_Holy War_, and you will see what an able and
impressive use John Bunyan will make of the shears of the coin-clippers
of his day. Macaulay has but made us ready to open and understand
Bunyan. 'After this, my Lord apprehended Clip-Promise. Now, because he
was a notorious villain, for by his doings much of the king's coin was
abused, therefore he was made a public example. He was arraigned and
judged to be set first in the pillory, then to be whipped by all the
children and servants in Mansoul, and then to be hanged till he was dead.
Some may wonder at the severity of this man's punishment, but those that
are honest traders in Mansoul they are sensible of the great abuse that
one clipper of promises in little time may do in the town of Mansoul;
and, truly, my judgment is that all those of his name and life should be
served out even as he.'

The grace of God is like a bullion mass of purest gold, and then Jesus
Christ is the great ingot of that gold, and then Moses, and David, and
Isaiah, and Hosea, and Paul, and Peter, and John are the inspired artists
who have commission to take both bullion and ingot, and out of them to
cut, and beat, and smelt, and shape, and stamp, and superscribe the
promises, and then to issue the promises to pass current in the market of
salvation like so many shekels, and pounds, and pence, and farthings, and
mites, as the case may be. And it was just these royal coins, imaged and
superscribed so richly and so beautifully, that Clip-Promise so
mutilated, abused, and debased, till for doing so he was hanged by the
neck till he was dead.

1. The very house of Israel herself, the very Mint-house, Tower Hill,
and Lombard Street of Israel herself, was full of false coiners and
clippers of the promises; as full as ever England was at her very worst.
Israel clipped her Messianic promises and lived upon the clippings
instead of upon the coin. Her coming Christ, and His salvation already
begun, were the true spiritual currency of Old Testament times; while
round that central Image of her great promise there ran an outside rim of
lesser promises that all took their true and their only value from Him
whose image and superscription stood within. But those besotted and
infatuated men of Israel, instead of entering into and living by the
great spiritual promises given to them in their Messiah, made lands, and
houses, and meat, and drink, all the Messiah they cared for. Matthew
Henry says that when we