The Preacher in Bedford Gaol

Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body. HEBREWS 13:3

The last pages of Grace Abounding turn from Bunyan’s inner battles to his public calling: how a tinker became a preacher, and how the preacher became a prisoner. They are short, plain and among the most moving things he wrote. They show what the gospel he had discovered looked like when it cost him his liberty.

Called by the church

Bunyan did not appoint himself. Some of the most able among the Bedford congregation, seeing his gift, asked him to speak a word of exhortation to them. It abashed him, but he consented, first twice in private assemblies, then as some of them went into the villages to teach. At last, after solemn prayer and fasting, the church called him to a more public preaching of the word, both to believers and to those who had not yet received the faith. Even then he was, he says, most sorely afflicted with the fiery darts of the devil concerning his own eternal state.

As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. 1 PETER 4:10

It is worth noticing the order. The church recognised the gift, tested it, prayed and sent him. He did not wait until he felt fit; he never did. And the people came by hundreds from all parts to hear the tinker, and some were awakened. At first he could not believe God would speak by him to the heart of any man. Only when they persisted in blessing God for him did he begin to conclude that God had owned in His work such a foolish one as he.

I preached what I felt

Bunyan’s account of his own preaching is famous. For the first two years, he says, he preached chiefly the terror of the law and the guilt of sin, because that was what lay on his own conscience. “I preached what I felt, what I smartingly did feel, even that under which my poor soul did groan and tremble to astonishment.” And then: “I went myself in chains to preach to them in chains; and carried that fire in my own conscience that I persuaded them to beware of.” He would go to the pulpit door full of guilt and terror; it would be lifted while he preached; and before he got down the pulpit stairs it would return.

For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake. 2 CORINTHIANS 4:5

Later, when God gave him settled peace, he laboured to hold forth Jesus Christ in all His offices and benefits. But the principle stayed the same: he preached what he saw and felt, and there was no gap between the man and the message.

Arrested at Samsell

In November 1660, as we saw in chapter two, Bunyan was taken at a meeting of good people in the country, among whom, he says, had they let him alone, he would have preached that day. He was brought before a justice, who would have released him if his sureties would be bound that he should preach no more. They would not, and he would not. He was indicted for upholding unlawful assemblies and for not conforming to the national worship, sentenced, and sent home to prison, where, writing years later, he says he had lain complete twelve years.

Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men. ACTS 5:29

An inlet into the Word

What was prison like for his soul? Surprisingly, he says it was a time of great content, through grace, though with many turnings upon his heart. And then this: “I never had in all my life so great an inlet into the Word of God as now.” Scriptures in which he had seen nothing before now shone on him. Jesus Christ was never more real and apparent. A handful of passages became especially precious — John 14:1–4, John 16:33, Colossians 3:3–4, Hebrews 12:22–24 — so that at times he could laugh at destruction.

Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. JOHN 14:1–2

The flesh from the bones

But he does not pretend it was easy. The parting with his wife and poor children, he says, was often to him in that place “as the pulling the flesh from the bones.” Above all he grieved for his blind daughter Mary, who lay nearer his heart than all the rest. He imagined her beaten, begging, hungry, cold, and cried, though I cannot now endure the wind should blow upon thee. He saw himself as a man pulling down his house on the heads of his wife and children. “yet thought I, I must do it, I must do it.”

Leave thy fatherless children, I will preserve them alive; and let thy widows trust in me. JEREMIAH 49:11

What held him were two texts, of which this was one, and a conviction: if he ventured all for God, he engaged God to take care of his concerns; if he forsook God, he could not expect God to keep them. “I must venture you all with God,” he wrote, “though it goeth to the quick to leave you.”

This is hard teaching, and it must not be twisted. Bunyan did not treat his family lightly; the passage is soaked in anguish. He did not neglect them; he made laces in prison to support them, and Elizabeth pleaded his cause before the judges. And his case was extreme: a direct command to stop preaching Christ. Most of us are never asked to choose so starkly, and Scripture commands us to provide for our own. But where the choice truly comes, Bunyan shows that it is possible to love one’s family deeply and still put Christ first.

Off the ladder blindfold

The last great temptation in Grace Abounding came early in his imprisonment. Not knowing the law, he thought he might be hanged. And Satan asked him: what if, when you come to die, you have no evidence for heaven? At that time, he says, all the things of God were hid from his soul. He feared he would climb the ladder with a pale face and tottering knees and shame the gospel. He prayed for comfort, and none came, for many weeks.

At last one thought fell on him: it was for the word and way of God that he was there, so he must not flinch a hair’s breadth. God might choose whether to comfort him now or at the hour of death; but he might not choose whether to hold his profession. “I was bound, but he was free.” And so he resolved: “I will leap off the ladder even blindfold into eternity, sink or swim, come heaven, come hell, Lord Jesus, if thou wilt catch me, do; if not, I will venture for thy name.”

Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him. JOB 13:15

No sooner had he resolved it than a word dropped on him: Doth Job serve God for nought? He saw at once that to serve God when all is taken away is the very mark of an upright soul. His heart was full of comfort, and he said he would not have been without that trial for much.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Do you preach — in a pulpit, a classroom, a home — what you have felt? Ask God to make your words match your experience of Him.

2. Pray this week for Christians imprisoned for their faith, and for their families.

3. Is there a gift in you that your church has recognised and you have buried out of fear? Talk to your pastor about it.

4. What would you find hardest to venture with God? Bring it to Him in prayer, with Jeremiah 49:11.

5. If comfort has been withheld from you for a long time, consider Bunyan’s resolution: to serve God for nothing, and venture on His name.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, You called a tinker to preach and made a prison into a house of Your word. Thank You for Your servant’s faithfulness.

Give me grace to speak what I have felt and seen of You, and to hold my profession whatever it costs.

For those I love, I venture them all with You; preserve them, and let them trust in You.

And when all comfort is hidden, teach me to leap into Your arms blindfold, trusting that You will catch me. Amen.