helpeth with us, and laboureth" (1 Cor 16:15,16).
'By this text I was made to see that the Holy Ghost never intended that men, who have gifts and abilities, should bury them in the earth, but rather did command and stir up such to the exercise of their gift, and also did commend those that were apt and ready so to do.
'Wherefore, though of myself, of all the saints the most unworthy, yet I, but with great fear and trembling at the sight of my own weakness, did set upon the work, and did according to my gift, and the proportion of my faith, preach that blessed gospel that God had showed me in the holy Word of truth; which, when the country understood, they came in to hear the Word by hundreds, and that from all parts. And I thank God he gave unto me some measure of bowels and pity for their souls, which did put me forward to labour with great diligence and earnestness, to find out such a word as might, if God would bless it, lay hold of and awaken the conscience, in which also the good Lord had respect to the desire of his servant; for I had not preached long before some began to be touched, and be greatly afflicted in their minds at the apprehension of the greatness of their sin, and of their need of Jesus Christ.
'But I at first could not believe that God should speak by me to the heart of any man, still counting myself unworthy; yet those who were thus touched would love me, and have a particular respect for me; and though I did put it from me that they should be awakened by me, still they would confess it, and affirm it before the saints of God. They would also bless God for me, unworthy wretch that I am! and count me God's instrument that showed to them the way of salvation.
'Wherefore, seeing them in both their words and deeds to be so constant, and also in their hearts so earnestly pressing after the knowledge of Jesus Christ, rejoicing that ever God did send me where they were; then I began to conclude that it might be so, that God had owned in his work such a foolish one as I; and then came that word of God to my heart with much sweet refreshment, "The blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon me, and I caused the widow's heart to sing for joy" (Job 29:13).
'At this therefore I rejoiced; yea, the tears of those whom God did awaken by my preaching would be both solace and encouragement to me. I thought on those sayings, "Who is he that maketh me glad, but the same that is made sorry by me" (2 Cor 2:2). And again, "Though I be not an apostle to others, yet doubtless I am unto you: for the seal of my apostleship are ye in the Lord" (1 Cor 9:2). These things, therefore, were as an another argument unto me, that God had called me to, and stood by me in this work.
'In my preaching of the Word I took special notice of this one thing, namely, that the Lord did lead me to begin where his Word begins with sinners; that is, to condemn all flesh, and to open and allege, that the curse of God by the law doth belong to, and lay hold on all men as they come into the world, because of sin. Now this part of my work I fulfilled with great feeling, for the terrors of the law, and guilt for my transgressions, lay heavy on my own conscience. I preached what I felt, what I smartingly did feel, even that under which my poor soul did groan and tremble to astonishment. Indeed, I have been as one sent to them from the dead; I went myself in chains to preach to them in chains; and carried that fire in my own conscience that I persuaded them to beware of.[175] I can truly say, that when I have been to preach, I have gone full of guilt and terror even to the pulpit-door, and there it hath been taken off, and I have been at liberty in my mind until I have done my work, and then, immediately, even before I could get down the pulpit stairs, I have been as bad as I was before: yet God carried me on with a strong hand, for neither guilt nor hell could take me off my work. Thus I went on for the space of two years, crying out against men's sins, and their fearful state because of them.'[176]
A man so much in earnest soon became a most acceptable and popular preacher. He studied his sermons carefully, and wrote such memorandums and notes as might refresh his memory before going into the pulpit, although his intensity of feeling, his ready utterance, and natural eloquence which charmed his hearers, and his extensive usefulness as a preacher, render it quite improbable that he restricted himself to notes while publicly engaged in sacred services. They must have aided him when he did not enjoy liberty of utterance. 'At times when I have begun to speak the Word with much liberty, I have been presently so straitened in speech that I scarcely knew what I was about, or as if my head had been in a bag.'[177] They were valuable, also, as a proof that all he said had its exclusive reference to the world to come, without the mixture of politics, which might have given offence to the Government. Thus, when he was apprehended for neglecting to attend the church service and for preaching the gospel, in his conversation with Mr. Cobb, the magistrate's clerk, he said 'that, to cut off all occasions of suspicion from any, as touching the harmlessness of my doctrine, in private I would willingly take the pains to give any one the notes of all my sermons, for I do sincerely desire to live quietly in my country, and to submit to the present authority.'[178] In such troublesome times these would afford abundant proof that he was desirous of submitting to all the political institutions of his country, while he dared not conform to human laws affecting his faith or his mode of worshipping God, for which he alone was to stand answerable at the great day.
The employment of his time in earning a maintenance for his family, and his constant engagements to preach, interfered with the proper fulfillment of his duties as a deacon of the church. His resignation of this important office is thus recorded in the minutes of the church—'At a meeting held on the 27th of the 6th month, 1657, the deacon's office was transferred from John Bunyan to John Pernie, because he could no longer discharge its duties aright, in consequence of his being so much employed in preaching.'
We cannot wonder that his time was incessantly employed. His was no ordinary case. He had to recover and improve upon the little education he had received, and lost again by dissipated habits. He must have made every effort, by his diligent study of the Bible, to gain that spiritual knowledge which alone could enable him to proclaim the unsearchable riches of Christ, and that profound internal converse with the throne of God which appears in all his writings. In addition to all this, he was engaged in continual controversy with a variety of sects, which, in his sober judgment, opposed the simplicity of the gospel. Among these the Ranters, or Sweet Singers, were very conspicuous. It is difficult to discover what were their opinions, but they appear to have been nearly like the Dutch Adamites; they were severely persecuted, by public authority, under the Commonwealth, for blasphemy. George Fox found some of them in prison at Coventry in 1649, and held a short disputation with them. They claimed each one to be GOD, founding their notion on such passages as 1 Corinthians 14:25, 'God is in you of a truth.' Fox quaintly asked them whether it would rain the next day; and upon their answering that they could not tell, 'Then said I unto them, God can tell.'[179] Strange as it may appear, the Ranters had many followers, while numerous pious people were troubled by their impudence and perversion of Scripture, but more especially by their being a persecuted people. Taking advantage of the inquiries that were excited by these strange doctrines, Bunyan determined to become an author, that he might set forth more extensively than he could do by preaching, the truths of the gospel in their native purity, simplicity, and beauty, as an antidote to fanaticism. The learned and eloquent looked with contempt upon the follies of the Ranters, Familists, and some loose Quakers, 'and only deigned to abuse them with raillery, while the poor unlettered tinker wrote against them.' To indite a work would be to him a pleasant recreation, but writing a book must have been extremely difficult, and have required extraordinary patience. This will be better seen by a specimen of his handwriting, now in the Bedford Library, found in Fox's Book of Martyrs, the three volumes of which beguiled many of his tedious hours when in prison.
To write a volume, containing about twenty-five thousand words, must have been a serious task to such a scribe.
It is interesting to trace his improvement in calligraphy while recovering his lost education, and advancing in proficiency in an art so essential to his constantly extending usefulness. The next is a more useful running hand, however defective in orthography and grammar; it is from the first page of a copy of Bishop Andrews' sermons[180]—
The inscription in a copy of his Holy City, 1665, in Dr. Williams' or the Dissenter's
