The Life of John Bunyan [13]
school, "he found peace." This
period, which seems to have embraced two or three years, was marked
by that tremendous inward struggle which he has described, "as with
a pen of fire," in that marvellous piece of religious
autobiography, without a counterpart except in "The Confessions of
St. Augustine," his "Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners."
Bunyan's first experiences after his introduction to Mr. Gifford
and the inner circle of his disciples were most discouraging. What
he heard of God's dealings with their souls showed him something of
"the vanity and inward wretchedness of his wicked heart," and at
the same time roused all its hostility to God's will. "It did work
at that rate for wickedness as it never did before." "The
Canaanites WOULD dwell in the land." "His heart hankered after
every foolish vanity, and hung back both to and in every duty, as a
clog on the leg of a bird to hinder her from flying." He thought
that he was growing "worse and worse," and was "further from
conversion than ever before." Though he longed to let Christ into
his heart, "his unbelief would, as it were, set its shoulder to the
door to keep Him out."
Yet all the while he was tormented with the most perverse
scrupulosity of conscience. "As to the act of sinning, I never was
more tender than now; I durst not take a pin or a stick, though but
so big as a straw, for my conscience now was sore, and would smart
at every twist. I could not now tell how to speak my words, for
fear I should misplace them. Oh! how gingerly did I then go in all
I did or said: I found myself in a miry bog, that shook if I did
but stir, and was as those left both of God, and Christ, and the
Spirit, and all good things." All the misdoings of his earlier
years rose up against him. There they were, and he could not rid
himself of them. He thought that no one could be so bad as he was;
"not even the Devil could be his equal: he was more loathsome in
his own eyes than a toad." What then must God think of him?
Despair seized fast hold of him. He thought he was "forsaken of
God and given up to the Devil, and to a reprobate mind." Nor was
this a transient fit of despondency. "Thus," he writes, "I
continued a long while, even for some years together."
This is not the place minutely to pursue Bunyan's religious history
through the sudden alternations of hopes and fears, the fierce
temptations, the torturing illusions, the strange perversions of
isolated scraps of Bible language - texts torn from their context -
the harassing doubts as to the truth of Christianity, the depths of
despair and the elevations of joy, which he has portrayed with his
own inimitable graphic power. It is a picture of fearful
fascination that he draws. "A great storm" at one time comes down
upon him, "piece by piece," which "handled him twenty times worse
than all he had met with before," while "floods of blasphemies were
poured upon his spirit," and would "bolt out of his heart." He
felt himself driven to commit the unpardonable sin and blaspheme
the Holy Ghost, "whether he would or no." "No sin would serve but
that." He was ready to "clap his hand under his chin," to keep his
mouth shut, or to leap head-foremost "into some muckhill-hole," to
prevent his uttering the fatal words. At last he persuaded himself
that he had committed the sin, and a good but not overwise man, "an
ancient Christian," whom he consulted on his sad case, told him he
thought so too, "which was but cold comfort." He thought himself
possessed by the devil, and compared himself to a child "carried
off under her apron by a gipsy." "Kick sometimes I did, and also
shriek and cry, but yet I was as bound in the wings of the
temptation, and the wind would carry me away." He wished himself
"a dog or a toad," for they "had no soul to be lost as his was like
to be;" and again a hopeless callousness seemed to settle upon him.
period, which seems to have embraced two or three years, was marked
by that tremendous inward struggle which he has described, "as with
a pen of fire," in that marvellous piece of religious
autobiography, without a counterpart except in "The Confessions of
St. Augustine," his "Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners."
Bunyan's first experiences after his introduction to Mr. Gifford
and the inner circle of his disciples were most discouraging. What
he heard of God's dealings with their souls showed him something of
"the vanity and inward wretchedness of his wicked heart," and at
the same time roused all its hostility to God's will. "It did work
at that rate for wickedness as it never did before." "The
Canaanites WOULD dwell in the land." "His heart hankered after
every foolish vanity, and hung back both to and in every duty, as a
clog on the leg of a bird to hinder her from flying." He thought
that he was growing "worse and worse," and was "further from
conversion than ever before." Though he longed to let Christ into
his heart, "his unbelief would, as it were, set its shoulder to the
door to keep Him out."
Yet all the while he was tormented with the most perverse
scrupulosity of conscience. "As to the act of sinning, I never was
more tender than now; I durst not take a pin or a stick, though but
so big as a straw, for my conscience now was sore, and would smart
at every twist. I could not now tell how to speak my words, for
fear I should misplace them. Oh! how gingerly did I then go in all
I did or said: I found myself in a miry bog, that shook if I did
but stir, and was as those left both of God, and Christ, and the
Spirit, and all good things." All the misdoings of his earlier
years rose up against him. There they were, and he could not rid
himself of them. He thought that no one could be so bad as he was;
"not even the Devil could be his equal: he was more loathsome in
his own eyes than a toad." What then must God think of him?
Despair seized fast hold of him. He thought he was "forsaken of
God and given up to the Devil, and to a reprobate mind." Nor was
this a transient fit of despondency. "Thus," he writes, "I
continued a long while, even for some years together."
This is not the place minutely to pursue Bunyan's religious history
through the sudden alternations of hopes and fears, the fierce
temptations, the torturing illusions, the strange perversions of
isolated scraps of Bible language - texts torn from their context -
the harassing doubts as to the truth of Christianity, the depths of
despair and the elevations of joy, which he has portrayed with his
own inimitable graphic power. It is a picture of fearful
fascination that he draws. "A great storm" at one time comes down
upon him, "piece by piece," which "handled him twenty times worse
than all he had met with before," while "floods of blasphemies were
poured upon his spirit," and would "bolt out of his heart." He
felt himself driven to commit the unpardonable sin and blaspheme
the Holy Ghost, "whether he would or no." "No sin would serve but
that." He was ready to "clap his hand under his chin," to keep his
mouth shut, or to leap head-foremost "into some muckhill-hole," to
prevent his uttering the fatal words. At last he persuaded himself
that he had committed the sin, and a good but not overwise man, "an
ancient Christian," whom he consulted on his sad case, told him he
thought so too, "which was but cold comfort." He thought himself
possessed by the devil, and compared himself to a child "carried
off under her apron by a gipsy." "Kick sometimes I did, and also
shriek and cry, but yet I was as bound in the wings of the
temptation, and the wind would carry me away." He wished himself
"a dog or a toad," for they "had no soul to be lost as his was like
to be;" and again a hopeless callousness seemed to settle upon him.