Page images
PDF
EPUB

such as Bunyan passed through, the calmest judgment must be sometimes at a loss to discriminate between the healthful and the morbid action, when it is the patient who describes the case. Such works furnish the most valuable materials for biography; but, as will appear in the sequel, it requires no ordinary discrimination, candour, and knowledge of the heart, to make the requisite allowances for the circumstances of the most conscientious narrator of his own history.

JOHN BUNYAN was born in the village of Elstow, near Bedford, in the year 1628. His descent, to use his own words, was "of a low and inconsiderable generation," his "father's house being of that rank that is meanest and most despised of all the families in the land." The craft to which he was born and bred, like his father before him, was that of a brazier or tinker; and he is said to have worked as a journeyman at Bedford. Mean and inconsiderable as were the circumstances of his parents, they were able to put their son to school; who learned both to read and write "according to the rate of other poor men's children;" but he confesses that he soon lost, almost utterly, what little he had acquired. Thrown among vile companions, he was early initiated into profaneness, lying, and all sorts of boyish vice and ungodliness; and the only indication of his having a capacity above the village rabble, was afforded by his being a ringleader of all the youth that kept him company, in their wickedness. Yet, even at nine or ten years old, in the midst of his many sports and childish vanities, and surrounded by his vain companions, he was often seized with deep compunction; and in his sleep, fearful visions, corresponding to his waking terrors, would alarm his conscience. "I was often," he says, "much cast down and afflicted therewith, yet could I not let go my sins: yea, I was also then so overcome with despair of life and heaven, that I should often wish, either that there had been no hell, or that I had been a devil, supposing they were only tormentors; that, if it must needs be that I went thither, I might be rather a tormentor, than

be tormented myself." After a time, these terrible dreams left him, and his apprehensions of infernal punishment wore off. He became “ void of all good consideration ;" “ heaven and hell were both out of mind:” and “ had not

[ocr errors]

a miracle of precious grace prevented," he says, " he had not only perished by the stroke of eternal justice, but had also laid himself open even to the stroke of those laws which bring some to disgrace and open shame before the world." It may be inferred, however, from this ingenuous confession, that he was nevertheless restrained from the commission of any delinquency cognizable by the magistrate. He was wild, boisterous, reckless, disorderly; passionately fond of village-sports, such as bell-ringing, dancing, the game of cat,' and similar amusements; a Sabbath-breaker, a terrible swearer, and thoroughly ungodly. But this appears to have been the extent of his youthful wickedness. He was no drunkard, nor was he, in the grossest acceptation, licentious. We have his own solemn declaration, in reply to his calumniators, that "no woman in heaven, or earth, or hell," could witness against him. "Not," he adds, "that I have been thus kept because of any goodness in me, more than other, but God has been merciful to me, and has kept me." It is evident that his conscience, though laid asleep, was never hardened; for, while he could take pleasure in the vileness of his companions, yet, if at any time he saw wicked things committed by those "who professed goodness," it would make his spirit tremble. Once, when in the height of his vanity, hearing a person swear who was reputed a religious man, "it struck upon his spirit," he says, so as to make his

heart ache."

،،

Bunyan was only seventeen when he entered into the Parliament's army; and in 1645, he was drawn out, with others, to go to the siege of Leicester; but when he was just ready to set off, one of the company expressed a desire to go in his stead, and, Bunyan having consented, the volunteer took his place, went to the siege, and was shot as he stood centinel. This remarkable interposition of Divine

Providence, as well as some other narrow escapes from death, Bunyan records with devout gratitude; but, at the time, they appear to have made a slight or transient impression upon his conscience. He could not have been long a soldier; yet it is probable that we are indebted to his having served in the Civil Wars, for the skilful management of his military allegory.

Not long after the occurrence above mentioned, and when, consequently, he must have been very young, (Dr. Southey thinks, before he was nineteen,) Bunyan married; and "my mercy was," he says, "to light upon a wife whose father was counted godly." They were both so poor as not to have so much household stuff as a dish or a spoon between them; but she brought him, for her portion, two books which her father had bequeathed to her when he died; one entitled, "The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven;" the other, "The Practice of Piety."* In these two books, Bunyan would sometimes read with his wife; and though they did not reach his heart so as to waken him to a sense of his real condition, yet they produced some desires and endeavours after reformation. These were fostered, too, by the frequent references made by his wife to the strict and holy life of her father. Bunyan now "fell in very eagerly with the religion of the times; went to church twice on the Sunday, and said and sung with the foremost;" and was withal, according to his own account, "so over-run with the spirit of superstition," that he adored with great devotion all things belonging to the church,— "the high-place, priest, clerk, vestment," and every thing relating to the service: the priest and clerk he counted most happy, and without doubt blessed, as the servants of God; and for the love he bore to the clergy, supposing them the ministers of heaven, he could have laid down at their feet, and have been trampled upon by them; so

• The latter work, by Bayly, Bishop of Bangor, was at one time so popular as to pass through more than fifty editions in the course of a hundred years, and has been translated not only into Welsh, the author's native tongue, but into Polish and Hungarian.

с

strongly, at this time, did their name, their garb, and their function" intoxicate and bewitch" him. This is precisely the feeling of abject reverence with which the priest of the Romish church is regarded by the common people in Popish countries; and if, at this period of his life, when his imagination was so much stronger than his judgment, and his mind had not emerged from the grossest ignorance, Bunyan had been thrown in the way of an artful emissary of that church, it is probable that he would have been inextricably entangled in the toils of superstition. His moral and intellectual progress would have terminated at the Giant's Cave. All this while, he says, he was not sensible of the danger and evil of sin, nor ever thought of the Saviour. The "Plain Man's Pathway" had not directed him to the Cross. "Thus man," he remarks, "while blind, doth wander, but wearieth himself with vanity, for he knoweth not the way to the city of God." In fact, at this stage, Bunyan had not even thrown off the habit of using profane language; for, some time afterwards, he met with a humiliating reproof from a woman who was herself of bad character, but who protested that Bunyan's awful profaneness made her tremble, and that " he was able to spoil all the youth in the town who but came into his company." "At this reproof," he says, "I was silenced and put to secret shame, and that too, as I thought, before the God of heaven; wherefore, while I stood there, and hanging down my head, I wished with all my heart that I might be a little child again, that my father might learn me to speak without this wicked way of swearing; for, thought I, I am so accustomed to it, that it is in vain for me to think of a reformation; for I thought that could never be. But how it came to pass, I know not; I did from this time forward so leave my swearing, that it was a great wonder to myself to observe it; and whereas, before, I knew not how to speak unless I put an oath before and another behind, to make my words have authority; now I could, without it, speak better, and with more pleasantness, than ever I could before."

66

This cordial wish, so touchingly expressed, would seem to have been the first genuine emotion of penitence in Bunyan's heart, such as all the terrific alarms of an awakened conscience had hitherto failed to produce. At this critical moment of incipient conversion, he "fell into company with one poor man that made profession of religion," who, as he then thought, "did talk pleasantly of the Scriptures and of the matter of religion; wherefore," he says, falling into some love and liking to what he said, I betook me to my Bible, and began to take great pleasure in reading, but especially with the historical part thereof; for, as for Paul's Epistles, and such like scriptures, I could not away with them, being as yet ignorant either of the corruptions of my nature, or of the want and worth of Jesus Christ to save us. Wherefore, I fell to some outward reformation, both in my words and life, and did set the commandments before me for my way to heaven; which commandments I also did strive to keep, and, as I thought, did keep them pretty well sometimes. . . . . My neighbours were amazed at this my great conversion from prodigious profaneness to something like a moral life: and truly so they well might; for this my conversion was as great as for Tom of Bedlam to become a sober man. Now, therefore, they began to praise, to commend, and to speak well of me, both to my face and behind my back." Flattered by these commendations, and proud of his imagined godliness, he concluded that the Almighty "could not choose but be now pleased with him. Yea," he says, " to relate it in mine own way, I thought no man in England could please God better than I."

....

He was wakened from this self-righteous delusion by accidentally overhearing the discourse of three or four poor women, who were sitting at a door in the sun, in one of the streets of Bedford, "talking about the things of God." Bunyan's attention was arrested by language which was altogether new to him, and which he heard, but understood not. What especially struck him was, that they conversed about the matters of religion "as if oy did

« PreviousContinue »