THE LIFE OF

JOHN BUNYAN,

AUTHOR OF THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS, ETC.

A.D. 1628 TO A.D. 1688.

LONDON

THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY,

Instituted 1799.

DEPOSITORIES, 56, PATERNOSTER ROW,

65, ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD, AND 164, PICCADILLY;

SOLD BY THE BOOKSELLERS.

210.7

368

THE LIFE OF

JOHN BUNYAN.

JOHN BUNYAN was born at Elstow, within a mile of Bedford, in the year 1628, of honest but very poor parents. In his "Grace Abounding" he gives many particulars of his history and experience, from which we shall extract largely, as his history is best told in his own plain and powerful language. It is prefaced by an introduction to his children, from which the following is an extract :

Amen.

"Children, Grace be with you. "I thank God upon every remembrance of you; and rejoice, even while I stick between the teeth of the lions in the wilderness, that the grace, and mercy, and knowledge of Christ our Saviour, which God hath bestowed upon you, with abundance of faith and love; your hungerings and thirstings after farther acquaintance with the Father, in the Son; your tenderness of heart, your trembling at sin, your sober and holy deportment also, before both God and men, is a great refreshment to me; for 'you are my glory and joy.' (1 Thess. ii. 20.)

"I have sent you here enclosed a drop of that honey that I have taken out of the carcase of a lion. (Judg. xiv. 5—8.) I have eaten thereof myself, and am much refreshed thereby. Temptations, when we meet them at first, are as the lion that roared upon Samson; but if we overcome them, the next time we