: REESE LIBRARY (UNIVERSITY BUNYAN'S DOMESTIC CHARACTER. *479 OF ful marriages, Deut. 7:4, 5; 2 Cor. 6:14 hikeably NIA fearfully miscarried. Soon after such marriages, conviction, the first step towards heaven, hath ceased; prayers, the next step towards heaven, have ceased; hungerings and thirstings after salvation, another step towards the kingdom of heaven, have ceased. In a word, such marriages have estranged them from the word, from their godly and faithful friends, and have brought them again into carnal company, among carnal friends, and also into carnal delights; where and with whom they have, in conclusion, both sinfully abode and miserably perished. Servants are goers as well as comers: take heed that thou give them no occasion to scandal the gospel when they are gone, for what they observed thee unrighteously to do when they were with thee. Though thy parents be never so low, and thou.thyself never so high, yet he is thy father, and she thy mother, and they must be in thine eyes in great esteem. BUNYAN'S DOMESTIC CHARACTER. But notwithstanding these helps from God, I found myself a man encompassed with infirmities; the parting with my wife and poor children,* hath often been to me in this place as the pulling the flesh from the bones; and that not only because I am somewhat too fond of these great mercies, but also because I should have often brought to my mind the many hardships, miseries, and wants that my poor family was like to meet with, should I be taken from them; especially my poor blind child, who lay nearer my heart than all beside. Oh, the thoughts of the hardships which my poor blind one might undergo, would seem to * Bunyan had four children, all by his first marriage. About 1658, some three years after his baptism, he married his second wife, the heroic Elizabeth. In 1660 he was first imprisoned. break my heart in pieces. Poor child, thought I, what sorrow art thou like to have for thy portion in this world! thou must be beaten, must beg, suffer hunger, cold, nakedness, and a thousand calamities, though I cannot now endure the wind should blow upon thee. But yet, recalling myself, thought I, I must venture you all with God, though it goeth to the quick to leave you. Oh, I saw in this condition I was as a man who was pulling down his house upon the heads of his wife and children; yet, thought I, I must do it, I must do it: and now I thought on those two milch kine that were to carry the ark of God into another country, and to leave their calves behind them. 6:10 1 Sam. DR. OWEN. What if, as you suggest, the sober Dr. Owen, though he told me and others, at first, he would write an epistle to my book, ("Peaceable Principles and True,") yet waved it afterwards; this was also to my advantage; because it was the earnest solicitations of several of you that at that time stopped his hand: and perhaps it was more for the glory of God that truth should go naked into the world, than as seconded by so mighty an armor-bearer as he. TRUTH. The truth is of that nature, that the more it is opposed, the more glory it appears in; and the more the adversary objects against it, the more it will clear itself. There belongs to every true notion of truth, a power; the notion is the shell, the power the kernel and life. It is impossible that a carnal heart should conceive of the weight that truth lays upon the conscience of a believer. They see nothing, alas, nothing at all but a truth; and, say they, Are you such fools as to stand groaning to bear up that, or what is contained therein? They see not the weight, the glory, the weight of glory, that is in a truth of God; and therefore they laugh at them that will count it worth the while to endure so much to support it from falling to the ground. Truths are often delivered to us, like wheat in full ears, to the end we should rub them out before we eat them, and take pains about them, before we have the comfort of them. STYLE. I could, were I so pleased, use higher strains, Should all be forced their brains to lay aside, Words easy to be understood do often hit the mark, when high and learned ones do only pierce the air. He also that speaks to the weakest, may make the learned understand him; when he that striveth to be high, is not only for the most part understood but of a sort, but also many times is neither understood by them nor by himself. THE OLD AND NEW DISPENSATIONS. There is as great a difference between their dispensation and ours for comfort, as there is between the making of a bond with a promise to seal it, and the actual sealing. It was made indeed in their time, but it was not sealed until the blood was shed on Calvary. THE PILGRIM IN NEW ENGLAND. My Pilgrim's book has travelled sea and land; In France, and Flanders, where men kill each other, In Holland too, 'tis said, as I am told, My Pilgrim is with some worth more than gold; My Pilgrim should familiar with them be. As to be trimmed, new clothed, and decked with gems, NOTICES OF BUNYAN. THIS Wonderful book, [the Pilgrim's Progress,] while it obtains admiration from the most fastidious critics, is loved by those who are too simple to admire it. Dr. Johnson, all whose studies were desultory, and who hated, as he said, to read books through, made an exception in favor of the Pilgrim's Progress. That work, he said, was one of the two or three which he wished longer. In every nursery the Pilgrim's Progress is a greater favorite than Jack the Giant-killer. Every reader knows the strait and narrow path as well as he knows a road in which he has gone backward and forward a hundred times. This is the highest miracle of genius-that things which are not should be as though they were, that the imaginations of one mind should become the personal recollections of another. Cowper said, forty or fifty years ago, that he dared not name John Bunyan in his verse, for fear of moving a sneer. We live in better times; and we are not afraid to say, that though there were many clever men in England during the latter half of the seventeenth century, there were only two great creative minds. One of those minds produced the Paradise Lost, the other the Pilgrim's Progress. The style of Bunyan is delightful to every reader, and invaluable as a study to every person who wishes to obtain a wide command over the English language. The vocabulary is the vocabulary of the common people. There is not an expression, if we except a few technical terms of theology, which would puzzle the rudest peasant. We have observed several pages which do not contain a single word of more than two syllables. Yet no writer has said more exactly what he meant to say. For magnificence, for pathos, for vehement exhortation, for subtle disquisition, for every purpose of the poet, the orator, and the divine, this homely dialect, the dialect of plain working-men, was sufficient. There is no book in our literature on which we could |