Page:The Pilgrim's Progress, the Holy War, Grace Abounding Chunk3.djvu/10

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Preface.

hill Mizaer to remember? Have you forgot the close, the milkhouse, the stable, the barn, and the like, Where God did visit your souls? Remember also the word—the word, I say, upon which the Lord hath caused you to hope. If you have sinned against, light, if you are tempted to blaspheme, if you are drowned in despair, if you think God fights against you, or if heaven is hid from your eyes, remember it was thus with your father; but out of them all the Lord delivered me.

I could have enlarged much in this my discourse of my temptations and troubles for sin, as also of the merciful kindness and working of God with my soul; I could also have stepped into a style much higher then this in which I have here discoursed, and could have adorned all things more than here I have seemed to do; but I dare not. God did not play in tempting of me; neither did I play when I sunk as into a bottomless pit, when the pangs of hell caught hold upon me: wherefore I may not play in relating of them, but be plain and simple, and lay down the thing as it was. He that liketh it, let him receive it; and he that doth not, let him produce a better.

My Dear Children,—The milk and honey is beyond this wilderness. God be merciful to you, and grant that, you be not slothful to go in possess the land. Farewell.

JOHN BUNYAN