110. I Find To This Day Seven Abominations In My Heart.

CX ‘I Find To This Day Seven Abominations In My Heart.’ THE number seven has been a mystical and a sacred number in all ages and in all literatures and in all religions. But it is in Holy Scripture and in Christian literature alone that the number seven has taken to itself that special height and depth and breadth and completeness with which we are so familiar. As for instance, there are the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost: Wisdom, and Understanding, and Counsel, and Fortitude, and Knowledge, and Piety, and the Fear of God. Then there are the seven Penitential Psalms. Then, again, there are the seven deadly sins: Pride, and Lechery, and Envy, and Wrath, and Covetousness, and Gluttony, and Sloth. And over against them there are the seven chief virtues: Humility, and Chastity, and Love, and Patience, and Bounty, and Abstinence, and Vigilance. Then, again, there are the seven spiritual works: to convert sinners, and to instruct the ignorant, and to counsel doubters, and to comfort the sorrowful, and to bear wrongs patiently, and to forgive enemies, and to pray for all men. And, lastly, there are the seven works of charity: to feed the hungry, and to give drink to the thirsty, and to clothe the naked, and to shelter the homeless, and to visit the sick, and to come to the imprisoned, and to bury the dead. And then, after the Bible examples of the number seven, the seven scars that were cut on Dante’s forehead have made by far the deepest impression on our minds and our hearts:

Seven times The letter that denotes the inward stain, He on my forehead, with the blunted point Of his drawn sword, inscrib’d. And ‘Look,’ he cried, ‘When enter’d, that thou wash these scars away.’ But all that only serves as so much preface and introduction to the seven arch-abominations that John Bunyan still finds in his own unsanctified heart.

Now my brethren, those seven arch-abominations in John Bunyan’s heart have given me more deep thought, and more perplexing thought, than I can well attempt to tell you. And in this way. When first I took those seven arch-abominations of John Bunyan’s heart, and laid them alongside the whole Law of God, I did not know where I was: I did not know what to say or what to think. For in the Book of Exodus I read that the Lord gave unto Moses two tables of stone written with the finger of God. And the tables were written on both their sides, and the tables were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the two tables. Now, the first table contained all the commandments concerning our duty to God; while the second table contained all the commandments concerning our duty to our neighbour. And just here arose my great perplexity about Bunyan’s seven arch-abominations. For in all his deep self-discoveries, in all his sometimes almost too awful contritions and confessions, in all his quite extraordinary brokenness of heart and burdensomeness of conscience, he has not recorded one single instance of any transgression of his against any of the commandments of the second table. In speaking of the holy law of God which the Holy Ghost makes use of to show us our sinfulness, John Calvin says that the first table of the law holds by far the higher spiritual rank, but that the second table is far better suited for the purposes of our self-examination: for our severe scrutiny of ourselves. Now, I will not say that John Bunyan never scrutinised himself by the second table; only we have no report of any such scrutiny. In all the three hundred and thirty-nine paragraphs of Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners there is not so much as one single line that speaks of any single sin of his against either the fifth, or the sixth, or the seventh, or the eighth, or the ninth, or the tenth commandment of the law. And in his enumeration and confession of his seven archabominations at the end of his heart-searching book there is not one syllable that refers to any sin of his against man, or woman, or child: not one syllable. In all his openness of heart and in all his brokenness of heart about himself Bunyan has not one word to say about anger, or about malice, or about pride, or about impurity, or about ill-will, or about an unbridled tongue, or about an envying or a grieving heart at the good of his neighbour. And yet you may depend upon it John Bunyan was quite as guilty in all these respects as you and I are. Emerson the American essayist once boasted that he did not care who saw into his heart. But in that boast Emerson only advertised to all the world that he had never seen so much as one inch under the surface of his own heart himself. And thus it is that we find that literary man saying that the Christian Church has dwelt with ‘noxious exaggeration’ on the Person of Christ. But John Bunyan was not such a born Philistine as that. And just how to account for the seven arch-abominations in Bunyan’s heart, and all of them against the first table of God’s holy law, and not one of them against any commandment of the second table, that fairly confounded me: I did not know how to explain that. I did not know what to make of that. And then when leaving Moses I went on to lay Bunyan alongside of Dante, I was only more and more staggered and perplexed and thrown out. You will all remember the successive names of Dante’s seven scars. You will all remember them because they are all your own. All your own foreheads have had cut in upon them all those same seams and scars of sin and shame. But not Bunyan’s forehead as it would seem. For Bunyan in all his humiliations, does not confess to so much as one of those seven scars of Dante’s and yours and mine. Only, on the other hand — and how this more and more perplexes us! — on every red-hot page of his Grace Abounding John Bunyan is constantly confessing to kinds of sins, and to aggravations of sins, and to a guilt and to a despair on account of sins, to all of which Dante seems to have been wholly ignorant and innocent. Now, how is all that, and all that on both sides, to be accounted for and explained? If I were to suggest to you that perhaps Bunyan saw deeper into some divine things than even Dante saw: that for one thing, he both saw and felt the spirituality of sin far better than Dante did, what would you say to me? If I were so much as to hint at my belief that Bunyan’s seven abominations are far away more significant, spiritually considered, than all Dante’s sufficiently fearful scars, what would you say in answer? Would you not start up and tell me that John Bunyan was not worthy to stoop down and unloose Dante’s shoe-latchet? Would you not exclaim that the tinker of Bedford is not to be named in the same day with the greatest of all Christian poets? And I would at once admit that. That is to say, I would at once admit that as far as Dante’s aristocratic birth and aristocratic breeding were concerned. And as far as his classical education and his oceanic reading were concerned. And as far as many more such like immense advantages of his were concerned. But perhaps there may have been one or two very real and very rich blessings left behind for Bunyan that even Dante did not wholly inherit, much less exhaust in his day. For one thing, Bunyan lived after Luther had written; whereas Dante lived and died long before that great epoch in the Church of Christ. And a great saying of our Lord comes to my mind at this moment:

‘Among those born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist: notwithstanding, he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.’

Now to my mind, Dante is among the very greatest born of women: notwithstanding, at the same time, John Bunyan is greater in the kingdom of heaven than he. Not that Dante is not high up in the kingdom of heaven also: for so he is and very high up. But the whole point is this: the kingdom of heaven had made some immense advances between Dante’s day and Bunyan’s day: immense advances in inwardness, and in depth, and in spirituality, and in evangelical doctrine and evangelical experience: immense advances of which the best men of Dante’s day had no knowledge and no experience. If Luther was all that Evangelical Christendom is now wholly agreed that he was, then simply to have been born after Luther, and to have heard him preach Paul’s Gospel, and to have read his Comment on the Galatians; all that places a man like Bunyan in a position of such privilege as to make all talent, and all learning, and all labour to fall into a far inferior place. Yes, yes: that great saying of our Lord about John the Baptist gives us the true point of view in this whole matter now in hand. The whole explanation of which we are in search lies away out in that direction. And they who are willing to receive that explanation, they will find it sufficient the more they think about it. For that explanation sheds a great light on all our confessed perplexities about the two tables of the law; and about Dante and his seven scars: and about Bunyan and his seven abominations. And when once you get a point of view that harmonises difficulties and perplexities hitherto insoluble and irreconcilable: however new to you, and however unexpected by you that point of view may be, you will be wise to take it, and to hold it, at any rate till you have found a better. The sum, then, under this head, is this. These same seven scars would all have been cut deep into Dante’s forehead, even though Jesus Christ had never come, and had never died, and had never risen again, and had never sent down the Holy Ghost. But unless the Son of God had come, and had been made sin, and had been made an atonement for sin, and had sent the Spirit of holiness to the Church; and unless Paul and Luther had had the Son of God and His righteousness revealed in their hearts, and had had the Spirit of gospel holiness shed abroad in their hearts, Paul would never have written his seventh chapter, and Bunyan would never have written his seven abominations. Nature herself, the law of God written on the natural conscience, would have secured Dante’s seven scars. But evangelical illumination and evangelical experience alone could have opened Bunyan’s eyes to such spiritual sins as he here laments, and that with such inconsolable bitterness. Where Dante is so severely ethical, Bunyan is intensely spiritual. Where Dante is consumed with the fire of legal and moral righteousness, the zeal of evangelical holiness has eaten Bunyan up. Dante’s seven scars are seen and are felt and are bitterly confessed by every righteously-minded man, pagan and Christian. But Bunyan’s seven abominations are seen and are felt and are bitterly confessed by the most evangelically-enlightened and the most heavenlyminded of God’s New Testament saints alone.

‘Unbelief’ was the first and it was by far the deepest of all John Bunyan’s abominations. Unbelief, and unbelief alone, was the one baleful mother of all the abominations in Bunyan’s heart. And when our own eyes are opened we then see that our unbelief also is the true and the only mother of all our abominations also. They have all been begotten in her bosom, they have all been suckled at her breasts, and they have all been brought up on her knees. All our sins and all our scars and all our abominations of all kinds arise out of our unbelief. Our Lord met with no enemy and no opposition in all His ministry but unbelief. He never upbraided any man or any woman or any city for anything else but for unbelief. He went about from city to city, and from synagogue to synagogue, and from one suppertable to another, asking for nothing but faith. And as soon as He found faith He straightway praised it and rewarded it and blessed it. ‘O woman!’ He said, ‘great is thy faith! Be it unto thee and unto thine according to thy faith!’ And so it is, down to our own day. For I find this illuminating passage in the spiritual biography of a great believer and a great preacher.

‘Having been much exercised, and for many years, with troubled thoughts, he had, by many self-mortifying methods, sought peace of conscience, but notwithstanding all he could do, his troubles still increased. Whereupon he consulted several eminent divines, who told him that he understood the Scriptures much too legally. Upon giving one of them an account of the state of his soul, and particularising his sins, that divine told him that he had forgotten to mention the greatest sin of all, the sin of unbelief, in not believing on the Lord Jesus Christ for the remission of his sins, and for the sanctification of his nature. Hereupon he set himself to studying and to preaching Christ, till he attained to eminent holiness and to great peace of conscience.’ So bitterly did Bunyan feel the evil of unbelief that ‘he set down even‘inclinings’ to unbelief as the first and the greatest of all his seven abominations, and as the too fruitful mother of all the rest.

All the same, it still remains no little of a mystery to me how Bunyan in all his so severe scrutiny of himself, spiritually and morally, should make no mention at all of pride, or of anger, or of hatred, or of malice, or of revenge, or of impurity, or of envy, and such like. I would have thought that by this time his eyes would have been so opened to all his sinfulness that he would have seen and would have confessed himself to be guilty of all these abominations of heart every day he lived. But no. For some still unexplained reason, no. Well, then, to make a last guess, was it this? Was it because Bunyan by this time had become so absolutely godly in all his views of things, that all his sins of all kinds, and of all degrees, and of all aggravations, he now saw to be committed not so much against man or woman as against God: indeed, as committed against God alone? Was that it? Would that be it? Yes, that was it; that must be it. That, I feel certain, is the whole of our difficulty resolved and explained. By this time Bunyan has become so like David that he says after every single sin of his of whatever kind, Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight. And so like Paul and Luther has Bunyan become that to him now faith, faith working by love, is the fulfilling of the whole law in both its tables, and in all that is required and in all that is forbidden in both its tables. And to him now the lack of faith in Christ and the lack of love to God involves all sin of all kinds. Yes; since God is the God He is, and since Christ is the Christ He is, faith in God, and faith in Christ, is everything. Only have faith in God, as God is in Christ, and all things are yours: law and gospel; Moses and Christ; whether Paul or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours; and ye are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s. Read this now in the light of all that:

‘I find to this day seven abominations in my heart.

(1) Inclinings to unbelief.

(2) Suddenly to forget the love and mercy that Christ manifesteth.

(3) A leaning to the works of the law.

(4) Wanderings and coldness in prayer.

(5) To forget to watch for that I pray for.

(6) Apt to murmur because I have no more, and yet ready to abuse what I have.

(7) I can do none of those things which God commands me, but my corruptions will thrust in themselves. When I would do good, evil is present with me.’

‘These things I continually see and feel, and am afflicted and oppressed with; yet the wisdom of God doth order them for my good. For (1) they make me abhor myself.

(2) They keep me from trusting my own heart.

(3) They convince me of the insufficiency of all inherent righteousness.

(4) They show me the necessity of fleeing to Jesus.

(5) They press me to pray unto God.

(6) They show me the need I have to watch and be sober.

(7) And they provoke me to look to God, through Christ, to help me, and to carry me through this world. Amen.’