The Man in the Iron Cage
“Now,” said Christian, “let me go hence.” “Nay, stay,” said the Interpreter, “till I have showed thee a little more, and after that thou shalt go on thy way.” So he took him by the hand again, and led him into a very dark room, where there sat a man in an iron cage.
Now the man to look on, seemed very sad. He sat with his eyes looking down to the ground, his hands folded together, and he sighed as if he would break his heart. Then said Christian, “What means this?” At which the Interpreter bid him talk with the man.
Then said Christian to the man, “What art thou?” The man answered, “I am what I was not once.”
CRISTIAN. “What wert thou once?”
The man said, “I was once a fair and flourishing professor, both in mine own eyes, and also in the eyes of others; I once was, as I thought, fair for the celestial city, Luke 8:13, and had then even joy at the thoughts that I should get thither.”
CHRISTIAN. “Well, but what art thou now?”
MAN. “I am now a man of despair, and am shut up in it as in this iron cage. I cannot get out: O NOW I cannot.”
CHRISTIAN. “But how earnest thou in this condition?”
MAN. “I left off to watch and be sober; I laid the reins upon the neck of my lusts; I sinned against the light of the word, and the goodness of God; I have grieved the Spirit, and he is gone; I tempted the devil, and he is come to me; I have provoked God to anger, and he has left me; I have so hardened my heart that I CANNOT repent.”
Then said Christian to the Interpreter, “But is there no hope for such a man as this?” “Ask him,” said the Interpreter.
Then said Christian, “Is there no hope but you must be kept in the iron cage of despair?”
MAN. “No, none at all.”
CHRISTIAN. “Why? the Son of the Blessed is very pitiful.”
MAN. “I have crucified him to myself afresh; I have despised his person, I have despised his righteousness, I have counted his blood an unholy thing. I have done despite to the Spirit of grace, Luke 19:14; Heh. 6:4-6; 10:28, 29; therefore I have shut myself out of all the promises, and there now remains to me nothing but threatenings, dreadful threatenings, fearful threatenings of certain judgment and fiery indignation which shall devour me as an adversary.”
CHRISTIAN. “For what did you bring yourself into this condition?”
MAN. “For the lusts, pleasures, and profits of this world; in the enjoyment of which I did then promise myself much delight; but now every one of those things also bites me and gnaws me like a burning worm.”
CHRISTIAN. “But canst thou not repent and turn?”
MAN. “God hath denied me repentance. His word gives me no encouragement to believe; yea, himself hath shut me up in this iron cage: nor can all the men in the world let me out. O eternity, eternity! how shall I grapple with the misery that I must meet with in eternity?”
Then said the Interpreter to Christian, “Let this man’s misery he remembered by thee, and be an everlasting caution to thee.”
“Well,” said Christian, “this is fearful! God help me to watch and he sober, and to pray that I may shun the cause of this man’s miseiy.”
We that religiously name the name of Christ should depart from iniquity, because the Spirit of the Father will else be grieved. Eph. 4:30. The countenancing of iniquity, the not departing therefrom, will grieve the Spirit of God, by which you are sealed to the day of redemption; and that is a sin of a higher nature than men commonly are aware of. He that grieveth the Spirit of God shall smart for it here, or in hell, or both. And that Spirit that sometimes did illuminate, teach, and instruct them, can keep silence, can cause darkness, can. withdraw itself, and sufler the soul to sin more and more; and this last is the very judgment of judgments. He that grieves the Spirit, quenches it; and he that quenches it, vexes it; and he that vexes it, sets it against himself, and tempts it to hasten destruction upon himself. 1 Thess. 5:19.
Wherefore take heed, professors, I say, take heed, you that religiously name the name of Christ, that you meddle not with iniquity, that you tempt not the Spirit of the Lord to do such things against you; whose beginnings are dreadful, and whose end in working of judgments is unsearchable. Isa. 63:10; Acts 5:9.
A man knows not whither he is sjoing, nor where he shall stop, that is but entering into temptation; nor whether he shall ever turn back, or go out at the gap that is right before him.
He that has begun to grieve the Holy Ghost, may be sufiered to go on until he has sinned that sin which is called the sin against the Holy Ghost. And if God shall once give thee up to that, then, thou art in the IRON CAGE, out of which there is neither deliverance nor redemption.
There is a sin called the sin against the Holy Ghost, from which there is no redemption, and this sin doth more than ordinarily befall professors; for there are few, if any, that are not professors, that are at present capable of sinning this sin. They which “were once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come,” Heb.6:4, 5—of this sort are they that commit this sin. Peter also describes them to be such, that sin the unpardonable sin: “For if after they have escaped the pollution of the world, through the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning.” 2 Pet. 2:2.
The other passage in the tenth of the Hebrews holdeth forth the same thing: “For if we sin wilfully, after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin. but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation that shall devour the adversaries.”
These, therefore, are the persons that are the prey for this sin. This sin feedeth upon professors, and they that are such do often fall into the rnouth of this eater.
The unpardonable sin, the sin against the Holy Ghost, is a sin of this nature: For a man after he hath made some profession of salvation to come alone by the blood of Jesus, together with some light%and power of the same upon his spirit—I say, for him knowingly, wilfully, and despitefully to trample upon the blood of Christ shed on the cross, and to count it an unholy thing, or no better than the blood of another man; and rather to venture his soul any other way, than to be saved by this precious blood.
It is called the sin against the Holy Ghost, because such sin against the manifest light of the Spirit; that is, they have been formerly enlightened into the nature of the gospel, and the merits of the man Christ, and his blood, righteousness, intercession, etc., and also have professed and confessed the same, with some life and comfort in and through the profession of him; yet now against all that light, they maliciously and with despite to all their former profession, turn their backs, and trample upon the same.
This sin is immediately committed against the motions and convictions and light of that Holy Spirit of God, that makes it his business to hand forth and manifest the truth and reality of the merits and virtue of the Lord Jesus.
To some men that have grievously sinned under a profession of the gospel, God. gives this token of his displeasure: they are denied the power of repentance; their heart is bound, they cannot repent. It is impossible they should ever repent, should they live a thousand years. It is impossible for those fall-aways to be renewed again unto repentance, seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to open shame. Now, to have the heart so hardened, so judicially hardened, this is as a bar put in by the Lord God against the salvation of this sinner. This was the burden of Spira’s complaint: “I cannot do it; O, now I cannot do it.”
This man sees what he has done, what should help him, and what will become of him; yet he cannot repent. He pulled away his shoulder before, he shut his eyes before, and in that very posture God left him; and so he stands to this very day. I have had a fancy that Lot’s wife, when she was turned into a pillar of salt, stood yet looking over her shoulder, or else with her face towards Sodom; as the judgment caught her, so it bound her, and left her for a monument of God’s anger to after-generations.
I have been the more plain and simple in my writing, because the sin against the Holy Ghost is in these days more common than formerly, and the way unto it more beautified with color and pretence of truth I may say of the way to this sin, it is, as was once the way to Jerusalem, strewed with boughs and branches, and by some there is cried a kind of Hosanna to them that are treading these steps to hell. Oh, the plausible pretences, the golden names, the feigned holiness, the demure behavior mixed with damnable hypocrisy, that attend the persons that have forsaken the Lord Jesus, that have despised his person, trampled upon him, and “counted the blood of the covenant wherewith they were sanctified an unholy thing.” They have crucified him to themselves, and think that they can go to heaven without him, yea, pretend they love him, when they hate him; pretend they have him, when they have cast him off; pretend they trust in him, when they bid defiance to his undertakings for the world.
So they both went on, and Ignorance he came after. Now, when they had passed him a little way, they entered into a very dark lane, where they met a man whom seven devils had bound with seven strong cords, and were carrying him back to the door that they saw on the side of the hill. Matt. 12: 45; Prov. 5: 22. Now good Christian began to tremble, and so did Hopeful, his companion; yet as the devils led away the man, Christian looked to see if he knew him; and he thought it might be one Turn-away that dwelt in the town of Apostasy. But he did not perfectly see his face; for he did hang his head like a thief that is found. But being gone past, Hopeful looked after him, and espied on his back a paper with this inscription: “Wanton professor and damnable apostate.”