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WILLIAM KIFFIN was born in 1616, and lost both his parents in the Plague when but nine years old. William but just escaped death, having nine plaque-boils on his body. At thirteen he became an apprentice to John Lilburn, the noted brewer, but at fifteen he left his master, and wandering about the streets of London in a melancholy manner, he passed with the crowd into St. Antholius’s Church, where Mr. Foxley preached on the Fifth Commandment. He thought the preacher knew his case, so exactly did he describe his duty to his master, and he quietly returned home. After that, he heard Norton, the Puritan, preach from ‘There is no peace to the wicked,’ and was deeply stirred, but on hearing Davenport, in Coleman Street, from ‘The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin,’ he says: ‘I found my fears to vanish, and my heart filled with love to Jesus.’ After the manner of Bunyan he alternated for months between hope and fear, temptation and triumph, until he joined the Church of which Lathrop was pastor. After enduring much persecution for holding religious meetings in Southwark, and being imprisoned, in 1643, he went to Holland for a time, and made a considerable sum of money in business before he returned. He went to Holland, again in 1645, and returned worth several thousand pounds, on which he entered the shipping business, meanwhile preaching the Gospel without charge.

The government made him an assessor of taxes for Middlesex, and he reached great influence in the community, although he had become a Baptist in 1638. When the controversy arose in Spilsbury’s Church on the propriety of admitting unimmersed persons to preach, he established the Devonshire Square Church, 1640, and became its pastor. Soon after he was arrested and committed to prison. On a Sunday afternoon between sixty and seventy Baptists were met for worship, when six of them were arrested, brought before Parliament, admonished and discharged, and on the next Sunday four peers attended their worship, one of them probably being Lord Brooke, who favored dissenters. It is quite likely that this led Featley to challenge them to a disputation before Sir John Lenthal, the justice who brought them before the lords, and who called Featley’s book, Kiffin’s Coffin. Featley and Edwards, the author of ‘Gangræna,’ assailed him bitterly. Kiffin’s wealth exposed him to wanton persecution, in which his foes expected fines or bribes. In 1655 he was brought before the lord mayor at Guildhall, charged with preaching ‘that the baptism of infants is unlawful,’ and Monk afterward annoyed him greatly, by sending him to the guard at St. Paul’s. His life was long, for he served the Devonshire Square Church over half a century; which spread through the reign of five monarchs, James I, the two Charles, James II and William III, besides the Protectorate of the two Cromwells. And it was full of trouble, for he was charged again and again with almost every conceivable plot against the government. Yet nothing was ever proved against him; and in 1701, he died at the age of 86, also full of honors. In sagacity, manners, godliness, labors and wisdom, he ranked as the leader of his denomination. Thurlow, Strype, Bumet and many others have honored his name with a high place in history, and Macaulay says of him: ‘Great as was the authority of Bunyan with the Baptists, William Kiffin’s was greater still.’

The same may be said today of his molding influence upon American Baptists more than a century and two thirds after his death. Kiffin was the great champion of the Baptists in his day. Robert Pool, one of the sharpest Presbyterian controversialists of that period, made a savage attack upon the Baptists, and Kiffin came to their rescue in his reply, London, 1645. Pool demanded: By what Scripture warrant Baptists separated from congregations where the Word and Sacraments were truly dispensed. Kiffin denied that they were so dispensed in the congregations from which they separated, otherwise they would be guilty of schism; then demanded: ‘What Gospel institution have you for the baptizing of children, which was a pure invention of men and not an institution of Jesus Christ? When you have dispensed the word and power of Christ for the cutting off all drunkards, fornicators, covetous, swearers, liars, and all abominable and filthy persons, and stand together in the faith, a pure lump of believers, gathered and united according to the institution of Christ; we, I hope, shall join with you in the same congregation and fellowship, and nothing shall separate us but death.’ Pool asked on what Scripture authority they separated from other Reformers and framed new congregations of their own? Kiffin replied: That Baptist churches existed before episcopacy, but Pool had withdrawn from Reformed Episcopacy. ‘Where, as you tell us of a great work of reformation, we entreat you to show us wherein the greatness of it doth consist, for as yet we see no greatness unless it be in the vast expense of money and time. For what great thing is it to change Episcopacy into Presbytery, and a Book of Common Prayer into a Directory, and to exalt men from livings of £100 a year to places of £400 per annum? But where have they yet framed their State Church according to the pattern of Christ and his Apostles?’ And when Pool pressed his point: On what Scripture ground the Baptists vindicated themselves from the sin of schism in defection from the Reformed Churches? Kiffin gave this home-thrust: The Presbyterians held that the baptism and ordination of Rome were valid, and that she was right in exacting tithes and state-pay, and yet held themselves guiltless of schism in leaving Rome. But when they shall return, ‘as dutiful sons to their mother, we will return to you or hold ourselves bound to show just grounds to the contrary.’

At this time the Baptists of England generally distinguished themselves from the Pedobaptists as those of ‘the baptised way,’ because they held that sprinkled folk were not baptized at all. But those of this ‘way’ divided on the subject of communion, part of them being open communion, led by Bunyan, Jessey and others, while the great majority of them were strict in their communion. Kiffin led this wing of ‘the baptized way,’ being followed by Denny, Thomas Paul, Henry D’Anvers and others. The controversy was hot, and in his ‘Right to Church Communion,’ Kiffin says in reply to Bunyan:

‘If unbaptized persons may be admitted to all church privileges, does not such a practice plainly suppose that it [baptism] is unnecessary? For to what purpose is it to be baptized, may one reason with himself, if he may enjoy all church privileges without it? The Baptists, if once such a belief prevails, would be easily tempted to lay aside that reproached practice, which envious men have unjustly derided and aspersed, of being dipt, that is, baptized, and challenge their church communion by virtue of their faith only. And such as baptized infants would be satisfied to discontinue the practice when once they are persuaded that their children may be regular church members without it, for if it be superfluous, discreet and thrifty people would willingly be rid of the trouble of christening-feasts, as they call them, and all the appurtenances thereto belonging. So that in a short time we should have neither old nor young baptized, and by consequence, be in a like condition to lose one of the sacraments, which would easily make way for the loss of the other, both having an equal sanction in Scripture. And the arguments that disarmed the one would destroy the other, and consequently all ordinances, and modes of worship, and lastly religion itself.’

No morsel of reasoning in the English language has ever disposed of the essence of the Communion question so fully as this; and if his proposition had been intended as a prophecy concerning Bunyan’s Church itself, it could not have been more strictly fulfilled to the letter, in that it now discards baptism entirely as necessary to the right of church fellowship.

HANSERD KNOLLYS was born in Lincolnshire, 1598, was educated at Cambridge and ordained in the Church of England by the Bishop of Peterborough. He was a thorough scholar, and published many works, amongst which were grammars of the Greek, Latin and Hebrew languages. After holding a living at Humberstone, in Leicestershire; for three years, he resigned it on account of objections affecting the principles and practices of the Established Church.

In 1638 he left England to escape persecution, and arrived in New England, becoming pastor of a Church in Dover, then known as Piscataqua, New Hampshire. He returned to England in 1641, and became a very popular preacher in the various Churches of London. But one day, preaching in Bow Church, Cheapside, he spoke against infant baptism, which gave such offense that he was thrown into prison. On. his release he went into Suffolk, where he was mobbed as an ‘Anabaptist,’ and after being stoned was sent to London on a warrant to answer to Parliament. Last of all he established a Baptist Church, meeting in Great St. Helen’s, London, where he seldom preached to less than a thousand people. There, says Wilson, he gave great offense to his Presbyterian brethren, ‘and the landlord was prevailed upon to warn him out of the place.’ After this he preached to large congregations in Finsbury Fields, till he was ‘summoned before a committee of divines in the Queen’s Court, Westminster.’ He had written a letter on the intolerance of the Presbyterian divines in London, to a friend in Norwich, which found its way to London and appeared against him. Again and again he was forbidden to preach, and as often he disregarded the charge and was pursued or imprisoned. At times he fled to Wales, Holland and Germany, to escape his foes. But his life was spared to the ripe age of ninety-three, and he preached the word in all parts of the kingdom; on Sundays generally delivering three or four sermons, and as many during the week, for a period of forty years. When in prison he had to content himself with one a day. Because of his great meekness and learning he won many distinguished persons to Baptist views. Amongst these was Dr. De Veil, a foreign divine, of the Gallican Church, and professor of divinity in the University of Anjou. On abjuring Rome he fled to Holland first and then to London, where he became intimate with Bishops Stillingfleet, Compton Lloyd, Tillotson, Sharp and Patrick. While passing his Minor Prophets, Solomon’s Song, Matthew and Mark, through the press, he found some Baptist writings in the library of Compton, the Bishop of London, the examination of which led him to seek the counsel of Knollys, and he united with the Baptists, to the great shock of the Bishops, all except Tillotson, who had been brought up a Baptist himself and knew how to value men of convictions. Knollys also immersed that great Oriental scholar, Henry Jessey, who spent his life upon a new translation of the Bible, a translation which, though not completed, was of great value to other scholars.

Those mentioned above were all Calvinistic Baptists, who were in a minority in and about London, but the General Baptists had men of equal piety, learning, and force of character amongst them. One of these was John Tombes, educated at Oxford, where he became a lecturer at the age of twenty-one. Leaving the university, he became famous as a Puritan preacher; and being satisfied at Oxford that infant baptism was an invention of men, his convictions were deepened at Bristol. In 1643 he went to London to consult the most famous of the Presbyterian divines assembled there; they rehearsed to him their stock arguments, and rejecting them as hollow, he was baptized upon a confession of Christ and became a Baptist pastor at Bewdly, near Kidderminster. He had severe controversies with Baxter and others on Baptist positions, and was pronounced by Baxter ‘the most learned writer against infant baptism.’ He wrote also more than a score of volumes on other subjects. Although a Baptist, such was his scholarship and intellectual power that in 1653 Parliament appointed him one of the ‘triers,’ or commissioners, to examine and approve those who were to exercise the public ministry in the national Church. After the Restoration he left the ministry and conformed to the Church as a lay member, claiming the right to do so without altering his opinions, and that after he had kept poor Baxter’s hands so full for many years.

HENRY DENSE was educated at Cambridge, and became a minister in the Established Church, about the year 1630. He was a stout Puritan, but his convictions led him to unite with the Baptists, and he was immersed into the fellowship of the Bell Alley Church, London, by Mr. Lamb, in 1643, and entered the Baptist ministry at once. He attained great fame as a disputant and as a ‘very affectionate’ preacher. He not only met Dr. Gunning in debate, but answered Featley’s ridiculous book. Persecution followed him everywhere, and he suffered much for Christ, but planted many Churches, chiefly in the eastern counties. He was heroic in following his convictions of duty wherever they led him, and withal he entered Cromwell’s army in obedience to the demands of his patriotism. There he served as a ‘cornet,’ or cavalry officer, meanwhile preaching to the soldiers; but mutinied with the twelve regiments in Oxfordshire, who demanded a free government, after the death of Charles. Some of his companions were punished with death, but he was pardoned. He wept bitterly when his life was spared, and afterward gave a history of the whole transaction. His death soon followed the Restoration and his memory was greatly honored.

HENRY JESSEY was a famous Baptist of those times. He was a Yorkshireman, educated at Cambridge and ordained in the Established Church in 1627. He refused to conform to all the Romish notions which Laud set up as the standard of clerical orthodoxy. In 1637 he became pastor of the Independent Church which Henry Jacob had formed in 1616. From time to time members of this Church adopted Baptist views and separated from it, as we have seen in the cases of Spilsbury and Kiffin. These events turned his attention to the subject of infant baptism, which, after consultation with many leading Pedobaptist divines, he concluded was unscriptural, and in 1645 he was immersed by Knollys. He differed with the Confession of the Eight Churches on the question of communion, and published the first work known in England in favor of open communion. He was endowed with noble abilities and enriched with high Christian graces. After the Restoration he endured great persecution with holy fortitude, and died in prison in 1663. A letter of his informs us that one of the London Churches, meeting in Great Allhallows, received two hundred members by baptism between the years 1650-53; a fact which illustrates the rapid increase of Baptists not only in London and Kent, but also in the middle and northern counties.

The Fifth Monarchy men waxed bold and numerous during the latter years of the Commonwealth. It was but natural that the somber and fiery religious spirit of those times should betray ill-balanced intellects into fanaticism. New sects sprang up in a day and disappeared as quickly, and amongst them the Fifth Monarchy men. They were Premillenarians, with this modification of the chiliastic views which have been held by some in various ages, namely: they believed that Christ was about to come and begin his millennial reign at once, and that they were divinely commissioned to set up his kingdom on earth. A few of them were disposed to effect this revolution by the sword, but the greater part favored peaceful measures. A meeting was called in London for debate concerning ‘the laws, subjects, extent, rise, time, place, offices and officers of the Fifth Monarchy;’ but probably the authorities suppressed it as mischievous, for it does not appear that it was held. The proposal to make it ‘public’ and to hear ‘debate’ indicate the pacific ideas of the leaders, and General Harrison was reported to be in sympathy with the movement, with a few other Baptists. But the Calvinistic Baptists were prompt to protest against the measure; they, with their brethren, the General Baptists, believing that the Prince of Peace will establish his kingdom without the sword. Just as the Protector’s life was drawing to a close these misguided men. chose Thomas Venner as their leader. He was a wine-cooper, and created an insurrection. He became nearly insane at the thought of monarchy restored in Charles II, and determined to destroy royalty as opposed to Christ. He rallied followers and armed them, adopted a banner on which was the lion of the tribe of Judah, with the motto, ‘Who shall rouse him up?’ and then proclaimed Jesus as King. The military were called out, and in a fight these men were slain or taken prisoners; Venner and fourteen others being hanged and quartered for treason. The fact that Venner and fifty men issued out of the Baptist meeting-house in Coleman Street has associated this mad proceeding with the General Baptists as a people, but very unjustly. Venner was not a Baptist; on the contrary, he threatened them that if he succeeded he would show them whether infant baptism were in the Bible, possibly as they had found it there so often, by the light of fagots. Mr. Lamb, the pastor of the Coleman Street Church, at once united with the London Baptists in issuing a strong appeal to the world, showing that they were bound in conscience to render to Caesar his right, and had no sympathy with Venner’s doings. This is clear enough from the fact that only fifty men issued out of the meeting-house with Venner, and yet Lamb’s Church was ‘by far the largest’ Baptist Church in. London. The British public believed the disclaimer of the Baptists, but not so the perfidious monarch; urged by his minister, Edward Hyde, Lord Clarendon, who hated the Baptists for their espousal of the Parliamentary cause, he made this insignificant piece of rant the pretext for a series of abuses upon the Independents, Quakers and Baptists, which will disgrace his name for ever. While some few Baptists believed in the doctrine of Christ’s millennial reign, there is no satisfactory evidence that one of the fifty men were of their number, or that a single Baptist took part in the plot. Harrison was committed to the Tower for supposed complicity with it, but Garlyle, who studied this period with great thoroughness, gives it as his opinion that ‘Harrison (was) hardly connected with the thing except as a well-wisher.’ Froude sees the matter in much the same light, for he says: ‘With the Fifth Monarchy men abroad, every chapel, except those of the Baptists, would have been a magazine of explosives. The Baptists and Quakers might have been trusted to discourage violence, but it was impossible to distinguish among the various sects.’ [Men of Letters, Bunyan, p. 46]

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A HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS

By Thomas Armitage

1890

[Note from the publisher. This valuable out-of-print book was scanned from an original printing and carefully formatted for electronic publication by Way of Life Literature. We extend a special thanks to our friend Brian Snider for his labor of love in diligently scanning the material so that it might be available to God's people in these days. For a catalog of other books, both current and old, in print and electronic format, contact us at P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061-0368, [e-mail] (e-mail), http://wayoflife.org/~dcloud (web site).]

[Table of Contents for "A History of the Baptists" by Thomas Armitage]

BAPTISTS OF GREAT BRITAIN

JOHN BUNYAN

We must now look at the Baptists after the Restoration, the most noted of whom is JOHN BUNYAN. He was born at Elstow, near Bedford, in 1628, the famous year in which Charles I was forced to yield the Petition of Right. His education was next to nothing, yet he was favored above the boys of his village, for he attended the grammar school founded by Sir William Harper at Bedford; how long is not known, but at the best his educational attainments were quite scanty. Nature had given him a warm, light, frolicsome heart, which held him ready for any sort of glee and mischief, and under reversed circumstances subjected him not only to the pensive, but the desponding. He early feared God and longed to love him, but his giddiness and love of fun drew him into sin, until he became addicted to wrong-doing, principally lying and swearing. Because his father and himself were tinkers, and Gipsies in England have been tinkers from time immemorial, he was long supposed to be of this alien blood. But the records of his family are now traceable to about A.D. 1200, and the name itself, as then known, Buignon, indicates that the family was of Norman origin. This great descendant of that house was a man of intense feeling on all subjects. The religion of his times was of the most earnest nature, emotional, deep, almost fanatical, and when Bunyan’s heart began to yearn after the Lord Jesus, his whole nature was inflamed. If we should take his own version of his case literally, he would compel us to believe that he was a sad scamp in youth and a desperate villain in early manhood. He tells us, however, that he was never drunk nor unchaste, and certainly he was never a thief nor a highwayman. He broke the Sabbath, loved dancing, ball-playing, bell-ringing and rough sports generally, and for these, with lying and profanity, his passionate self-accusings threw him into a deep and terrible sense of guilt. His agonies and conflicts continued for months; he dreamed frightful dreams and saw alarming day visions, heard warning voices and read his doom written in letters of fire. Meanwhile, he was a soldier in the civil war, and at its close married a poor, but godly, orphan girl. Froude says that his marriage speaks much for his character, for ‘had he been a dissolute, idle scamp, it is unlikely that a respectable woman would have become his wife when he was a mere boy.’ At any rate, his soul-conflict not only continued, but deepened, until his sufferings became unbearable, and he concluded that he was too wicked to be saved and must be lost. One day, when walking alone in the country, a flood of light broke upon his mind with these words: ‘He hath made peace through the blood of his cross;’ when, he says: ‘I saw that the justice of God and my sinful soul could embrace and kiss each other. I was ready to swoon, not with grief and trouble, but with solid joy and peace.’ Soon after this, 1653, Mr, Gifford immersed him in the river Ouse, when he became a member of the Baptist Church at Bedford, as we shall see more fully in the next chapters; and in 1655 he entered the ministry of the Gospel.

Lord Macaulay speaks thus: ‘The history of Bunyan is the history of a most excitable mind in an age of excitement.’ While this consideration does not throw light upon the source and sweep of Bunyan’s genius, it may and does suggest a weighty reason why it took the hue and channel that it selected for its expression, both in his personal history and in the sixty works of his pen. The sixty years of his natural life ran through a long list of the most remarkable events of the English annals. In his day the High Commission and the Star Chamber brought before his mind the most vital question of human rights. This Court was empowered on mere suspicion to administer an oath, by which the prisoner was bound to reveal his inward thoughts, opinions and convictions, and thus accuse himself on pain of death. Every day filled Bunyan’s ears with some new, romantic and blood-stirring event. He held his breath and turned pale when he heard that Charles lost not only his crown but his head as a traitor, when Cromwell drew the sword for British liberties and progress, when Cavaliers and Roundheads flew in every direction, when the Commonwealth was nourished with the blood of his brethren, and when Naseby, Edgewood and Marston Moor decreed, that no irresponsible tyrant should ever mount the throne again. He was familiar with the mad plots of Oates, Dangerfield and Venner, with the Conventicle Act, the ejection of two thousand men of God from the pulpits in a day, the faithlessness of the second Charles, the hypocrisies of James, the Butcheries of Claverhouse, the infamous mockery of justice in Jeffreys, and the fall of the perfidious Stuarts. The smoke of burning martyrs filled the air over his head, and he saw the blows for freedom which were struck by Hampden and Pym, Sidney and Russell. Howard, the great philanthropist, a hundred years afterward, walked the same streets and country roads that Bunyan trod, and, it is said, caught his spirit of prison reform largely from the ‘Den’ in which Bunyan had lain. The great singers of his day were Herbert and Milton, Dryden and Shakespeare. And the mighty preachers were Howe and Henry, Charnock and Owen, Tillotson and South, Sherlock and Stillingfleet. Bunyan’s observation was keen and extensive; he lived in the very heart of England, was an actor in some of its most exciting scenes, and it is impossible but that the spirit of the times moved him at every step. In his day, English literature had become thoroughly imbued with all the elements of poetry and fiction; nay, even of romance. These had come down through high Italian authorship. Not only had the colloquial English descended through Wycliffe, and its higher literature through Chaucer, but they had been largely blended in the Bible, with which Bunyan was most familiar; so that simple, idiomatic Saxon English was prepared to his hand; being full of image and awe, of wonder and grandeur, which he could express to the popular mind in a very racy style. Unconsciously he felt the force of his mother-tongue; it stimulated his genius, became the groundwork of his thought and the model of his utterance; a choice which places him side by side with Shakespeare and the English Bible, as one of the great conservators of our powerful language.

In a burst of unreasoning loyalty the English people, in 1660, placed Charles II on the throne, without exacting proper guarantees for that liberty which they had bought with their own blood. He had given his word on honor to protect all his subjects in their religious freedom; and then, like a true Stuart, he sold that honor to his lust of power. Hardly was he seated on the throne when Venner’s petty insurrection furnished a pretext for vengeance upon all his opponents, and especially those in the dissenting sects, no matter how much they proved their loyalty. Amongst the first victims of his tyranny we find Bunyan, charged with ‘devilishly’ and ‘perniciously’ abstaining from going to church, ‘as a common upholder of meetings contrary to the laws of the king,’ and with ‘teaching men to worship contrary to law.’ He was sentenced to Bedford jail for three months, and at the end of that time to be transported if he refused to conform. But his judges kept him in prison for six years: and when released he instantly began to preach again, whereupon he was imprisoned for another six years. Being released still again, he began to preach at once, and was arrested for the third time, but was detained only a few months. His judges were harsh with him, but his real oppressors for these twelve weary years were the king and Parliament, who made it a crime for any one to preach but a priest of the Church of England. It was long supposed that he was imprisoned mostly in the town jail of Bedford, on the bridge over the river Ouse, but it is now clear that his long imprisonment was in the county jail, where his anonymous biographer of 1700 says, that he heard him preach to sixty dissenters and three ministers. There is good ground for believing, however, that he passed a considerable period in the jail on the bridge, and that he wrote his Pilgrim’s Progress there.

While we are obliged to reprehend the base injustice which kept this grand preacher pining in a prison, however leniently treated, the fact is forced upon us, that the wrath of man was made to praise God; for had not his zealous servant been compelled to this solitude, we should not have had that masterpiece of literature. His ‘Holy War’ and other productions would have brought down to us a literary name for him of no mean order, but his ‘Pilgrim’ is a book for all people and all time. Bunyan’s great power is in allegory and this form of it is unique, because its facts and dress are not fantastic, but are inherent in man’s common sense and moral nature. His ‘Pilgrim’ is full of truth--this he drew from the Bible; of history, which he took from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs; of terse English, which he learned from Spenser and Chaucer; of human nature, which he borrowed from himself and his circumstances; of hallowed conviction, which he caught from the Holy Spirit; and of uncrippled boldness, which was inspired by his love of soul-liberty. In earlier times some treated this great book with sneer and scorn, but in later days the first critics have vied with each other to exhaust upon it the language of eulogy. Dr. Johnson, Coleridge, Arnold, Macaulay and Froude have pronounced it equally fit for the plowman and the philosopher, the peer and the peasant; and the Queen of England thinks ‘Christian,’ its great character, a pattern for her grandchildren to copy in the palace. The glorious truth which made the heart of Bunyan beat quicker under the tinker’s doublet has since given ‘heart’s-ease’ to many a throbbing bosom which heaves under the purple. And the humbler walks of life, from old age to childhood, have made it next to the Bible, the story of their lives. In all souls it has created visions, interpreted dreams, and awakened ‘the joy that made me write.’ The eight editions through which it passed in thirty years gave but small promise of the progress of its pilgrimage since. No book has been rendered into so many languages, except the word of God itself. To many who are now ‘high in bliss upon the bliss of God,’ it first set ‘the joy-bells ringing in the city of habitation.’ The pauper and beggar of London have read it in thoroughfares and squares, and threaded their way by its guidance through Vanity Fair. The Italian has crouched beneath the shade of the Vatican, and trembled to look up lest he should see Giant Pope. The dusky Burman has taken it into the deep jungle, to show him stepping-stones through the Slough of Despond. The darker African has stolen with it into a by-path of the wild woods, and, under the palm-tree, has dreamed of the white man’s heaven. The son of Abraham and the daughter of Jerusalem have read its pages to the sigh of the wind amongst the olives and the ripple of Kedron; and the Hindoo, with Bunyan in his hand, has resolved on courage when he crossed the ‘deep river;’ for angels, such as do not wait upon the banks of his sacred Ganges, beckon him over.

No wonder that when Mr. Brown, the minister of Bunyan’s meeting, lately visited Scotland, a worthy Highlander was startled when introduced to him as ‘Bunyan’s successor.’ Starting back and measuring him from head to foot, he exclaimed: ‘Eh, mon! but ye’ll ha hard work to fill his shoon!’ Dean Stanley says: ‘When in early life I lighted on the passage where the Pilgrim is taken into the House Beautiful to see "the pedigree of the Ancient of Days, and the varieties and histories of that place, both ancient and modern," I determined that if ever the time should arrive when I should become a professor of ecclesiastical history, these should become the opening words in which I would describe the treasures of that magnificent store-house. Accordingly, when, many years after, it so fell out, I could find no better mode of beginning my course at Oxford than by redeeming that early pledge; and when the course came to an end, and I wished to draw a picture of the prospects still reserved for the future of Christendom, I found again that the best words I could supply were those in which, on leaving the Beautiful House, Christian was shown in the distance the view of the Delectable Mountains, "which they said, would add to his comfort because they were nearer to the desired haven"’ This was a worthy and heart-felt tribute from Westminster to the dreaming tinker whose effigy now adorns the House of Commons, side by side with those of orators, heroes and statesmen in honor of the man, who, though he ‘devilishly’ abstained from attending the church ‘contrary to the laws of the king,’ has preached in all pulpits and palaces ever since.

After Bunyan’s final release from prison in 1672, he became pastor of the Church at Bedford, and so threw his life into Gospel labor, that his fame as a preacher increased until he was, perhaps, the most famous minister of his day. The few sermons which have come down to us, show that he spoke as he wrote. As in his Pilgrim he embodies more of the Bible than does Milton in his Paradise Lost, so in his sermons we find more true human nature than in Shakespeare. His sentences burn with sacred touches of divine experience and move us with sympathy, so that they must have melted his bearers to tears. They also abound in personification and figure, touched by a little quiet but keen satire, and are rich in reality, tenderness and life. So great was his success as a preacher, that the largest buildings to which he had access in London would not contain the multitudes who flocked to hear him. One of his early biographers says: ‘I have seen about twelve hundred at a morning lecture, by seven o’clock, on a working day, in the dark winter time. I have computed about three thousand that came to hear him one Lord’s-day at the town’s-end meeting-house, so that half were fain to go back again for want of room, and then himself was fain, at a back door, to be pulled almost over people to get up stairs to his pulpit.’ John Owen heard him preach, probably at Zoar Chapel, and when King Charles expressed wonder that a man of his learning could bear to listen to the ‘prate’ of a tinker, he answered, that he would gladly give all his learning for this tinker’s power. In the doctrinal controversies of the times, he gave and took many a hard blow, but his writings leave slight traces of personal bitterness toward his opponents. Indeed, hard feeling seems to have been a stranger both in him and his house. His wife was gentle to a proverb. When he was in prison she went to London to pray for his release, and induced a peer of the realm to present a petition to the House of Lords in his behalf; so the judges were directed to look into the matter afresh. She, therefore, appeared before Sir Matthew Hale, Chester and Twisden. With all the simplicity of a woman’s love she told her artless story. She said that her husband ‘was a peaceable person,’ and wished to support his family. They had four helpless children, one of them blind, and while he was in prison they must live on charity. Hale treated her kindly, Twisden harshly, and demanded whether he would leave off preaching if released. In child-like honesty she replied, that ‘he dare not leave off preaching so long as he could speak.’ Her request was denied and she left the Court in tears, not so much, she said, ‘because they were so hard-hearted against me and my husband, but to think what a sad account such poor creatures would have to give at the coming of the Lord.’ Jesus wept because Jerusalem stoned the prophets, and Bunyan’s wife was much like him. But, this giant in genius was just as tender-hearted as his wife. Where do we find such pathos in any passage as this, which he wrote in prison:

‘The parting with my wife and poor children hath often been to me in this place as the pulling off my flesh from my bones; and that not only because I am too, too fond of those great mercies, but also because I should have often brought to my mind the hardships, miseries and wants my poor family was like to meet with should I be taken from them; especially my poor blind child, who lay nearer my heart than all I had besides. Poor child, thought I, what sorrow art thou like to have for thy portion in this world! Thou must be beaten, suffer hunger, cold, nakedness and a thousand calamities, though I cannot now endure the wind should blow on thee. But yet, thought I, I must venture all with God, though it goeth to the quick to leave you. I was as a man who was pulling down his house upon the head of his wife and children. Yet; thought I, I must do it, I must do it.’

So loving was Bunyan’s disposition, that he kept the heart of the jailer soft all the time. He not only allowed him to visit his church frequently, unattended, and to preach the Gospel, too; but his blind Mary constantly visited him, with such little gifts as she could gather for his solace. She had great concern for him, lest he sorrowed beyond all hope, and often when parting with him, would put her delicate fingers to his eyes and cheeks, to feel if the tears flowed that she might kiss them away. His blind babe died and left him in prison; with O, how many fatherly benedictions upon her sweet memory. It was meet that little, blind Mary Bunyan should enter the Celestial Gate before the hero of the ‘DEN,’ a true ‘shining one’ to watch and wait for his coming. Nor did she wait long. In 1688 he went to London to reconcile an alienated father and son, and succeeded. But on the journey a violent storm overtook him, and he contracted a fatal illness which after ten days took him to Jesus, the King in his beauty, and to blind Mary, when he first saw her sweet eyes blaze with light. She raised not a hand to his cheek then, as was her old wont in Bedford, for God had wiped away all tears from his eyes; and since then the old and young pilgrim have dwelt together in the golden city.

Bunyan died just as the day dawned on England when the second great Revolution was to make her a free nation, in which Baptists could breathe freely. Mr. Froude couples him thus with them, in his biography of Bunyan: ‘In the language of the time, he became convinced of sin and joined the Baptists, the most thorough-going and consistent of all the Protestant sects. If the sacrament of baptism is not a magical form, but is a personal act in which the baptized person devotes himself to Christ’s service, to baptize children at any age when they cannot understand what they are doing may seem irrational and even impious.’ [Froude’s English Men of Letters] Bunyan’s ashes rest in Bunhill Fields, marked by a neat tomb, bearing simply his name. But in 1874 the Duke of Bedford, a descendant of Lord William Russell, the martyr to liberty, presented a most costly and beautiful statue to that city, in Bunyan’s memory. The 10th of June in that year was one of the greatest days that Bedford ever knew. The corporation, with many thousands of distinguished persons from all parts of the Kingdom, assembled on St. Peter’s green, to unveil this work of art. This was done by Lady Augusta Stanley, sister of the Earl of Elgin and wife of the Dean of Westminster. Although Bunyan’s back is still turned toward St. Peter’s Church, the bells rang a merry peal, and immense crowds assembled in the Corn Exchange and on the green, to listen to addresses from the Mayor, Dean Stanley, Earl Cowper and many others of great note; and a banquet at the Swan Hotel crowned the day. As was fitting, 4,000 Sunday-school children of Bedford and Elstow consumed a ton and a quarter of cake and six hundred gallons of tea, in honor of the occasion; and with bands of music made a pilgrimage to Elstow, the birthplace of their enchanting dreamer; and the press of the United Kingdom that day called Bunyan blessed. The statue is of bronze, cast of cannon and bells brought from China, weighing two and a half tons. The figure of Bunyan is taken from a painting by Sadler, and is ten feet high. The idea which Boehm, the sculptor, has striven to give, is expressed in an inscription on the pedestal, and is taken from the picture of ‘a very grave person.’ which Bunyan saw hung in the Interpreter’s house:

‘It had eyes uplifted to heaven;
The best of books in his hand;
The law of truth was written
Upon his lips. . . .
It stood as if it pleaded
With men.’

A broken fetter at his feet represents his long imprisonment, and on a tablet beneath is a facsimile of his autograph in his will, ‘John Bunyan.’ Three sides of the pedestal contain scenes from ‘Pilgrim’s Progress,’ in, bold relief: Evangelist pointing Christian to the wicket gate; Christian’s fight with Apollyon; Pilgrim released from his load and the three shining ones pointing him to the Celestial City. The monument stands where four roads meet, but, like its original, it only faces one way and is full of repose, the ideal of that lofty spirituality, which claims the right to look to heaven without a license from the established Church.

Bunyan’s figure is thus described: ‘He was tall of stature, strong-browed, with sparkling eyes, wearing his hair on his upper lip after the old British fashion; his hair reddish, but in his latter days sprinkled with gray; his nose well cut, his mouth moderately large, his forehead something high, and his habit always plain and modest.’

That Bunyan was an open communion Baptist has never been seriously doubted until the recent publication of his life, by Rev. John Brown, A.M., minister of the bunyan meeting at Bedford.. This work throws new light on many points in his history and is ably written, but because of certain pariah records which it publishes, and which seem to imply that Bunyan’s children were christened, after he had united with the Bedford Church, it is needful to examine that subject candidly and carefully. Whether Mr. Brown intended to convey this impression or not, his book is well adapted to place Bunyan’s practice in direct contradiction with many of his own utterances, and to render his conduct irreconcilable with the universal testimony of history as to his union with the Baptists. Yet Mr. Brown carefully avoids saying that he was not a Baptist. He quotes Bunyan’s words: ‘Do not have too much company with some Anabaptists, though I go under that name myself,’ and then adds: ‘This is plain enough. The only difficulty is how to reconcile his practice with his declaration; for he seems to have had three of his children baptized at church in their infancy, as we gather from the register of the parishes of Elstow and St. Cuthbert’s.’ These words cannot be misunderstood, and their sense is re-affirmed thus: ‘There can be little doubt, therefore, that the year after John Bunyan joined the Bedford brotherhood his second daughter, like his first, was baptized at Elstow Church. The third case, that of his son Joseph, is the most remarkable of all, for this child, according to the register, was baptized at St. Cuthbert’s Church after Bunyan’s twelve years’ imprisonment for conscience’ sake, and during the time he was conducting the controversy on open communion with D’Anvers and Paul. The fact is curious, and can only be accounted for on the supposition that upon the question of baptism he had no very strong feeling any way.’ [Brown’s Life of Bunyan, pp. 238,239]

On this question and others growing out of it, the writer opened a respectful correspondence with Mr. Brown, to which he responded in that manner and spirit which always prompt the high-minded investigator. Under date of May 1st, 1886, Mr. Brown writes concerning Bunyan’s own baptism: ‘There is no evidence that Bunyan was not immersed. Looking at what he says of himself (vide my ‘life of Bunyan,’ p. 238, line 6), I should say he was immersed though there is no record of the fact.’

These quotations are sufficient to show that Mr. Brown is not to be considered as saying that Bunyan was not a Baptist, but simply that he could not reconcile his position as a Baptist with the christening of his children. Before examining these records it may be a favor to the American reader, who is not familiar with the vicinity of Bedford in England, to say, that Elstow, Bunyan’s birthplace, is a village about a mile and a half from Bedford, and that he continued to reside there probably till about A.D. 1685-56, when he removed to Bedford. At that time this town numbered less than 2,000 inhabitants, and for ecclesiastical purposes, was then and is now divided into four parishes, known respectively as St. John’s, St. Peter’s, St. Paul’s and St. Cuthbert’s. The first record to be examined is that of Elstow, which reads thus:

Elstow: ‘Mary, the daughter of John Bonion, baptized July 20th, 1650.’

As Bunyan did not unite with Gifford’s Church till 1653, three years after this record was made, it has no bearing on the question whether he was a Baptist or not. When Mary was christened, he was, as he tells us himself, leading a wicked life, having no church connection aside from a nominal one in the Church of England. It may, therefore, be dismissed with the remark, that as it leaves nothing to ‘reconcile’ in his practice, it needs no further consideration.

The second entry was made at Elstow, the year after his union with Gifford’s Church, and reads as follows: ‘Elizabeth, the daughter of John Bonyon, was borne 14th day of April, 1654.’