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

ADVERTISEMENT BY THE EDITOR.

THIS admirable Treatise upon the most important of all subjects, that of the soul’s salvation, was first published in a pocket volume, in the year 1675. This has become very rare, but it is inserted in every edition of the author’s collected works. Our copy is reprinted from the first edition published after the author’s decease, in a small folio volume of his works, 1691. Although it is somewhat encumbered with subdivisions, it is plain, practical, and written in Bunyan’s strong and energetic style; calculated to excite the deepest attention, and to fix the mind upon those solemn realities which alone can unite earth with heaven.

Ho extensive is the meaning of that little sentance, ‘Saved by Grace!’ It includes in it redemption from the curse of sin, which oppresses the poor sinner with the fears of everlasting burnings; while it elevates the body, soul, and spirit, to an eternal and an exceeding weight of glory—to the possession of infinite treasures, inconceivable, and that never fade away.

Bunyan, in opening and deeply investigating this subject, shows his master hand in every page. It was a subject which, from his first conviction of sin, while playing a gat at cat on a Sunday, ahd excited his feelings to an intense degree, absorbing all the powers of his soul. It was eminently to him the one thing needful—the sum and substance of human habbiness. He felt that it included the preservation and re-structure of the body—raised from filth and vileness—from sickness, pain, and disease—from death and the grave—to be perfected in immortality like the Saviour’s glorious body. That included in this salvation, is the death ofdeath, and the swallowing up of the grave, to be no more seen for ever. The soul will be perfect, and, re-united with the body, be filled ‘with bliss and glory, as much as ever it can hold;’ all jars and discord between sould and body will be finished; and the perfect man be clothed with righteousness; in a word, be like Christ and with him.

All this is the work of grace, performed by the ever-blessed Trinity.

In displaying the feelings and experience of the inquiring, alarmed, quickened sinner, we are instructed by a continual illustration of the Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. He manifests profound knowledge of the devices of Satan—the workings of unbelief—the difficulties thrown by the wicked one in the way of the sinner, to prevent his approach to Christ. He fastens conviction upon conviction—gives blow upon blow to human pride; proving that there can be found nothing in our fallen nature to recommend the sinner to God—all is of grace—from the foundation to the top-stone of a sinner’s salvation. And above all, he clearly shows that salvation by grace is the most sin-killing doctrine in the world, as well as the most consoling tidings that can be brought to a sin-sick soul.

‘O, when a God of grace is upon a throne of grace, and a poor sinner stands by and begs for grace, and that in the name of a gracious Christ, in and by the help of the Spirit of grace, can it be otherwise but that such a sinner must obtain mercy and grace to help in time of need? O, then, COME BOLDLY!’ p. 360.

But I must not detain the reader from entering upon this solemn subject; only for a moment, while I quote another passage conceived in all the ardour of Bunyan’s feelings:—‘O Son of God! grace was in all thy tears—grace came out where the. whip smote thee, where the thorns pricked thee, where the nails and spear pierced thee! O

blessed Son of God! Here is grace indeed!’ Unsearchable riches of grace! Grace to make angels wonder, grace to make sinners happy, grace to astonish devils! And what will become of them that trample under foot this Son of God?’

Reader, may this searching, comforting, reviving subject be blessed to our well-grounded consolation!

GEO. OFFOR.

TO THE READER.

COURTEOUS READER,

In this little book thou art presented with a discourse of the GRACE of God, and of salvation by that grace. In which discourse, thou shalt find how each Person in the Godhead doth his part in the salvation of the sinner. I. The Father putteth forth his grace, thus. II. The Son putteth forth his grace, thus. III. And the Spirit putteth forth his grace, thus. Which things thou shalt find here particularly handled.

Thou shalt also find, in this small treatise, the way of God with the sinner, as to his CONVERSATION, 1 and the way of the sinner with God in the same; where[in] the grace of God, and the wickedness of the sinner, do greatly show themselves.

If thou findest me short in things, impute that [to] my love to brevity. If thou findest me besides the truth in aught, impute that to mine infirmity. But if thou findest anything here that serveth to thy furtherance and joy of faith, impute that to the mercy of God bestowed on thee and me.

Thine to serve thee with that little I have, J.B.

SAVED BY GRACE.

“BY GRACE YE ARE SAVED.”—EPHESIANS 2:5.

In the first chapter, from the fourth to the twelfth verse, the apostle is treating of the doctrine of election, both with respect to the act itself, the end, and means conducing thereto. The act, he tells us, was God’s free choice of some (verse 4,5,11). The end was God’s glory in their salvation (verse 6,14). The means conducing to that end was Jesus Christ himself—“In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace” (verse 7). This done, he treateth of the subjection of the Ephesians to the faith, as it was held forth to them in the Word of the truth of the gospel, as also of their being sealed by the Holy Spirit of God unto the day of redemption (verse 12-14).

Moreover, he telleth them how he gave thanks to God for them, making mention of them in his prayers, even that he would make them see “what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of his power to usward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead,” &c. (verse 15-20).

And lest the Ephesians, at the hearing of these their so many privileges, should forget how little they deserved them, he tells them that in time past they were dead in trespasses and sins, and that then they walked in them “according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience” (Eph 2:2,3).

Having thus called them back to the remembrance of themselves—to wit, what they were in their state of unregeneracy, he proceedeth to show them that their first quickening was by the resurrection of Christ their Head, in whom they before were chosen, and that by him they were already set down in heavenly places, (verse 5,6); inserting, by the way, the true cause of all this blessedness, with what else should be by us enjoyed in another world; and that is, the love and grace of God: “But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ [by grace ye are saved].”

These last words seen to be the apostle’s conclusion rightly drawn from the premises; as who should say, If you Ephesians were indeed dead in trespasses and sins; if indeed you were by nature the children of wrath, even as others, then you deserve no more than others. 2

Again, if God hath chosen you, if God hath justified and saved you by his Christ, and left others as good as you by nature to perish in their sins, then the true cause of this your blessed condition is, the free grace of God. But just thus it is, therefore by grace ye are saved; therefore all the good which you enjoy more than others, it is of mere goodwill.

“BY GRACE YE ARE SAVED.”

The method that I shall choose to discourse upon these words shall be this—I will propound certain questions upon the words, and direct particular answers to them; in which answers I hope I shall answer also, somewhat at least, the expectation of the godly and conscientious reader, and so shall draw towards a conclusion.

THE QUESTIONS ARE—

I. What is it to be saved? II. What is it to be saved by grace? III.

Who are they that are saved by grace? IV. How it appears that they that are saved, are saved by grace? V. What might be the reasons which prevailed with God to save us by grace, rather than by any other means?

Now the reason why I propound these five questions upon the words, it is, because the words themselves admit them; the first three are grounded upon the several phrases in the text, and the two last are to make way for demonstration of the whole.

QUEST. I.—WHAT IS IT TO BE SAVED?

This question supposeth that there is such a thing as damnation due to man for sin; for to save supposeth the person to be saved to be at present in a sad condition; saving, to him that is not lost, signifies nothing, neither is it anything in itself. “To save, to redeem, to deliver,” are in the general terms equivalent, and they do all of them suppose us to be in a state of thraldom and misery; therefore this word “saved,” in the sense that the apostle here doth use it, is a word of great worth, forasmuch as the miseries from which we are saved is the misery of all most dreadful.

The miseries from which they that shall be saved shall by their salvation be delivered, are dreadful; they are no less than sin, the curse of God, and flames of hell for ever. What more abominable than sin? What more insupportable than the dreadful wrath of an angry God? And what more fearful than the bottomless pit of hell?

I say, what more fearful than to be tormented there for ever with the devil and his angels? Now, to “save,” according to my text, is to deliver the sinner from these, with all things else that attend them. And although sinners may think that it is no hard matter to answer this question, yet I must tell you there is no man, that can feelingly know what it is to be saved, that knoweth not experimentally something of the dread of these three things, as is evident, because all others do even by their practice count it a thing of no great concern, when yet it is of all other of the highest concern among men; “For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Matt 16:26).

But, I say, if this word “saved” concludeth our deliverance from sin, how can he tell what it is to be saved that hath not in his conscience groaned under the burden of sin? yea, it is impossible else that he should ever cry out with all his heart, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?”—that is, do to be saved (Acts 2:37).

The man that hath no sores or aches cannot know the virtue of the salve; I mean, not know it from his own experience, and therefore cannot prize, nor have that esteem of it, as he that hath received cure thereby. Clap a plaster to a well place, and that maketh not its virtue