8. How great is the delight of meeting in a foreign country, after a long absence from home, with one who speaks your own language and sympathizes with your national feelings. How much more strong are those enjoyments arising from the communion of saints, while travelling through an enemy's country, with difficult duties to perform,—animated by a kindred spirit, and seeking the same eternal home.—Ed.
9. The despising and disregarding the Holy Scriptures, rejecting Jesus and the way of salvation by Him, especially after having attained to the knowledge and conviction of the truth of it by the gospel, is the unpardonable sin, and renders men obdurate and impenitent.—Mason.
10. How strongly must have been the principle of humble submission to the will of God implanted and rooted in Bunyan's mind. He writes this peaceful advice from his dungeon, after twelve years' cruel imprisonment for his love and obedience to the Saviour. It requires a holy flame of Divine love to enable us to take the spoiling of our goods joyfully; but how much more strongly must this principle pervade the heart to enable us to suffer the loss of liberty, deprived of the society of a much loved wife and family, and in daily fear of an ignominious death! We cannot sufficiently admire the grace of God in the sufferer, nor abhor the tyranny under which he suffered.—Ed.
11. This idea is found in other of Bunyan's Works. Certainly the mixture of saints and sinners in a national church established for worldly purposes, must engender hypocrisy and pride, intolerance and persecution. Such leaders in Satan's army were calculated mightily to assist, if they were not the original cause, of the overspreading of sin which called forth the flood to wash away.—Ed.
12. Bishop Hall describes a Christian indeed as 'having white hands and a clean soul, fit to lodge God in; all the rooms whereof are set apart for his holiness.'—Ed.
13. Submission to the disciples of a Christian church must be voluntary, and not by the constraint of force or hypocrisy. In Christ's church ALL must be free, and not a mixture of free-men and the slaves of sin.—Ed.
14. What faithfulness and plain dealing is here. If any church communicates with the profane it is offering sacrifice to the devil.—Ed.
15. One of the most touching scenes in the Pilgrim's Progress beautifully illustrates this fact. When Christian led Hopeful into Bye-path Meadow, so that they fell into the hands of Giant Despair, Hopeful says, 'I wold have spoke plainer, but that you are older than I.' That whole scene manifests the most delicate sensibility and christian feeling.—Ed.
16. How strange that pious men should have been prone to punish their fellows for non-conformity in an outward sign. They themselves were suffering inconceivable miseries under acts of uniformity in rites and ceremonies. How applicable to the framers of such acts of parliament are our Lord's words, 'Woe unto you, pharisees, who whiten and garnish the outside of a sepulchre, while within it is full of uncleanness, hypocrisy, and iniquity' (Matt 23).—Ed.
17. 'An implicit faith'; faith in things without inquiry, or in things not expressed.—Ed.