Bunyan, John, 1628-1688 -- Criticism and interpretation
To sum up. 'There is reared up in the midst of Mansoul a most famous and
stately palace: for strength, it may be called a castle; for
pleasantness, a paradise; and for largeness, a place so copious as to
contain all the world. This palace the King intends but for Himself
alone, and not another with Him, and He commits the keeping of that
palace day and night to the men of the town.'
CHAPTER VI--MY LORD WILLBEWILL
--'to will is present with me.'--_Paul_
There is a large and a learned literature on the subject of the will.
There is a philosophical and a theological, and there is a religious and
an experimental literature on the will. Jonathan Edwards's well-known
work stands out conspicuously at the head of the philosophical and
theological literature on the will, while our own Thomas Boston's
_Fourfold State_ is a very able and impressive treatise on the more
practical and experimental side of the same subject. The Westminster
Confession of Faith devotes one of its very best chapters to the teaching
of the word of God on the will of man, and the Shorter Catechism touches
on the same subject in Effectual Calling. Outstanding philosophical and
theological schools have been formed around the will, and both able and
learned and earnest men have taken opposite sides on the subject of the
will under the party names of Necessitarians and Libertarians. This is
not the time, nor am I the man, to discuss such abstruse subjects; but
those students who wish to master this great matter of the will, so far
as it can be mastered in books, are recommended to begin with Dr. William
Cunningham's works, and then to go on from them to a treatise that will
reward all their talent and all their enterprise, Jonathan Edwards's
perfect masterpiece.
1. But, to come to my Lord Willbewill, one of the gentry of the famous
town of Mansoul:--well, this Lord Willbewill was as high-born as any man
in Mansoul, and was as much a freeholder as any of them were, if not
more. Besides, if I remember my tale aright, he had some privileges
peculiar to himself in that famous town. Now, together with these, he
was a man of great strength, resolution, and courage; nor in his occasion
could any turn him away. But whether he was too proud of his high
estate, privileges, and strength, or what (but sure it was through pride
of something), he scorns now to be a slave in Mansoul, as his own proud
word is, so that now, next to Diabolus himself, who but my Lord
Willbewill in all that town? Nor could anything now be done but at his
beck and good pleasure throughout that town. Indeed, it will not out of
my thoughts what a desperate fellow this Willbewill was when full power
was put into his hand. All which--how this apostate prince lost power
and got it again, and lost it and got it again--the interested and
curious reader will find set forth with great fulness and clearness in
many powerful pages of the _Holy War_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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