He hath put down the mighty from their seat: and hath exalted the humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry with good things: and the rich he hath sent empty away.1
IN The Heavenly Foot-man Bunyan listed six tests by which we may know the cross—the doctrine of justification, mortification, and perseverance; self-denial, patience, and communion with poor saints. ‘How hard are these things!’ he commented. For Dent self-denial was the fifth of eight signs of regeneration; for the Puritan Lady Elizabeth Brooke, friend of Richard Sibbes, it was ‘the foundation of religion’.2
Self-denial sounds a negative virtue; but as Bunyan saw it in the world of the persecuted it was positive and testing. When Prince Emanuel captures Mansoul he purges its officers and replaces them with his own henchmen. The last whom he appoints is Captain Self-denial, ‘a young man, but stout’. When some of the citizens are ready to wink at the behaviour of the Diabolonian Self-love, Mr. Self-denial insists on his summary execution—to the approval of Emanuel. Self-denial then is the opposite of self-love and pride, sins to which even the elect citizens of Mansoul remain prone. In The Resurrection of the Dead (1665?) Bunyan asked, ‘What act of self-denial hast thou done for the name of the Lord Jesus … among the sons of men? … Art thou one of them that wouldst not be won, neither by fears, frowns nor flatteries, to forsake the ways of God or wrong thy conscience?’ Here in the immediate post-restoration years, self-denial clearly consisted for the imprisoned Bunyan in refusing compromise, refusing to be bought, refusing to allow self-love to live within the soul. ‘One Temporary’ in The Pilgrim’s Progress ‘was resolved to go on pilgrimage’ until he ‘grew acquainted with one Save-self’.3
In The Jerusalem Sinner (1688), self-denial, charity to my neighbour, and patient endurance of afflictions for Christ’s name are the manifestations of practical love. In the posthumous Christ a Complete Saviour Bunyan praised ‘the grace of humility’ together with ‘simplicity and godly sincerity’. Of the latter he added ‘with how much dirt is it mixed in the best; especially among those of the saints that are rich, who have got the poor and beggarly art of complimenting.’ ‘God commands to self-denial’, Bunyan wrote in his Exposition on … Genesis, ‘but the world makes that a reason of their standing off from the very grace of God in the Gospel.’ The fall of man resulted from Eve preferring ‘the privileges of the flesh before the argument to self-denial’. In the posthumous Paul’s Departure and Crown Bunyan criticized sermons ‘where only grace is preached, and nothing of our duty as to works of self-denial’ under Christ’s yoke.4
In all these instances endurance and solidarity under persecution seem to be the keynote. Self-denial is a religious and almost a political virtue. The theme of The Pharisee and the Publican (1685) is the contrast between the ‘proud self-conscious’ rich man, who ‘calls himself … one of God’s white boys’ and the ‘vile and base publican’. Bunyan stresses that this parable is to be taken in conjunction with the parable of the unjust judge and the poor widow in the same chapter of Luke’s Gospel, which was designed for ‘the relief of those that are under the hand of cruel tyrants.’ Self-denial is the virtue of Mr. Stand-fast, Mr. Valiant-for-the-truth, and those less stalwart characters in Part II of The Pilgrim’s Progress who nevertheless refuse to turn back. ‘Self-denial’, Bunyan wrote in 1675, ‘is one of the distinguishing characters by which true Christians are manifested from the feigned ones; for those that are feigned flatter God with their mouth, but their hearts seek themselves; but the sincere, for the love he hath to Christ, forsaketh all that he hath for his sake.’ ‘The Lord Jesus denied himself for thee; what sayest thou to that?’5
ii. Songs in The Pilgrim’s Progress
The songs of the Shepherd Boy and of Mr. Valiant-for-the-truth in Part II are justly regarded as among Bunyan’s best. It is important to stress that they were songs. Bunyan must have had tunes in his head when he composed them. In this they differ from the poems in Part I, even those which are called songs. Controversies over hymn-singing were going on in the Bedford church at the time of writing Part II: Bunyan may have intended these songs for congregational singing.
They are still I believe sung in some churches, and are often regarded as models of old-fashioned acceptance of an unequal society. At first sight, the Shepherd Boy’s song smacks of ‘the humble poor’, of ‘God bless the squire and his relations’.
He that is down, needs fear no fall,
He that is low, no pride;
He that is humble ever shall
Have God to be his guide.
I am content with what I have,
Little be it or much:
And, Lord, contentment still I crave,
Because thou savest such.
Fullness to such a burden is
That go on pilgrimage:
Here little and hereafter bliss
Is best from age to age.
By now I think we can see that Bunyan was not proclaiming a social attitude. For him humility was a Christian virtue: to be humble meant having a sense of your worthlessness in the eyes of God—not of men. ‘There was but one way with me’, wrote Bunyan in Grace Abounding, ‘I must go to him and humble myself.’ ‘I never heard a presumptuous man, in my life, say that he was afraid that he presumed; but I have heard many an honest humble soul say that they have been afraid that their faith had been presumptuous.’ God will look ‘even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit.’ ‘God resisteth the proud’, says Mr. Great-heart, ‘but gives more, more grace to the humble.’ The Shepherd Boy’s song follows.6
The seventeenth-century equivalent of ‘God bless the squire and his relations’ was The Whole Duty of Man, which urged the poor ‘be often thinking of the joys laid up for thee in heaven and then, as a traveller expects not the same conveniences at an inn as he hath at home, so thou hast reason to be content with whatever entertainment thou findest here.’7 One wonders how many poor men were entertained at inns on their journeys.
In 1665 or thereabouts Bunyan emphasized that humility was necessary to the attaining of grace:
The promise is so open and so free
In all respects, to those that humble be.…
A tender heart … may
Obtained be of them that humbly pray.
Twenty-three years later he confirmed that we must be clothed with humility ‘if we will … our Master’s mind fulfil’.
Christ bids us learn of him, humble to be.
Profession’s beauty is humility.
We must share each other’s griefs and burdens, abandoning pride. ‘Let each then count his brother as his better.’8
But there is a relationship between social position and Christian humility. The rich are exposed to temptations from which the poor are immune. The Shepherd Boy is singing in the Valley of Humiliation, which
was a traditional symbol of religious humility, conveniently conflated with low social status.… Discontent and Shame lurk in this valley, and remind Faithful of his ‘lack of honour’, of ‘the scorn of the mighty, rich and wise’ for religion. Yet ‘many labouring men have got good estates in this Valley’.
Humiliation, as Turner puts it, ‘is thus assimilated to class-hatred and opposition’. Humility was closely associated with self-denial in The Strait Gate (1676). It is the opposite of pride, as self-denial is the equivalent of contentment. Of false professors Bunyan wrote ‘their pride saith, they have repented of their humility.’9
The Shepherd Boy’s statements are factual. ‘He that is down needs fear no fall.’ ‘He that is low’ can easily avoid the sin of pride. ‘Fullness to such a burden is / That go on pilgrimage’ reiterated Bunyan’s oft-repeated view that more poor than rich, more servants than masters, are likely to find their way to the kingdom of heaven. That is why the Shepherd Boy ‘lives a merrier life, and wears more of the herb called hearts-ease in his bosom, than he that is clad in silk and velvet.’10
Again attention to seventeenth-century usage may help us. For John Downame and Thomas Taylor true humility was the virtue of Job and Jesus Christ. Andrew Marvell, writing about the same date as Bunyan, declared humility to be ‘the lowliest but the highest of all Christian qualifications’. He had seen it exemplified in Lord Fairfax.11 Sir William Denny, not one of the humble poor, described humility as
a voluntary inclination of the mind and declination of the haughtiness of the spirit, upon the inspection of ourselves and the beholding of the proper condition of our present state of being.… If thou desirest to be great in God’s eyes, be little in thine own. As therefore thou lovest thine own salvation, be humble.
Mary Astell, not a very Bunyanesque character, nevertheless thought that ‘a secure and humble seat’ freed one from ‘these necessary evils of the Great.’12 Nothing we know about Bunyan suggests that he valued social humility. He thought himself, and was thought by his contemporaries, to be liable rather to the sin of pride. His Christian virtue of humility before God might include lack of humility in the presence of ungodly gentlemen.
In the light of Turner’s account we may also see Mr. Valiant-for-the-truth’s song a little differently. Giants and fiends have castles and dungeons as well as enclosures. They can force vagrants to work for them. The gentry were the form of persecuting power immediately known to ordinary people. Against them the pilgrim will ‘have a right’ to join the congregation of his choice, the one which he believes essential to his salvation (‘My soul is my own soul’). His ‘right to be a pilgrim’ includes this right. ‘His first proclaimed intent’ to be a pilgrim refers either to joining a congregation or (less likely) to going public after the Declaration of Indulgence in 1672. Despite the power of his adversaries, ‘there’s no discouragement’ that ‘shall make him once relent’ his decision: not ‘dismal stories’ of persecution and imprisonment, not social ostracism (‘what men say’). Singing that song would strengthen the solidarity, self-confidence, and will to resist of a beleaguered congregation.
In A Few Sighs from Hell (1658) Bunyan had stressed the virtues of contentment even in poverty, as he was to do in The Shepherd Boy’s song. But Bunyan knew too much to sentimentalize poverty. He knew about the ‘many necessary inconveniences that attend him that is fallen into decay in this world. It is not a time now, will Satan say, to retain a tender conscience, to regard thy word or promise, to pay for what thou buyest, or to stick at pilfering.… How many in our day have, on these very accounts, brought religion to a very ill savour?’13 The inconveniences were at least as much spiritual as social.
As we shall see in chapter 24, another matter much on Bunyan’s mind when he wrote Part II of The Pilgrim’s Progress was the backsliding and hypocrisy of godly members of his congregation. It may be that the stress on Christian humility, and on the perils and risks of being a pilgrim, were intended to shame them. If he thought of these songs as possible hymns for his congregation, this consideration would be even more relevant.