The Narrated Puritan

Perhaps the most lamentable aspect of it is that the persons who are thus devoid of the spiritual senses by which they can converse with the best and highest world, are not conscious of their incapacity, or, if partially conscious of it, seem to be stupidly contented to remain as they are. The naturally blind mail would see if he could; what shall I say of those whose inability to see spiritually is wilful, and lies more in their will than anywhere else?

CASE 30. What judgment must a person form about his state, or what must he do, if he is in total darkness and cannot see anything of a work of grace in his heart? What difference is there between the hypocrite and the real believer? The one is always full of selfflattery, entertaining the kindest thoughts of his state; the other writes bitter things against himself, ever humble, and afraid lest in entertaining a hope of an interest in Jesus, he would be esteemed presumption. He appears so unworthy in his own eyes, so vile and despicable, that he dares not draw a favourable conclusion concerning himself, but as he knows he has deserved the everlasting indignation of a just and holy God, so he is ready to fear that will be his awful portion, notwithstanding all the promises of Divine grace

Don't think you have done all that is incumbent upon you, when you have read the Scripture either in the family or the closet. Pray over it before God. Have you been reading any promises of spiritual blessings? Plead them with God. Has the chapter represented the odiousness of sin, its dreadful consequences, the falls of God's people, and the salvation of the chief of sinners? Then beg that your eyes may be opened to see the malignity of sin, the wickedness of your heart, and that you may be kept from those evils which many have fallen into, and be enabled to admire the riches of free grace in the salvation of creatures so unworthy, and in your own in particular.

In the literary landscape of seventeenth-century England, few trial scenes resonate with as much raw satire and visceral injustice as the Trial at Vanity Fair in John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress. Before the merciless magistrate Lord Hate-good and a jury composed of men like Mr. Malice and Mr. Cruelty, the pilgrim Faithful is condemned not for a genuine crime, but for daring to challenge the corrupt, self-serving norms of a culture obsessed with worldly indulgence. This courtroom farce was no mere construct of allegory or creative imagination; it was a thinly veiled, cathartic processing of Bunyan's own lived trauma. In November 1660, following the Restoration of King Charles II and the aggressive crackdown on religious dissent, Bunyan was arrested for preaching at an unlicensed gathering in Bedfordshire. Refusing to compromise his conscience or promise silence in exchange for leniency, the humble tinker turned preacher was sentenced to a brutal, twelve-year imprisonment in the squalid, overcrowded confines of the Bedford County Gaol. It was precisely within those damp, disease-ridden walls—isolated from his family and facing an indefinite loss of liberty—that Bunyan transmuted his personal legal struggles into eternal art, forging a narrative where the terrifying corruptions of earthly justice serve only to illuminate the ultimate triumph of the steadfast soul.

CASE 16. Is it necessary, in order to evidence a person's conversion, that he sees and acknowledges himself as the chief of sinners, even if he hasn't been guilty of outward abominations? Or, what is that sense of sin, which evidences conversion, and is therefore accompanied with salvation?

From the Book Looking Unto Jesus: 1658

QUESTION. When our own faith is weakened as to the hearing of our prayers—when we ourselves are hindered within ourselves from believing the answer of our prayers, have no ground to expect we should be heard, or no ground to believe we are heard—what are those things that greatly weaken our faith as to the answer of our prayers; that though we continue to pray, yet our faith is weakened as to the hearing of our prayers? and what are the grounds that weaken men's faith in such a state? ANSWER. If our hearts are not duly prepared to the consideration of the great and glorious properties, presence, and holiness of God, and duly affected with them in our preparation for prayer, it is certain we can have no faith for the hearing of our prayers.

If it be so, that sin doth thus always abide in us, and will upon occasions work to all its fruit, to all manner of concupiscence, then the mortification of sin is a continual duty, that we ought to be exercised in all our days. Col. 3:3, "Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God." A blessed state and condition! I desire no better attainment in this world than this holds out. But what duty does the apostle infer from thence? "Therefore," saith he, "mortify your members which are upon the earth." What, I pray? "Fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry." The mortification of sin is a duty incumbent upon the best of saints.

Let a man fear it is so, when he finds arguments against it to lose their force. No man is under the power of particular corruption, but will have arguments suggested to his mind from fear, danger, shame, ruin, against continuing under that corruption. When a man begins to find these arguments abate in their force, and have not that prevalency upon his mind they have had, let him fear there is an habitual prevalency of his corruption.