Bunyan agreed with his learned contemporary, Milton, in the invisible agency of good and bad spirits.
‘Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep!’
The malignant demons watch their opportunity to harass the pilgrim with evil thoughts, injected when least expected.
101. Vol. i., p. 19.
102. Vol. i., p. 20.
103. The anxiety of this pious teacher was to press upon his hearers to take special heed, not to receive any truth upon trust from any man, but to pray over it and search ‘the Holy Word.’ This, Mr. Southey designates, ‘doctrine of a most perilous kind.’ How happy would it be for society if every religious teacher pressed this perilous doctrine upon their hearers, that it might bring forth the same fruit universally, as it did specially in Bunyan. Compare Grace Abounding, No. 117, and Southey’s Life, p. 27, 28.
104. Vol. i., p. 21.
105. Vol. i., p. 22.
106. Vol. iii., p. 115.
107. Vol. iii., p. 270.