10 This is a most astonishing natural phenomenon: that such a river as the Thames, receiving constantly all the filth of a vast metropolis, containing more than two millions of inhabitants, buries it all, and yet purifieth itself.—Ed.
11 Light bread is an allusion to Numbers 21:5: 'our soul loatheth this light bread.' The heavenly manna, like Christ, is despised and rejected of man.—Ed.
12 By 'the text,' in this and other places, is meant the text of sacred Scripture; not the particular passage, or text, on which this treatise is founded.—Ed.
13 The solemn silence, and the sound of the trumpet, took place in quick succession when the medium of prayer and praise, from fallen man, was first exhibited in heaven. When Christ was revealed to John, as the throne upon which God received the prayers of all his saints, awe, and wonder, and silence, was felt in heaven for the space of half an hour; then came the sound of the trumpet with dire events to those who had refused to pray in the name of Christ.—Ed.
14 Thus the Spirit of God in regeneration produces light out of darkness, makes the barren heart fruitful, and from confusion, discord, and enmity, brings order, harmony, and tranquility. The renewed man is actuated by new hopes and fears; his judgment is enlightened, his will rectified, and his heart transformed; his eyes being divinely opened he sees into eternity; he has a hope full of immortality; spiritual appetites are excited in his soul; his affections are raised to God and heaven; his soul thirsteth for God, for the living God! Thus the Spirit giveth life to the dead, eyes to the blind, speech to the dumb, feet to the lame, and the hand of faith to lay hold on Christ for complete salvation.—Mason.
15 This is an excellent commentary upon that part of the Pilgrim's Progress which describes Christiana and her company at the foot of the hill Difficulty. Greatheart points out the spring at which Christian was refreshed before he began the arduous ascent which led him, in defiance of a persecuting world, to join in church fellowship, allegorically represented by the house Beautiful—'When Christian drank it was clear and good, but now it is dirty; and with the feet of some that are not desirous that pilgrims should here quench their thirst.' After the writing of the first part, and before that of the second, the Act of Uniformity had spread its baleful influence over England. To use Bunyan's words—'The Romish beasts have corrupted the doctrine by treading it down with their feet, and have muddied this water with their own dirt and filthiness.'—See Holy City.—Ed.
16 'Shuck,' to shake; obsolete as a verb, but retained as a noun to designate the pea-shell, after the peas have been shook out.—Ed.
17 Probatum est—is proved—a scrap of Latin commonly used in advertising medical prescriptions, in Bunyan's time.—Ed.
18 A Protestant can have but little idea of the insane superstition of the Papists in respect to holy water. The following lines, from Barnaby Googe's Popish Kingdome, will shed a little light upon it:—
'Besides, they do beleeue their sinnes to be forgiven quight, By taking holy water here, whereof if there do light But one small drop, it driueth out the hellishe deuils all Then which there can no greater griefe vnto the feend befall.'—4to. 1570, p. 42. In the Editor's library.—Ed.