Buynan's Apology

Well, I've stepped onto the path with Buynan. And I'm eager to move forward. The introduction was helpful orientation. And two things grabbed me in the "Author's Apology" and make me want to journey forward: First, the poetry there arrests me as I recall that Buynan was a tinker with no formal education. There's a lesson here for us, for those who think too much of credentials (namely, all Americans): don't despise God's good gifts that come without the world's "letters of recommendation." Second, he tells us why he felt free to write a theological allegory when criticism was coming his way for doing so: he simply gets his method from the nature of the Bible. The Bible overflows with figurative language; Scripture courses with typology and parables; Holy Writ contains mostly narrative and poetry. It is not mainly discursive! (Important as that is!)

Here's a sample reason Buynan gives for his approach (p. 6):

Solidity, indeed becomes the Pen
Of him that writeth things Divine to Men:
But must I needs want solidness, because
By Metaphors I speak? Were not God's Laws
His Gospel-Laws, in olden times held forth
By Types, Shadows, and Metaphors?
Will any sober Man be to find fault
With them, lest he be found for to assault
The highest Wisdom: No, he rather stoops,
And seeks to find out what by Pins and Loops,
By Calves, and Sheep, by Heifers, and by Rams;
By Birds and Herbs, and by the blood of Lambs,
God speaketh to him; and happy is he
That finds the Light and Grace that in them be.

And here's the effect, he says, of such powerful language (p. 7):

Some Truth, although in Swadling-clouts, I find,
Reforms the Judgment, rectifies the Mind;
Pleases the Understanding, makes the Will
Submit: The Memory too it doth fill
With what doth our Imaginations please;
Likewise, it tends our Troubles to appease.

Buynan, an uneducated man, was a biblical and theological giant. Already I can see why C. H. Spurgeon said of him that if pricked he'd bleed bibline. And so in Buynan's shadow on the path to paradise I'm ready to make the journey, trodding where he and so many others have trodden, one step at a time: right, and then left; right, and then left; and so on to the celestial city.

Once again, you may find the text we're reading here.