the only way to characterise sin, the only way to aggravate sin, is just to call it sin; sinful sin; ’sin by the commandment became exceeding sinful.’  And, in like manner, John Bunyan, who has only his own mother tongue to work with, in his straits to get a proper name for this terrible fellow who was next to Diabolus himself, cannot find a proud enough name for him but just by giving him his own name, and then doubling it.  Add will to will, multiply will by will, and multiply it again, and after you have done all you are no nearer to a proper name for that apostate, who, for pride, and insolence, and headstrongness, in one word, for wilfulness, is next to Diabolus himself.  But as Willbewill, if he is to be named and described at all, is best named and described by his own naked name; so Bunyan is always best illustrated out of his own works.  And I turn accordingly to the Heavenly Footman for an excellent illustration of the wilfulness of the will both in a good man and in a bad; as, thus:  ’Your self-willed people, nobody knows what to do with them.  We use to say, He will have his own will, do all we can.  If a man be willing, then any argument shall be matter of encouragement; but if unwilling, then any argument shall give discouragement.  The saints of old, they being willing and resolved for heaven, what could stop them?  Could fire and fagot, sword or halter, dungeons, whips, bears, bulls, lions, cruel rackings, stonings, starvings, nakedness?  So willing had they been made in the day of His power.  And see, on the other side, the children of the devil, because they are not willing, how many shifts and starting-holes they will have!  I have married a wife; I have a farm; I shall offend my landlord; I shall lose my trade; I shall be mocked and scoffed at, and therefore I cannot come.  But, alas! the thing is, they are not willing.  For, were they once soundly willing, these, and a thousand things such as these, would hold them no faster than the cords held Samson when he broke them like flax.  I tell you the will is all.  The Lord give thee a will, then, and courage of heart.’

2.  Let that, then, suffice for this man’s name and nature, and let us look at him now when his name and his nature have both become evil; that is to say, when Willbewill has become Illwill.  You can imagine; no, you cannot imagine unless you already know, how evil, and how set upon evil, Illwill was.  His whole mind, we are told, now stood bending itself to evil.  Nay, so set was he now upon sheer evil that he would act it of his own accord, and without any instigation at all from Diabolus.  And that went on till he was looked on in the city as next in wickedness to very Diabolus himself.  Parable apart, my ill-willed brethren, our ill-will has made us very fiends in human shape.  What a fall, what a fate, what a curse it is to be possessed of a devil of ill-will!  Who can put proper words on it after Paul had to confess himself silent before it?