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Therefore the instant and deep-toned affirmative to the question
"And do you actually believe the presence of the material water in the baptizing of infants or adults is essential to their salvation, so indispensably so that the omission of the water in the Baptism of an infant who should die the day after would exclude that infant from the kingdom of heaven, and whatever else is implied in the loss of salvation?"
I should not be surprised, I say, to hear this question answered with an emphatic,
"Yes, Sir! I do actually believe this, for thus I find it written, and herein begins my right to the name of a Christian, that I have exchanged my reason for the Holy Scriptures: I acknowledge no reason but the Bible."
But as this intrepid respondent, though he may dispense with reason, cannot quite so easily free himself from the obligations of common sense and the canons of logic, – both of which demand consistency, and like consequences from like premisses in rebus ejusdem generis, in subjects of the same class, – I do find myself tempted to wonder, some small deal, at the unscrupulous substitution of a few drops of water sprinkled on the face for the Baptism, that is, immersion or dipping, of the whole person, even if the rivers or running waters had been thought non-essential.
And yet where every word in any and in all the four narratives is so placed under the logical press as it is in this Discourse by Jeremy Taylor, and each and every incident pronounced exemplary, and for the purpose of being imitated, I should hold even this hazardous.
But I must wonder a very great deal, and in downright earnest, at the contemptuous language which the same men employ in their controversies with the Romish Church, respecting the corporal presence in the consecrated bread and wine, and the efficacy of extreme unction.
For my own part, the assertion that what is phenomenally bread and wine is substantially the Body and Blood of Christ, does not shock my common sense more than that a few drops of water sprinkled on the face should produce a momentous change, even a regeneration, in the soul; and does not outrage my moral feelings half as much.
P. S. There is one error of very ill consequence to the reputation of the Christian community, which Taylor shares with the Romish divines, namely, the quoting of opinions, and even of rhetorical flights, from the writings of this and that individual, with 'Saint' prefixed to his name, as expressing the faith of the Church during the first five or six centuries.
Whereas it would not, perhaps, be very difficult to convince an unprejudiced man and a sincere Christian of the impossibility that even the decrees of the General Councils should represent the Catholic faith, that is, the belief essential to, or necessarily consequent on, the faith in Christ common to all the elect.
Notes on The Pilgrim's Progress
I know of no book, the Bible excepted, as above all comparison, which I, according to my judgment and experience, could so safely recommend as teaching and enforcing the whole saving truth according to the mind that was in Christ Jesus, as the Pilgrim's Progress. It is, in my conviction, incomparably the best Summa Theologiæ Evangelicæ ever produced by a writer not miraculously inspired.
June 14, 1830.
It disappointed, nay surprised me, to find Robert Southey express himself so coldly respecting the style and diction of the Pilgrim's Progress. I can find nothing homely in it but a few phrases and single words. The conversation between Faithful and Talkative78 is a model of unaffected dignity and rhythmical flow.
Southey's Life of Bunyan
P. xiv.
"We intended not," says Baxter, "to dig down the banks, or pull up the hedge, and lay all waste and common, when we desired the Prelates' tyranny might cease."
No; for the intention had been under the pretext of abating one tyranny to establish a far severer and more galling in its stead: in doing this the banks had been thrown down, and the hedge destroyed; and while the bestial herd who broke in rejoiced in the havoc, Baxter, and other such erring though good men, stood marvelling at the mischief, which never could have been effected, if they had not mainly assisted in it.
But the question is, would these 'erring good' men have been either willing or able to assist in this work, if the more erring Lauds and Sheldons had not run riot in the opposite direction? And as for the 'bestial herd,' – compare the whole body of Parliamentarians, all the fanatical sects included, with the royal and prelatical party in the reign of Charles II. These were, indeed, a bestial herd. See Baxter's unwilling and Burnet's honest description of the moral discipline throughout the realm under Cromwell.
Ib. p. xv.
They passed with equal facility from strict Puritanism to the utmost license of practical and theoretical impiety, as Antinomians or as Atheists, and from extreme profligacy to extreme superstition in any of its forms.
'They!' How many? and of these how many that would not have been in Bedlam, or fit for it, under some other form? A madman falls into love or religion, and then, forsooth! it is love or religion that drove him mad.
Ib. p. xxi.
In an evil hour were the doctrines of the Gospel sophisticated with questions which should have been left in the Schools for those who are unwise enough to employ themselves in excogitations of useless subtlety.
But what, at any rate, had Bunyan to do with the Schools? His perplexities clearly rose out of the operations of his own active but unarmed mind on the words of the Apostle. If anything is to be arraigned, it must be the Bible in English, the reading of which is imposed (and, in my judgment, well and wisely imposed) as a duty on all who can read. Though Protestants, we are not ignorant of the occasional and partial evils of promiscuous Bible-reading; but we see them vanish when we place them beside the good.
Ib. p. xxiv.
False notions of that corruption of our nature which it is almost as perilous to exaggerate as to dissemble.
I would have said "which it is almost as perilous to misunderstand as to deny."
Ib. p. xli. &c.
But the wickedness of the tinker has been greatly over-charged; and it is taking the language of self-accusation too literally, to pronounce of John Bunyan that he was at any time depraved. The worst of what he was in his worst days is to be expressed in a single word … he had been a blackguard, &c.
All this narrative, with the reflections on the facts, is admirable and worthy of Robert Southey: full of good sense and kind feeling – the wisdom of love.
Ib. p. lxi.
But the Sectaries had kept their countrymen from it (the Common Prayer Book), while they had the power, and Bunyan himself in his sphere laboured to dissuade them from it.
Surely the fault lay in the want, or in the feeble and inconsistent manner, of determining and supporting the proper powers of the Church. In fact, the Prelates and leading divines of the Church were not only at variance with each other, but each with himself.
One party, the more faithful and less modified disciples of the first Reformers, were afraid of bringing anything into even a semblance of a co-ordination with the Scriptures; and, with the terriculum of Popery ever before their eyes, timidly and sparingly allowed to the Church any even subordinate power beyond that of interpreting the Scriptures; that is, of finding the ordinances of the Church implicitly contained in the ordinances of the inspired writers.
But as they did not assume infallibility in their interpretations, it amounted to nothing for the consciences of such men as Bunyan and a thousand others.
The opposite party, Laud, Taylor, and the rest, with a sufficient dislike of the Pope (that is, at Rome) and of the grosser theological corruptions of the Romish Church, yet in their hearts as much averse to the sentiments and proceedings of Luther, Calvin, John Knox, Zuinglius, and their fellows, and proudly conscious of their superior learning, sought to maintain their ordinances by appeals to the Fathers, to the recorded traditions and doctrine of the Catholic priesthood during the first five or six centuries, and contended for so much that virtually the Scriptures were subordinated to the Church, which yet they did not dare distinctly to say out.
The result was that the Anti-Prelatists answered them in the gross by setting at nought their foundation, that is, the worth, authority and value of the Fathers.
So much for their variance with each other. But each vindicator of our established Liturgy and Discipline was divided in himself: he minced this out of fear of being charged with Popery, and that he dared not affirm for fear of being charged with disloyalty to the King as the head of the Church.
The distinction between the Church of which the king is the rightful head, and the Church which hath no head but Christ, never occurred either to them or to their antagonists; and as little did they succeed in appropriating to Scripture what belonged to Scripture, and to the Church what belonged to the Church.
All things in which the temporal is concerned may be reduced to a pentad, namely, prothesis, thesis, antithesis, mesothesis and synthesis. So here —
2 See ante. Ed.
Ib. p. lxiii.
"But there are two ways of obeying," he observed; "the one to do that which I in my conscience do believe that I am bound to do, actively; and where I cannot obey actively, there I am willing to lie down, and to suffer what they shall do unto me."
Genuine Christianity worthy of John and Paul!
Ib. p. lxv.
I am not conscious of any warping power that could have acted for so very long a period; but from sixteen to now, sixty years of age, I have retained the very same convictions respecting the Stuarts and their adherents. Even to Lord Clarendon I never could quite reconcile myself.
How often the pen becomes the tongue of a systematic dream, – a somniloquist! The sunshine, that is, the comparative power, the distinct contra-distinguishing judgment of realities as other than mere thoughts, is suspended. During this state of continuous, not single-mindedness, but one-side-mindedness, writing is manual somnambulism; the somnial magic superinduced on, without suspending, the active powers of the mind.
Ib. p. lxxix.
"They that will have heaven, they must run for it, because the devil, the law, sin, death and hell, follow them. There is never a poor soul that is going to heaven, but the devil, the law, sin, death and hell make after that soul. The devil, your adversary, as a roaring lion, goeth about seeking whom he may devour. And I will assure you the devil is nimble; he can run apace; he is light of foot; he hath overtaken many; he hath turned up their heels, and hath given them an everlasting fall. Also the law! that can shoot a great way: have a care thou keep out of the reach of those great guns the Ten Commandments! Hell also hath a wide mouth," &c.
It is the fashion of the day to call every man, who in his writings or discourses gives a prominence to the doctrines on which, beyond all others, the first Reformers separated from the Romish communion, a Calvinist. Bunyan may have been one, but I have met with nothing in his writings (except his Anti-pædobaptism, to which too he assigns no saving importance) that is not much more characteristically Lutheran; for instance, this passage is the very echo of the chapter on the Law and Gospel, in Luther's Table Talk.
It would be interesting, and I doubt not, instructive, to know the distinction in Bunyan's mind between the devil and hell.
Ib. p. xcvii.
Bunyan concludes with something like a promise of a third part. There appeared one after his death, and it has had the fortune to be included in many editions of the original work.
It is remarkable that Southey should not have seen, or having seen, have forgotten to notice, that this third part is evidently written by some Romish priest or missionary in disguise.
Life of Bunyan 79
The early part of his life was an open course of wickedness.
Southey, in the Life prefixed to his edition of the Pilgrim's Progress, has, in a manner worthy of his head and heart, reduced this oft repeated charge to its proper value. Bunyan was never, in our received sense of the word, wicked. He was chaste, sober, honest; but he was a bitter blackguard; that is, damned his own and his neighbour's eyes on slight or no occasion, and was fond of a row. In this our excellent Laureate has performed an important service to morality. For the transmutation of actual reprobates into saints is doubtless possible; but like the many recorded facts of corporeal alchemy, it is not supported by modern experiments.
Pilgrim's Progress
Part i. p. II.
As I walked through the wilderness of this world.
That in the Apocalypse the wilderness is the symbol of the world, or rather of the worldly life, Bunyan discovered by the instinct of a similar genius. The whole Jewish history, indeed, in all its details is so admirably adapted to, and suggestive of, symbolical use, as to justify the belief that the spiritual application, the interior and permanent sense, was in the original intention of the inspiring Spirit, though it might not have been present, as an object of distinct consciousness, to the inspired writers.
Ib.
… where was a den.
The jail. Mr. Bunyan wrote this precious book in Bedford jail, where he was confined on account of his religion. The following anecdote is related of him. A Quaker came to the jail, and thus addressed him:
"Friend Bunyan, the Lord sent me to seek for thee, and I have been through several counties in search of thee, and now I am glad I have found thee."
To which Mr. Bunyan replied,
"Friend, thou dost not speak the truth in saying the Lord sent thee to seek me; for the Lord well knows that I have been in this jail for some years; and if he had sent thee, he would have sent thee here directly."
Note in Edwards.
This is a valuable anecdote, for it proves, what might have been concluded a priori, that Bunyan was a man of too much genius to be a fanatic. No two qualities are more contrary than genius and fanaticism. Enthusiasm, indeed, 
is almost a synonyme of genius; the moral life in the intellectual light, the will in the reason; and without it, says Seneca, nothing truly great was ever achieved by man.
Ib. p. 12.
And not being able longer to contain, he brake out with a lamentable cry, saying, "What shall I do?"
Reader, was this ever your case? Did you ever see your sins, and feel the burden of them, so as to cry out in the anguish of your soul, What must I do to be saved? If not, you will look on this precious book as a romance or history, which no way concerns you; you can no more understand the meaning of it than if it were wrote in an unknown tongue, for you are yet carnal, dead in your sins, lying in the arms of the wicked one in false security. But this book is spiritual; it can only be understood by spiritually quickened souls who have experienced that salvation in the heart, which begins with a sight of sin, a sense of sin, a fear of destruction and dread of damnation. Such and such only commence Pilgrims from the City of Destruction to the heavenly kingdom.
Note in Edwards.
Most true. It is one thing to perceive and acknowledge this and that particular deed to be sinful, that is, contrary to the law of reason or the commandment of God in Scripture, and another thing to feel sin within us independent of particular actions, except as the common ground of them. And it is this latter without which no man can become a Christian.
Ib. p. 39.
Now whereas thou sawest that as soon as the first began to sweep, the dust did so fly about that the room by him could not be cleansed, but that thou wast almost choked therewith; this is to show thee, that the Law, instead of cleansing the heart (by its working) from sin, doth revive, put strength into, and increase it in the soul, even as it doth discover and forbid it; for it doth not give power to subdue.
See Luther's Table Talk. The chapters in that work named "Law and Gospel," contain the very marrow of divinity. Still, however, there remains much to be done on this subject; namely, to show how the discovery of sin by the Law tends to strengthen the sin; and why it must necessarily have this effect, the mode of its action on the appetites and impetites through the imagination and understanding; and to exemplify all this in our actual experience.
Ib. p. 40.
Then I saw that one came to Passion, and brought him a bag of treasure, and poured it down at his feet; the which he took up, and rejoiced therein, and withal laughed Patience to scorn; but I beheld but awhile, and he had lavished all away, and had nothing left him but rags.
One of the not many instances of faulty allegory in The Pilgrim's Progress; that is, it is no allegory. The beholding "but awhile," and the change into "nothing but rags," is not legitimately imaginable. A longer time and more interlinks are requisite. It is a hybrid compost of usual images and generalized words, like the Nile-born nondescript, with a head or tail of organized flesh, and a lump of semi-mud for the body. Yet, perhaps, these very defects are practically excellencies in relation to the intended readers of The Pilgrim's Progress.
Ib. p. 43.
The Interpreter answered, "This is Christ, who continually, with the oil of his grace, maintains the work already begun in the heart; by the means of which, notwithstanding what the Devil can do, the souls of his people prove gracious still. And in that thou sawest that the man stood behind the wall to maintain the fire, this is to teach thee, that it is hard for the tempted to see how this work of grace is maintained in the soul."
This is beautiful; yet I cannot but think it would have been still more appropriate, if the waterpourer had been a Mr. Legality, a prudentialist offering his calculation of consequences as the moral antidote to guilt and crime; and if the oil-instillator, out of sight and from within, had represented the corrupt nature of man, that is, the spiritual will corrupted by taking up a nature into itself.
Ib.
What, then, has the sinner who is the subject of grace no hand in keeping up the work of grace in the heart? No! It is plain Mr. Bunyan was not an Arminian.
Note in Edwards.
If by metaphysics we mean those truths of the pure reason which always transcend, and not seldom appear to contradict, the understanding, or (in the words of the great Apostle) spiritual verities which can only be spiritually discerned – and this is the true and legitimate meaning of metaphysics, [Greek: metà tà physikà] – then I affirm, that this very controversy between the Arminians and the Calvinists, in which both are partially right in what they affirm, and both wholly wrong in what they deny, is a proof that without metaphysics there can be no light of faith.
Ib. p. 45.
I left off to watch and be sober; I laid the reins upon the neck of my lusts
This single paragraph proves, in opposition to the assertion in the preceding note in Edwards, that in Bunyan's judgment there must be at least a negative co-operation of the will of man with the divine grace, an energy of non-resistance to the workings of the Holy Spirit. But the error of the Calvinists is, that they divide the regenerate will in man from the will of God, instead of including it.
Ib. p. 49.
" So I saw in my dream, that just as Christian came up with the Cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders, and fell from off his back, and began to tumble; and so continued to do, till it came to the mouth of the sepulchre, where it fell in, and I saw it no more."
We know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding (or discernment of reason) that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols.
1. John, v. 20, 21.
Alas! how many Protestants make a mental idol of the Cross, scarcely less injurious to the true faith in the Son of God than the wooden crosses and crucifixes of the Romanists! – and this, because they have not been taught that Jesus was both the Christ and the great symbol of Christ.
Strange, that we can explain spiritually, what to take up the cross of Christ, to be crucified with Christ, means; – yet never ask what the Crucifixion itself signifies, but rest satisfied in the historic image.
That one declaration of the Apostle, that by wilful sin we crucify the Son of God afresh, might have roused us to nobler thoughts.
Ib. p. 52.
And besides, say they, if we get into the way, what matters which way we get in? If we are in, we are in. Thou art but in the way, who, as we perceive, came in at the gate: and we are also in the way, that came tumbling over the wall: wherein now is thy condition better than ours?
The allegory is clearly defective, inasmuch as 'the way' represents two diverse meanings;
1. the outward profession of Christianity, and
2. the inward and spiritual grace.
But it would be very difficult to mend it.
1830.
In this instance (and it is, I believe, the only one in the work,) the allegory degenerates into a sort of pun, that is, in the two senses of the word 'way,' and thus supplies Formal and Hypocrite with an argument which Christian cannot fairly answer, or rather one to which Bunyan could not make his Christian return the proper answer without contradicting the allegoric image.
For the obvious and only proper answer is: No! you are not in the same 'way' with me, though you are walking on the same 'road.'
But it has a worse defect, namely, that it leaves the reader uncertain as to what the writer precisely meant, or wished to be understood, by the allegory.
Did Bunyan refer to the Quakers as rejecting the outward Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper?
If so, it is the only unspiritual passage in the whole beautiful allegory, the only trait of sectarian narrow-mindedness, and, in Bunyan's own language, of legality.
But I do not think that this was Bunyan's intention. I rather suppose that he refers to the Arminians and other Pelagians, who rely on the coincidence of their actions with the Gospel precepts for their salvation, whatever the ground or root of their conduct may be; who place, in short, the saving virtue in the stream, with little or no reference to the source.
But it is the faith acting in our poor imperfect deeds that alone saves us; and even this faith is not ours, but the faith of the Son of God in us.
I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Gal. ii. 20.
Illustrate this by a simile. Labouring under chronic bronchitis, I am told to inhale chlorine as a specific remedy; but I can do this only by dissolving a saturated solution of the gas in warm water, and then breathing the vapour. Now what the aqueous vapour or steam is to the chlorine, that our deeds, our outward life, 
is to faith.
Ib. p. 55.
And the other took directly up the way to Destruction, which led him into a wide field, full of dark mountains, where he stumbled and fell, and rose no more.
This requires a comment. A wide field full of mountains and of dark mountains, where Hypocrite stumbled and fell! The images here are unusually obscure.
Ib. p. 70.
They showed him Moses' rod, the hammer and nail with which Jael slew Sisera.
I question whether it would be possible to instance more strikingly the power of a predominant idea (that true mental kaleidoscope with richly-coloured glass) on every object brought before the eye of the mind through its medium, than this conjunction of Moses' rod with the hammer of the treacherous assassin Jael, and similar encomiastic references to the same detestable murder, by Bunyan and men like Bunyan, good, pious, purely-affectioned disciples of the meek and holy Jesus; yet the erroneous preconception that whatever is uttered by a Scripture personage is, in fact, uttered by the infallible Spirit of God, makes Deborahs of them all.
But what besides ought we to infer from this and similar facts? Surely, that the faith in the heart overpowers and renders innocent the errors of the understanding and the delusions of the imagination, and that sincerely pious men purchase, by inconsistency, exemption from the practical consequences of particular errors.
Ib. p. 76.
All this is true, and much more which thou hast left out, &c. This is the best way; to own Satan's charges, if they be true; yea, to exaggerate them also, to exalt the riches of the grace of Christ above all, in pardoning all of them freely.
Note in Edwards.
That is, to say what we do not believe to be true! Will ye speak wickedly for God, and talk deceitfully for him? said righteous Job.
Ib. p. 83.
One thing I would not let slip: I took notice that now poor Christian was so confounded, that he did not know his own voice; and thus I perceived it: just when he was come over against the mouth of the burning pit, one of the wicked ones got behind him, and stepped up softly to him, and whisperingly suggested many grievous blasphemies to him, which he verily thought had proceeded from his own mind.
There is a very beautiful letter of Archbishop Leighton's to a lady under a similar distemperature of the imagination80. In fact, it can scarcely not happen under any weakness and consequent irritability of the nerves to persons continually occupied with spiritual self-examination. No part of the pastoral duties requires more discretion, a greater practical psychological science. In this, as in what not?
Luther is the great model; ever reminding the individual that not he, but Christ, is to redeem him; and that the way to be redeemed is to think with will, mind, and affections on Christ, and not on himself. I am a sin-laden being, and Christ has promised to loose the whole burden if I but entirely trust in him.
To torment myself with the detail of the noisome contents of the fardel will but make it stick the closer, first to my imagination and then to my unwilling will.
Ib.
For that he perceived God was with them, though in that dark and dismal state; and why not, thought he, with me, though by reason of the impediment that attends this place, I cannot perceive it? But it may be asked, Why doth the Lord suffer his children to walk in such darkness? It is for his glory: it tries their faith in him, and excites prayer to him: but his love abates not in the least towards them, since he lovingly inquires after them, Who is there among you that feareth the Lord and walketh in darkness, and hath no light? Then he gives most precious advice to them: Let him trust in the Lord, and stay himself upon his God.
Yes! even in the sincerest believers, being men of reflecting and inquiring minds, there will sometimes come a wintry season, when the vital sap of faith retires to the root, that is, to atheism of the will. But though he slay me, yet will I cling to him.
Ib. p. 85.
And as for the other (Pope), though he be yet alive, he is, by reason of age, and also of the many shrewd brushes that he met with in his younger days, grown so crazy and stiff in his joints, that he can now do little more than sit in his cave's mouth, grinning at pilgrims as they go by, and biting his nails because he cannot come at them.
O that Blanco White would write in Spanish the progress of a pilgrim from the Pope's cave to the Evangelist's wicket-gate and the Interpreter's house!
1836.
Ib. p. 104.
And let us assure ourselves that, at the day of doom, men shall be judged according to their fruit. It will not be said then, "Did you believe?" but "Were you doers or talkers only?" and accordingly shall be judged.
All the doctors of the Sorbonne could not have better stated the Gospel medium between Pelagianism and Antinomian-Solifidianism, more properly named Sterilifidianism. It is, indeed, faith alone that saves us; but it is such a faith as cannot be alone. Purity and beneficence are the epidermis, faith and love the cutis vera of Christianity. Morality is the outward cloth, faith the lining; both together form the wedding-garment given to the true believer in Christ, even his own garment of righteousness, which, like the loaves and fishes, he mysteriously multiplies. The images of the sun in the earthly dew-drops are unsubstantial phantoms; but God's thoughts are things: the images of God, of the Sun of Righteousness, in the spiritual dew-drops are substances, imperishable substances.
Ib. p. 154.
Fine-spun speculations and curious reasonings lead men from simple truth and implicit faith into many dangerous and destructive errors. The Word records many instances of such for our caution. Be warned to study simplicity and godly sincerity. Note in Edwards on Doubting Castle.
And pray what does implicit faith lead men into? Transubstantiation and all the abominations of priest-worship. And where is the Scriptural authority for this implicit faith? Assuredly not in St. John, who tells us that Christ's life is and manifests itself in us as the light of man; that he came to bring light as well as immortality. Assuredly not in St. Paul, who declares all faith imperfect and perilous without insight and understanding; who prays for us that we may comprehend the deep things even of God himself. For the Spirit discerned, and the Spirit by which we discern, are both God; the Spirit of truth through and in Christ from the Father.
Mournful are the errors into which the zealous but unlearned preachers among the dissenting Calvinists have fallen respecting absolute election, and discriminative, yet reasonless, grace: – fearful this divorcement of the Holy Will, the one only Absolute Good, that, eternally affirming itself as the I AM, eternally generateth the Word, the absolute Being, the Supreme Reason, the Being of all Truth, the Truth of all Being: – fearful the divorcement from the reason; fearful the doctrine which maketh God a power of darkness, instead of the God of light, the Father of the light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world!
