Ib.
p. 45.
I left off to watch and be sober; I laid the reins upon the neck of my lusts
This single paragraph proves, in opposition to the assertion in the preceding note in Edwards, that in Bunyan's judgment there must be at least a negative co-operation of the will of man with the divine grace, an energy of non-resistance to the workings of the Holy Spirit. But the error of the Calvinists is, that they divide the regenerate will in man from the will of God, instead of including it.
Ib.
p. 49.
" So I saw in my dream, that just as Christian came up with the Cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders, and fell from off his back, and began to tumble; and so continued to do, till it came to the mouth of the sepulchre, where it fell in, and I saw it no more."
We know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding (or discernment of reason) that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols.
1. John, v. 20, 21.
Alas! how many Protestants make a mental idol of the Cross, scarcely less injurious to the true faith in the Son of God than the wooden crosses and crucifixes of the Romanists! — and this, because they have not been taught that Jesus was both the Christ and the great symbol of Christ.
Strange, that we can explain spiritually, what to take up the cross of Christ, to be crucified with Christ, means; — yet never ask what the Crucifixion itself signifies, but rest satisfied in the historic image.
That one declaration of the Apostle, that by wilful sin we