The Pilgrim's Progress

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first hand, “The way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Matt. 7:14).

4. Bunyan’s sufferings strengthened his assurance that God is sovereign over all the afflictions of his people and will bring them safely home.

There have always been, as there are today, people who try to solve the problem of suffering by denying the sovereignty of God—that is the all-ruling providence of God over Satan and over nature and over human hearts and deeds. But it is remarkable how many of those who stand by the doctrine of God’s sovereignty over suffering have been those who suffered most and who found in the doctrine the most comfort and help.

Bunyan was among that number. In 1684 he wrote an exposition for his suffering people based on 1 Peter 4:19: “Let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator.” The book was called Seasonable Counsels: Advice to Sufferers. He takes the phrase “according to the will of God,” and unfolds the sovereignty of God in it for the comfort of his people.

It is not what enemies will, nor what they are resolved upon, but what God will, and what God appoints; that shall be done. . . . No enemy can bring suffering upon a man when the will of God is otherwise, so no man can save himself out of their hands when God will deliver him up for his glory. . . [just as Jesus showed Peter “by what death he would glorify God”]. We shall or shall not suffer, even as it pleaseth him.

Thus God has appointed the persons who will suffer, the  

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time of their suffering, the place of their suffering, and how they will suffer.

“God has appointed who shall suffer”

In the first case, “God has appointed who shall suffer. Suffering comes not by chance, or by the will of man, but by the will and appointment of God.” Thus Bunyan cites 1Thessalonians 3:3 (KJV): “. . . that no man should be moved by these afflictions: for yourselves know that we are appointed thereunto.” We must not think that suffering is a strange thing for those who fear God (1 Pet 4:12), he reminds us and appeals to Revelation 6:11 where the martyrs under the altar in heaven are told “that they should rest for a little while longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brethren who were to be killed [“mark that,” Bunyan says] even as they had been, would be completed also.” An appointed number of martyrs! From which Bunyan concludes, “Suffering for righteousness and for righteousness’ sake, is by the will of God. God has appointed who shall suffer.”

“My Times Are in Thy Hands”

Secondly, God has appointed when they shall suffer . . . for his truth in the world. Suffering for such and such a man are timed, as to when he shall be tried for his faith.” Hence when Paul was afraid in Corinth, the Lord strengthened him in a dream by saying, “Do not be afraid any longer, but go on speaking and do not be silent; for I am with you, and no man will attack you in order to harm you, for I have many people in this city” (Acts 18:9–10). “His time of suffering,” Bunyan says, “was not yet come there.” In the same way it was said of Jesus, “They sought to take him: but no man laid hands on him, because his hour was not yet come” (John  

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7:30, KJV). Bunyan concludes, “The times, then, and the seasons, even for the sufferings of the people of God, are not in the hands of their enemies, but in the hand of God; as David said, ‘My times are in thy hand’” (Ps 31:15).

“By the Hand of God Here and There”

Thirdly, God has appointed where this, that, or the other good man shall suffer. Moses and Elias [Elijah], when they appeared on the holy mount, told Jesus of the suffering which he should accomplish at Jerusalem” (Luke 9:30–31). “The saints are sprinkled by the hand of God here and there, as salt is sprinkled upon meat to keep it from stinking. And as they are sprinkled, that they may season the earth; so accordingly, where they must suffer is also appointed for the better confirming of the truth. Christ said, it could not be that a prophet should ‘perish out of Jerusalem’ (Luke 13:33). But why . . . ? God has appointed that they should suffer there. So then, who, when, and where, is at the will of God, and they, accordingly, are ordered by that will.”

"By What Death He Should Glorify God”

Fourth, “God has appointed . . . what kind of sufferings this or that saint shall undergo. . . . God said that he would show Paul beforehand how great things he should suffer for his sake (Acts 9:16). And it is said that Christ did signify to Peter beforehand ‘by what death he should glorify God’ (John 21:19).” As with the time and place and persons, so it is with the kind of sufferings we endure: They “are all writ down in God’s book; and though the writing seem as unknown characters to us, yet God understands them very well. . . . It is appointed who of them should die of hunger, who with the sword, who should go into captivity, and who should be  

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eating up of beasts. Let it then be concluded, that hitherto it appears, that the sufferings of saints are ordered and disposed by the will of God.

”We could go even further with Bunyan as he shows “for what truth” his saints will suffer, and “by whose hand” and “how long.” But let us ask, What is Bunyan’s aim in this exposition of the sovereignty of God in suffering? He tells us plainly: “I have, in a few words, handled this . . . to show you that our sufferings are ordered and disposed by him, that you might always, when you come into trouble for this name, not stagger nor be at a loss, but be stayed, composed, and settled in your minds, and say, ‘The will of the Lord be done.’ (Acts 21:14).

”The Mercy That We Suffer Rather Than Torture

He warns against feelings of revenge.

Learn to pity and bewail the condition of the enemy . . . Never grudge them their present advantages. ‘Fret not thy self because of evil men. Neither be thou envious at the workers of iniquity’ (Prov. 24:19). Fret not, though they spoil thy resting place. It is God that hath bidden them do it, to try thy faith and patience thereby. Wish them no ill with what they get of thine; it is their wages for their work, and it will appear to them ere long that they have earned it dearly. . . . Bless God that thy lot did fall on the other side. . . . How kindly, therefore, doth God deal with us, when he chooses to afflict us but for a little, that with everlasting kindness he may have mercy upon us (Isa 54:7–8.).  

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No Fruit, Because There Is no Winter There

”The key to suffering rightly is to see in all things the hand of a merciful and good and sovereign God and “to live upon God who is invisible.” There is more of God to be had in times of suffering than any other time.

There is that of God to be seen in such a day as cannot be seen in another. His power in holding up some, his wrath in leaving of others; his making of shrubs to stand, and his suffering of cedars to fall; his infatuating of the counsels of men, and his making of the devil to outwit himself; his giving of his presence to his people, and his leaving of his foes in the dark; his discovering [disclosing] the uprightness of the hearts of his sanctified ones, and laying open the hypocrisy of others, is a working of spiritual wonders in the day of his wrath, and of the whirlwind and storm. . . . We are apt to overshoot, in the days that are calm, and to think ourselves far higher, and more strong than we find we be, when the trying day is upon us. . . . We could not live without such turnings of the hand of God upon us. We should be overgrown with flesh, if we had not our seasonable winters. It is said that in some countries trees will grow, but will bear no fruit, because there is no winter there.

So Bunyan begs his people to humble themselves under the mighty hand of God and trust that all will be for their good. “Let me beg of thee, that thou wilt not be offended either with God, or men, if the cross is laid heavy upon thee. Not with God, for he doth nothing without a cause, nor with men, for . . . they are the servants of God to thee for good. (Ps 17:14 KJV; Jer 24:5). Take therefore what comes to thee from God by them, thankfully.”  

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5. Bunyan’s suffering deepened in him a confidence in the Bible as the word of God and a passion for biblical exposition as the key to perseverance.

If “living upon God who is invisible” is the key to suffering rightly, what is the key to living upon God? Bunyan’s answer is to lay hold on Christ through the word of God, the Bible. Prison proved for Bunyan to be a hallowed place of communion with God because his suffering unlocked the word and the deepest fellowship with Christ he had ever known.

I never had in all my life so great an inlet into the Word of God as now [in prison]. Those scriptures that I saw nothing in before were made in this place and state to shine upon me. Jesus Christ also was never more real and apparent than now. Here I have seen him and felt him indeed. . . I have had sweet sights of the forgiveness of my sins in this place, and of my being with Jesus in another world. . . I have seen that here that I am persuaded I shall never, while in this world, be able to express.

“In My Chest Pocket I Have a Key”

He especially cherished the promises of God as the key for opening the door of heaven.

I tell thee, friend, there are some promises that the Lord hath helped me to lay hold of Jesus Christ through and by, that I would not have out of the Bible for as much gold and silver as can lie between York and London piled up to the stars.

One of the greatest scenes in The Pilgrim’s Progress is when Christian recalls in the dungeon of Doubting-castle that he  

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has a key to the door. Very significant is not only what the key is, but where it is:

“What a fool I have been, to lie like this in a stinking dungeon, when I could have just as well walked free. In my chest pocket I have a key called Promise that will, I am thoroughly persuaded, open any lock in Doubting-Castle.” “Then,” said Hopeful, “that is good news. My good brother, do immediately take it out of your chest pocket and try it.” Then Christian took the key from his chest and began to try the lock of the dungeon door; and as he turned the key, the bolt unlocked and the door flew open with ease, so that Christian and hopeful immediately came out.

“p***k Him Anywhere . . . His Blood Is Bibline”

Three times Bunyan says that the key was in Christians “chestpocket” or simply his “chest.” I take this to mean that Christian had hidden it in his heart by memorization and that it was now accessible in prison for precisely this reason. This is how the promises sustained and strengthened Bunyan. He was filled with Scripture. Everything he wrote was saturated with Bible. He poured over his English Bible, which he had most of the time. This is why he can say of his writings, “I have not for these things fished in other men’s waters; my Bible and Concordance are my only library in my writings.”

Charles Spurgeon put it like this

:He had studied our Authorized Version . . . till his whole being was saturated with Scripture; and though his writings . . . continually make us feel and say, ‘Why, this man is a living Bible!’ p***k him anywhere; and you will find that his blood is Bibline, the very essence of the Bible flows  

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from him. He cannot speak with out quoting a text, for his soul is full of the word of God.

Bunyan reverenced the word of God and trembled at the prospect of dishonoring it. “Let me die . . . with the Philistines (Judg 16:30) rather than deal corruptly with the blessed word of God.” This, in the end, is why Bunyan is still with us today rather than disappearing into the mist of history. He is with us and ministering to us because he reverenced the word of God and was so permeated by it that his blood is “Bibline” and that “the essence of the Bible flows from him.”

And this is what he has to show us. That “to live upon God who is invisible” is to live upon God in his word. And to serve and suffer out of a life in God is to serve and suffer out of a life drenched with the word of God. This is how we shall live, this is how we shall suffer, and this is how we shall help those we love get safely to the Celestial City. We will woo them with the word. We will say to them what Bunyan said to his people:

God hath strewed all the way from the gate of hell, where thou wast, to the gate of heaven, whither thou art going, with flowers out of his own garden. Behold how the promises, invitations, calls, and encouragements, like lilies, lie round about thee! Take heed that thou dost not tread them under thy foot.  

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PREFACE

John Newton, 1776

The writings of Mr. Bunyan need no recommendatory preface. The various editions they have passed through, and the different languages into which many of them have been translated, sufficiently prove that the gifts of God which were in him, have, by the divine blessing, been made very acceptable and useful to the churches. Though he was called to the knowledge and ministry of the gospel from a low state of life, as well as from a vicious course of conversation, and was unfurnished with human literature, the Lord, the great, the effectual, the only effectual teacher, made him, in an eminent degree, an able and successful minister of the New Testament. It is probable that only the people to whom he personally preached would have been benefited by his zeal and experience, had not the Lord permitted the rage of his enemies to prevail against him for a season. He lived in more trying days than those in which our lot is fallen. For preaching the word of life to sinners, he was sentenced to perpetual banishment, but what he actually suffered was imprisonment for more than twelve years. But his spirit was not bound. Though secluded from his public work, he could not be idle. He applied himself to writing books, and most of the treatises, by which being dead he still speaketh (in number about threescore) were composed during his con-  

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finement in Bedford Jail. Thus his adversaries themselves contributed to extend his usefulness by the very methods they took to prevent it. And (as in the apostle’s case) the things that happened to him, proved rather to the furtherance than the hindrance of the gospel.

His books, though devoid of that art and those ornaments, on which writers who seek the praise of men lay so great a stress, have been, and still are highly esteemed by those who have a taste for divine truth; and greatly instrumental, in the hands of the Holy Spirit, to the awakening of the careless, and the encouragement of those who are seeking salvation. And we doubt not but they will be farther owned of God for these purposes, to many who are yet unborn. But as among the stars one excelleth another in glory, so of all our author’s writings, there is no one perhaps so universally and deservedly admired as his Pilgrim’s Progress, in which he gives a delineation of the Christian life under the idea of a journey or a pilgrimage, from the City of Destruction to the heavenly Jerusalem. In this treatise he appears not only as a writer well instructed in the mysteries of the kingdom, but a man of real genius. Though he had not a learned education, God had given him considerable natural abilities, a lively invention, a penetrating spirit, a strong judgment, and his style, though plain and simple, is remarkably clear, animated, and engaging. By the exercises through which the Lord led him, and a close study of the Word of God, he acquired a singular knowledge of the human heart, and its various workings, both in a state of nature and grace, and of the various snares and dangers to which a believer is exposed from the men and things of the world, and the subtlety of Satan. These fruits of his experience and observation he has exhibited in a very pleasing and instructive manner in his pilgrim, which may be considered as a map of the Christian profession in its present mixed state, while the wheat and  

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the tares are growing in the same field. A map, so exactly drawn, that we can hardly meet with a case or character, amidst the vast variety of persons and incidents, that daily occur to our observation, to which we cannot easily point out a counterpart in the pilgrim. And he is peculiarly happy in fixing the attention of his readers: many have read this book with a kind of rapturous pleasure, though they have not understood the authors design, (which only they who have the eyes of their minds enlightened by the Spirit of God can fully enter into) and they who understand it best, and who have read it often, usually find fresh pleasure and instruction upon every perusal.

As many persons who have read this allegory, though they find benefit from the whole, are at a loss to determine the author’s meaning in some particular parts of his representation, an edition containing some brief notes to illustrate the more difficult passages, has been long desired. An attempt of this kind is now submitted to the public. The annotator does not pretend to be positive that he has always precisely taken up the thought the author had upon his mind at the time of writing, though he thinks there are but few places in which he is in danger of greatly missing it. He hopes however that he has proposed no illustration but what will be found agreeable to the analogy of faith and the experience of believers.

The unusual demand for the Pilgrim’s Progress upon its first appearance, induced the author some time after to send forth a second part. In which there are many beautiful passages that sufficiently demonstrate it to be the work of the same masterly hand. But the plan of that which is now called the First Part, was so comprehensive, and so well executed, that the subject was too much exhausted to admit of a Second Part, capable of standing in competition with the former. It is upon the whole greatly inferior to it, though a  

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few pages here and there might be selected, which, for their beauty, propriety, and energy, almost deserve the epithet of inimitable (See the character of Mr. Fearing, and Standfast’s discourse when in the river).

There is a small book in print which bears the title of the third part of the Pilgrim’s Progress. It can hardly be necessary to inform any but those who have not read it, that this pretended third part, with Mr. Bunyan’s name, is a gross imposition on the public, and that the title is almost the only part of it which bears any resemblance to Bunyan’s Pilgrim, excepting when the writer has borrowed the same names. But Bunyan’s spirit and manner he could not borrow, and his principles he openly contradicts. A common hedge-stake deserves as much to be compared to Aaron’s rod, which yielded blossoms and almonds, as this poor performance to be obtruded upon the world under the title of the third part of the Pilgrim’s Progress.

Thus much concerning our book: Let the v close with a word to the reader’s heart. If you are not convinced of sin, and led by the Spirit to seek Jesus, notwithstanding the notes, the Pilgrim will still be a riddle to you. A well-wish-er to your soul assures you, that whether you know these things or not, they are important realities. The Pilgrim is a parable, but it has an interpretation in which you are nearly concerned. If you are living in sin, you are in the City of Destruction. O hear the warning voice! “Flee from the wrath to come.” Pray that the eyes of your mind may be opened, then you will see your danger, and gladly follow the shining light of the word, till you enter by Christ, the straight gate, into the way of salvation. If death surprise you before you get into this road, you are lost forever.

If you are indeed asking the way to Zion with your face thitherward, I bid you good speed. Behold an open door is set before you, which none can shut. Yet prepare to endure  

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hardship, for the way lies through many tribulations. There are hills and valleys to be passed, lions and dragons to be met with, but the Lord of the hill will guide and guard his people. “Put on the whole armor of God, fight the good fight of faith.” Beware of the Flatterer. Beware of the Enchanted Ground. See the Land of Beulah, yea, the city of Jerusalem itself is before you:

There Jesus the forerunner waits.To welcome travelers home.

JOHN NEWTON.  

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THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS

In The Similitude of a Dream

By John Bunyan“

I have used similitudes.”—Hosea 12:10

 

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THE JAIL

As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place, where was a den; and I laid me down in that place to sleep: and as I slept, I dreamed a dream. I dreamed, and, behold, “I saw a man clothed with rags, standing in a certain place, with his face from his own house, a book in his hand, and a great burden upon his back.”1 I looked, and saw him open the book, and read therein; and as he read, he wept and trembled; and not being able longer to contain, he brake out with a lamentable cry, saying, “What shall I do?”2

In this plight, therefore, he went home, and refrained himself as long as he could, that his wife and children should not perceive his distress; but he could not be silent long, because that his trouble increased. Wherefore at length he brake his mind to his wife and children; and thus he began to talk to them: “O my dear wife,” said he, “and you, the children of my bowels, I, your dear friend, am in myself undone, by reason of a burden that lieth hard upon me; moreover, I am for certain informed that this our city will be burned with fire from Heaven; in which fearful overthrow, both myself, with thee, my wife, and you, my sweet babes, shall miserably come to ruin, except (the which yet I see not) some way of escape can be found, whereby we may be

1 Isa. 64:6; Luke 14:33; Psa. 38:4; Hab. 2:2; Acts 16:31

2 Acts 2:37