To begin, then, at the very bottom of this whole matter, take stiff old Loth-to-stoop as a guilty sinner in the sight of God.

Let us take this stiff old man in this dreadful character to begin with, because it is in this deepest and most dreadful aspect of his nature and his character that he is introduced to us in the _Holy War_.

And I shall stand aside and let John Bunyan himself describe Loth-to-stoop in the matter of his justification before God.

'That is a great stoop for a sinner to have to take,' says our apostolic author in another classical place, 'a too great stoop to have to suffer the total loss of all his own righteousness, and, actually, to have to look to another for absolutely everything of that kind.

That is no easy matter for any man to do.