A Premonition to the Reader

Foreword

The substantial elements of 17th-century England were combustible, and John Bunyan’s ministry was a blazing torch. Bunyan’s is a household name amongst most evangelicals thanks to his bestseller, Pilgrim’s Progress. But important lessons — lessons most relevant to our own times of state overreach — are lost if we only know this Puritan Non-Conformist apart from his times and only for one book. Revisiting Bunyan in historical context, and especially noting his book Of Antichrist, and His Ruin, is instructive for evangelicals seeking light in the foggy atmosphere of contemporary church and state relations.

John Bunyan was an English Puritan; the Puritans sought to conform the Church’s worship to the norms of Scripture and, further, to reform society and government with the same. J.I. Packer explains:

Puritanism was an evangelical holiness movement seeking to implement its vision of spiritual renewal, national and personal, in the church, the state, and the home; in education, evangelism, and economics; in individual discipleship and devotion, and in pastoral care and competence. 1

1. J.I. Packer, quoted in Joel Beeke and Mark Jones, A Puritan

Theology, (Reformation Heritage Books: Grand Rapids, MI, 2012), 5.

The Puritan movement in England galvanized during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, 1558 to 1603. Elizabeth moved the church away from Romish liturgy with her 1559 Act of Uniformity, but Puritan ministers argued she still needed to take the reforms further. Chafing under her prescribed ecclesiastical vestments, they found themselves oppressed under her rule, especially over the penalties levied against those who refused to use the Anglican Book of Common Prayer or who spoke against it.2 That said, she did turn a blind eye to some of the Puritans, allowing them space to flourish. The Puritans became more hopeful when the throne passed to James I in 1603, but when they presented him with their desire for further reforms he threatened to “harry them out of the land, or else do worse.”3 King James raised their ire further when he published the Book of Sports in 1618, encouraging sports on Sunday in contravention to Puritan teaching.4 In 1625 King Charles I succeeded James, and he appointed men to torture ecclesiastical dissenters, like the Puritans, which provoked over 13,000 Puritans to flee to America. King Charles I was a thrice son of hell, who resented accountability to God’s Law and especially abhorred the Puritan attestation that King Jesus is true Head of the Church, instead claiming that place for himself.

Pressure escalated even more when Charles insisted on his divine right to tax the people without parliamentary approval. By this time Puritanism had grown as a movement, and Puritans had made inroads into Parliament. Puritan parliamentarians, already vexed with the King’s insistence on taxation without representation, wanted to do away with the Anglican bishops and the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. With the outbreak of civil war in 1642, the combustible 17th-century was finally set ablaze.

2. Leland Ryken, Worldly Saints: The Puritans As They Really Were, (Zondervan Academic: Grand Rapids, MI, 2010), 5. 3. Ibid., 9. 4. Ibid.

The Crown collided with Parliament, and the Puritans naturally backed Parliament. The ultimate parliamentary triumph sealed the eventual beheading of the thrice son of hell King Charles I in 1649. His son and heir was also exiled. Oliver Cromwell, a parliamentarian and Puritan, ascended to prominence in the Civil War and, following the war, assumed power as Lord Protector of England. Under his Protectorate England functioned as a republic, adopting a policy of general religious toleration, abolishing the Anglican bishops and discountenancing the Anglican Book of Common Prayer.5

The tolerance of Puritanism lasted until a few years after Cromwell’s death in 1658, after which his sons proved inept to match his strength of leadership which had been a major factor in achieving the political stability of Cromwell’s interregnum. Parliament, seeking stability, reinstated the monarchy in 1660. Charles II — the exiled son of the thrice son of hell Charles I — ascended the throne, promising that he would maintain the policy of general religious tolerance. He was his father’s son, and he reneged. Most famously, the Act of Uniformity was passed on St. Bartholomew’s Day in 1662, and it mandated that the Anglican Book of Common Prayer be used in all England’s churches. Puritan pastors refused to conform, and over 2,000 were ejected from their pulpits. During Charles II’s time, John Bunyan lamented that England’s sins “are conspicuous, they are open, they are declared as Sodom’s were,” and, “they have infected most of them that now name the name of Christ.”6 Charles II spent his reign slandering Cromwell and persecuting Puritans. He died in 1685,

5. “Cromwell, Oliver,” in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd ed., edited by E.A. Livingstone and F.L. Cross (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1997), 436. 6. John Bunyan, “A Holy Life The Beauty of Christianity,” in The Works of John Bunyan, ed. by George Offor, vol. 2 (The Banner of Truth Trust: Carlisle, PA, 1991), 534.

with 14 illegitimate children and no legitimate heir.7

His brother James II succeeded him. An ardent Romanist, James plotted to consolidate power under his rule and Romanize England through bribery and backroom deals. A minority of established Protestant clergy, wise to his intentions, invited his Dutch and Protestant son-in-law, William of Orange, to depose him in 1688. William obliged and, without bloodshed, reinstated English liberty — notably legislating the toleration of Puritanism — while sending James II into exile. The Orange Revolution, or Glorious Revolution, as it came to be known, ended the Antichrist reign in 17th-century England.

Bunyan’s Conversion and Ministry

While Antichrist blustered from the offices of state, God was quietly preparing another case of using the weak and foolish to shame the wise and powerful. John Bunyan, the son of a mechanic, was born one mile from Bedford, England, in 1628, 3 years after Charles I began his reign. He received little education, just enough for him to read and write. Sinfulness characterized his earliest years. “As soon as his strength enabled him, he devoted his whole soul and body to licentiousness.”8 He fought in the English Civil War, although what side he fought on is uncertain. In 1648, with the war over and Bunyan still unconverted, he married a Christian woman who — despite her obvious lapse in becoming unequally yoked to him — with “affectionate, amiable mildness”9 influenced Bunyan to consider Christ.

Providence directed events that led to his eventual conversion. He once found himself under conviction for dishonouring

7. Roy Strong, The Story of Britain, (Pegasus Books, Ltd: New York, 2019), 262. 8. George Offor, “Memoir of John Bunyan,” in The Works of John Bunyan, vol. 1, iii. 9. Ibid., ix.

the Sabbath, to the point that he wouldn’t stand near church bells for fear that God, in judgement, might cause them to fall and crush him.10 He became ashamed on another occasion when, while he was “cursing and swearing” in public, a woman, who herself was “a very loose and ungodly wretch,” publicly castigated him, saying his behaviour could “spoil all the youth in a whole town.”11 He later overheard a group of godly ladies discussing the second birth. He inquired of them, and they directed him to the Baptist church in Bedford. He was converted and then baptized by immersion, as a Baptist, in 1653. After an internal struggle with doubt over his salvation, God quieted his soul with assurance. He began to preach the Gospel.

His popularity spread with the news of his dramatic conversion, and he earned a reputation for fiery preaching. “Fear of the consequences, or of offending his enemies, never entered his mind.”12 Predictably, “Bunyan’s veneration for the Scriptures, as the only source and standard of religious knowledge, led him into frequent controversies.”13 He preached against the unregenerate clergy of his day, and called believers to come out from among them. In retribution, they slandered him as a Jesuit, a thief, a polygamist, and an adulterer.14 Edward Fowler — the Bishop of Gloucester who Bunyan lumped with a “whole gang of…rabbling counterfeit clergy”15— called Bunyan “most unchristian and wicked,” “a piece of proud folly,” and, “infamous in Bedford for a pestilent schismatic.”16 Bunyan once exclaimed, “I

10. Ibid., x—xi. 11. John Bunyan, “Grace Abounding To The Chief Of Sinners,” in Works, vol. 1, 9. 12. Offor, “Memoir,” lvi. 13. Ibid., xliii. 14. Ibid., xliv. 15. Bunyan, “A Defence of the Doctrine of Justification,” in Works, vol. 2, 322. 16. Quoted by Offor, in “Editor’s Advertisement,” Ibid., 279.

rejoice in reproaches for Christ’s sake.”17

His pastor, John Gifford, defended Bunyan: “I verily believe that God hath counted him faithful, and put him in the ministry.” Gifford also countered Bunyan’s attackers, asserting that, by Bunyan’s ministry, “their slothfulness hath been reproved, and the eyes of many have been opened to see a difference between those that are sent of God and those that run before they are sent.”18

Upon the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, Charles II — the son of the thrice son of hell Charles I — became king, and Bunyan, on November 16, 1660, ominously became the first preacher imprisoned under Charles.

His situation was desperate. Bunyan’s first wife had died, leaving him four children, the firstborn being blind. He had remarried in 1659. His second wife cared for the children after his 1660 arrest, and the stress of the arrest resulted in her miscarrying their first child. She once recounted her privations to a judge: “My lord, I have four small children that cannot help themselves, of which one is blind, and have nothing to live upon but the charity of good people.”19 Her agony induced her into a dangerous illness that she physically survived, but from which she never mentally recovered.20 Bunyan, in anguish over his family’s dreadful circumstances, described his inner turmoil: “the parting with my wife and poor children hath oft been to me in this place as the pulling the flesh from my bones,” and continuing he explained, “because I should have often brought to my mind the many hardships, miseries and wants that my poor family was like to meet with , should I be taken from them, especially my poor blind child, who lay nearer my heart than all I had beside.” He continued, “I saw in this condition I was as a man who was

17. Bunyan, “Grace Abounding,” 46. 18. Bunyan, “Grace Abounding,” 46. 19. Offor, Memoirs, lv. 20. Ibid., l.

pulling down his house upon the head of his wife and children.” Yet, he knew it was his duty to God and thus reasoned, “I must first pass a sentence of death upon everything that can properly be called a thing of this life, even to reckon myself, my wife, my children, my health, my enjoyments, and all, as dead to me, and myself to them,” while quoting Christ’s words in Matthew 10:37, “He that loveth father or mother, so or daughter, more than me, is not worthy of me.”21

With the tragedy of his family’s circumstances, Bunyan’s chronicle of his interactions with officials just after his arrest offers a most relevant historical lesson. A few months after his arrest, a Clerk of the Peace, one Mr. Cobb, visited Bunyan in prison. Cobb, Bunyan recounts, “came to admonish me.”22 As an historical pretext to his arrest and only a few weeks prior, a religious fanatic amassed a small crowd in London, unsuccessfully attempting to overthrow the newly restored King Charles II, and killing many in the process. With the public on edge, the Crown enforced assembly bans on unlicensed religious gatherings to prevent more zealots from organizing. Bunyan was under police surveillance prior to his arrest because the authorities feared he was about “to do some fearful business, to the destruction of the country,”23 and at his arrest he learned they suspected that his congregation was armed. Unfounded suspicions in mind, Cobb asserted that the state’s assembly bans were for the public good. Bunyan retorted, “My end in meeting with others is simply to do as much good as I can.”24 As in our own COVID-19 times, the Crown maintained that their restrictions served the public, while Bunyan, like the non-conforming clergy of our last two years, asserted that his assemblies served the people of God.

Cobb continued, maintaining that the Crown permitted

21. Bunyan, Grace Abounding, 48. 22. Bunyan, “Relation of Bunyan’s Imprisonment,” in Works, vol. 1, 54. 23. Ibid., 50. 24. Ibid., 57

Bunyan to communicate his beliefs to individuals, but only prohibited the gathering of crowds. He sounded much like the state’s offer during our own lockdowns which “permitted” online preaching while severely restricting church capacity limits. Bunyan, like the faithful among us, knew better: “if I may, by the law, discourse with one, surely it is to do him good; and if I, by discoursing, may do good to one, surely, by the same law, I may do good to many.”25 Bunyan clashed with the Crown because he believed the unrestricted gathering was good in itself.

Following what has become a familiar line of reasoning in our own time, Cobb argued that Bunyan should act neighbourly by submitting to the law: “Cannot you submit, and, notwithstanding, do as much good as you can, in a neighbourly way, without having such meetings?” Bunyan replied, “I dare not but exercise that gift which God hath given me for the good of the people.”26 Contrary to Cobb, Bunyan understood that turning persons away from hearing him preach was unneighbourly.

Cobb attempted a compromise with Bunyan, asking him to stop gathering crowds temporarily: “[What] if you should forbear awhile, and sit still, till you see further how things will go?” Bunyan asserted that a temporary compromise would imperil his soul by referencing the famed 14th-century English outlaw preacher John Wycliffe: “Wicliffe saith, that he which leaveth off preaching and hearing of the Word of God for fear of excommunication of men, he is already excommunicated of God, and shall in the day of judgment be counted a traitor to Christ.”27

Perhaps not surprisingly, Cobb also alluded to Romans 13:1 to convince Bunyan that full submission to the state is godly: “You know…that the Scripture saith ‘the powers that be are ordained of God,’” and, “the King then commands you, that you should not have any private meetings; because it is against his

25. Ibid., 58. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid., 59.

law, and he is ordained of God, therefore you should not have any.” Referencing the legal troubles of Christ and the Apostle Paul, Bunyan justified his own disobedience to the state: “I hope you will not say that either Paul, or Christ, were such as deny magistracy, and so sinned against God in slighting the ordinance.”28

Now in 2022, we remember that for nearly two years not a few Canadian pastors — fearful of COVID-19 and subservient to the state — shut churches, moved “worship” online, restricted church attendance, abandoned the sick to die alone, mandated masks during worship, turned unvaccinated worshippers away, enforced social distancing at church, advocated state intrusion that impoverished small family businesses, etc. Compliant clergy and bureaucrats alike resorted to a few stock arguments to cajole non-compliant churches into submission to so-called “health regulations”. Those arguments are manifestly similar, if not exact copies, to the ones used against Bunyan, which he documented.

The global COVID-19 lockdowns showcased the perennial relevance of Bunyan’s time and testimony, even as they also demonstrate that Antichrist might change his shape but not his intentions. George Offor, editor of Bunyan’s works, writing long after the persecuting times of Bunyan, predicted Antichrist’s return: “The dread enemy may yet appear in a different shape to any that he has hitherto assumed.”29 Offor’s prediction has come true. We have beheld Antichrist in a different shape — this time with arbitrary “health mandates” — but still intent to lord over men and control Christian worship, thereby usurping the place of the Lord Christ. While we might hope that the COVID-19 era is behind us, we should reflect on those days to learn from them. Some should repent for how they carried on. Bunyan’s example will help us, and, as we prepare to potentially face Antichrist again, we should echo Bunyan’s confession to God: “Lord, I can-

28. Ibid. 29. Offor, in “Prefatory Remarks by the Editor” to “Of Antichrist, and His Ruin,” by Bunyan, in Works, vol. 2, 41—42.

not consent that human inventions and doctrines of men should be joined with thy institution as matters of worship and imposed upon my conscience as such.”30

Aiding us to that end, Bunyan wrote Of Antichrist, and His Ruin long after his 1673 release from his twelve-year imprisonment and after his final brief 1677 stint in prison. By then his popularity, with the runaway success of Pilgrim’s Progress, had exploded. One biographer noted that with one day’s notice he could preach to upwards of 3,000 people outdoors, and he once preached to 1,200 outdoors in London on a weekday at 7:00 AM in the winter. Distinguished Puritan scholar John Owen — a contemporary to Bunyan — was asked by King Charles II why a scholar like him would go listen to the preaching of an uneducated tinker like Bunyan. Owen replied, “May it please your Majesty, if I could possess the tinker’s abilities, I would gladly give in exchange all my learning.”31 Bunyan even became chaplain to the Lord Mayor of London. At the peak of his ministry with his twilight looming, he warned of Antichrist and offered hope with the promise of Antichrist’s ruin.

King James II — who succeeded his brother Charles II just three years before Bunyan’s death — attempted to Romanize England by consolidating local power under his rule. Alarmed by this new threat of arbitrary rule, Bunyan, by then also pastor of a flock, galvanized his Bedford congregation against James II’s conspiracy. Desiring to neutralize him, James II attempted to pacify Bunyan with political favours. Bunyan resisted and wrote Of Antichrist, and His Ruin. “At this time he again manifested his lion heart, by writing and preparing for the press a fearless treatise on Antichrist, and His Ruin… This was one of the last treatises which Bunyan prepared for the press, as if in his dying moments he would aim a deadly thrust at Apollyon.”32 The vol-

30. Bunyan, “Advice to Sufferers,” in Works, vol. 2, 714. 31. John Owen, quoted by Offor, “Memoir of John Bunyan,” in Works, vol. 1, lxx. 32. Offor, “Memoir,” lxxi—lxxii.

ume, however, remained unpublished until it appeared in a folio in 1691, three years after Bunyan’s death. To my knowledge, this copy published by Ezra Press is the first time it has ever been published as a standalone volume.

Bunyan’s Legacy

Our contemporary English-speaking church has now, for at least a couple generations, received sensational teachings on Antichrist fabricated to sell novels and whatnot. This, quite understandably, has created a distaste for the concept, and deprived God’s people of a meaningful, biblical lens through which to consider the doctrine of Antichrist. Therein might be why so many proved themselves unprepared for the COVID-19 lockdowns. Repulsed by fanciful concoctions of Antichrist, the church had no category for a state at war with her.

Born-again men and evil times are the substantial elements of combustion. Bunyan, from his study of Scripture in his own context, bequeathed to us a timeless biblical category for the combustion that occurs when a wicked establishment attacks a faithful church. By extracting the principles, we learn to diagnose our own times. Antichrist endeavors to usurp Christ’s headship over His Bride, the church, “to prostrate her to his lusts, to deflower her, and to make her an adulteress.”33 Antichrist “hath turned the sword of the magistrate against those that keep God’s law,” rendering the state’s sword “the ruin of the good and virtuous, and a protection of the vile and base.”34 This book provides a needed category.

Beyond just leaving us that category, this book strengthens confidence that God has decreed all events, even the rise of Antichrist governments, for the good of His elect. “And the reason why Antichrist came into the world, was, That the church, which

33. Bunyan, “Of Antichrist, and His Ruin,” in Works, vol. 2, 75. 34. Ibid., 77.

is the body of Christ, might be tried, and made white by suffering under his tyranny, and by bearing witness against his falsehoods.”35 To this end, “the church shall single him out from all beasts, and so follow him with cries, and pinch him with their voices, that he alone shall perish by their means.”36 God in His wisdom appoints Antichrist to purge His church of hypocrites, to embolden His chosen in their militancy against evil, and to unveil His glory in triumph.

Explaining God’s purpose, Bunyan’s writing offers the sure hope of the church’s sure triumph and Antichrist’s sure demise. Thus “will the beauty of Antichrist fade like a flower, and fall as doth a leaf when the sap of the tree has left it.”37 Unlike many today who view the state as a neutral force, Bunyan maintained that God would, in His time, raise up a Christ-honouring state which would properly employ its sword to destroy the body of Antichrist. “I believe that by magistrates and powers we shall be delivered and kept from Antichrist.”38 “Now these kings whose hearts God shall set to destroy Antichrist, shall do it without those inward reluctancies that will accompany inferior men: they shall be stript of all pity and compassion.”39 As if to vindicate Bunyan posthumously, Providence directed William of Orange to enter England and depose James II — restoring English liberty and enacting the toleration of Puritanism — less than two months after Bunyan’s August 1688 death. “An enlightened monarch was placed upon the vacant throne, and persecution was deprived of its tiger claws and teeth by the act of toleration.”40

Bunyan entered ministry just prior to the enthronement of the tyrant King Charles II. That ministry ended with his death

35. Ibid., 77. 36. Ibid., 48. 37. Ibid., 49. 38. Ibid., 74 39. Ibid. 40. George Offor, in “The Editor’s Advertisement” to “A Holy Life The Beauty of Christianity,” by Bunyan, in Works, vol. 2, 505.