10 The heart ‘unweldable.’ This homely allusion, drawn from Bunyan’s trade of blacksmith, is worthy of remark. The heart a mountain of iron, so hard that no heat in nature can soften it so as to weld it to Christ. To weld is to hammer into firm union two pieces of iron, when heated almost to fusion, so as to become one piece. The heart of man is by nature ‘unweldable,’ until God the Spirit softens it; and then the union is such that Christ becomes THE LIFE of his saints. Reader, has thy heart passed through this process?—Ed.
11 This is a solemn and heart-searching consideration. It is not enough that we fear eternal wrath, but we must love heaven, for the sake of its purity. It is not sufficient that we go to Christ for pardon, but we must go through him to the infinitely holy God, for holiness and fitness for heaven.—Ed.
12 There have been, in every age, professors who, instead of gratefully receiving and obeying the whole truth, have indulged in favourite doctrines. Happy is that Christian who equally loves to hear Christ set forth as a priest and sacrifice, or to dwell upon his power and authority as king and lawgiver; who delights as much in holy obedience as in electing love. The saints are bound to bear with each other, never forgetting that they are members of one family, and must cherish and comfort one another, as we hope to enjoy fellowship with heaven and the smiles of the great Head of the church.—Ed.
13 Nothing can be more solemn and awful than are these warnings. O that we may feel the spurs, the condemning curse of a broken law, and a sense of the jaws of hell, urging us on in coming to, and cleaving to Christ.—Ed.
14
‘To any boot,’ to any profit.
‘What boots it at one gate to make defence,
and at another to let in the foe!’
Milton’s Samson Agonistes—Ed.
15 ‘Them.’ As Christ is the Saviour of both body and soul, notwithstanding the sins of the body, they break not the covenant; because it is God’s covenant, and stands fast in Christ for evermore.—Ed.
16 ‘Plenary’; full, perfect, or complete.—Ed.
17 Bunyan saw that time very far off, which much more nearly approaches us: when Antichrist will find a grave in the side of the pit’s mouth; when no national barriers, either Pagan, Popish, or Protestant, shall exist to prevent the glorious spread of pure and vital Christianity. And, however abundant that harvest of souls shall be, there will prove a superabundance of grace in Christ to supply all their wants. He was, is now, and ever will be, ‘a complete Saviour.’—Ed.