The Works of John Bunyan, vol 1 by John Bunyan (books to read to improve english .TXT) 📕

6 To the unregenerate, unsanctified soul, the language of the Saviour in John 6:48-58, must appear, as it did to the Jews, perfectly inexplicable—’ He that eateth My flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.’ Blessed mystery! to be one with Christ, in obedience to His will, and in partaking of His inheritance. To be enabled to say, ‘For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.’—Ed.

7 Nothing short of a Divine influence can direct the passions of the soul to a proper use of their energies. ‘Godly sorrow worketh repentance—carefulness—indignation—fear—a vehement desire—zeal—revenge,’ (2 Cor 7:11). Reader, has thy spirit been thus excited against sin?—Ed.

8 This is perfectly true, but is only felt by those who are taught of the Holy Spirit rightly to appreciate Divine worship. How many pay undue respect to buildings in which public prayer is offered up? It is the worship that consecrates the place and solemnizes the mind. Very remarkably was this the case with Jacob while wandering in the open wilderness. He put stones for his pillow, and in a dream saw the angels visiting the earth, and said, THIS is the house of God, and the gate of heaven.—Ed.

9 If the body, which is to return to dust, ‘is fearfully and wonderfully made,’ past our finding out in its exquisite formation, how much more so must be that immortal soul which we can only contemplate by its own powers, and study in the Bible. It never dies, although it may be dead in sin, in time; and be ever dying—ever in the agonies of death, in eternity. Solemn consideration! May our adorning be ‘the hidden man of the heart, which is not corruptible; a meek and quiet spirit; that which is in the sight of God of great price’ (1 Peter 3:4).—Ed.

10 One of the first revelations to our race was, that ‘God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.’

And this great and important fact has, by tradition, extended over the whole of the human family.—Ed.

11 ‘An old horse shoe’ must be mentioned, to throw utter contempt upon a custom, then very prevalent, and even now practised, of nailing an old horse shoe over the door of the house, to prevent a witch from entering. When will these absurd heathenish customs cease in Christian England?—Ed.

12 ‘A point,’ the tag at the end of a lace.—Ed.

13 Nothing can more fully display the transcendant worth and excellency of the soul, than these two considerations:—first, That by the operation of the Eternal Spirit, it is made a habitation for God Himself, and susceptible of communion and converse with God, nay, of being even filled with all the fulness of God; and, second, The infinite price that was paid for its redemption from sin and woe—the precious blood of the Son of God.—Mason.

14 ‘A Relation of the Fearful Estate of Frances Spira.’ He had been a Protestant, but, for some unworthy motives, became a Papist, and was visited with the most awful compunctions of conscience. A poetical introduction thus describes the guilty wretch:—

‘Reader, wou’dst see what, may you never feel, Despair, racks, torments, whips of burning steel?

Behold this man, this furnace, in whose heart, Sin hath created hell. Oh! In each part What flames appear;

His thoughts all stings; words swords; Brimstone his breath;

His eyes flames; wishes curses; life a death; A thousand deaths live in him, he not dead; A breathing corpse, in living scalding lead.’

It is an awful account, and has added to it a narrative of the wretched end of John Child, a Bedford man, one of Bunyan’s friends, who, to avoid prosecution, conformed; was visited with black despair, and hung himself. A copy of this curious little book is in the editor’s possession.—Ed.

15 Nothing more properly excited horror throughout Christendom, than the conduct of the Algerines in making slaves of their captives; because their victims had white skins, and were called Christians.

Hundreds of thousands of pounds sterling were paid to redeem the Christian captives, and thus the pirates were strengthened to continue their ferocious deeds. Many contributed to those funds the very money which they derived from the negro slave trade; who, while they professed to execrate white man slavery, perpetrated the same barbarities upon their brethren of a different colour and caste. How strangely does sin pervert the understandings of men, who arrogate to themselves the highest grade of humanity and civilization!—Ed.

16 These awful denunciations are so many proofs of the immutablilty of the justice and of the Word of God.—Ed.

17�‘Saith Christ;’ Peter in Acts i. 20, applies this Psalm to Christ, when the Jews cried, ‘His blood be upon us and upon our children;’

then did they put on the envenomed garment which has tormented them ever since. It is girded about their loins; the curse has penetrated like water, and entered the very bones like oil. How awful will be the state of those who crucify Him afresh, and again put Him to open shame!—Horsley.

18 How awfully inconceivable is that eternal death that never dieth; that final end that never endeth—an immortal death—a soul-murdering life—ever dying, but never dead; were the mountains and rocks to fall upon and and crush them, still eternity would intervene between them and death. Oh that grace may be given to ransom our souls from the doom we have deserved!—Ed.

19 ‘Weal;’ wealth, happiness, prosperity; ‘wherefore taking comfort and boldness, partly of your grace and benevolent inclination toward the universal weal of your subjects, partly inflamed with zeal, I have now enterprized to describe, in our vulgar tongue, the form of a just public weal.’ Sir T. Elyot, Dedication of the Governor to Henry VIII.—Ed.

20 ‘From the belly,’: from its birth.

21 Bunyan having been engaged in the civil war, accounts for his using this military idea.—Ed.

22 God hates not the sinner, but the sin; the glorious provision made for salvation, proves His good will to sinful souls. This will be ‘the worm that dieth not,’ to sinners to reflect, that, in rejecting the inviting promises of God, they have sealed their own condemnation.—Mason.

23 ‘Hideth his sins,’ is quoted from the Genevan, or Puritan version.—Ed.

24 ‘Pother;’ to be, or cause to be, as one involved in dust, in a cloud; to perplex, to puzzle, to confound.—Ed.

25 This is an allusion to a custom, nearly obsolete, originating in the feast of tabernacles, of sacrificing to Vacina at the harvest home. The Papists substituted St. Bartholomew for the heathen goddess. Upon his day, the harvest being completed, an image of straw was carried about, called the corn, or Bartholomew, baby; and masters, mistresses, men, and maidens danced and rioted together; thus, under the guise of harmless joy, much evil was perpetrated.—Ed.

26 ‘A blandation,’ an obsolete word, which means wheedling, flattering speech, soft words.—Ed.

27 Knowing the certainty that this wrath to the uttermost will be poured out, our blessed Lord exhorts all to ‘fear God, who is able to destroy both body and soul in hell.’ In that doleful pit, the soul, re-united with the body, will suffer under the outpourings of Divine wrath.—Mason.

28 Bunyan probably here refers to his own experience when he was in prison, and was threatened by the judge to be hung for not going to parish church. ‘I thought with myself, if I should make a scrabbling shift to clamber up the ladder, yet I should, either with quaking or other symptoms of faintings, give occasion to the enemy to reproach the way of God. I was ashamed to die with a pale face and tottering knees in such a cause as this.’—Grace Abounding, No.

334.—Ed.

29 This wish has been felt while in a desponding state, under the terrors of the law, and a fearful looking for of fiery indignation.

Thus Bunyan says, ‘I blessed the condition of the dog and toad, and counted the estate of everything that God had made far better than this dreadful state of mine.’ Grace Abounding, No. 104.—Ed.

30 Alluding to the old proverb of bringing a noble to ninepence, and ninepence to nothing.—Ed.

31 At the popular game of nine pins—Ed.

32 In our comparatively happy days, we have little if any conception of the manner in which our forefathers desecrated the Sabbath.

When Popery clouded the country, mass was attended on the Lord’s day morning early; it was a recital of certain unknown words, after which parties of pleasure, so called, spent the day in places attractive for the frivolity or wantonness of their entertainments—in dancing, and carousing; the evening being devoted to the theatres or ball rooms. This was afterwards encouraged by our English ‘heads of the church,’ in a book of lawful sports to be used on Sundays.

Even in our time a flood of iniquity continues to flow on those sacred days, which human laws cannot prevent. As the influence of the gospel spreads, the day will become sanctified and this will ever prove a correct standard of its progress.—Ed.

33 How solemn, nay, awful is the thought that heaven’s gates must be shut against all impurity. None who live and die in the love of sin can enter heaven, lest they should defile it—‘And there shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth, neither worketh abomination, or a lie’ (Rev 21: 27).—Ed.

34 In ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress,’ in the house called Beautiful, all the inmates, except the porter, are females.—Ed.

35 The edict of Nantes was issued April 1598; but in violation of it, Rochelle was taken from the Protestants in 1628. From that time horrid barbarities were practised upon them. In 1676, the elector of Brandenburg appealed to the French king on behalf of his Protestant subjects, of whom multitudes fled for refuge to England and Germany. In 1685, the edict of Nantes was revoked, and a frightful persecution ensued.—Ed.

36 Great allowance must be made for the times in which Bunyan lived.

Baxter, and all the great divines, Sir M. Hale, and the judges, believed in witches, ghosts, and other chimeras; in fact, any one professing unbelief in these wild fancies, would have been counted among infidels and atheists.—Ed.

37 Sin ‘in the general of it,’ or sin wherever it may be found.

38 The law is a transcript of the mind of God, it is holy, just, and good—so that he that offendeth in one point is guilty of all.

The law convicts and shows the sinner that God is all eye to see, and all fire to consume, every unclean thing. Thus the law gives sin its strength, and death its warrant, to arrest and execute the sinner.—Mason.

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THE WORK OF JESUS CHRIST AS AN ADVOCATE, CLEARLY EXPLAINED, AND LARGELY IMPROVED, FOR THE BENEFIT OF ALL BELIEVERS.

1 John 2:1—“And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.”

By JOHN BUNYAN, Author of “The Pilgrim’s Progress.”

London: Printed for Dorman Newman, at the King’s Arms, in the Poultry, 1689.

ADVERTISEMENT BY THE EDITOR.

This is one of the most interesting of Bunyan’s treatises, to edit which required the Bible at my right hand, and a law dictionary on my left. It was very frequently republished; but in an edition by John Marshall, 1725, it became most seriously mutilated, many passages were omitted, and numerous errors were made. In this state, it was copied into Mr. Whitefield’s edition of his works, and it has been since republished with all those errors. It is now restored to its original state; and we hope that it will prove a most acceptable