Bunyan Grace Abounding to the Chief Sinners a5

149 Pages·2012·0.69 MB·English

1
2 Grace Abounding
3
4 To The Chief of Sinners
5
6 Or,
7
8 A Brief Relation of the Exceeding Mercy of God in Christ
9 to His Poor Servant
10
11 By
12
13 John Bunyan
14
15
16
17 PUBLISHER’S FOREWORD
18
19 John Bunyan was born at Elstow, near Bedford, England,
20 sometime in the fall of 1628, the first of three children
21 born to Thomas and Margaret Bunyan. The parish
22 register indicates that he was baptized on November 30,
23 1628.
24
25 In Grace Abounding Bunyan describes his descent as “of
26 a low and inconsiderable generation.” He had particular
27 disdain for his father’s house; to him it was “of a rank
28 that is meanest and most despised of all the families in
29 the land.”
30
31 Sir Walter Scott thought John Bunyan was of gypsy
32 descent, because his father was a traveling tinker, a
1
33 mender of pots and pans. But historians view the
34 occupation as somewhat like that of “village blacksmith.”
35 The Bunyans were not homeless; they were landowners,
36 but of peasant stock.
37
38 Bunyan’s schooling was of brief duration, and it wasn’t
39 long before he was assisting his father and learning the
40 trade himself. On his sixteenth birthday Bunyan joined
41 Cromwell’s New Model Army, introducing him to the
42 Puritan movement. After this military stint, he settled
43 down as a tinker (“brazier”) and married at the age of
44 twenty.
45
46 In 1653 Bunyan joined the Puritan Free Church in
47 Bedford, and in 1657 he took on his first assignment as
48 a “field preacher.” At this time there were scores of
49 men, most with little education, who were preaching to
50 Nonconformist audiences throughout England. With the
51 restoration of Charles II to the throne, these preachers
52 were suspect and subject to arrest. Refusing to refrain
53 from preaching, Bunyan was arrested in 1660 and
54 imprisoned for more than eleven years.
55
56 Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, written during
57 this imprisonment, is the spiritual autobiography of
58 Bunyan, the traveling tinker who became the eminent
59 preacher and author. It is in the genre of Augustine’s
60 Confessions and Thomas a Kempis’s Imitation of Christ.
61 It is not a detailed account of Bunyan’s early life, for it
62 tells us very little of his youth, education, military
63 experiences, and marriages.
64
2
65 Written in 1666, Grace Abounding chronicles Bunyan’s
66 spiritual journey from a profane life filled with cursing,
67 blasphemy, and Sabbath desecration to a new creation in
68 Christ Jesus. Some commentators on Bunyan’s life and
69 work are of the opinion that Bunyan wrote too
70 disparagingly of his early life. George Offor, editor of a
71 three volume compilation of Bunyan’s works, observes:
72
73 A great difference of opinion has been expressed by
74 learned men as to whether Bunyan’s account of himself
75 is to be understood literally, as it respects his bad
76 conduct before his conversion. or whether he views
77 himself through a glass, by which his evil habits are
78 magnified. No one can doubt his perfect honesty. He
79 plainly narrates his bad, as well as his redeeming
80 qualities; nor does his narrative appear to be
81 exaggerated.
82
83 Grace Abounding is an autobiography that begins with
84 guilt and despair and ends with a heart “full of comfort,”
85 a thankful heart for “grace abounding.”
86
87 Those who have read both Grace Abounding and The
88 Pilgrim’s Progress will realize that The Pilgrim’s Progress,
89 in substantial measure, is the same life as that described
90 in Grace Abounding, but in allegory rather than
91 straightforward narrative. George Offor makes this point
92 when he quotes a Dr. Cheever:
93
94 As you read the “Grace Abounding”, you are ready to
95 say at every step, Here is the future author of the
96 “Pilgrim’s Progress”. It is as if you stood beside some
3
97 great sculptor, and watched every movement of the
98 chisel, having seen his design; so that at every blow
99 some new trait of beauty in the future comes clearly into
100 view.
101
102 Ernest W. Bacon, in a recent biography based on the
103 latest historical research makes the same point:
104
105 The experiences he [Bunyan] records in Grace Abounding
106 are seen in the characters of The Pilgrim’s Progress, and
107 there is little doubt that he could not have written the
108 great allegory had he not experienced God’s saving
109 mercy recounted in the autobiography. It has an undying
110 vitality and perpetual youth about it, is a record of
111 Puritan experience unsurpassed, and a spiritual stimulus
112 of great value.
113
114 The importance of Grace Abounding is summed up by
115 Hugh Martin:
116
117 Grace Abounding is among the greatest stories of God’s
118 dealings with the human soul—to be put on the shelf
119 beside such treasures as Augustine’s Confessions, Law’s
120 Serious Call, Baxter’s Autobiography, and Wesley’s
121 account of his own spiritual travail.
122 _________________________________________
123 _________________________
124
125 A PREFACE
126
127 OR BRIEF ACCOUNT OF THE PUBLISHING OF THIS WORK
128
4
129 WRITTEN BY THE AUTHOR THEREOF, AND DEDICATED TO
130 THOSE WHOM GOD HATH COUNTED HIM WORTHY TO
131 BEGET TO FAITH, BY HIS MINISTRY IN THE WORD
132
133 CHILDREN, grace be with you, Amen. I being taken from
134 you in presence, and so tied up, that I cannot perform
135 that duty that from God doth lie upon me to youward,
136 for your further edifying and building up in faith and
137 holiness, etc., yet that you may see my soul hath
138 fatherly care and desire after your spiritual and
139 everlasting welfare; I now once again, as before, from
140 the top of Shenir and Hermon, so now from the lions’
141 dens, from the mountains of the leopards (S.of Sol. 4.8),
142 do look yet after you all, greatly longing to see your safe
143 arrival into the desired haven.
144
145 I thank God upon every remembrance of you; and
146 rejoice, even while I stick between the teeth of the lions
147 in the wilderness, at the grace, and mercy, and
148 knowledge of Christ our Saviour, which God hath
149 bestowed upon you, with abundance of faith and love.
150 Your hungerings and thirstings also after further
151 acquaintance with the Father, in His Son; your
152 tenderness of heart, your trembling at sin, your sober
153 and holy deportment also, before both God and men, is
154 great refreshment to me; For ye are my glory and joy’ (1
155 Thess. 2.20).
156
157 I have sent you here enclosed, a drop of that honey, that
158 I have taken out of the carcase of a lion (Judg. 14.5-9). I
159 have eaten thereof myself also, and am much refreshed
160 thereby. (Temptations, when we meet them at first, are
5
161 as the lion that roared upon Samson; but if we overcome
162 them, the next time we see them, we shall find a nest of
163 honey within them.) The Philistines understand me not. It
164 is something of a relation of the work of God upon my
165 own soul, even from the very first, till now; wherein you
166 may perceive my castings down, and raisings up; for he
167 woundeth, and his hands make whole. It is written in the
168 Scripture (Isa. 38.19), The father to the children shall
169 make known the truth of God.’ Yea, it was for this
170 reason I lay so long at Sinai (Deut. 4.10, 11), to see the
171 fire, and the cloud, and the darkness, that I might fear
172 the Lord all the days of my life upon earth, and tell of his
173 wondrous works to my children (Ps. 78.3-5).
174
175 Moses (Num. 33.1, 2) writ of the journeyings of the
176 children of Israel, from Egypt to the land of Canaan; and
177 commanded also, that they did remember their forty
178 years’ travel in the wilderness. Thou shalt remember all
179 the way which the Lord thy God led thee these forty
180 years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove
181 thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou
182 wouldest keep his commandments, or no’ (Deut. 8.2).
183 Wherefore this I have endeavoured to do; and not only
184 so, but to publish it also; that, if God will, others may be
185 put in remembrance of what He hath done for their
186 souls, by reading His work upon me.
187
188 It is profitable for Christians to be often calling to mind
189 the very beginnings of grace with their souls. It is a night
190 to be much observed unto the Lord for bringing them
191 out from the land of Egypt: this is that night of the Lord
192 to be observed of all the children of Israel in their
6
193 generations’ (Ex. 12.42). O my God,’ saith David (Ps.
194 42.6), my soul is cast down within me; therefore will I
195 remember thee from the land of Jordan, and of the
196 Hermonites, from the hill Mizar.’ He remembered also the
197 lion and the bear, when he went to fight with the giant
198 of Gath (I Sam. 17.36, 37).
199
200 It was Paul’s accustomed manner (Acts 22), and that
201 when tried for his life (Acts 24), ever to open, before his
202 judges, the manner of his conversion: he would think of
203 that day, and that hour, in the which he first did meet
204 with grace;^4 for he found it support unto him. When
205 God had brought the children of Israel through the Red
206 Sea, far into the wilderness, yet they must turn quite
207 about thither again, to remember the drowning of their
208 enemies there (Num.14.25). For though they sang His
209 praise before, yet they soon forgat his works’ (Ps.
210 106.11-13).
211
212 In this discourse of mine you may see much; much, I say,
213 of the grace of God towards me. I thank God I can count
214 it much, for it was above my sins and Satan’s
215 temptations too. I can remember my fears, and doubts,
216 and sad months with comfort; they are as the head of
217 Goliath in my hand. There was nothing to David like
218 Goliath’s sword, even that sword that should have been
219 sheathed in his bowels; for the very sight and
220 remembrance of that did preach forth God’s deliverance
221 to him. Oh, the remembrance of my great sins, of my
222 great temptations, and of my great fears of perishing for
223 ever! They bring afresh into my mind the remembrance
7
224 of my great help, my great support from heaven, and
225 the great grace that God extended to such a wretch as I.
226
227 My dear children, call to mind the former days, and the
228 years of ancient times: remember also your songs in the
229 night; and commune with your own heart (Ps. 77.5-12).
230 Yea, look diligently, and leave no corner therein
231 unsearched, for there is treasure hid, even the treasure
232 of your first and second experience of the grace of God
233 toward you. Remember, I say, the word that first laid
234 hold upon you; remember your terrors of conscience,
235 and fear of death and hell; remember also your tears and
236 prayers to God; yea, how you sighed under every hedge
237 for mercy. Have you never a hill Mizar to remember?
238 Have you forgot the close, the milk house, the stable,
239 the barn, and the like, where God did visit your soul?
240 Remember also the Word—the Word, I say, upon which
241 the Lord hath caused you to hope. If you have sinned
242 against light; if you are tempted to blaspheme; if you are
243 down in despair; if you think God fights against you; or if
244 heaven is hid from your eyes, remember it was thus with
245 your father, but out of them all the Lord delivered me.
246
247 I could have enlarged much in this my discourse, of my
248 temptations and troubles for sin; as also of the merciful
249 kindness and working of God with my soul. I could also
250 have stepped into a style much higher than this in which
251 I have here discoursed, and could have adorned all things
252 more than here I have seemed to do, but I dare not. God
253 did not play in convincing of me, the devil did not play in
254 tempting of me, neither did I play when I sunk as into a
255 bottomless pit, when the pangs of hell caught hold upon
8
256 me; wherefore I may not play in my relating of them, but
257 be plain and simple, and lay down the thing as it was. He
258 that liketh it, let him receive it; and he that does not, let
259 him produce a better. Farewell.
260
261 My dear children, the milk and honey are beyond this
262 wilderness, God be merciful to you, and grant that you
263 be not slothful to go in to possess the land.
264 _________________________________________
265 _________________________
266
267 GRACE ABOUNDING TO THE CHIEF OF SINNERS;
268
269 OR, A BRIEF RELATION OF THE EXCEEDING MERCY OF
270 GOD IN CHRIST, TO HIS POOR SERVANT JOHN BUNYAN
271
272 1. In this my relation of the merciful working of God
273 upon my soul, it will not be amiss, if, in the first place, I
274 do, in a few words, give you a hint of my pedigree, and
275 manner of bringing up; that thereby the goodness and
276 bounty of God towards me, may be the more advanced
277 and magnified before the sons of men.
278
279 2. For my descent then, it was, as is well known by
280 many, of a low and inconsiderable generation; my
281 father’s house being of that rank that is meanest and
282 most despised of all the families in the land. Wherefore I
283 have not here, as others, to boast of noble blood, or of a
284 high-born state, according to the flesh; though, all things
285 considered, I magnify the heavenly Majesty, for that by
286 this door He brought me into this world, to partake of
287 the grace and life that is in Christ by the gospel.
9
288
289 3. But yet, notwithstanding the meanness and
290 inconsiderableness of my parents, it pleased God to put
291 it into their hearts to put me to school, to learn both to
292 read and write; the which I also attained, according to
293 the rate of other poor men’s children; though, to my
294 shame I confess, I did soon lose that little I learned, and
295 that even almost utterly, and that long before the Lord
296 did work His gracious work of conversion upon my soul.
297
298 4. As for my own natural life, for the time that I was
299 without God in the world, it was indeed according to the
300 course of this world, and the spirit that now worketh in
301 the children of disobedience’ (Eph. 2.2, 3). It was my
302 delight to be taken captive by the devil at his will’ (II
303 Tim. 2.26). Being filled with all unrighteousness, the
304 which did also so strongly work and put forth itself, both
305 in my heart and life, and that from a child, that I had but
306 few equals, especially considering my years, which were
307 tender, being few, both for cursing, swearing, lying, and
308 blaspheming the holy name of God.
309
310 5. Yea, so settled and rooted was I in these things, that
311 they became as a second nature to me; the which, as I
312 also have with soberness considered since, did so offend
313 the Lord, that even in my childhood He did scare and
314 affright me with fearful dreams, and did terrify me with
315 dreadful visions; for often, after I had spent this and the
316 other day in sin, I have in my bed been greatly afflicted,
317 while asleep, with the apprehensions of devils and wicked
318 spirits, who still, as I then thought, laboured to draw me
319 away with them, of which I could never be rid.
10