Redimete Diem!

Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise,
making the most of the time, because the days are evil. (Eph. 5:15-16, ESV)

Notes Regarding the Characters in

Pilgrim's Progress

Lesson #26

Discourse #2 with Ignorance Hopeful’s experience stands in a fine instructive contrast with that of Ignorance; the first shows the relish of the renewed heart for pure divine truth, and the secret of it; the second shows the secret of the opposition of the unrenewed heart against that same divine truth in its purity. The pride of our nature is one of the last evils revealed to ourselves, and whatever goes against it, we do naturally count as our enemy. But humility, learning of Christ, make a different estimate, and counts as precious, beyond price, all that truth and virtue in the gospel which abases self. On the other hand, those who do not love God cannot expect to find in his Word a system of truth that will please their own hearts. A sinful heart can have to right views of God, and of course will have defective views of his Word; for sin distorts the judgment, and overturns the balance of the mind on all moral subjects far more than even the best of men are aware of. there is, there can be, no true reflection of God or of his Word from the bosom darkened with guilt, from the heart at enmity with him. That man will always look at God through the medium of his own selfishness, and at God’s Word through the coloring of his own wishes, prejudices, and fears. (Cheever, pp. 446-447).

Though God’s truth is clear, Ignorance’s depraved mind dims and distorts this truth and makes a religious system in which he cooperates (by his works) with Christ for his right standing with God. Ignorance has made Christ a justifier of his religious duties instead of trusting in Christ wholly and solely for acceptance before God. Believers, because of their love for divine teachings, understand that they may glory in nothing in and of themselves concerning their salvation but only in Christ and what he has done in and for them. So Ignorance is to be an object of pity because of his boastfulness, which is a sign of his great delusion.

Ignorance is so dismayed by Christian’s statement that Christ’s righteousness alone is the believer’s justification that he declares that this belief system will lead to antinomianism (lawlessness). However, believers, who have had Christ revealed to them through the Word, realize the true fullness of the gospel (that our salvation is totally, form beginning to end, all of Christ) and will have such love and gratitude that they will want to obey the Law. Unless God is pleased to reveal Christ and the gospel (Mt. 11:27) to Ignorance, he will forever be captive to his notions of works salvation, though Ignorance is himself responsible for his sinful blindness. (Bradley, p. 96-7)

True Fear - Fears of wrath are too generally ascribed to unbelief, and deemed prejudicial; but this arises from ignorance and mistake; for belief of God’s testimony must excite fears in every heart, till it is clearly perceived how that wrath may be escaped; and doubts mingled with hopes must arise from faith, till a man is conscious of having experienced a saving change. These fears and doubts excite men to self-examination, watchfulness, and diligence; and thus tend to the believer’s establishment, and “the full assurance of hope unto the end”: while the want of them often results from unbelief and stupidity of conscience, and terminates in carnal security and abuse of the gospel. Fears may indeed be excessive and unreasonable, and the effect of unbelief: but it is better to mark the extreme, and caution men against it, than by declaiming indiscriminately against all doubts and fears, to help sinners to deceive themselves, and discourage weak believers from earnestly using the scriptural means of “making their calling and election sure”. (Scott, p. 314-5)

People seek to stifle conviction of sin by thinking that it comes form the Devil; this spoils their supposed faith, and thus they become presumptuously confident. They believe that fears of sin’s consequences take away from their self-holiness. The personal righteousness they claim is one that comes from the natural man (his supposed good heart) and causes them to applaud and be confident in themselves instead of desiring and trusting in Christ’s righteousness. such presumption in the unbeliever is fatal. (Bradley, p. 97)

Temporary - “The hypocrite will not pray always”; nor can he ever pray with faith or sincerity, for spiritual blessings: but he may deprecate misery, and beg to be made happy, and continue to observe a form of private religion. But when such men begin to shun the company of lively Christians, to neglect public ordinances, and to excuse their own conduct, by imitating the devil, the accuser of the brethren, in calumniating pious persons, magnifying their imperfections, insinuating suspicions of them, and aiming to confound all distinction of character among men; we may safely conclude their state to be perilous in the extreme. While professed Christians should be exhorted carefully to look to themselves, and to watch against the first incursions of this spiritual declension; it should also be observed, that the lamented infirmities and dullness of those who persist in using the means of grace, and striving against sin; who decidedly prefer the company of believers, and deem them the excellent of the earth, and who are severe in judging themselves, but candid to others, are of a contrary nature and tendency to the steps of Temporary’s apostasy.” (Scott, p. 320)

Thomas Shepard’s Ten Virgins is the most terrible book upon Temporaries that ever was written. Temporaries never once saw their true vileness, he keeps on saying. Temporaries are, no doubt, wounded for sin sometimes, but never in the right place nor to the right depth. And again, sin and especially heart-sin, is never really bitter to Temporaries. In an “exhortations to all new beginners, and so to all others”, “Be sure”, Shepard says, “your wound for sin at first is deep enough. For all the error in a man’s faith and sanctification springs from his first error in his humiliation. If a man’s humiliation be false, or even weak or little, then his faith and his hold of Christ are weak and little, and his sanctification counterfeit. But if a man’s wound be right, and his humiliation deep enough, that man’s faith will be right and his sanctification will be glorious. The esteem of Christ is always little where sin lies light.” ... “Come,” said Pliable, in the beginning of the book, “come on and let us mend our pace.” “I cannot go so fast as I would,” humbly replied Christian, “because of this burden on my back.” It is a common observation among mountaineers that he who takes the hill at the greatest spurt is the last climber to come to the top, and that many who so ostentatiously make spurts at the bottom of the hill never come within sight of the top at all. And this is one of the constant dangers that wait on all revivals, religious retreats, conferences, and even communion seasons. Our hot fits, the hotter they are, are only the more likely, unless we take the greatest care, to cast us down into all the more deadly a chill. It is this danger that our Lord points out so plainly in His parable of apostasy. The same is he, says our Lord, that heareth the word, and anon with joy receiveth it; yet hath he no root in himself, but dureth for a while. In Hopeful’s words, his mind and will were never changed with all his joy, only his passing moods and his momentary emotions. ... [But a]fter all that has been said, I fully admit that we are all Temporaries to begin with. We all cool down from our first heat in religion. We all halt from our first spurt. We all turn back from faith and from duty and from privilege through our fear of men, or through our corrupt love of ourselves, or through our course-minded love of this present world. Only, those who are appointed to perseverance, and through that to eternal life, always kindle again; they are kindled again, and they love the return of their lost warmth. They recover themselves and address themselves again and again to the race that is still set before them. They prove themselves not to be of those who draw back unto perdition, but of those that believe to the saving of the soul. Now, if you have only too good ground to suspect that you are but a temporary believer, what are you to do to make your sure escape out of that perilous state? What, but to keep on believing? You must cry constantly, “Lord, I believe, help Thou mine unbelief!” (Whyte, pp. 62, 64, 66)

Pilgrims on the Way should take from the character of Temporary a warning to examine their hearts, for all backsliding begins in the heart, the seat of our affections. When we neglect prayer and our Bibles and are preoccupied with the pursuit of the things of this world, it is a sure indication that our affections are going astray and becoming lukewarm towards God. A Christian should diligently make use of the means of grace to keep fuel in the heart that it may burn hot in its affections toward God. (Bradley, pp. 98-99)

------------------------------------

notes taken from:

Bunyan Characters in the Pilgrim's Progress, vol. 2, by Alexander Whyte, London:Oliphant Anderson and Ferrier, 1902.

Lectures on the Pilgrim’s Progress ..., by George Cheever, NY:Carter & Brothers, 1875.

The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan with Explanatory Notes by Thomas Scott, Swengel, PA:Reiner Pub., 1976.

The Pilgrim’s Progress Study Guide by Maureen L. Bradley, Phillipsburg, NJ:P&R, 1994.

David G. Barker
david.barker@ncpres.org