Welcome to our collection of quotes by John Bunyan. We hope you enjoy pondering them and please share widely.
Wikipedia Summary for John Bunyan
John Bunyan (baptised 30 November 1628 – 31 August 1688) was an English writer and Puritan preacher best remembered as the author of the Christian allegory The Pilgrim's Progress. In addition to The Pilgrim's Progress, Bunyan wrote nearly sixty titles, many of them expanded sermons.
Bunyan came from the village of Elstow, near Bedford. He had some schooling and at the age of sixteen joined the Parliamentary Army during the first stage of the English Civil War. After three years in the army he returned to Elstow and took up the trade of tinker, which he had learned from his father. He became interested in religion after his marriage, attending first the parish church and then joining the Bedford Meeting, a nonconformist group in Bedford, and becoming a preacher. After the restoration of the monarch, when the freedom of nonconformists was curtailed, Bunyan was arrested and spent the next twelve years in jail as he refused to give up preaching. During this time he wrote a spiritual autobiography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, and began work on his most famous book, The Pilgrim's Progress, which was not published until some years after his release.
Bunyan's later years, in spite of another shorter term of imprisonment, were spent in relative comfort as a popular author and preacher, and pastor of the Bedford Meeting. He died aged 59 after falling ill on a journey to London and is buried in Bunhill Fields. The Pilgrim's Progress became one of the most published books in the English language; 1,300 editions having been printed by 1938, 250 years after the author's death.
Bunyan is remembered in the Church of England with a Lesser Festival on 30 August, and on the liturgical calendar of the United States Episcopal Church on 29 August. Some other churches of the Anglican Communion, such as the Anglican Church of Australia, honour him on the day of his death (31 August).
The frog by nature is both damp and cold. Her mouth is large, her belly much will hold. She sits somewhat ascending, loves to be
Croaking in gardens, though unpleasantly.
So he passed over and the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.
He that forgets his friend is ungrateful to him; but he that forgets his Savior is unmerciful to himself.
Thou may'st, too, here thy spots and freckles see, Hast thou but eyes, and what their numbers be.
The road of denial leads to the precipice of destruction.
To pray rightly, you must make God your hope, stay, and all. Right prayer sees nothing substantial or worth being concerned about except God.
Oh the remembrance of my great sins, of my great temptations, and of my great fear of perishing forever! They bring afresh into my mind the remembrance of my great help, my great supports from Heaven, and the great grace that God extended to such a wretch as I.
One leak will sink a ship, and one sin will destroy a sinner.
Shame, depart, thou art an enemy to my salvation!
Saint abroad, and a devil at home.
Then Iandnbsp;saw that there was a way to hell, even from the gates of heaven.
He who bestows his goods upon the poor,
Shall have as much again, and ten times more.
Afflictions make the heart more deep, more experimental, more knowing and profound, and so, more able to hold, to contain, and beat more.
Nothing can hurt you except sin; nothing can grieve me except sin; nothing can defeat you except sin. Therefore, be on your guard, my Mansoul.
Now may this little Book a blessing be
To those that love this little Book, and me:
And may its Buyer have no cause to say,
His money is but lost, or thrown away.
Another part or piece,' said Diabolus, 'of mine excellent armour, is a dumb and prayerless spirit, a spirit that scorns to cry for mercy, let the danger be ever so great; therefore be you, my Mansoul, sure that you make use of this.
Christians are like the several flowers in a garden that have each of them the dew of heaven, which, being shaken with the wind, they let fall at each other's roots, whereby they are jointly nourished, and become nourishers of each other.
To seek yourself in this world is to be lost; and to be humble is to be exalted.
We know not the matter of the things for which we should pray, neither the object to whom we pray, nor the medium by or through whom we pray; none of these things know we, but by the help and assistance of the Spirit.
No child of God sins to that degree as to make himself incapable of forgiveness.
There is in Jesus Christ more merit and righteousness than the whole world has need of.
I will stay in prison till the moss grows on my eye lids rather than disobey God.
Words easy to be understood do often hit the mark, when high and learned ones do only pierce the air.
If people really see that Christ has removed the fear of punishment from them by taking it into Himself, they won't do whatever they want, they'll do whatever He wants.
I love to hear my Lord spoken of, and wherever I have seen the print of His shoe in the earth, there have I coveted to put mine also.
If thou hast sinned, lie not down without repentance; for the want of repentance, after one has sinned, makes the heart yet harder and harder.
Christ is my righteousness. I am neither less righteous for my ill deservings nor more righteous for my good deservings, for Christ is my righteousness, and He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
Our sins, when laid upon Christ, were yet personally ours, not his; so his righteousness, when put upon us, is yet personally his, not ours.
The heart, when broken, is like sweet gums and spices when beaten; for as such cast their fragrant scent into the nostrils of men, so the heart, when broken, casts its sweet smell into the nostrils of God.
Fear, lest, by forgetting what you are by nature, you also forget the need that you have of continual pardon, support, and supplies from the Spirit of grace, and so grow proud of your own abilities, or of what you have received from God.
Whatever contradicts the Word of God should be instantly resisted as diabolical.
He that lives in sin and looks for happiness hereafter is likehimthat soweth cockleand thinkstofill hisbarnwith wheat or barley.
Just as Christian came up to the Cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders, fell from off his back, and began to tumble down the hill, and so it continued to do till it came to the mouth of the sepulchre. There it fell in, and I saw it no more!
The heart must be beaten or bruised, and then the sweet scent will come out.
Run when I can, walk when I cannot run, and creep when I cannot walk.
Be of good cheer, Jesus Christ maketh thee whole.
A comely sight indeed it is to see, a world of blossoms on an apple tree.
The best prayer I ever prayed had enough sin to damn the whole world.
There is enough sin in my best prayer to send the whole world to Hell.
Thou art beaten that thou mayest be better.
The Author's Way of sending forth his Second Part of the Pilgrim. Some things are of that nature as to make One's fancy chuckle, while his heart doth ache.
To-despise the world is the way to enjoy heaven; and blessed are they who delight to converse with God by prayer.
It is the opener of the heart of God, and a means by which the soul, though empty, is filled.
Yet my great-grandfather was but a water-man, looking one way and rowing another: and I got most of my estate by the same occupation.
It is possible to learn all about the mysteries of the Bible and never be affected by it in one's soul. Great knowledge is not enough.
Riches and power, what is there more in the world? For money answereth all things-that is, all but soul concerns. It can neither be a price for souls while here, nor can that, with all the forces of strength, recover one out of hell fire.
Man indeed is the most noble, by creation, of all the creatures in the visible World; but by sin he has made himself the most ignoble.
Men, even the elect, have too many infirmities to come to Christ without help from heaven; inviting will not do.
He who runs from God in the morning will scarcely find Him the rest of the day.
Beware of resting in the word of the kingdom, without the spirit and power of the kingdom of that gospel, for the gospel coming in word only saves nobody, for the kingdom of God or the gospel, where it comes to salvation, is not in word but in power.
Temptation provokes me to look upward to God.
His love is what makes us live, love, sing, and praise forever.
Great sins do draw out great grace; and where guilt is most terrible and fierce, there the mercy of God in Christ, when showed to the soul, appears most high and mighty.
The greatness of God, of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is that, if rightly considered, which will support the spirits of those of his people that are frighted with the greatness of their adversaries.
Prayer is an ordinance of God, that must continue with a soul so long as it is on this side glory.
See how ye Pharisee in the Temple stands,
And justifies himself with lifted hands.
Whilst ye poor publican with downcast eyes,
Conscious of guilt to God for mercy cries.
On the Day of Judgment , life and death are not determined by the world but by God's wisdom and law.
A saint abroad, and a devil at home.
The man that takes up religion for the world will throw away religion for the world.
Dark clouds bring waters, when the bright bring none.
I have given Him my faith, and sworn my allegiance to Him; how, then, can I go back from this, and not be hanged as a traitor?
To go back is nothing but death; but to go forward is fear of death and life everlasting beyond.
I seek a place that can never be destroyed, one that is pure, and that fadeth not away, and it is laid up in heaven, and safe there, to be given, at the time appointed, to them that seek it with all their heart. Read it so, if you will, in my book.
Care, mad to see a man sae happy, E'en drouned himsel amang the nappy.
It could be a sign of pride in your life if a word of reproof or admonition is not able to be received with the same grace, whether it be given by the poorest of saints or the most educated person.
There can be but one will the master in our salvation, but that shall never be the will of man, but of God; therefore man must be saved by grace.
Prayer is a shield to the soul.
Great grace and small gifts are better than great gifts and no grace.
But pleasures are like poppies spread: You seize the flower.
Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.
A tender heart is a wakeful, watchful heart. It watches against sin in the soul, sin in the family, sin in the calling, sin in spiritual duties and performances.
The difference between true and false repentance lies in this: the man who truly repents cries out against his heart; but the other, as Eve, against the serpent, or something else.
If that a pearl may in a toad's head dwell, And may be found too in an oyster shell.
Temptations, when we meet them at first, are as the lion that reared upon Samson; but if we overcome them, the next time we see them we shall find a nest of honey within them.
Every fat (vat) must stand upon its bottom.
Fullness to such a burden is
That go on pilgrimage;
Here little, and hereafter bliss,
Is best from age to age.
No man, without trials and temptations, can attain a true understanding of the Holy Scriptures.
I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.
The reason why the Christians in this day are at such a loss as to some things is that they are contented with what comes from man's mouth, without searching and kneeling before God to know of Him the truth of things.
This hill though high I covent ascend; The difficulty will not me offend; For I perceive the way of life lies here. Come, pluck up, heart; let's neither faint nor fear.
The law, instead of cleansing the heart from sin, doth revive it, put strength into, and increase it in the soul, even as it doth discover and forbid it, for it doth not give power to subdue.
It is said that in some countries trees will grow, but will bear no fruit because there is no winter there.
A man there was, though some did count him mad, the more he cast away the more he had.
The more he cast away, the more he had.
Let the Kingdom be always before you, and believe with certainty and consistency the things that are yet unseen. Let nothing that is on this side of eternal life get inside you.
If you do not put a difference between justification wrought by the Man Christ without, and sanctification wrought by the Spirit of Christ within, you are not able to divide the word aright; but contrariwise, you corrupt the word of God.
And, indeed, this is one of the greatest mysteries in the world; namely, that a righteousness that resides in heaven should justify me, a sinner on earth!
The name of the Slough was Despond.
I found it hard work now to pray to God, because despair was swallowing me up.
A sensible thanksgiving for mercies received is a mighty prayer in the Spirit of God. It prevails with Him unspeakably.