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Ecclesiastical writers, previous to Bunyan's time, made an hierarchy of nine orders of celestial spirits, viz., seraphim, cherubim, thrones, dominions, virtues, powers, principalities, archangels, and angels; agreeing with Bunyan as to the angels being the lowest order in these celestial hierarchies. The angels are ministering spirits. May not the glorified saints become angels? Ed.
It was common in many parts of England, as late as the end of the last century, for the farmers to gather their apprentices about them on Sunday afternoons, and to teach them the Catechism. Rude as was Bunyan's home, religious notions of some kind had been early and vividly impressed upon him. He caught, indeed, the ordinary habits of the boys among whom he was thrown.
The author of Bunyan's Life, published in 1690, dates his baptism 'about the year 1653. Life from his Cradle to his Grave, 1700. September 21. In the same year, and about the same period, Oliver Cromwell was made Lord Protector. Upon this coincidence, Mr.
Light afflictions, but for a moment, and which work out for us an eternal weight of glory 'a little hurt on my flesh. If this refers to Bunyan's twelve years' imprisonment under the maul of sophistry, how must his natural temper have been subdued by humility! This club we may suppose to mean human power, under which many godly ministers, in the seventeenth century, suffered greatly.
Bunyan's life is an epitome of that astonishing religious individualism which marked the close of the English Reformation. He was born in the little village of Elstow, near Bedford, in 1628, the son of a poor tinker.
Ed. 'Under her apron, was altered in subsequent editions to 'in her arms. Ed. 'Poor fool'; altered, in later editions, to 'poor soul. Ed. John Gifford, Bunyan's pastor, was a Kentish man, and had been a major in the King's army, a roistering cavalier.
Sometimes in our walks we come across a charred round patch upon the grass in some quiet nook by the roadside, and we know the tinkers have been there, and can imagine all sorts of stories about them. Or sometimes, better still, we find them really there by the roadside boiling a mysterious three- legged black kettle over a fire of sticks. But John Bunyan's father was not this kind of tinker.
I am also for blessing them that curse me, for doing good to them that hate me, and for praying for them that despitefully use me and persecute me; and I have had more peace in the practice of these things than all the world are aware of. The Stuarts, both Charles and James, were grateful for Bunyan's services.
It is seldom that a more curious jumble is found than in the following paragraph: 'The waxen comb of the ancient figures and typical eels is fully matted and rolled up in shining tapers, to illuminate temple students in finding out the honey that couches in the carcass of the slain Lion of the tribe of Judah. There is no fear of Bunyan's indulging his readers with the vagaries of the Jewish rabbis or Christian fathers his converse was limited to the prophets and apostles.
Bunyan's presence at the siege of Leicester, which has been so often reported that it has almost been regarded as an historical truth, must therefore take its place among the baseless creations of a fertile fancy. Bunyan's military career, wherever passed and under whatever standard, was very short. The civil war was drawing near the end of its first stage when he enlisted.
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