ition. If he was to be saved at
all, he could be saved only by the unmerited grace of God. In himself
he was a child of the devil; and hell, not in metaphor, but in hard
and palpable fact, inevitably waited for him. This belief, or the
affectation of this belief, continues to be professed, but without a
realisation of its tremendous meaning. The form of words is repeated
by multitudes who do not care to think what they are saying. Who can
measure the effect of such a conviction upon men who were in earnest
about their souls, who were assured that this account of their
situation was actually true, and on whom, therefore, it bore with
increasing weight in proportion to their sincerity?

With these few prefatory words, I now return to Bunyan. He had begun
to go regularly to church, and by Church he meant the Church of
England. The change in the constitution of it, even when it came, did
not much alter its practical character in the country districts. At
Elstow, as we have seen, there was still a high place; there was still
a liturgy; there was still a surplice. The Church of England is a
compromise between the old theology and the new. The Bishops have the
apostolical succession, but many of them disbelieve that they derive
any virtue from it. The clergyman is either a priest who can absolve
men from sins, or he is a minister as in other Protestant communions.
The sacraments are either means of grace, or mere outward signs. A
Christian is either saved by baptism, or saved by faith, as he pleases
to believe. In either case he may be a member of the Church of
England. The effect of such uncertain utterances is to leave an
impression that in defining such points closely, theologians are
laying down lines of doctrines about subjects of which they know
nothing, that the real truth of religion lies in what is common to the
two theories, the obligation to lead a moral life; and to this
sensible view of their functions the bishops and clergy had in fact
gradually arrived in the last century, when the revival of what is
called earnestness, first in the form of Evangelicalism, and then of
Anglo-Catholicism, awoke again the old controversies.

To a man of fervid temperament suddenly convinced of sin, incapable of
being satisfied with ambiguous answers to questions which mean life or
death to him, the Church of England has little to say. If he is quiet
and reasonable, he finds in it all that he desires. Enthusiastic ages
and enthusi