The Life of John Bunyan [23]
be carried. The withering lines are familiar to
us, in which Milton denounces the "New Forcers of Conscience," who
by their intolerance and "super-metropolitan and
hyperarchiepiscopal tyranny," proved that in his proverbial words,
"New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large" -
"Because you have thrown off your prelate lord,
And with stiff vows renounce his liturgy
Dare ye for this adjure the civil sword
To force our consciences that Christ set free!"
How Bunyan came to escape we know not. But the danger he was in
was imminent enough for the church at Bedford to meet to pray "for
counsail what to doe" in respect of it.
It was in these closing years of the Protectorate that Bunyan made
his first essay at authorship. He was led to it by a long and
tiresome controversy with the Quakers, who had recently found their
way to Bedford. The foundations of the faith, he thought, were
being undermined. The Quakers' teaching as to the inward light
seemed to him a serious disparagement of the Holy Scriptures, while
their mystical view of the spiritual Christ revealed to the soul
and dwelling in the heart, came perilously near to a denial of the
historic reality of the personal Christ. He had had public
disputations with male and female Quakers from time to time, at the
Market Cross at Bedford, at "Paul's Steeple-house in Bedford town,"
and other places. One of them, Anne Blackley by name, openly bade
him throw away the Scriptures, to which Bunyan replied, "No; for
then the devil would be too hard for me." The same enthusiast
charged him with "preaching up an idol, and using conjuration and
witchcraft," because of his assertion of the bodily presence of
Christ in heaven.
The first work of one who was to prove himself so voluminous an
author, cannot but be viewed with much interest. It was a little
volume in duodecimo, of about two hundred pages, entitled "Some
Gospel Truths Opened, by that unworthy servant of Christ, John
Bunyan, of Bedford, by the Grace of God, preacher of the Gospel of
His dear Son," published in 1656. The little book, which, as Dr.
Brown says, was "evidently thrown off at a heat," was printed in
London and published at Newport Pagnel. Bunyan being entirely
unknown to the world, his first literary venture was introduced by
a commendatory "Epistle" written by Gifford's successor, John
Burton. In this Burton speaks of the young author - Bunyan was
only in his twenty-ninth year - as one who had "neither the
greatness nor the wisdom of the world to commend him," "not being
chosen out of an earthly but out of a heavenly university, the
Church of Christ," where "through grace he had taken three heavenly
degrees, to wit, union with Christ, the anointing of the Spirit,
and experience of the temptations of Satan," and as one of whose
"soundness in the faith, godly conversation, and his ability to
preach the Gospel, not by human aid, but by the Spirit of the
Lord," he "with many other saints had had experience." This book
must be pronounced a very remarkable production for a young
travelling tinker, under thirty, and without any literary or
theological training but such as he had gained for himself after
attaining to manhood. Its arrangement is excellent, the arguments
are ably marshalled, the style is clear, the language pure and well
chosen. It is, in the main, a well-reasoned defence of the
historical truth of the Articles of the Creed relating to the
Second Person of the Trinity, against the mystical teaching of the
followers of George Fox, who, by a false spiritualism, sublimated
the whole Gospel narrative into a vehicle for the representation of
truths relating to the inner life of the believer. No one ever had
a firmer grasp than Bunyan of the spiritual bearing of the facts of
the recorded life of Christ on the souls of men. But he would not
suffer their "subjectivity" - to adopt modern terms - to
us, in which Milton denounces the "New Forcers of Conscience," who
by their intolerance and "super-metropolitan and
hyperarchiepiscopal tyranny," proved that in his proverbial words,
"New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large" -
"Because you have thrown off your prelate lord,
And with stiff vows renounce his liturgy
Dare ye for this adjure the civil sword
To force our consciences that Christ set free!"
How Bunyan came to escape we know not. But the danger he was in
was imminent enough for the church at Bedford to meet to pray "for
counsail what to doe" in respect of it.
It was in these closing years of the Protectorate that Bunyan made
his first essay at authorship. He was led to it by a long and
tiresome controversy with the Quakers, who had recently found their
way to Bedford. The foundations of the faith, he thought, were
being undermined. The Quakers' teaching as to the inward light
seemed to him a serious disparagement of the Holy Scriptures, while
their mystical view of the spiritual Christ revealed to the soul
and dwelling in the heart, came perilously near to a denial of the
historic reality of the personal Christ. He had had public
disputations with male and female Quakers from time to time, at the
Market Cross at Bedford, at "Paul's Steeple-house in Bedford town,"
and other places. One of them, Anne Blackley by name, openly bade
him throw away the Scriptures, to which Bunyan replied, "No; for
then the devil would be too hard for me." The same enthusiast
charged him with "preaching up an idol, and using conjuration and
witchcraft," because of his assertion of the bodily presence of
Christ in heaven.
The first work of one who was to prove himself so voluminous an
author, cannot but be viewed with much interest. It was a little
volume in duodecimo, of about two hundred pages, entitled "Some
Gospel Truths Opened, by that unworthy servant of Christ, John
Bunyan, of Bedford, by the Grace of God, preacher of the Gospel of
His dear Son," published in 1656. The little book, which, as Dr.
Brown says, was "evidently thrown off at a heat," was printed in
London and published at Newport Pagnel. Bunyan being entirely
unknown to the world, his first literary venture was introduced by
a commendatory "Epistle" written by Gifford's successor, John
Burton. In this Burton speaks of the young author - Bunyan was
only in his twenty-ninth year - as one who had "neither the
greatness nor the wisdom of the world to commend him," "not being
chosen out of an earthly but out of a heavenly university, the
Church of Christ," where "through grace he had taken three heavenly
degrees, to wit, union with Christ, the anointing of the Spirit,
and experience of the temptations of Satan," and as one of whose
"soundness in the faith, godly conversation, and his ability to
preach the Gospel, not by human aid, but by the Spirit of the
Lord," he "with many other saints had had experience." This book
must be pronounced a very remarkable production for a young
travelling tinker, under thirty, and without any literary or
theological training but such as he had gained for himself after
attaining to manhood. Its arrangement is excellent, the arguments
are ably marshalled, the style is clear, the language pure and well
chosen. It is, in the main, a well-reasoned defence of the
historical truth of the Articles of the Creed relating to the
Second Person of the Trinity, against the mystical teaching of the
followers of George Fox, who, by a false spiritualism, sublimated
the whole Gospel narrative into a vehicle for the representation of
truths relating to the inner life of the believer. No one ever had
a firmer grasp than Bunyan of the spiritual bearing of the facts of
the recorded life of Christ on the souls of men. But he would not
suffer their "subjectivity" - to adopt modern terms - to