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Whyte, Alexander, 1836-1921

"Bunyan Characters (1st Series)"

He comes to church and goes through public worship in the
same wooden way, and he sits through the Lord's Table in the same formal
and ceremonious manner. He has eyes of glass and hands of wood, and a
heart without either blood or motion in it. His mind and his heart were
destroyed in his youth, and all his religion is a religion of rites and
ceremonies without sense or substance. 'Because I knew no better,' says
Bunyan, 'I fell in very eagerly with the religion of the times: to wit,
to go to church twice a day, and that, too, with the foremost. And there
should I sing and say as others did. Withal, I was so overrun with the
spirit of superstition that I adored, and that with great devotion, even
all things, both the high place, priest, clerk, vestment, service, and
what else belonged to the church: counting all things holy that were
therein contained. But all this time I was not sensible of the danger
and evil of sin. I was kept from considering that sin would damn me,
what religion soever I followed, unless I was found in Christ. Nay, I
never thought of Christ, nor whether there was one or no.


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