'Let no man take your crown,'
he said also, as he foresaw at how many booths and counters, houses,
lands, places, preferments, wives, husbands, and what not, would be
offered them and pressed upon them in exchange for their heavenly crown.
'Above all, look well to your own hearts,' he said. Canon Venables
laments over the teaching that Bunyan received from John Gifford. 'Its
principle,' he says, 'was constant introspection and scrupulous weighing
of every word and deed, and even of every thought, instead of leading the
mind off from self to the Saviour.' The canon seems to think that it was
specially unfortunate for Bunyan to be told to keep his heart and to
weigh well every thought of it; but I must point out to you that
Evangelist puts as above all other things the most important for the
pilgrims the looking well to their own hearts; and our plain-spoken
author has used a very severe word about any minister who should whisper
anything to any pilgrim that could be construed or misunderstood into
putting Christ in the place of thought and word and deed, and the
scrupulous weighing of every one of them.
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