and his ability to preach the Gospel, not by human aid, but by the Spirit
of the Lord," he "with many other saints had had experience." This book
must be pronounced a very remarkable production for a young travelling
tinker, under thirty, and without any literary or theological training
but such as he had gained for himself after attaining to manhood. Its
arrangement is excellent, the arguments are ably marshalled, the style is
clear, the language pure and well chosen. It is, in the main, a well-
reasoned defence of the historical truth of the Articles of the Creed
relating to the Second Person of the Trinity, against the mystical
teaching of the followers of George Fox, who, by a false spiritualism,
sublimated the whole Gospel narrative into a vehicle for the
representation of truths relating to the inner life of the believer. No
one ever had a firmer grasp than Bunyan of the spiritual bearing of the
facts of the recorded life of Christ on the souls of men. But he would
not suffer their "subjectivity"--to adopt modern terms--to destroy their
"objectivity." If the Son of God was not actually born of the Virgin
Mary, if He did not live in a real human body, and in that body die, lie
in the grave, rise again, and ascend up into heaven, whence He would
return--and that Bunyan believed shortly--in the same Body He took of His
mortal mother, His preaching was vain; their faith was vain; they were
yet in their sins. Those who "cried up a Christ within, _in opposition_
to a Christ without," who asserted that Christ had no other Body but the
Church, that the only Crucifixion, rising again, and ascension of Christ
was that _within_ the believer, and that every man had, as an inner
light, a measure of Christ's Spirit within him sufficient to guide him to
salvation, he asserted were "possessed with a spirit of delusion;"
deceived themselves, they were deceiving others to their eternal ruin. To
the refutation of such fundamental errors, substituting a mystical for an
historical faith, Bunyan's little treatise is addressed; and it may be
truly said the work is done effectually. To adopt Coleridge's expression