CHAPTER VII.

BRITISH BAPTISTS-BUNYAN'S PRINCIPLES.

SIDE from all expression of Bunyan's principles on his own part, it is readily seen why the universal decision of history accounts him a Baptist. But aside from this, there is a certain philosophy about the genius of Bunyan which allies his life so closely and openly with Baptist principles, that it has not escaped the eye of even casual observers. With all Philip's unfriendliness to Baptists, he discovers this at a glance, becomes enamored of Bunyan as a Baptist, and says:

'No one surely can regret that he was baptized by immersion. That was just the mode calculated to impress him-practiced as it usually then was in rivers. He felt the sublimity of the whole scene at the Ouse, as well as its solemnity. Gifford's eye may have realized nothing on the occasion but the meaning of the ordinance, but Bunyan saw Jordan in the lilied Ouse, and John the Baptist in the holy minis ter, and almost the Dove in the passing birds; while the sun-struck waters flashed around and over him, as if the Shekinah had descended upon them. For let it not be thought that he was indifferent about his baptism because he was indignant against Strict Baptists, and laid more stress upon the doctrine it taught than upon its symbolic significancy. He loved immersion, although he hated the close communion of the Baptist Churches. . . . Bunyan could not look back upon his baptism in infancy (if he was baptized then) with either our emotions or convictions. We think, therefore, that he did wisely in being re-baptized. I think he did right in preferring immersion to sprinkling, not, however, that I believe immersion to be right, or sprinkling wrong, according to any scriptural rule, for there is none, but because the former suited his temperament best, inasmuch as it gave him most to do, and thus most to think of and feel. For that is the best mode of baptism to any man which most absorbs his own mind with its meaning and design.'1

With an eye quite as clear and sharp, this writer discovers an intimate connection between his immersion and the after thoughts and actions of his life, which he expresses thus:

'Had he not been a Baptist, he would have written little more than his 'Pilgrim's Progress and Holy War;' because he knew that profounder theologians than he ever pretended to be, were publishing quite enough, both doctrinal and practical, for every nation to read; but he knew also that the Baptists, as a body, would take a lesson from him more readily, than from an Episcopalian, a Presbyterian, or an Independent; or at least that he would be read by many who would not read Owen or Baxter. In like manner, had he not been more than a Baptist, he would have written less than he did.' 'Bunyan's adherence,' he continues, and attachments to the Baptists, notwithstanding the attacks made upon him, did him great credit. He was also a loser by identifying himself with their name and cause at the Restoration. But he never flinched nor repented. And in this he truly did them justice. Their cause was good and their name bad only by misrepresentation.'

BUNYAN'S EXPOSITION OF BAPTISM.

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Southey seems to sympathize with this view, in the words: Both the world and the Church are indebted to the Baptists for the ministry of Bunyan. But for them he might have lived and died a tinker.' And Dean Stanley unites with them both, when he says: Neither amongst the dead nor the living who have adorned the Baptist name, is there any before whom other Churches bow their heads so reverently as he who in this place derived his chief spiritual inspiration from them.' 3 But Cheever, who has not been equaled as an interpreter of Bunyan, unless by Offer, goes further than this. He sees a direct act of divine Providence in Bunyan's association with the Baptists and writes:

To make the highest jewel of the day as a Christian, a minister and a writer, Divine Providence selected a member of the then obscure, persecuted and despised sect of the Baptists. He took John Bunyan: but he did not remove him from the Baptist Church of Christ into what men said was the only true Church; he kept him shining in that Baptist candlestick all his life-time. . . . All gorgeous and prelatical establishments God passed by, and selected the greatest marvel of grace and genius in all the modern age from the Baptist Church in Bedford.'4

More than one passage in Bunyan's writings confirm the view of Philip concerning the deep influence of immersion upon his mind, but one will suffice, in which, far beyond the common conception, he puts forth the opinion, that the Lord's Supper as well as baptism symbolizes Christ's overwhelming agony. This he finds implied in his own words: 'Ye shall indeed endure the baptism [immersion in suffering] which I endure.' Hence, Bunyan exclaims: "That Scripture, "Do this in remembrance of me," was made a very precious word unto me, when I thought of that blessed ordinance, the Lord's Supper, for by it the Lord did come down upon my conscience with the discovery of his death for my sins; and as I then felt, plunged me in the virtue of the same." Philip says: There seems to me in this passage an intended use of terms which should express the views of both classes in his Church on the mode of baptism;' and this may be implied in his words. But Bunyan found his full type of baptism in the Deluge. He says:

'The Flood was a type of three things. First, of the enemies of the Church. Second, a type of the water-baptism under the New Testament. Third, of the last overthrow of the world.' Again, in his 'Exposition of the First Ten Chapters of Genesis,' he remarks: That was the time then that God had appointed to try his servant Noah by the waters of the flood: in which time he was so effectually crucified to the things of this world, that he was as if he was never more to enjoy the same. Wherefore Peter maketh mention of this estate of his; he tells us, it was even like unto our baptism; wherein we profess ourselves dead to the world, and alive to God by Jesus Christ. 1 Peter iii, 21. '5

As Mr. Brown simply gives voice to a vague and loose notion which is afloat concerning Bunyan's fixed views of baptism when he says that he had no very strong feeling any way' on that subject, it is but just to allow him to say for himself what he did believe, and then all can judge whether or not he treated that subject as a matter of indifference. In a 'Reason for My Practice' he writes of ordi

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BUNYAN'S REAL VIEWS.

nances: 'I believe that Christ hath ordained but two in his Church, namely, water baptism and the Supper of the Lord; both which are of excellent use to the Church in this world, they being to us representations of the death and resurrection of Christ, and are, as God shall make them, helps to our faith therein. But I count them not the fundamentals of Christianity nor grounds or rule to communion with saints. Great injustice is done to him in the heedlessness which applies these words only to baptism and not to the Supper. What he says here of one ordinance he says of the other; namely, that they stand on a ground of equal excellency, and that he did not count either of them a fundamental of Christianity. He neither idolized the Supper nor treated baptism with indifference, that is the work of his interpreters; but he says that Jesus ordained the two equally; and to say that he had strong feeling about one of Christ's ordinances and no strong feeling about the other, is to put words into his mouth which he never uttered. In his 'Divine Emblems' he says, that he put the two ordinances of the Gospel upon a parity as to authority, and reverenced them equally.

'Two sacraments I do believe there be,
Baptism and the Supper of the Lord,
Both mysteries divine, which do to me,

By God's appointment, benefit afford.'

He never held the popularly current Quaker view, ascribed to him, that immersion is unimportant and so showed that baptism sat loosely upon him; that is simply what those who misrepresent him hold themselves and wish to find in his writings. But it is not there. He held that immersion on a man's personal faith in Christ is the duty of every man who believes in Christ; that when men receive 'water-baptism' they should be immersed, because there is no other water-baptism but immersion; but he also held that 'water-baptism is not a precedent to the Lord's Supper. He says as plainly as his use of terse English could, that neither baptism nor the Supper form a rule to communion with saints,' and this proposition cannot be taken by halves, without the grossest injustice to him. As it regards baptism and the Supper, there was not the least shade of difference between him and the strict communion Baptists, excepting, that he did not hold baptism to be an act precedent to the breaking of bread at the Lord's table, while they did. He constantly uses the phrases 'water-baptism' and 'those of the baptized way,' and the construction is forced upon his words that this form of expression puts a slight upon the immersion of believers. But the strictest of strict Baptists of his day, Kiffin amongst them, used the same phraseology as freely as he did. What other could any of them use? The Quakers all over England, and especially about Bedford, where they abounded, compelled the Baptists to use these forms of utterance in order to make themselves understood. The Friends were constantly using the terms 'spirit-baptism,' and 'baptism of the Spirit,' and the Baptists had no choice left but

THIS SUBJECT CONTINUED.

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to use these chosen phrases. Bunyan said to the Quakers most significantly: The Ranters are neither for the ordinance of baptism with water, nor breaking of bread, and are not you the same?' In regard to what constituted water-baptism,' he had no difficulty, for he held that it was dipping and only dipping, and so, only those who had been immersed he called 'of the baptized way.' He says of the Baptists and not of the Pedobaptists, that he would persuade my brethren of the baptized way not to hold too much thereupon,' and again: 'I put a difference between my brethren of the baptized way. I know some are more moderate than some;' that is, he drew a line between the strict and open communionists. But there is not a passage in the sixty books which he wrote, in which he says that the Pedobaptists are of the 'baptized way,' and protests: 'I would not teach men to break the least of the commandments of God.' So far from laxity, this is his pungent teaching on this point:

'God never ordained significative ordinances, such as baptism and the Lord's Supper or the like, for the sake of water or of bread and wine; nor yet because he takes any delight that we are dipped in water or eat that bread; but they are ordained to minister to us by the aptness of the elements through our sincere partaking of them, further knowledge of the death, burial and resurrection of Christ, and of our death and resurrection by him to newness of life. Wherefore, he that eateth and believeth not, and he that is baptized and is not dead to sin and walketh not in newness of life, neither keepeth these ordinances nor pleaseth God."

Again, no Baptist ever insisted more earnestly than Bunyan, that faith and regeneration must precede baptism. In his 'Reason for My Practice,' he says that a visible saint

'Is not made so by baptism; for he must be a visible saint before, else he ought not to be baptized. Acts viii, 37; ix, 17; xvi, 33.' Then he gives this answer to the question, Why the New Testament saints were baptized? That their faith by that figure might be strengthened in the death and resurrection of Christ, and that themselves might see that they have professed themselves dead, and buried, and risen with him to newness of life. . . . He should know by that circumstance that he hath received forgiveness of sin, if his faith be as true as his being baptized is felt by him. Yet again he says, that he who has not the doctrine of baptism ought to have it before he be convicted it is his duty to be baptized, or else he playeth the hypocrite. There is, therefore, no difference between that believer that is and he that is not yet baptized with water, but only his going down into the water, there to perform an outward ceremony the substance of which he hath already.' Still further he writes: That our denomination of believers, and of our receiving the doctrine of the Lord Jesus, is not to be reckoned from our baptism is evident, because according to our notion of it, they only that have before received the doctrine of the Gospel, and so show it us by their profession of faith, they only ought to be baptized. And finally on this point he writes: The Scriptures have declared that this faith gives the professors of it a right to baptism, as in the case of the eunuch (Acts viii) when he demanded why he might not be baptized? Philip answereth, if he believed with all his heart he might; the eunuch thereupon professing Christ was baptized.' Then he sums up all in these words: It is one thing for him that administereth to baptize in the name of Jesus, another thing for him that is the subject by that to be baptized into Jesus. Baptizing into Christ is rather the act of the faith of him that is baptized, than his going into water and coming out again.

This is the way in which disinterested and broad-minded interpreters understand Bunyan's Baptist principles. The learned Dr. Stebbing, unwilling either to conceal, to add to, or to accept Bunyan's positions, says in the round frankness of a man who has no ends to serve but those of the truth:

Bunyan belonged to a sect peculiarly strict on the subject of communion. He honestly kept him faithful to its principles; his charity made him inconsistent with its severity. Baptism was regarded by his associates as furnishing a bond of union indispensable to Christain brotherhood, and unattainable by other means. . . . It was the baptism of adults, capable of repentance and faith, and actually repenting and believing, which alone could fulfill these conditions. . . . He had, therefore, first to defend himself against the charge of unfaithfulness to his party, and then to state the principles, which he thought might form a safer and broader groundwork of Christian communion. In the former part of his task he had only to prove that neither his practice nor his profession had altered from the time of his conversion; that he had ever spoken with all plainness and sincerity on the topics in dispute, and had shown himself as little willing to indulge error among his brethren, as to let truth suffer from his own fear of an enemy. No one could gainsay the defense of his integrity.'9

Dr. Stebbing had no sympathy with Bunyan in rejecting baptism as a necessary precedent to the reception of the Supper, because in this he thought his teaching contrary to the New Testament. He holds him at fault for speaking in his writings' with unhappy violence,' but says that 'he shared largely in the prejudices of the party to which he belonged,' and excuses him therefore on the ground that the whole of England was convulsed with a controversy on baptism.'

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That history has accorded to Bunyan his proper ecclesiastical place in numbering him with the Baptists is clear, from the place which he assigns to himself in their ranks, and from the place which his most intimate friends as well as his sturdiest opponents amongst the Baptists assigned him. The Britannica' says that he had a dispute with some of the chiefs in the sect to which he belonged, and that 'they loudly pronounced him a false brother.' A great controversy on communion was rife amongst the Baptists, about the time that Bunyan took the pastoral charge of the Bedford Church, the leaders being Henry Jessey and Bunyan on one side, and William Kiffin, Henry Denne, Thomas Paul and Henry D'Anvers on the other side; this whole dispute, from one end to the other, was a family quarrel amongst the English Baptists, and none but Baptists took part therein. As nearly as can be ascertained, Bunyan published his Confession of Faith' in 1672, in which he first fully printed his views on open communion. In 1673 D'Anvers, in his work on baptism, adds a postscript answering this Confession, and refers to Thomas Paul's "Serious Reflections thereon, also published in 1673, and written jointly by Paul and Kiffin. These Reflections apparently indulged in serious personalities upon Bunyan as one of themselves, whose novel doctrines threatened to destroy Baptist Churches, and threw blame on Bunyan as a Baptist; to which he takes serious exception in his reply, known as 'Difference of Judgment,' 1673. This was followed