I must first tell you something about holy Mr. Gifford himself. Well, John Gifford was the very minister for John Bunyan; for in everything but literary genius John Gifford had been a John Bunyan himself, only unspeakably worse.
John Gifford had at one time been a Royalist officer in the great civil war; and like so many officers and men of that bad side he was a man of a very bad life … After some hairbreadth escapes Gifford was enabled somehow to set up as a Doctor in the town of Bedford, where he continued his old life of debauchery and was notorious far and near for his hatred and ill-usage of the Puritan people.
But, one night, after losing all his money at cards … Gifford was led to open a book of the famous Puritan Robert Bolton, when something that he read in that book took such a hold of him that he lay in agony of conscience for several weeks afterwards. “At last,” as his old kirk-session record still extant has it, “God did so plentifully discover to him the forgiveness of his sins for the sake of Christ that all his life after he lost not the sight of God's countenance, save only about two days before he died.” No sooner did John Gifford become a changed man than, like Saul of Tarsus, he openly joined himself to those whom he had hitherto persecuted, and ultimately he became their beloved pastor. The three or four poor women whom Bunyan saw one day sitting at a door in the sun and talking about the things of God were all members of John Gifford's free church congregation. And in long after days John Bunyan immortalised John Gifford as his evangelist in the Pilgrim's Progress. Such then was holy Mr. Gifford, whose doctrine, by God's grace, was so much for John Bunyan's stability.
John Gifford's pulpit was … blessed to young Bunyan … And Bunyan long afterwards went back upon and signalised these four features of John Gifford's pulpit-work – its Scriptural character, its doctrinal character, its experimental character, and its evangelical character … He tells us in his own inimitable way how his minister taught him to read his New Testament; and, especially how he taught him to employ his eyes upon Jesus Christ in his New Testament … “Under the ministry of holy Mr. Gifford, O how my soul was led on from truth to truth! Even from the birth and cradle of the Son of God, to His Ascension and second coming from heaven to judge the world. There was not one part of the gospel of the Lord Jesus but I was orderly led into it. Methought I was as if I had seen Him born, as if I had seen Him grow up, as if I had seen Him walk through this world from His cradle to His cross; to which also, when He came, I saw how gently He gave Himself to be hanged and nailed upon it for my sins and my wicked doings. Also, as I mused on this His progress, that Scripture dropped on my spirit, “He was ordained for the slaughter.”
What a contrast to the time when the young Bunyan could not away with the Scriptures. And when he said, “What is the Bible? Give me a ballad, a newsbook, 'George on Horseback', or 'Bevis of Southampton.' Give me some book that teaches curious arts, or that tells old fables; but for the Holy Scriptures I cared not.” What a happy service John Gifford did to John Bunyan, and to us, and to all the world!
And, then, all his after days, John Bunyan – tinker, preacher; great writer, and great saint of God – went back on John Gifford's doctrinal preaching with an ever-increasing gratitude … “At this time also, I sat under the ministry of holy Mr. Gifford, whose doctrine, by God's grace, was much for my stability. His doctrine was as seasonable to my soul as the former and the latter rain in their season. Wherefore I found my soul, through grace, very apt to drink in his doctrine.” Both John Gifford's day and John Bunyan's day were the greatest days of doctrinal preaching the church of Christ has seen since Paul's day. Whereas your day and mine is the weakest in doctrine that the church of Christ has ever had to come through. But the day of sound and deep doctrine in religion must come back again. All real knowledge takes the form of doctrine.
A doctrine is a truth that is so sure that it can be taught and can be trusted to … our statesmen, and our business men, and our scientific men, and our artistic men are all trusted and are all honoured and are all rewarded just in the measure that they master the foundation doctrines of their several professions and services, and then go on to put those doctrines into practice. And it surely cannot continue to be, that the one thing needful for all men to know should be left to stand without a foundation in men's understandings, as well as without a hold over their hearts and their lives … All other doctrines, whether of philosophy, or of science, or of art, have been the slow and the gradual discovery of human observation and experiment. But the doctrines of grace are of another kind, and they come from another world. Unless they are the greatest delusion and the greatest snare the doctrines of grace are the very wisdom of God, and the very power of God, to the salvation of sinful and suffering men. And in the word of God those doctrines stand revealed from heaven in all their fulness and in all their assurance of grace and truth, and in a fulness to which no man is ever to add or is over to take away.
“At this time I sat under the ministry of holy Mr. Gifford, whose doctrine, by God's grace, was much for my stability.”
