Writings on the Scriptures
The Scriptures carry such a blessed beauty in them to that
soul that has faith in the things contained in them, that they do
take the heart and captivate the soul of him that believeth them
into the love and liking of them, believing all things that are
written in the law and the prophets, and having hope towards God
that here shall be a resurrection of the dead both of the just
and unjust.
To him that believes the Scriptures aright, the promises or
threatenings are of more power to comfort or cast down, than all
the promises or threatenings of all the men in the world; and
this was the cause why the martyrs of Jesus did so slight both
the promises of their adversaries when they would have overcome
them with proffering the great things of this world unto them,
and also their threatenings when they told them they would rack
them, hang them, burn them. None of these things could prevail
upon them, or against them.
I never had in all my life so great an inlet into the word of God
as now, [in prison.] Those scriptures that I saw nothing in
before, were made in this place and state to shine upon me. Jesus
Christ also was never more real and apparent than now. Here I
have seen and felt him indeed: O that word, “We have not
preached unto you cunningly devised fables,” and that,
“God raised Christ from the dead and gave him glory, that
our faith and hope might be in God,” were blessed words unto
me in this condition.
These three or four scriptures also have been great refreshments
in this condition to me, John 14:1-4; 16:33; Heb. 12:22-24; so
that sometimes, when I have been in the savor of them, I have
been able to laugh at destruction, and to fear neither the horse
nor his rider. I have had sweet sights of the forgiveness of my
sins in this place, and of my being with Jesus in another world.
Oh the mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, the innumerable
company of angels, and God the judge of all, and the spirits of
just men made perfect; and Jesus has been sweet to me in this
place: I have seen that here, which I am persuaded I shall never
while in this world be able to express. I have seen a truth in
this scripture, “Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom,
though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy
unspeakable and full of glory.”
Read, and read again, and do not despair of help to understand
something of the will and mind of God, though you think they are
fast locked up from you. Neither trouble your heads though you
have not commentaries and expositions; pray and read, and read
and pray; for a little from God is better than a great deal from
men: also what is from men is uncertain, and is often lost and
tumbled over and over by men; but what is from God is fixed as a
nail in a sure place. There is nothing that so abides with us, as
what we receive from God; and the reason why Christians at this
day are at such a loss as to some things, is because they are
content with what comes from men’s mouths, without searching
and kneeling before God to know of him the truth of things.
Things that we receive at God’s hand come to us as things
from the minting-house, though old in themselves, yet new to us.
Old truths are always new to us, if they come to us with the
smell of heaven upon them.
(Taken out of the book Riches of Bunyan,
1850)