For the obvious and only proper answer is: No! you are not in the same 'way' with me, though you are walking on the same 'road.'
But it has a worse defect, namely, that it leaves the reader uncertain as to what the writer precisely meant, or wished to be understood, by the allegory.
Did Bunyan refer to the Quakers as rejecting the outward Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper?
If so, it is the only unspiritual passage in the whole beautiful allegory, the only trait of sectarian narrow-mindedness, and, in Bunyan's own language, of legality.
But I do not think that this was Bunyan's intention. I rather suppose that he refers to the Arminians and other Pelagians, who rely on the coincidence of their actions with the Gospel precepts for their salvation, whatever the ground or root of their conduct may be; who place, in short, the saving virtue in the stream, with little or no reference to the source.
But it is the faith acting in our poor imperfect deeds that alone saves us; and even this faith is not ours, but the faith of the Son of God in us.
I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Gal. ii. 20.
Illustrate this by a simile. Labouring under chronic
bronchitis
, I am told to inhale chlorine as a specific remedy; but I can do this only by dissolving a saturated solution of the gas in warm water, and then breathing the vapour. Now what the aqueous vapour or steam is to the chlorine, that our deeds, our outward life,