FOOTNOTES:

1. The second month in the Hebrew calendar began April 7.—Ed.

2. A common expression for difference.—'What's the odds between us?'—Ed.

3. The churches of Christ have suffered under bitter persecution, and been in a wilderness state, from the primitive times, through Popish days, and under the relentless cruelties suffered by the Covenanters and Nonconformists from the Church of England. As the gospel spreads, it humanizes and softens the hearts even of the rebellious. The dread fire no longer consumes the cedars of Lebanon. Still there remains the contemptuous sneer, the scorn, the malice of the soul, against Christ and his spiritual seed. Not many years since the two daughters of an evangelical clergyman, a D.D., came out, from strong and irresistible conviction, and united with one of the straitest sects of Dissenters—the Plymouth Brethren. The unhappy parent could not brook the insult to his order, and died insane.—Ed.

4. Bunyan not only experienced the richest enjoyments in jail, but it is very probable that his life was saved for a few years by his having lain in prison during the violent heat and storm of persecution which raged in the early part of the reign of Charles II. Thus God mysteriously restrains the wrath of man, and makes it to praise him. The damp unwholesome dungeon, intended for his destruction, crowned him with peculiar honour, because, as in his Patmos, he there wrote his immortal book.—Ed.

5. Pill, to rob; poll, to exact, to extort. 'The church is pilled and polled by its own flocks.'—South, Ser. 11. v. 5.—Ed.

6. Maundrel measured a cedar which was thirty-six feet six inches in girth, and one hundred and eleven feet in the spread of its boughs; the foliage is ever green, and it mounts up to an enormous height.—Ed.

7. It is one of the strongest proofs that the human mind is disordered by sin, that man is by nature senseless to the sublime truths of Christianity—the beam, the truth which saves the world from utter moral desolation. What wonders open before the eyes of the young convert, stretching far away into that heavenly and eternal felicity which had been shut out from his vision by the gloom of death! Life and immortality is brought to light. His life, and all other things, become but dross, that he may win Christ, and maintain his cause in the world.—Ed.

8. All men have the same Bible, but all have not sought for spiritual discernment. The Beast, whether of Rome, Greece, or England, that looks through the Word to find some plausible means of tyrannising over the soul, by preventing man from using his own eyes in seeking salvation, whether it be by church canons or acts of Parliament interfering with the exercise of private judgment, is an enemy to, and hater of, the true light.—Ed.

9. Humanity, in its usual acceptation, means the inferiority of man to the divine or angelic nature, but superiority to the mere animal or brute creation. 'The nature of man, wherein he is lesse than God Almighty, and excellynge not withstandyng al other creatures in erth, is called humanitie.'—Sir T. Eliot. Bunyan's illustration of the word is curious.—Ed.

10. A common mode of picturing the virgin Mary for the devotee of Popery to worship, is a whole length beautiful woman, with rays as of the sun shooting out all round her, standing upon the moon, and upon her head a splendid crown ornamented with twelve stars. Under such a disguise, who would expect to find 'the well-favoured harlot establishing a throne for Satan?'—Ed.

11. Inventions, fictions, fables.—Ed.

12. The Hebrew words translated in the authorized version of the Bible, 'And a target' or gorget 'of brass,' are rendered, in all the earlier versions, 'And a shield of brass.' Perhaps a cuirass; it was evidently defensive brass armour, worn between the shoulders.—Ed.

13. No formal service such as that of the temple. While the churches are in the wilderness, suffering under the fangs of Antichrist, religious services must be adapted to their circumstances. At times fervent silent prayer, unheard on earth, but recorded in heaven; at other times in an upper chamber or a forest, afraid to sin, lest it should bring the enemy upon them. How ought we to bless God for giving us the full enjoyment of public worship, even while in the wilderness.—Ed.

14. One of the popular delusions of our day is, that all sects have been intolerant and persecutors when they had the opportunity. This is a gross falsehood. Who can charge the Waldenses, Albigenses, or Lollards with that spirit of Antichrist? Who dares charge the Quakers with a persecuting spirit? They had the full opportunity when governing Pennsylvania. Who can accuse the Baptists with injuring those who differed from them when Roger Williams and his Baptist brethren obtained the charter of Rhode Island, with full power to rule themselves by any form of government they preferred? His magna charta concludes with these words, 'And let the saints of the Most High walk in this colony without molestation, in the name of Jehovah their God, for ever and ever.' And it has never been violated. Persecution has never sullied its annals. Freedom to worship God was the desire of its founder—for himself and of all; and he nobly endured till it was accomplished.—Ed.

15. This word was used by Fox in translating the letter of Algerius; I cannot find it in any dictionary. It probably refers to this poor prisoner for Christ being confined in a 'soler,' or room, close under the roof of his prison, in which an Italian sun must have rendered the heat intense. The word 'sooly' may be derived from the Anglo-Saxon 'swool,' sultry; the Dutch use swoel, zoel, and zoelheid, for heat and sultry heat.—Ed.

16. The obsolete verb, to kill.—Ed.

17. This is a curious mode of expressing the awful gradation of a sinner. 1. To go in the way of sinners. 2. To enter into their counsels. 3. To sit in the scorner's seat, here called 'the chair of pestilence.' This is from the vulgate Latin, which renders it pestilentiae.—Ed.

18. Pomponius Algerius, born in Capua, a young man of great learning, was student in the University of Padua, where he, not being able to conceal the verity of Christ's gospel which he learned by the heavenly teaching of God's grace, ceased not, both by doctrine and example of life, to inform as many as he could in the same doctrine, and to bring them to Christ; for which he was accused of heresy, and brought to Rome, where he was burned alive. He wrote this letter while in prison at Venice.—See Fox's Acts and Monuments, edit. 1631. vol. ii. p. 181.

Mr. Southey thought that this letter gave Bunyan some germ of his Pilgrim's Progress!! He takes it from the words, 'In this world there is no mansion firm for me, and therefore I will travel up to the New Jerusalem, which is in heaven.'—Life of Bunyan, p. xc.—Ed.

19. Thus the blood of the martyrs was the seedtime of the church, and it produced an abundant harvest. That God suffered the choicest of his saints to pass through such dreadful sufferings in their way to glory, is a proof that God's ways are not our ways, but they are infinite in wisdom and mercy.—Ed.

20. Consult Bunyan's admirable treatise, Of Antichrist and his Ruin.

21. How easily is this riddle resolved by those who visit the afflicted. The Christian poor beat the rich out and out in charity. The poor mother rises long before her usual time, and having fitted her own children for school, runs to her sick neighbour to do the same for her little ones, frequently sharing with them her own children's food; and then, like an angel of mercy, watches over and comforts her sick neighbour. Such is the unostentatious Christian charity found among the Christian poor. O that it may more and more abound.—Ed.

22. These home-thrusts at conscience, so constantly met with in Bunyan's works, should have the effect of exciting us to solemn self-examination. May we never be contented with the porch, but enter and enjoy the riches of Divine grace.—Ed.

23. The gradual spread of the gospel, like the leaven, must eventually leaven the whole. How astonishing has been its progress since Bunyan entered the celestial city. If his happy spirit hovers as a guardian angel about the saints at Bedford, how must he rejoice in the change. The iron hand of despotic oppression laid low; his old prison swept away; the meetings in dells, and woods, and barns, exchanged for large and commodious places of worship. How he must wonder at our want of gratitude, and love, and zeal, in return for such mercies.—Ed.

FOOTNOTES:

THE WATER OF LIFE;

OR,

A DISCOURSE SHOWING THE RICHNESS AND GLORY

OF THE

GRACE AND SPIRIT OF THE GOSPEL,

AS SET FORTH IN SCRIPTURE BY THIS TERM, THE WATER OF LIFE.

BY JOHN BUNYAN.