25 What can I render unto thee, my God, for such unspeakable blessedness? The cattle upon a thousand hills, yea, all creation, all that I have and am, is thine: all that I can do is "to take the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord." Not unto us, but unto thy name, be all the praise and honour of salvation!—Ed.
26 In the edition of 1692, this sentence is "subject to the Father of spirits and love." It is a very singular mode of expression to call God "the Father of love." God is love, and that author and source of all holy love. Bunyan was at all times governed by Scripture phrases, with which his mind was so richly imbued as to cause him, if we may so speak, to live in a scriptural atmosphere; and this sentence bears a great affinity to Hebrews 12:9, "Shall we not much rather be in subjection to the Father of spirits, and live." I have been, for these reasons, induced to consider the letter o in "love" a typographical error, and have altered the word to "live," but could not take such a liberty without a public notice.—Ed.
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THE STRAIT GATE;
OR,
GREAT DIFFICULTY OF GOING TO HEAVEN:
PLAINLY PROVING, BY THE SCRIPTURES, THAT NOT ONLY THE RUDE AND PROFANE, BUT MANY GREAT PROFESSORS, WILL COME SHORT OF THAT KINGDOM.
"Enter ye in at the strait gate; for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it."—Matthew 7:13, 14
ADVERTISEMENT BY THE EDITOR.
If any uninspired writer has been entitled to the name of Boanerges, or a son of thunder, it is the author of the following treatise. Here we have a most searching and faithful display of the straitness or exact dimensions of that all-important gate, which will not suffer many professors to pass into the kingdom of heaven, encumbered as they are with fatal errors. Still "it is no little pinching wicket, but wide enough for all the truly gracious and sincere lovers of Jesus Christ; while it is so strait, that no others can by any means enter in." This is a subject calculated to rouse and stimulate all genuine professors to solemn inquiry; and it was peculiarly intended to dart at, and fix convictions upon, the multitudes of hypocritical professors who abounded in Bunyan's time, especially under the reigns of the later Stuarts.