Chapter 17

The time was drawing near when, in the midst of his usefulness, and with little warning, he was to be summoned to his eternal rest. He had been seriously attacked with that dangerous pestilence which, in former years, ravaged this country, called the sweating sickness, a malady as mysterious and fatal as the cholera has been in later times. The disease was attended by great prostration of strength; but, under the careful management of his affectionate wife, his health became sufficiently restored to enable him to undertake a work of mercy; from the fulfillment of which, as a blessed close to his incessant earthly labour, he was to ascend to his Father and his God to be crowned with immortality. A father had been seriously offended with his son, and had threatened to disinherit him. To prevent the double mischief of a father dying in anger with his child, and the evil consequence to the child of his being cut off from his patrimony, Bunyan again ventured, in his weak state, on his accustomed work, to win the blessings of the peace-maker. He made a journey on horseback to Reading, it being the only mode of travelling at that time, and he was rewarded with success. Returning home by way of London to impart the gratifying intelligence, he was overtaken by excessive rains, and, in an exhausted state, he found a kindly refuge in the house of his Christian friend Mr. Strudwick, and was there seized with a fatal fever. His much-loved wife, who had so powerfully pleaded for his liberty with the judges, and to whom he had been united thirty years, was at a great distance from him. Bedford was then two days’ journey from London. Probably at first, his friends had hopes of his speedy recovery; but when the stroke came, all his feelings, and those of his friends, appear to have been absorbed, by the anticipated blessings of immortality, to such an extent, that no record is left as to whether his wife, or any of his children, saw him cross the river of death. There is abundant testimony of his faith and patience, and that the presence of God was eminently with him.

He bore his trying sufferings with all the patience and fortitude that might be expected from such a man. His resignation was most exemplary; his only expressions were ‘a desire to depart, to be dissolved, to be with Christ.’ His sufferings were short, being limited to ten days. He enjoyed a holy frame of mind, desiring his friends to pray with him, and uniting fervently with them in the exercise. His last words, while struggling with death, were, ‘Weep not for me, but for yourselves. I go to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will, no doubt, through the mediation of his blessed Son, receive me, though a sinner; where I hope we ere long shall meet, to sing the new song, and remain everlastingly happy, world without end. Amen.’ He felt the ground solid under his feet in passing the black river which has no bridge, and followed his pilgrim into the celestial city in August, 1688, in the sixtieth year of his age. There is some uncertainty as to the day of his decease: Charles Doe, in the Struggler, 1692, has August 31, and this has been copied in all his portraits. In the life appended to the Grace Abounding, 1692, his death-day is stated as August 12; and in the memoir appended to the third part of the Pilgrim, also in 1692, the date is August 17. The circumstances of his peaceful decease are well compared by Dr. Cheever to the experience of Mr. Standfast, when he was called to pass the river: the great calm—the firm footing—the address to by-standers—until his countenance changed, his strong man bowed under him, and his last words were, ‘Take me, for I come to thee.’ Then the joy among the angels while they welcomed the hero of such spiritual fights, and conducted his wandering soul to the New Jerusalem, which he had so beautifully described as ‘the holy city’; and then his wonder and amazement to find how infinitely short his description came to the blissful reality.

The deep affliction that his church was plunged into led to several special meetings. Wednesday, the 4th of September, ‘was kept in prayer and humiliation for this heavy stroke upon us—the death of dear brother Bunyan; it was appointed also, that Wednesday next be kept in prayer and humiliation on the same account. At the meeting held on the 11th, it was appointed that all the brethren meet together on the 18th of this month, September, to humble themselves for this heavy hand of God upon us, and also to pray unto the Lord for counsel and direction what to do, in order to seek out for a fit person to make choice of for an elder. On the 18th, when the whole congregation met to humble themselves before God, by fasting and prayer, for his heavy and severe stroke upon us in taking away our honoured brother Bunyan by death, it was agreed by the whole congregation that care be taken to seek out for one suitably qualified to be chosen an elder among us, and that care was committed by the whole to the brethren at Bedford.’ Thus did the church manifest that they had improved in wisdom under his ministry by flying, in their extreme distress, to the only source of consolation.

The saddest feelings of sorrow extended to every place where he had been known. His friend, the Rev. G. Cockayn, of London, says, ‘it pleased the Lord to remove him, to the great loss and inexpressible grief of many precious souls.’ Numerous elegies, acrostics, and poems were published on the occasion of his decease, lamenting the loss thus sustained by his country—by the church at large, and particularly by the church and congregation at Bedford. One of these, ‘written by a dear friend of his,’ is a fair sample of the whole:—

A SHORT ELEGY IN MEMORY OF MR. JOHN BUNYAN, WRITTEN BY A DEAR FRIEND OF HIS.

The pilgrim traveling the world’s vast stage, At last does end his weary pilgrimage: He now in pleasant valleys does sit down, And, for his toil, receives a glorious crown. The storms are past, the terrors vanish all, Which in his way did so affrighting fall; He grieves nor sighs no more, his race is run Successfully, that was so well begun. You’ll say he’s dead: O no, he cannot die, He’s only changed to immortality— Weep not for him, who has no cause of tears; Hush, then, your sighs, and calm your needless fears. If anything in love to him is meant, Tread his last steps, and of your sins repent: If knowledge of things here at all remains Beyond the grave, to please him for his pains And suffering in this world; live, then, upright, And that will be to him a grateful sight. Run such a race as you again may meet, And find your conversation far more sweet; When purged from dross, you shall, unmix’d, possess The purest essence of eternal bliss

‘He in the pulpit preached truth first, and then He in his practice preached it o’er again.’

His remains were interred in Bunhill Fields, in the vault of his friend Mr. Strudwick, at whose house he died. His tomb[322] has been visited by thousands of pilgrims, blessing God for his goodness in raising up such a man, so signally fitted to be a blessing to the times in which he lived. All the accounts of his decease, published at the time, agree as to his place of burial. The words of Mr. Doe, who probably attended the funeral, are, ‘he was buried in the new burying-place, near the artillery ground, where he sleeps to the morning of the resurrection.’[323] His Life and Actions, 1692, records that ‘his funeral was performed with much decency, and he was buried in the new burying-ground by Moorfields.’ The Struggler calls it ‘Finsbury burying-ground, where many London Dissenting ministers are laid.’[324] Bunhill Fields burying-ground for Dissenters was first opened in 1666. The inscription upon the tomb to his memory was engraven many years after his funeral. It is not contained in the list of inscriptions published in 1717. His widow survived him four years. He had six children by his first wife, three of whom survived him—Thomas, Joseph, and Sarah. His son Thomas joined his church in 1673, and was a preacher in 1692. He appears to have been usefully employed in visiting absent members until December 1718. My kind friend, the Rev. J. P. Lockwood, rector of South Hackney, recently discovered entries in the register of Kimbolton, in Huntingdonshire, probably of the descendants of this son, Thomas. November 26, 1698, John Bonion and Mary Rogers, married: she was buried, September 7, 1706; and he again married Anne, and buried her in 1712, leaving a son and two daughters. His death is not recorded. One of the descendants, Hannah Bunyan, died in 1770, aged seventy-six years, and lies in the burial-ground by the meeting-house at Bedford. John Bunyan’s son, Joseph, settled at Nottingham, and marrying a wealthy woman, conformed to the Church. A lineal descendant of his was living, in 1847, at Islington, near London, aged eighty-four, Mrs. Senegar, a fine hearty old lady, and a Strict Baptist. She said to me, ‘Sir, excuse the vanity of an old woman, but I will show you how I sometimes spend a very pleasant half-hour.’ She took down a portrait on canvas of her great forefather, and propped it up on the table with a writing-desk, with a looking-glass by its side. ‘There, Sir, I look at the portrait, and then at myself, and can trace every feature; we resemble each other like two pins.’ ‘Excepting the imperial and moustachios,’ I replied; to which she readily assented. It was the fact that there was a striking family likeness between the picture and her reflection in the looking-glass. Another descendant, from the same branch of the family, is now living at Lincoln. He was born in 1775, and possessed a quarto Bible, published by Barker and Bill in 1641, given by John Bunyan to his son Joseph. This was preserved in his family until the present year, when it came into the editor’s possession, with the following relics, which were, and I trust will yet be preserved with the greatest care:—An iron pencase, made by Bunyan the brazier, with some stumps of old pens, with which it is said he wrote some of his sermons and books; the buckles worn by him, and his two pocket-knives, one of them made before springs were invented, and which is kept open by turning a ferrule; his apple-scoop, curiously carved, and a seal; his pocket-box of scales and weights for money, being stamped with the figures on each side of the coins of James and Charles I.[325] These were given by Robert Bunyan, in 1839, then sixty-four years of age, to a younger branch of the family, Mr. Charles Robinson, of Wilford, near Nottingham (his sister’s son), for safe custody. He died in 1852; while his aged uncle remains in good health, subject to the infirmities of his seventy-eighth year. On many of the blank spaces in the Bible are the registers of births and deaths in the family, evidently written at the time. Those relics are deposited in a carved oak box. They were sold with the late Mr. Robinson’s effects, January, 1853, and secured for me by my excellent friend James Dix, Esq., of Bristol, who met with them immediately after the sale, on one of his journeys at Nottingham. They are not worshipped as relics, nor have they performed miracles, but as curiosities of a past age they are worthy of high consideration. Everything that was used by him, and that survives the ravages of time, possesses a peculiar charm; even the chair in which he sat is preserved in the vestry of the new chapel, and is shown to those who make the pilgrimage to the shrine of Bunyan.[326]

In the same vestry is also a curious inlaid cabinet, small, and highly finished. It descended from Bunyan to a lady who lived to an advanced age—Madam Bithray; from her to the Rev. Mr. Voley; and of his widow it was purchased to ornament the vestry of Bunyan’s meeting-house.

The personal appearance and character of our pilgrim’s guide, drawn by his friend Charles Doe, will be found at the end of his Grace Abounding; to which is appended his Dying Sayings—‘of sin—afflictions—repentance and coming to Christ—of prayer—of the Lord’s day, sermons, and week days: “Make the Lord’s day the market for thy soul”—of the love of the world—of suffering—of death and judgment—of the joys of heaven—and the torments of hell.’

How inscrutable are the ways of God! Had Bunyan lived a month longer, he would have witnessed the glorious Revolution—the escape of a great nation. The staff and hope of Protestant Europe was saved from a subtle—a Jesuitical attempt—to introduce Popery and arbitrary government. The time of his death, as a release from the incumbrance of a material body, was fixed by infinite wisdom and love at that juncture, and it ought not to be a cause of regret. His interest in the welfare of the church ceased not with his mortal life. How swiftly would his glorified spirit fly to see the landing of William, and hover with joy over the flight of the besotted James! He was now in a situation to prove the truth of that saying, ‘the angels desire to look into’ the truth and spread of the glad tidings. How he would prove the reality of his opinion, expressed in The Holy War, of the interest taken by the inhabitants of heaven in the prosperity of the church on earth. When Mansoul was conquered, the spirits that witnessed the victory ‘shouted with that greatness of voice, and sung with such melodious notes, that they caused them that dwell in the highest orbs to open their windows, and put out their heads and look down to see the cause of that glory’ (Luke 15:7-10).[327] So may we imagine that the happy, happy, glorified spirit of Bunyan would look down rejoicing, when, a few years after he had yielded up his pastoral cares, the seed which he had been instrumental in sowing produced its fruit in such numbers, that the old meeting-house was pulled down, and in its place a large and respectable one was erected. And again, on the 20th February, 1850, with what joy would he look down upon the opening of a still larger, more commodious, and handsome meeting-house, bearing his name, and capable of holding 1150 worshippers. One of Bunyan’s pungent, alarming sayings to the careless was, ‘Once die, we cannot come back and die better.’[328] If anything could tempt him, in his angelic body, to re-visit this earth, it would be to address the multitude at the new Bunyan Chapel with his old sermon on The Jerusalem Sinner Saved, or Good News to the Vilest of Men. But we have Moses and the prophets—Christ and his apostles; if we shut our ears to them, neither should we listen to a messenger from the New Jerusalem.

When it is recollected that Bunyan received the most imperfect rudiments of education in a charity school when very young, which were ‘almost entirely’ obliterated by bad habits—that he was a hard-working man through life, maintaining himself, a wife, and four children, by his severe labour as a brazier—and yet, by personal efforts, he educated himself and wrote sixty-two valuable religious treatises, numbering among them his inimitable allegories, The Pilgrim’s Progress and Holy War, made a Concordance to the Bible, and conducted important controversies. Preaching, while at liberty, almost innumerable sermons on the Lord’s-days and week-days, early in the morning and late at night. Visiting his flock with pastoral care—founding churches in the villages, and even in towns and cities far distant from his dwelling—constantly giving advice to promote peace and good will, and rendering benevolent aid by long journeys! His whole life presents to us a picture of most astonishing, energetic perseverance. Every moment of time must have been employed as if he valued it as a precious trust, which, if once lost, could never be regained. Who of us can compare our life with his last thirty years, and not blush with shame!

The finest trait in Bunyan’s Christian character was his deep, heartfelt humility. This is the more extraordinary from his want of secular education, and his unrivalled talent. The more we learn, the greater is the field for research that opens before us, insomuch that the wisest philosophers have most seriously felt the little progress they have made. He acknowledged to Mr. Cockayn, who considered him the most eminent man, and a star of the first magnitude in the firmament of the churches,[329] that spiritual pride was his easily besetting sin, and that he needed the thorn in the flesh, lest he should be exalted above measure. A sense of this weakness probably led him to peculiar watchfulness against it. His self-abasement was neither tinctured with affectation, nor with the pride of humility. His humble-mindedness appeared to arise form his intimate communion with Heaven. In daily communion with God, he received a daily lesson of deeper and deeper humility. ‘I am the high and lofty One, I inhabit eternity! verily this consideration is enough to make a broken-hearted man creep into a mouse-hole, to hide himself from such majesty! There is room in this man’s heart for God to dwell.’[330] ‘I find it one of the hardest things that I can put my soul upon, even to come to God, when warmly sensible that I am a sinner, for a share in grace and mercy. I cannot but with a thousand tears say, “God be merciful to me a sinner” (Ezra 9:15).’[331]

The Revs. Messrs. Chandler and Wilson, bear the following testimony as eye-witnesses to his character:—‘His fancy and invention were very pregnant and fertile. His wit was sharp and quick—his memory tenacious, it being customary with him to commit his sermons to writing after he had preached them,’ a proof of extraordinary industry. ‘His understanding was large and comprehensive—his judgment sound and deep in the fundamentals of the gospel. His experience of Satan’s temptations in the power and policy of them, and of Christ’s presence in, and by his Word and Spirit to succour and comfort him, was more than ordinary; the grace of God was magnified in him and by him, and a rich anointing of the Spirit was upon him; and yet this great saint was always in his own eyes the chiefest of sinners, and the least of saints. He was not only well furnished with the helps and endowments of nature, beyond ordinary, but eminent in the graces and gifts of the Spirit, and fruits of holiness. He was from first to last established in, and ready to maintain, that God-like principle of having communion with saints as such, without any respect to difference in things disputable among the godly. His carriage was condescending, affable, and meek to all, yet bold and courageous for Christ. He was much struck at, in the late times of persecution; being far from any sinful compliance to save himself, he did cheerfully bear the cross.’ Such was the character given of him by these two eminent divines, in 1693, while his memory, in its fullest fragrance, was cherished by all the churches.

This humility peculiarly fitted him to instruct the young, of whom he was very fond—

‘Nor do I blush, although I think some may Call me a baby, ‘cause I with them play; I do ‘t to show them how each fingle fangle On which they doating are, their souls entangle; And, since at gravity they make a tush, My very beard I cast behind a bush.’[332]

He had friends among the rich as well as the poor. Of this his solid gold ring and handsome cabinet are proofs. From a letter in the Ellis correspondence, we learn that Bunyan had so secured the affections of the Lord Mayor of London, as to be called his chaplain.[333]

Among his religious friends and associates he must have been a pleasing, entertaining, lively companion. However solemn, nay awful, had been his experience when walking through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, yet when emerging from the darkness and enjoying the sunshine of Divine favour, he loved social intercourse and communion of saints. It is one of the slanders heaped upon Christianity to call it a gloomy, melancholy theme: though ‘it is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting,’ yet the wisely pious man will endeavour, even at an elegant entertainment or a Lord Mayor’s dinner, to drop useful hints. Whenever Bunyan describes a social party, especially a feast, he always introduces a wholesome dish; and it is singular, in the abundance of publications, that we have not been favoured with John Bunyan’s Nuts to Crack at Religious Entertainments, or a Collection of his Pious Riddles. Thus, at the splendid royal feast given to Emmanuel, when he entered Mansoul in triumph, ‘he entertained the town with some curious riddles, of secrets drawn up by his father’s secretary, by the skill and wisdom of Shaddai, the like to which there are not in any kingdom.’ ‘Emmanuel also expounded unto them some of those riddles himself, but O how were they lightened! They saw what they never saw, they could not have thought that such rarities could have been couched in such few and ordinary words. The lamb, the sacrifice, the rock, the door, the way.’[334] ‘The second Adam was before the first, and the second covenant was before the first.’[335] ‘Was Adam bad before he eat the forbidden fruit?’[336] ‘How can a man say his prayers without a word being read or uttered?’[337] ‘How do men speak with their feet?’ Answer, Proverbs 6:13.[338] ‘Why was the brazen laver made of the women’s looking-glasses?’[339] ‘How can we comprehend that which cannot be comprehended, or know that which passeth knowledge?’[340] ‘Who was the founder of the state or priestly domination over religion?’[341] What is meant by the drum of Diabolus and other riddles mentioned in The Holy War?[342] The poetical riddles in The Pilgrim’s Progress are very striking—

‘A man there was, though some did count him mad, The more he cast away, the more he had.’ How can ‘evil make the soul from evil turn.’[343] Can ‘sin be driven out of the world by suffering?’[344] ‘Though it may seem to some a riddle, We use to light our candles at the middle.’[345] ‘What men die two deaths at once?’[346] ‘Are men ever in heaven and on earth at the same time?’[347] ‘Can a beggar be worth ten thousand a-year and not know it?’[348]

He even introduced a dance upon the destruction of Despair, Mr. Ready-to-halt, with his partner Miss Much-afraid, while Christiana and Mercy furnished the music. ‘True, he could not dance without one crutch in his hand; but I promise you he footed it well. Also the girl was to be commended, for she answered the music handsomely.’ Is this the gloomy fanaticism of a Puritan divine? It is true, that promiscuous dancing, or any other amusement tending to evil, he had given up and discountenanced, but all his writings tend to prove that the Christian only can rationally and piously enjoy the world that now is, while living in the delightful hope of bliss in that which is to come.

Bunyan’s personal appearance and character was drawn by his friend Mr. Doe. ‘He appeared in countenance stern and rough, but was mild and affable; loving to reconcile differences and make friendships. He made it his study, above all other things, not to give occasion of offence. In his family he kept a very strict discipline in prayer and exhortations. He had a sharp, quick eye, and an excellent discerning of persons; of good judgment and quick wit. Tall in stature, strong-boned; somewhat of a ruddy face with sparkling eyes; his hair reddish, but sprinkled with gray; nose well set; mouth moderately large; forehead something high, and his habit always plain and modest.’