

Transcribed from the 1845 Thomas Nelson “Works of the Puritan Divines
(Bunyan)” edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org

                    [Picture: Picture of John Bunyan]





                              LIFE OF BUNYAN


                          BY REV. JAMES HAMILTON

                  SCOTCH CHURCH, REGENT SQUARE, LONDON.

AFTER the pleasant sketches of pens so graceful as Southey’s and
Montgomery’s; after the elaborate biography of Mr Philip, whose
researches have left few desiderata for any subsequent devotee; indeed,
after Bunyan’s own graphic and characteristic narrative, the task on
which we are now entering is one which, as we would have courted it the
less, so we feel that we have peculiar facilities for performing it.  Our
main object is to give a simple and coherent account of a most unusual
man—and then we should like to turn to some instructive purpose the
peculiarities of his singular history, and no less singular works.

                                * * * * *

John Bunyan was born at Elstow, near Bedford, in 1628.  His father was a
brazier or tinker, and brought up his son as a craftsman of like
occupation.  There is no evidence for the gipsy origin of the house of
Bunyan; and though extremely poor, John’s father gave his son such an
education as poor men could then obtain for their children.  He was sent
to school and taught to read and write.

There has been some needless controversy regarding Bunyan’s early days.
Some have too readily taken for granted that he was in all respects a
reprobate; and others—the chief of whom is Dr Southey—have laboured to
shew that there was little in the lad which any would censure, save the
righteous overmuch.  The truth is, that considering his rank of life, his
conduct was not flagitious; for he never was a drunkard, a libertine, or
a lover of sanguinary sports: and the profanity and sabbath-breaking and
heart-atheism which afterwards preyed on his awakened conscience, are
unhappily too frequent to make their perpetrator conspicuous.  The thing
which gave Bunyan any notoriety in the days of his ungodliness, and which
made him afterwards appear to himself such a monster of iniquity, was the
energy which he put into all his doings.  He had a zeal for idle play,
and an enthusiasm in mischief, which were the perverse manifestations of
a forceful character, and which may have well entitled him to Southey’s
epithet—“a blackguard.”  The reader need not go far to see young Bunyan.
Perhaps there is near your dwelling an Elstow—a quiet hamlet of some
fifty houses sprinkled about in the picturesque confusion, and with the
easy amplitude of space, which gives an old English village its look of
leisure and longevity.  And it is now verging to the close of the
summer’s day.  The daws are taking short excursions from the steeple, and
tamer fowls have gone home from the darkening and dewy green.  But old
Bunyan’s donkey is still browzing there, and yonder is old Bunyan’s
self—the brawny tramper dispread on the settle, retailing to the more
clownish residents tap-room wit and roadside news.  However, it is young
Bunyan you wish to see.  Yonder he is, the noisiest of the party, playing
pitch-and-toss—that one with the shaggy eyebrows, whose entire soul is
ascending in the twirling penny—grim enough to be the blacksmith’s
apprentice, but his singed garments hanging round him with a lank and
idle freedom which scorns indentures; his energetic movements and
authoritative vociferations at once bespeaking the ragamuffin ringleader.
The penny has come down with the wrong side uppermost, and the loud
execration at once bewrays young Badman.  You have only to remember that
it is Sabbath evening, and you witness a scene often enacted on Elstow
green two hundred years ago.

The strong depraving element in Bunyan’s character was _ungodliness_.  He
walked according to the course of this world, fulfilling the desires of
the flesh and of the mind; and conscious of his own rebellion, he said
unto God, “Depart from me, for I desire not the knowledge of thy ways.”
The only restraining influence of which he then felt the power, was
terror.  His days were often gloomy through forebodings of the wrath to
come; and his nights were scared with visions, which the boisterous
diversions and adventures of his waking-day could not always dispel.  He
would dream that the last day had come, and that the quaking earth was
opening its mouth to let him down to hell; or he would find himself in
the grasp of fiends, who were dragging him powerless away.  And musing
over these terrors of the night, yet feeling that he could not abandon
his sins, in his despair of heaven his anxious fancy would suggest to him
all sorts of strange desires.  He would wish that there had been no hell
at all; or that, if he must needs go thither, he might be a devil,
“supposing they were only tormentors, and I would rather be a tormentor
than tormented myself.”

These were the fears of his childhood.  As he grew older, he grew harder.
He experienced some remarkable providences, but they neither startled nor
melted him.  He once fell into the sea, and another time out of a boat
into Bedford river, and either time had a narrow escape from drowning.
One day in the field with a companion, an adder glided across their path.
Bunyan’s ready switch stunned it in a moment; but with characteristic
daring, he forced open the creature’s mouth, and plucked out the sting—a
foolhardiness which, as he himself observes, might, but for God’s mercy,
have brought him to his end.  In the civil war he was