’But having now my method by the end,
   Still, as I pulled it came:  and so I penned
   It down; until at last it came to be
   For length and breadth the bigness that you see.’

The Blessed Prince, he begins, did also ordain a new officer in the town, and a goodly person he was.  His name was Mr. God’s-peace.  This man was set over my Lord Will-be-will, my Lord Mayor, Mr. Recorder, the subordinate preacher, Mr. Mind, and over all the natives of the town of Mansoul.  Himself was not a native of the town, but came with the Prince from the court above.  He was a great acquaintance of Captain Credence and Captain Good-hope; some say they were kin, and I am of that opinion too.  This man, as I said, was made governor of the town in general, especially over the castle, and Captain Credence was to help him there.  And I made great observation of it, that so long as all things went in the town as this sweet-natured gentleman would have them go, the town was in a most happy condition.  Now there were no jars, no chiding, no interferings, no unfaithful doings in all the town; every man in Mansoul kept close to his own employment.  The gentry, the officers, the soldiers, and all in place, observed their order.  And as for the women and the children of the town, they followed their business joyfully.  They would work and sing, work and sing, from morning till night; so that quite through the town of Mansoul now nothing was to be found but harmony, quietness, joy, and health.  And this lasted all the summer.  I shall step aside at this point and shall let Jonathan Edwards comment on this sweet-natured gentleman and his heavenly name.  ’God’s peace has an exquisite sweetness,’ says Edwards.  ’It is exquisitely sweet because it has so firm a foundation on the everlasting rock.  It is sweet also because it is so perfectly agreeable to reason.  It is sweet also because it riseth from holy and divine principles, which, as they are the virtue, so are they the proper happiness of man.  This peace is exquisitely sweet also because of the greatness of the good that the saints enjoy, being no other than the infinite bounty and fulness of that God who is the Fountain of all good.  It is sweet also because it shall be enjoyed to perfection hereafter.’  An enthusiastic student has counted up the number of times that this divine word ‘sweetness’ occurs in Edwards, and has proved that no other word of the kind occurs so often in the author of True Virtue and The Religious Affections.  And I can well believe it; unless the ‘beauty of holiness’ runs it close.  Still, this sweet-natured gentleman will continue to live for us in his government and jurisdiction in Mansoul and in John Bunyan even more than in Jonathan Edwards.