EXTRACT FROM ORIGINAL PREFACE.

In this discourse of mine you may see much of the grace of God towards me: I thank God, I can count it much, for it was above my sins and Satan's temptations too. I can remember my fears, and doubts, and sad months with comfort; they are as the head of Goliah in my hand. There was nothing to David like Goliah's sword, even that sword that should have been sheathed in his bowels; for the very sight and remembrance of that did preach forth God's deliverance to him. Oh the remembrance of my great sins, of my great temptations, and of my great fear of perishing for ever! They bring afresh into my mind the remembrance of my great help, my great supports from Heaven, and the great grace that God extended to such a wretch as I.

My dear children, call to mind the former days and years of ancient times: Remember, also, your songs in the night, and commune with your own hearts, Psal. lxxvii. 5, 6. Yea, look diligently, and leave no corner therein unsearched, for that treasure hid even the treasure of your first and second experience of the grace of God towards you. Remember, I say, the word that first laid hold upon you: remember your terrors of conscience, and fear of death and hell: remember, also, your tears and prayers to God; yea, how you sighed under every hedge of

GRACE ABOUNDING

TO THE

CHIEF OF SINNERS.

1. In this my relation of the merciful working of God upon my soul, it will not be amiss, if, in the first place, I do, in a few words, give you a hint of my pedigree and manner of bringing up; that thereby the goodness and bounty of God towards me may be the more advanced and magnified before the sons of men.

2. For my descent, then, it was, as is well known by many, of a low and inconsiderable generation; my father's house being of that rank that is meanest and most despised of all the families of the land. Wherefore have not here, as others, to boast of

noble bloc the flesh. nify

bry

of high-born state, according to all things considered, I magmajesty, for that by this door he world, to partake of the grace hrist by the Gospel.

ithstanding the meanness and inmy parents, it pleased God to put to put me to school, to learn me d write; the which I also attained rate of other poor men's children;

6

EXTRACT FROM ORIGINAL PREFACE.

mercy. Have you never a hill Mizar to remember? Have you forgot the close, the milk-house, the stable, the barn, and the like, where God did visit your souls? Remember also the word, the word, I say, upon which the Lord hath caused you to hope, if you have sinned against light, if you are tempted to blaspheme, if you are drowned in despair, if you think God fights against you, or if heaven is hid from your eyes, remember it was thus with your father; but out of them all the Lord delivered me.

I could have enlarged much in this my discourse of my temptations and troubles for sin; as also of the merciful kindness and working of God with my soul; I could also have stepped into a style much higher than this, in which I have here discoursed, and could have adorned all things more than here I have seemed to do; but I dare not: God did not play in tempting of me; neither did I play when I sunk as into a bottomless pit, when the pangs of hell caught hold upon me; wherefore I may not play in relating of them, but be plain and simple, and lay down the thing as it was. He that liketh it, let him receive it; and he that doth not, let him produce a better. Farewell.

MY DEAR CHILDREN,

The milk and honey are beyond this wilderness; God be merciful to you, and grant that you be not slothful to go in to possess the land.

JOHN BUNYAN.