Here’s another instalment form Mason’s Notes. I placed the extract from Pilgrim’s Progress in italics and the relevant word in bold followed by Mason’s Notes. I think you get the idea. The picture on the left is a scan (not scam!) of the notes. The picture on the right is from a couple of pages further on showing Evangelist and Pilgrim.
I looked and saw him open the book, and read therein; and as he read, he wept and trembled; and not being able longer to contain, he brake out with a lamentable cry, saying, “What shall I do?” Acts 2:37; 16:30; Habak 1:2,3.
Mason’s Note for cry
The cry of an awakened sinner, who sees his own righteousness to be as filthy rags: his soul in a state of wrath and wretchedness, exposed to everlasting destruction, feeling the burden of his sins upon his back, he turns his face from his own house, from himself, from all his false hopes and vain confidence, for refuge; and takes his Bible in his hand to direct him where he shall flee for refuge and salvation. The more a sinner reads therein, the more he is convinced of the wretched state and ruined condition of his precious and immortal soul, and of his necessity of fleeing to Christ for eternal life and salvation. As he reads he weeps and trembles to think what will become of him. Reader, was this ever your case? Did you ever see your sins, and feel the burden of them, so as to cry out in the anguish of your soul, What must I do to be saved? If not, you will look on this precious book as a romance, or history, which no way concerns you: ypu can no more understand the meaning of it, than if it were written in an unknown tongue: for you are yet carnal, dead in your sins, lying in the arms of the wicked one, in false security. But this book is spiritual; it can only be understood by spiritually quickened souls, who have experienced that salvation in the heart which begins with a sight of sin, a sense of sin, a fear of destruction. Such, and only
such, commence pilgrims from the City of Destruction to the heavenly kingdom.
Over the page a little we read: I saw also that he looked this way, and that way, as if he would run; yet he stood still because (as I perceived) he could not tell which way to go. I looked then, and saw a man named Evangelist coming to him, and he asked, “Wherefore dost thou cry?” Here Mason comments:
Behold here the tender love and care of Jesus, the great Shepherd and Bishop of souls, to sin-distressed, heavy laden sinners, in sending Evangelist, that is, a preacher of the gospel grace, and glad tidings of salvation to them.
Let’s pray that we too, by the Grace of God have the privilege and opportunity to point sinners to the only refuge and saviour, The Lord Jesus Christ.