The Riches of Bunyan: Selected from His Works

by John Bunyan

6. Think much of them that are gone before; how safe they are in the arms of Jesus. Would they be here again for a thousand worlds? Or if they were, would they be afraid that God would not make them welcome? What would they judge of thee if they knew thy heart began to fail thee in thy journey, or thy sins began to allure thee and to persuade thee to stop thy race? Would they not call thee a thousand fools, and say, O that he did but see what we see, feel what we feel, and taste of the dainties that we taste of? O if he were one quarter of an hour to behold, to feel, to taste, and enjoy but the thousandth part of what we enjoy, what would he do? What would he suffer? What would he leave undone? Would he favor sin? Would he love this world below? Would he be afraid of friends, or shrink at the most fearful threatenings that the greatest tyrants could invent to give him? Nay, those who have had but a sight of these things by faith, when they have been as far off from them as heaven from earth, yet they have been able to say with a comfortable and merry heart as the bird that sings in the spring, that this and more shall not stop them from running to heaven. Sometimes when my base heart hath been inclining to this world, and to loiter in my journey towards heaven, the very consideration of the glorious saints and angels in heaven hath caused me to rush forward—to disdain these poor, low, empty, beggarly things, and say to my soul, Come soul, let us not be weary; let us see what this heaven is; let us even venture all for it, and try if that will quit the cost. Surely Abraham, David, Paul, and the rest of the saints of God, were as wise as any are now, and yet they lost all for this glorious kingdom.

7. To encourage thee a little further, set to work, and when thou hast run thyself down weary, then the Lord Jesus will take thee up and carry thee. Is not this enough to make any poor soul begin his race? Thou perhaps criest, "O, but I am feeble, I am lame;" well, but Christ has a bosom; consider, therefore, when thou hast run thyself down weary, he will put thee in his bosom. "He shall gather the lambs with his arms, and carry them in his bosom." This is the way that fathers take to encourage their children, saying, Run, sweet babe, until thou art weary, and then I will take thee up and carry thee.

8. Or else he will convey new strength from heaven into thy soul.

9. Again, methinks the very industry of the devil, and the industry of his servants, should make you that have a desire to heaven and happiness, run apace. Why, the devil he will lose no time, spare no pains, also neither will his servants, both to seek the destruction of themselves and others; and shall not we be as industrious for our own salvation? Shall the world venture the damnation of their souls for a poor corruptible crown, and shall not we venture the loss of a few trifles for an eternal crown? Shall they venture the loss of eternal friends, as God to love, Christ to redeem, the Holy Spirit to comfort, heaven for habitation, saints and angels for company, and all this to get and hold communion with sin and this world, and a few base wretches like themselves? And shall not we labor as hard, run as fast, seek as diligently, nay, a hundred times more diligently, for the company of these glorious eternal friends, though with the loss of such as these, nay, with the loss of a thousand times better than these poor, low, base, contemptible things? Shall it be said at the last day, that wicked men made more haste to hell than you did make to heaven; that they spent more hours, days, and that early and late, for hell, than you spent for that which is ten thousand thousand of thousand times better? O let it not be so, but run with all might and main.

Is the soul such an excellent thing, and is the loss thereof so unspeakably great? Then this commends those for the wise ones that above all business concern themselves with the salvation of their souls; those that make all other matters but things by the by, and the salvation of their soul the one thing needful.

Let me then encourage those that are of this mind to be strong and hold on their way. Soul, thou hast chosen right; I will say of thy choice, as David said of Goliath's sword, "There is none like that, give it me."

But who told thee that thy soul was such an excellent thing as by thy practice thou declarest thou believest it to be? What, set more by thy soul than by all the world? What, cast a world behind thy back for the welfare of a soul! Is not this to play the fool in the account of sinners, while angels wonder at and rejoice for thy wisdom?

What a thing is this, that thy soul and its welfare should be more in thy esteem than all these glories wherewith the eyes of the world are dazzled! Surely, thou hast looked upon the sun, and that makes gold look like a clod of clay in thine eyesight.

But who put the thoughts of the excellencies of the things that are eternal—I say, who put the thoughts of the excellency of those things into thy mind in this wanton age, in an age wherein the thoughts of eternal life and the salvation of the soul are with too many like the Morocco ambassador [Footnote: Evelyn, who lived in the times of Charles I., Cromwell. Charles II., and William, refers in his "Diary" to this ambassador, named Hamet. When presented to the king, he and his retinue were "clad in the Moorish habite, cassocks of colored cloth or silk, with buttons and loopes; over this an ALHAGA or white woolen mantle, so large as to wrap both head and body; a shash or small turban; naked legg'd and armed, but with leather socks like the Turks; rich scymeters, and large calico-sleeved shirts. The ambassador had a string of pearls oddly woven in the turban. Their presents were lions and estridges (ostriches.) But the concourse and tumult of the people was intolerable, so as the officers could keep no order.">[ and his men of strange faces, in strange habits, with strange gestures and behaviors, monsters to behold?

But where hadst thou that heart that gives entertainment to these thoughts, these heavenly thoughts? These thoughts are like the French Protestants, [Footnote: By the famous edict of Nantes, which was granted the Huguenots by Henry IV., they were allowed liberty of conscience and the free exercise of religion. Louis XIV., grandson of Henry, after a series of arbitrary infractions of that edict by his father and himself at the instigation of the Jesuits, at length in 1685 abrogated it, and banished the Protestants from the kingdom under circumstances of aggravated cruelty. Great numbers of them were dispersed through all the countries of Europe. Evelyn, in his Diary, says that in 1685, "there had now been numbered to passe through Geneva onely forty thousand towards Swisserland. In Holland, Denmark, and all Germany were dispersed some hundred thousands, besides those in England." In the Memoirs of the Reformation in France prefixed to Saurin's Sermons, it is stated that eight hundred thousand were banished from France, and that they carried with them more than twenty millions of property. The refugees charged their sufferings on the RELIGION of Rome, for Pope Innocent XI highly approved of this persecution. He wrote a brief to the king, assuring him that what he had done against the heretics of his kingdom would be immortalieied by the eulogies of the Catholic church. He delivered a discourse in the Consistory in 1689, in which he said, "The most Christian king's zeal and piety did wonderfully appear in extirpating heresy." He ordered the TE DEUM to be sung. Evelyn says, "I was show'd the harangue which the bishop of Valentia on Rhone made in the name of the cleargie, celebrating the French king for persecuting the poor Protestants; with this expression in it: 'His victory over heresy was greater than all the conquests of Alexander and Caesar.'">[ banished thence where they willingly would have harbor: how came they to thy house, to thy heart, and to find entertainment in thy soul? The Lord keep them in every imagination of the thoughts of thy heart for ever, and incline thine heart to seek him more and more.