'Search me, O God, and know my heart.' - David.
John Menzies. Let us read the great books that make salvation difficult.
Let us work out our own salvation, day and night, with fear and
trembling, and when Wisdom is justified in her children, we shall be
found justified among them. We shall be openly acknowledged and
acquitted in the day of judgment, and made perfectly blessed in the
full enjoying of God to all eternity.
Chapter 15 - MR. PRYWELL
'Search me, O God, and know my heart.' - David.
'Let a man examine himself.' - Paul.
'Look to yourselves.' - John.
'Know thyself.' - Apollo.
The year 1668 saw the publication of one of the deepest books in
the whole world, Dr. John Owen's Remainders of Indwelling Sin in
Believers. The heart-searching depth; the clear, fearless, humbling
truth, the intense spirituality, and the massive and masculine strength
of John Owen's book have all combined to make it one of the
acknowledged masterpieces of the great Puritan school. Had John
Owen's style been at all equal to his great learning, to the depth and
the grasp of his mind, and to the lofty holiness of his life, John Owen
would have stood in the very foremost and selectest rank of
apostolical and evangelical theologians. But in all his books Owen
labours under the fatal drawback of a bad style. A fine style, a style
like that of Hooker, or Taylor, or Bunyan, or Howe, or Leighton, or Law,
is such a winning introduction to their works and such an abiding
charm and spell. The full title of Dr. Owen's great work runs thus: The
Nature, Power, Deceit, and Prevalency of the Remainders of Indwelling
Sin in Believers - a title that will tell all true students what awaits
them when they have courage and enterprise enough to address
themselves to this supreme and all-essential subject. Fourteen years
after the publication of Dr. Owen's epoch-making book, John Bunyan's
Holy War first saw the light. Equal in scriptural and in experimental
depth, as also in their spiritual loftiness and intensity, those two books
are as different as any two books, written in the same language, and
written on the same subject, could by any possibility be. John Owen's
book is the book of a great scholar who has read the Fathers and the
Schoolmen and the Reformers till he knows them by heart, and till he
has been able to digest all that is true to Scripture and to experience in
them into his rich and ripe book. A powerful reasoner, a severe, bald,
muscular writer, John Owen in all these respects stands at the very
opposite pole to that of John Bunyan. The author of the Holy War had
no learning, but he had a mind of immense natural sagacity, combined
with a habit of close and deep observation of human life, and
especially of religious life, and he had now a lifetime of most fruitful
experience as a Christian man and as a Christian minister behind him; and, all that, taken up into Bunyan's splendid imagination, enabled
him to produce this extraordinarily able and impressive book. A
model of English style as the Holy War is, at the same time it does not
attain at all to the rank of the Pilgrim's Progress; but then, to be
second to the Pilgrim's Progress is reward and honour enough for any
book. Let all genuine students, then, who would know the best that
has been written on experimental religion, and who would preach to
the deepest and divinest experience of their best people, let them
keep continually within their reach John Owen's Temptation, his
Mortification of Sin in Believers, his Nature and Power of Indwelling
Sin, and John Bunyan's Holy War made for the Regaining of the
Metropolis of this World.
Well, then, as He who dwells on high would have it, there was one
whose name was Mr. Prywell, a great lover of Mansoul. And he, as his
manner was, did go listening up and down in Mansoul to see and hear,
if at any time he might, whether there was any design against it or no.
For he was always a jealous man, and feared some mischief would
befall it, either from within or from some power without. Mr. Prywell
was always a lover of Mansoul, a sober and a judicious man, a man
that was no tattler, nor a raiser of false reports, but one that loves to
look into the very bottom of matters, and talks nothing of news but by
very solid arguments. And then, after our historian has told us some of
the eminent services that Mr. Prywell was able to perform both for the
King and for the city, he goes on to tell us how the captains
determined that public thanks should be given by the town of
Mansoul to Mr. Prywell for his so diligent seeking of the welfare of the
town; and, further, that, forasmuch as he was so naturally inclined to
seek their good, and also to undermine their foes, they gave him the
commission of Scoutmaster-general for the good of Mansoul. And Mr.
Prywell managed his charge and the trust that Mansoul had put into
his hands with great conscience and good fidelity; for he gave himself
wholly up to his employ, and that not only within the town, but he also
went outside of the town to pry, to see, and to hear. Now, that being so,
it may interest and perhaps instruct you to-night to look for a little at
some of the features and at some of the feats of the Scoutmaster-
general of the Holy War, Mr. Prywell, of the town of Mansoul.
'Well, now, as He who dwells on high would have it, there was one
whose name was Mr. Prywell, a great lover of the town of Mansoul.' In
other words: self-observation, self-examination, strict, jealous,
sleepless self-examination, is of God. Our God who searches our hearts
and tries our reins would have it so. And if He does not have it so in us,
our souls are not as our God would have them to be. 'Bunyan employs
pry,' says Miss Peacock in her excellent notes, 'in a more favourable
sense than it now bears. As, for instance, it is said in another part of
this same book that the men of Mansoul were allowed to pry into the
words of the Holy Ghost and to expound them to their best advantage.
Honest anxiety for the welfare of his fellow-townsmen was Mr.
Prywell's chief characteristic. Pry is another form of peer - to look
narrowly, to look closely.' And God, says John Bunyan, would have it so.
'A great lover of Mansoul,' 'always a lover of Mansoul'; again and
again that is testified concerning Mr. Prywell. It was not love for the
work that led Mr. Prywell to give up his days and his nights as his
history tells us he did. Mr. Prywell ran himself into many dangerous
situations both within and without the city, and he lost himself far
more friends than he made by his devotion to his thankless task. But
necessity was laid upon him. And what held him up was the sure and
certain knowledge that his King would have that service at his hands.
That, and his love for the city, for the safety and the deliverance of the
city, - all that kept Mr. Prywell's heart fixed. Am I therefore your
enemy? he would say to some who would have had it otherwise than
the King would have it. But it is a good thing to be zealously affected in
a work like mine, he would say, in self-defence and in self-
encouragement. And then, though not many, there were always some
in the city who said, Let him smite me and it shall be a kindness; let
him reprove me and it shall be an excellent oil which shall not break
my head. It was in Mansoul with Mr. Prywell as it was in
Kidderminster with Richard Baxter, when some of his people said to
one another, 'We will take all things well from one that we know doth
entirely love us.' 'Love them,' said Augustine, 'and then say anything
you like to them.' Now, that was Mr. Prywell's way. He loved Mansoul,
and then he said many things to her that a false lover and a flatterer
would never have dared to say.
Then, as the saying is, it goes without saying that 'Mr. Prywell was
always a jealous man.' Great lovers are always jealous men, and Mr.
Prywell showed himself to be a great lover by the great heat of his
jealousy also. 'Vigilant,' says the excellent editress again; 'cautious
against dishonour, reasonably mistrustful - low Latin zelosus, full of
zeal. "And he said, I have been very jealous for the Lord God of hosts."'
Now, it so happened that some of Mr. Prywell's most private and not at
all professional papers - papers evidently, and on the face of them,
connected with the state of the spy's own soul - came into my hands
as good lot would have it just the other night. The moth-eaten chest
was full of his old papers, but the pieces that took my heart most were,
as it looked to me, actually gnashed through with his remorseful teeth,
and soaked and sodden past recognition with his sweat and his tears
and his agonising hands. But after some late hours over those
remnants I managed to make some sense to myself out of them. There
are some parts of the parchments that pass me; but, if only to show
you that this arch-spy's so vigilant jealousy was not all directed
against other people's bad hearts and bad habits, I shall copy some
lines out of the old box. 'Have I penitence?' he begins without any
preface. 'Have I grief, shame, pain, horror, weariness for my sin? Do I
pray and repent, if not seven times a day as David did, yet at least
three times, as Daniel? If not as Solomon, at length, yet shortly as the
publican? If not like Christ, the whole night, at least for one hour? If
not on the ground and in ashes, at least not in my bed? If not in
sackcloth, at least not in purple and fine linen? If not altogether freed
from all, at least from immoderate desires? Do I give, if not as
Zaccheus did, fourfold, as the law commands, with the fifth part
added? If not as the rich, yet as the widow? If not the half, yet the
thirtieth part? If not above my power, yet up to my power?' And then
over the page there are some illegible pencillings from old authors of
his such as this from Augustine: 'A good man would rather know his
own infirmity than the foundations of the earth or the heights of the
heavens.' And this from Cicero: 'There are many hiding-places and
recesses in the mind.' And this from Seneca: 'You must know yourself
before you can amend yourself. An unknown sin grows worse and
worse and is deprived of cure.' And this from Cicero again: 'Cato
exacted from himself an account of every day's business at night'; and
also Pythagoras,
'Nor let sweet sleep upon thine eyes descend
Till thou hast judged its deeds at each day's end.'
And this from Seneca again: 'When the light is removed out of
sight, and my wife, who is by this time aware of my practice, is now
silent, I pass the whole of my day under examination, and I review my
deeds and my words. I hide nothing from myself: I pass over nothing.'
And then in Mr. Prywell's boldest and least trembling hand: 'O yes!
many shall come from the east and the west and shall sit down with
Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, when many of
the children of the kingdom shall be cast out. O yes.' Now, this 'O yes!'
Miss Peacock tells us, is the Anglicised form of a French word for our
Lord's words, Take heed how ye hear!
'A sober and a judicious man' it is said of Mr. Prywell also. To a
certainty that. It could not be otherwise than that. For Mr. Prywell's
office, its discoveries and its experiences, would sober any man. 'I am
sprung from a country,' says Abelard, 'of which the soil is light, and the
temper of the inhabitants is light.' So was it with Mr. Prywell to begin
with. But even Abelard was sobered in time, and so was Mr. Prywell.
Life sobered Abelard, and Mr. Prywell too; life's crooks and life's
crosses, life's duties and life's disappointments, especially Mr. Prywell.
'The more narrowly a man looks into himself,' says A Kempis, 'the
more he sorroweth.' Not sober-mindedness alone comes to him who
looks narrowly into himself, but great sorrow of heart also. And if you
are not both sobered in your mind and full of an unquenchable sorrow
in your heart, O yes! attend to it, for you are not yet begun to be what
God would have you to be. Dr. Newman, with all his mistakes and all
his faults, was a master in two things: his own heart and the English
language. And in writing home to his mother a confidential letter from
college on his birthday, he confides to her that he often 'shudders at
himself.' 'No,' he answered to his mother's fears and advices about
food and air and exercise: 'No, I am neither nervous, nor in ill-health,
nor do I study too much. I am neither melancholy, nor morose, nor
austere, nor distant, nor reserved, nor sullen. I am always cheerful,
ready and eager to join in any merriment. I am not clouded with
sadness, nor absent in mind, nor deficient in action. No; take me when
I am most foolish at home and extend mirth into childishness; yet all
the time I am shuddering at myself.' There spake the future author of the immortal sermons. There spake a mind and a heart that have
deepened the minds and the hearts of Christian men more than any
other influence of the century; a mind and a heart, moreover, that will
shine and beat in our best literature and in our deepest devotion for
centuries to come. You must all know by this time another classical
passage from the pen of another spiritual genius in the Church of
England, that greatly gifted church.
Let me repeat it to illustrate how sober-mindedness and great
sorrow of heart always come to the best of men. 'Let any man consider
that if the world knew all that of him which he knows of himself; if
they saw what vanity and what passions govern his inside, and what
secret tempers sully and corrupt his best actions; and he would have
no more pretence to be honoured and admired for his goodness and
wisdom than a rotten and distempered body is to be loved and
admired for its beauty and comeliness. And, perhaps, there are very
few people in the world who would not rather choose to die than to
have all their secret follies, the errors of their judgments, the vanity of
their minds, the falseness of their pretences, the frequency of their
vain and disorderly passions, their uneasinesses, hatreds, envies, and
vexations made known to the world. And shall pride be entertained in
a heart thus conscious of its own miserable behaviour?' No wonder
that Mr. Prywell was sober-minded! No wonder that Dr. Newman
shuddered at himself! And no wonder that William Law chose
strangling and the pond rather than that any other man should see
what went on in his heart!
And as if all that were not enough, and more than enough, to
commend Mr. Prywell to us - to our trust, to our confidence, and to our
imitation - his royal certificate continues, 'One that looks into the very
bottom of matters, and talks nothing of news, but by very solid
arguments.' The very bottom of matters - that is, the very bottom of
his own and other men's hearts. Mr. Prywell counts nothing else worth
a wise man's looking at. Let fools and children look at the painted and
deceitful surface of things, but let men, men of matters, and especially
men of divine matters, look only at their own and other men's hearts.
The very bottom of all matters is there. All wars, all policies, all
debates, all disputes, all good and all evil counsels, all the much weal
and all the multitudinous woe of Mansoul - all have their bottom in the heart; in the heart of God, or in the heart of man, or in the heart of
the devil. The heart is the root of absolutely every matter to Mr.
Prywell. He would not waste one hour of any day, or one watch of any
night, on anything else. And it was this that made him both the
extraordinarily successful scout he was, and the extraordinarily sober
and thoughtful and judicious man he was. O yes, my brethren, the
bottom of matters, when you take to it, will work the same change in
you. 'Two things,' says one who had long looked at his own matters
with Mr. Prywell's eyes - 'two things, O Lord, I recognise in myself:
nature, which Thou hast made, and sin, which I have added.' My
brethren, that recognition, that discovery in yourselves, when it comes
to you, will sober you as it has sobered so many men before you: when
it comes to you, that is, about yourselves. That discovery made in
yourselves will make you deep-thinking men. It will make common
men and unlearned men among you to be philosophers and
theologians and saints. It will work in you a thoughtfulness, a
seriousness, a depth, an awe, a holy fear, and a great desire that will
already have made you new creatures. When, in examining yourselves
and in characterising yourselves, you come on what some cleareyed
men have come on in themselves, and what one of them has described
as 'the diabolical animus of the human mind' - when you make that
discovery in yourselves, that will sober you, that will humble you and
fill you full of remorse and compunction. And if in God's grace to you,
that were to begin to be wrought in you this week, there would be one,
at any rate, eating of that bread next Lord's day, and drinking of that
cup as God would have it.
'A man that is no tattler, nor raiser of false reports, and that talks
nothing of news, but by very solid arguments.' Mr. Prywell was more
taken up with his own matters at home, far more than the greatest
busybodies are with other men's matters abroad. His name, I fear, will
still sound somewhat ill in your ears, but I can assure you all the ill for
you lies in the sound. Mr. Prywell would not hurt a hair of your head:
the truth is, he does not know whether there is a hair on your head or
no. This man's name comes to him and sticks to him, not because he
pries into your affairs, for he does not, and never did, but because he
is so drawn down into his own. Mr. Prywell has no eye for your
windows and he has no ear for your doors. If your servant is a leaky slave, Prywell, of all your neighbours, has no ear for his idle tales. This
man is no eavesdropper; your evil secrets have only a sobering and a
saddening and a silencing effect upon him. Your house might be full of
skeletons for anything he would ever discover or remember. The beam
in his own eye is so big that he cannot see past it to speak about your
small mote. 'The inward Christian,' says A Kempis, 'preferreth the care
of himself before all other cares. He that diligently attendeth to
himself can easily keep silence concerning other men. If thou
attendest unto God and unto thyself, thou wilt be but little moved with
what thou seest abroad.' At the same time, Mr. Prywell was no fool,
and no coward, and no hoodwinked witness. He could tell his tale,
when it was demanded of him, with such truth, and with such
punctuality, and on such ample grounds, that a conviction of the truth
instantly fell on all who heard him. 'Sirs,' said those who heard him
break silence, 'it is not irrational for us to believe it,' with such solid
arguments and with such an absence of mere suspicion and of all idle
tales did he speak. On one occasion, on a mere 'inkling,' he woke up
the guard; only, it was so true an inkling that it saved the city. But I
cannot follow Mr. Prywell any further to-night. How he went up and
down Mansoul listening; how he kept his eyes and his ears both shut
and open; what splendid services he performed in the progress, and
specially toward the end, of the war; how the thanks of the city were
voted to him; how he was made Scoutmaster-general for the good of
the town of Mansoul, and the great conscience and good fidelity with
which he managed that great trust - all that you will read for
yourselves under this marginal index, 'The story of Mr. Prywell.'
Now, my brethren, as the outcome of all that, we must all examine
ourselves as before God all this week. We must wait on His word and
on His providences while they examine us all this week. We must pry
well into ourselves all this week. Come, let us compel ourselves to do
it. Let us search and try our ways all this week as we shall give an
account. Let us ask ourselves how many Communion tables we have
sat at, and at how many more we are likely to sit. Let us ask why it is
that we have got so little good out of all our Communions. Let us ask
who is to blame for that, and where the blame lies. Let us go to the
bottom of matters with ourselves, and compel ourselves to say just
what it is that is the cause of God's controversy with us. What vow, what solemn promise, made when trouble was upon us, have we
completely cast behind our back? What about secret prayer? At what
times, for what things, and for what people do we in secret pray? What
about secret sin? What is its name, and what does it deserve, and what
fruit are we already reaping out of it? What is our besetting sin, and
what steps do we take, as God knows, to crucify it? Do we love money
too much? Do we love praise too much? Do we love eating and