the ministry of holy Mr. Gifford," and to his doctrine he ascribed in some degree this mental convalescence. But that doctrine was of a most perilous kind; for the preacher exhorted his hearers not to be contented with taking any truth upon trust, nor to rest till they had received it with evidence from Heaven; —that is, till their belief should be confirmed by a particular * Chap. iii. 1. † Ib. v. 4. † 2 Cor. v. 21. |