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T H E First Preached at Pinners Hall and now Enlarged and Published for Good. By J O H N.B U N Y A N. L O N D O N, Printed for Benjamin Alsop, at the Angel and Bible in the Poultry, 1682. Faithfully reprinted from the Author's First Edition. Written six years before John Bunyan's death. |
ADVERTISEMENT BY THE EDITOR.
ur curiosity is naturally excited to discover what
a poor, unlettered mechanic, whose book-learning had been limited to the contents
of one volume, could by possibility know upon a subject so abstruse, so profound,
and so highly metaphysical, as that of the Soul, it's greatness and the inconceivableness
of it's loss. Heathen philosophers, at the head of whose formidable array stand Plato
and Aristotle, had exhausted their wit, and had not made the world a whit the wiser
by all their lucubrations. The fathers plunged into the subject, and increased the
confusion; we are confounded with their subtle distinctions, definitions, and inquiries;
such as that attributed to St. Aquinas, How many disembodied spirits could dance
upon the point of a fine needle without jostling each other? Learned divines had
puzzled themselves and their hearers with suppositions and abstract principles. What,
then, could a travelling brasier, or tinker, have discovered to excite the attention
of the Christian world, and to become a teacher to philosophers, fathers, and learned
divines? Bunyan found no access to the polluted streams of a vain philosophy; he
went at once to the fountain-head; and, in the pure light of Revelation, displays
the human soul infinitely great in value, although in a fallen state. He portrays
it as drawn by the unerring hand of it's Maker. He sets forth, by the glass of God's
Word, the inconceivableness of it's value, while progressing through time; and, aided
by the same wondrous glass, he penetrates the eternal world, unveils the joys of
heaven and the torments of hell so far as they are revealed by the Holy Ghost, and
are conceivable to human powers. While he thus leads us to some kind of estimate
of it's worth, he, from the same source the only source from whence such knowledge
can be derived, makes known the causes of the loss of the soul, and leads his trembling
readers to the only name under heaven given among men, whereby they can be saved.
In attempting to conceive the greatness and value of the soul, the importance of
the body is too often overlooked. The body, it is true, is of the earth; the soul
is the breath of God. The body is the habitation; the soul is the inhabitant.
The body returns to the dust; while the soul enters into the intermediate state,
waiting to be reunited to the body after it's new creation, when death shall be swallowed
up of life. In these views, the soul appears to be vastly superior to the body. But
let it never be forgotten, that, as in this life, so it will be in the everlasting
state; the body and soul are so intimately connected as to become one being, capable
of exquisite happiness, or existing in the pangs of everlasting death. He who felt
and wrote as Bunyan does in this solemn treatise, and whose tongue was as the pen
of a ready writer, must have been wise and successful in winning souls to Christ.
He felt their infinite value, he knew their strong and their weak points, their riches
and poverty. He was intimate with every street and lane in the town of Man-soul,
and how and where the subtle Diabolians shifted about to hide themselves in the walls,
and holes, and corners. He sounds the alarm, and plants his engines against the eye
as the window, and the ear as the door, for the soul to look out at, and to receive
in by. He detects the wicked in speaking with his feet, and teaching with his fingers.
His illustration of the punishment of a sinner, as set forth by the sufferings of
the Saviour, is peculiarly striking. The attempt to describe the torments of those
who suffer under the awful curse, Go ye wicked, is awfully and intensely vivid.
Bunyan most earnestly exhorts the distressed sinner to go direct to the great Shepherd
and Bishop of souls, and not to place confidence in those who pretend to be his ministers;
but who are false shepherds, in so many ugly guises, and under so many false and
scandalous dresses; take heed of that shepherd that careth not for his own soul,
that walketh in ways, and doth such things, as have a direct tendency to damn his
own soul; come not near him. He that feeds his own soul with ashes, will scarce feed
thee with the bread of life. Choose Christ to be thy chief Shepherd, sit at his feet,
and learn of him and he will direct thee to such as shall feed thy soul with knowledge
and understanding.
Reader, let me no longer keep thee upon the threshold but enter upon this important
treatise with earnest prayer; and may the blessed Spirit enable us to live under
a sense of the greatness of the soul, the unspeakableness of the loss thereof, the
causes of losing it, and the only way in which it's salvation can he found.
GEORGE OFFOR.
Hackney, April 1850
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