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Elephant and Castle, near Temple-Bar," and is dated "from Prison." It is, although not "one of his best pieces," as Ivimey says, yet a very remarkable treatise on Justification by faith and must have completed the confidence of the Church in their choice of Bunyan to the pastorate. They had long known him as a good Minister of Jesus Christ, and it proved him to be an able Minister of the New Testament. Fowler also found him so; and in his rage under the lash, got up 78 pages of unparalleled Billingsgate, in an answer entitled "Dirt Wip't off, or a manifest discovery of the gross ignorance, erroneousness, and most unchristian and wicked spirit of John Bunyan, Lay Preacher in Bedford; which he hath shown in a vile pamphlet." This tirade was published in 1672, "by Royston, bookseller to His most sacred Majesty ;" and with the Lambeth imprimatur of Tho: Tomkyns. It does not bear Fowler's name; but pretends to be the work of an anonymous friend. And it may have been written by an amanuensis: but, throughout, it is evidently the dictate of Fowler himself. I am compelled to say this, after many zealous efforts to remove the odium of vulgar scurrility from a scholar who reached the bench. The only thing creditable to him in the affair, is, that he did not wear his mask well enough to conceal himself. A worse man would have worn it better.

Those who have the opportunity of reading Bunyan's work on Justification, will enjoy it most by viewing it as the breath. ings of his spirit, whilst his ordination vows were fresh upon his memory and conscience. Perhaps, he intended it to prepare his church for his stated ministry, quite as much as to warn the public against Fowlerism. That church had passed a resolution in 1660, which I have copied from their minutes, "That Brother Bunyan do prepare to speak" before them, and "that Brother Whiteman fail not to speak to him of it." He did not forget this requisition to prepare, when they called him to be a pastor, eleven years afterwards. Then he proved to them, by his answer to Dr. Fowler, that he was prepared.

I mention this, to show that such churches did not admit preachers indiscriminately, although they often called forth uneducated men, of whose talents and piety they had "good experience." So far were they from countenancing ignorant men, that they subjected their candidates to an ordeal of preaching or expounding before the church, to which the theological examination of a Bishop's Chaplain, apart from the Greek and

Hebrew of it, is a gentle probation. I do not mean, of course, that they were questioned or tested by a formula; but that they had to approve themselves sound in the faith and mighty in the Scriptures, to a prayerful and thoughtful assembly of men and women, who made the Bible all in all in religion. Neither assent nor consent to a creed satisfied these churches. They judged candidates for holy orders, by their gift in prayer, and their power in preaching. They expected a confession of faith from them at their ordination; but it rather consisted of definitions and reasons, than of forms of sound words. Let any one who doubts this, read Bunyan's Confession of Faith, in the first volume of his Works. There, indeed, it has no date; and thus it is not known as the avowal he made at his ordination. It was, however, published in 1672, the year after his ordination, and whilst he was yet in prison. I have ascertained this from a list of his works, which he himself enabled his friend, the Rev. Charles Doe, to draw up. I am indebted to Mr. Kilpin and his friends, of Bedford, for an original copy of the Circular, in which Doe published this list. It bears date 1691, three years after Bunyan's death.

This clue to the succession of his works enables me to throw some light upon the history of his pastorate, which has hitherto been unknown. His Confession of Faith was accompanied with what he calls "A Reason of my Practice; showing that I can communicate with those visible saints that differ about Water Baptism." This Reason set the champions of strict communion in a rage. They had long annoyed him; but now they slandered him. He calls their work "A Book writ. ten by the Baptists, and published by Mr. T. P. (Paul) and Mr. W. K. (Kiffin ?)" It appeared just as he was entering upon his pastoral duties, and upon his old itineracies, as a free man. This was the nick of time they chose for an attack upon his "low descent," and for "stigmatizing" him as "a person of that rank which need not to be heeded or attended unto." Accordingly, his answer to T. Paul (for he "forgave Mr. Kiffin, and loved him never the worse") came out in 1673. But, although full of argument and amenity, it was lost upon Paul. He rushed to the rescue again, more foul-mouthed than ever, and brought with him Danvers and Denn, to fall upon Bunyan "with might and main.” Not content with impugning his morals, they began, he says, "to cry out murder, as if I intended nothing less than to accuse them to the magistrate." Works, vol. iii. p. 1268. Another of the party, Dan, told

Bunyan before Paul's second pamphlet was published, that it would provoke him to what he calls, "the beastly work, of replying to bitter invectives." But it did not. He left the party to the corrosion of "the vinegar of their own spirit," and published, in 1674, his " Peaceable Principles and True." Thus he was occasionally diverted from his favourite itinera. cies in the county, and distracted in his ministry at Bedford, by the Ishmaels of both the General and Particular Baptist Churches. He did not, however, neglect his own church. In 1675, he published, for the benefit of their "carnal relations,” as well as for general use, his masterly catechism, entitled "Instruction for the Ignorant;" and about the same time also, his elaborate work on eternal redemption by Christ, entitled "Light for them that sit in Darkness." These were followed, in 1676, by his "Strait Gate," and "Salvation by Grace." This list will convey some idea of his labours as a teacher : and what he was as a pastor, who looked well to the state of his flock, will be best seen in his treatise on "Christian Behaviour," which was published in 1674; and in his work on "The Fear of God," in 1679. There is enough in any of these pastoral remonstrances to exasperate hypocrites, as well as to ripen the imperfect. Accordingly, the practical tone of his ministry at this time so exasperated John Wildman, one of the members of the church, that he charged Bunyan with inducing wives to inform against their husbands. This charge the church investigated in 1680, and found it such a wanton slander on Bunyan and the sisterhood, that they unanimously voted Wildman "an abominable liar," and dealt with him accordingly.-Church Book. It is delightful to read the respectful and affectionate terms in which Bunyan is mentioned in the minutes of the church meetings.

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Besides his stated labours in Bedford and its immediate vicinity, he often visited London," where his reputation," says Dr. Southey," was so great, that if a day's notice were given, the meeting-house at Southwark, at which he generally preached, would not contain half the people." I have seen by my computation," says his friend Charles Doe, "about twelve hundred persons to hear him at a morning lecture, on a working day, in dark winter time. I also computed about three thousand that came to hear him at a town's-end meetinghouse; so that half were fain to go back again for want of room: and then himself was fain at a back door to be pulled

almost over people to get up-stairs to the pulpit."-Doe's Circular.

The Chapel in Southwark is said to have been in Zoar Street; but it no longer exists as a Chapel. Some years ago, a writer in the Monthly Magazine ascribed the origin of the building to Bishop Barlow. A most unlikely source! The mistake was accordingly, soon and ably exposed by B. Hanbury, Esq.

Bunyan seems to have preached frequently at Pinner's Hall also. His Sermons on "The Greatness of the Soul" were delivered there; and they well account for the electrifying effect of his ministry. It is impossible to read them without exclaiming, "Hell is open before him, and Destruction without a covering!" I know of nothing so awful. He makes the reader hear "the sighs of the lost soul." It will be some explanation of this, to quote a passage from the Work. He says, "Once I dreamed that I saw two (persons) whom I knew, in hell: and methought I saw a continual dropping from heaven as of great drops of fire, lighting upon them to their sore distress. Oh, words are wanting,-thoughts are wanting,imagination and fancy are poor things here! Hell is another kind of place than any alive can think." Thus he seems to have had awful dreams, besides those in early life. These Sermons where preached in Pinner's Hall; and probably the very Sermons which led Dr Owen to say to Charles II., when the King upbraided him for hearing an "illiterate Tinker prate," "Please your Majesty, could I possess that Tinker's abilities for preaching, I would most gladly relinquish all my learning." Dr. Southey says, "That this opinion would have been discreditable to Owen, if he really entertained it, and the anecdote were entitled to belief." There is much truth in this remark. Owen's learning has been of more use to the Church than Bunyan's genius, so far as her theology is concerned. And yet, if Owen heard the Sermons at Pinner's Hall, which is not unlikely, as they seem to have been preached whilst his asthma unfitted him to preach, and thus whilst he was preparing to give an account of the souls he had won rather than of the books he had written, we can hardly wonder at his opinion; for their power and pathos eclipse all learning, and throw every thing into the shade, but the wisdom which "winneth souls."

Bunyan seems to have visited London annually, almost from his liberation until his death. The principal part, how.

ever, of the time he could spare from Bedford, was devoted to "the region round about." Accordingly, not a few of the Baptist Churches in the county trace their origin to "Bishop Bunyan's itineracies;" as do some also in the adjoining coun ties of Cambridge, Hertford, Huntingdon, Buckingham, and Northampton; so wide was his influence, as well as his labours. His maxim in these tours was, "If I can pluck souls from the clutches of the devil, I care not where they go to be built up in their holy faith."

Amongst the first fruits of his labours in a dark wood near Hitchin, where he often preached at midnight, were the ancestors of the well known FOSTER family, to whom the cause of Missions owes so much in Cambridge, Biggleswade, Huntingdonshire, and Hitchin. Not more, however, than they owe to Bunyan; as they frankly acknowledge. How I envied my friend Michael Foster, Esq. of Huntingdon, Surgeon, when he said to me, 66 you may suppose the grateful emotions of my soul, when I think that my ancestors saw with their eyes, and heard with their ears, the PILGRIM himself; and set out with him from the City of Destruction; and are now with him in the Heavenly City." The descendants of many such ancestors might have been able to say the same, had they been equally careful to ascertain the fact: for "thousands of Christians in country and town," says Charles Doe, "can testify that their comforts under his ministry have been to an admiration, so that their joy showed itself by much weeping. His Pilgrim's Progress wins so smoothly upon the affections, and so insensibly distils the Gospel into them, that a hundred thousand have been printed in England, besides that it hath been printed in France, Holland, New England, Welch ; whereby the Author hath become famous, and (it) may be the cause of spreading his other Gospel-Books over the European and American world, and in process of time may be so to the whole Universe."-Doe's Circular.

Doe's enthusiasm is delightful. Indeed, but for his zeal to preserve the whole of Bunyan's Works, not a few of them must have been lost. He calls himself in his Circular as he well might, "The Struggler for the Preservation of Mr. Bunyan's Labours, in Folio;" and he did struggle hard, although he had only been acquainted with Bunyan about two years. He tried to get out a Folio Edition, even whilst Bunyan was alive to correct it: but an "interested Bookseller," he says, "opposed it." He was more successful in 1690. He obtained

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