Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 23, 2025
"Now, you must know, that before this I had taken much delight in ringing, but my conscience beginning to be tender, I thought such practice was but vain, and therefore forced myself to leave it; yet my mind hankered; wherefore, I would go to the steeple-house and look on, though I durst not ring; but I thought this did not become religion neither; yet I forced myself, and would look on still.
The orator, in the new-born zeal of his amateur Puritanism, stigmatizes the persecuted class as "fanatics and ranters, foaming forth their mad opinions;" compares them to the Mormons and the crazy followers of Mathias; and cites an instance of a poor enthusiast, named Eccles, who, far gone in the "tailor's melancholy," took it into his head that he must enter into a steeple-house pulpit and stitch breeches "in singing time," a circumstance, by the way, which took place in Old England, as a justification of the atrocious laws of the Massachusetts Colony.
Did not the sweet clamour of the wild-fowl, gathering for one rich paean ere they sank into rest, seem to him as God's bells chiming him home in triumph, with peels sweeter and bolder than those of Lincoln or Peterborough steeple-house? Did not the very lapwing, as she tumbled, softly wailing, before him, as she did years ago, seem to welcome the wanderer home in the name of heaven?
In keeping with the sturdy Non-conformist's life, he was interred at the foot of his own orchard, in Siddington, a spot he had selected for a burial-ground long before, where neither the foot of a priest nor the shadow of a steeple-house could rest upon his grave.
Make him a suit of sad-coloured clothes, not cut out after the vanities of the world. Your own would not serve for a bad model. You go to meeting, I presume?" "I have received grace I eschew the steeple-house I receive the blessed crumbs of the Word that fall from the lips of that light of salvation, the Reverend Mr Obadiah Longspinner."
The tower answers to the description of the 'steeple-house' in which Mr. Bunyan was engaged in ringing the bells. This is quite natural, and very common. The men of this world will canonize those for saints, when dead, whom they stigmatized with the vilest names when living.
He attributes to them collectively the following tenets, in addition to those of mere Antipaedobaptism and rigid Separatism: "They put all church-power in the hand of the people;" "They give the power of preaching and celebrating the sacraments to any of their gifted members, out of all office;" "All churches must be demolished: they are glad of so large and public a preaching place as they can purchase, but of a steeple-house they must not hear;" "All tithes and all set stipends are unlawful; their preachers must work with their own hands, and may not go in black clothes."
Now as I went towards Nottingham on a first-day, when I came on the top of a hill in sight of the town, I espied the great steeple-house, and the Lord said unto me, "Thou must go cry against yonder great idol, and against the worshippers therein." Now the Lord's power was so mighty upon me that I could not hold, but was made to cry out.
Some of these itinerants came to Bedford, and in the parish church, called 'the steeple-house, in Bedford town, on the 23d of May, 1656, they met John Bunyan, probably after he had been ministering there. With him they held a public disputation or controversy, to which allusions are made by both parties, and in Bunyan they met a master spirit who confounded them.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking