The editor of the three-volume edition of the Works of John Bunyan in 1854, George Offor, comments on Bunyan’s position:
"Bunyan saw all the difficulties of this question: he was satisfied that baptism is a personal duty, in respect of which every individual must be satisfied, in his own mind, and over which no church had any control; and that the only enquiry as to the fitness of a candidate for church fellowship should be, whether the regenerating powers of the Holy Ghost had baptized the spirit of the proposed member into newness of life. This is the only livery by which a Christian can be known. Bunyan very justly condemns the idea of water baptism being either the Christian’s livery or his marriage to the Saviour."
It is a sad fact that most Baptists have long since denied the theology of the Strict and Particular Baptists and yet have the vestige of an external requirement. Others who hold steadfastly to the theology have not listened to their father in the faith, John Bunyan. Even those whom Bunyan admonished at that time seem to have relented for a time since in the appendix to the
Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1677) they wrote,
"We would not be misconstrued, as if the discharge of our consciences did any way disoblige or alienate our affections or conversations from any others that fear the Lord: earnestly desiring to approve ourselves to be such as follow after peace with holiness. We continue our practice, not out of obstinacy, but we do therein
according to the best of our understandings, in that method which
we take to be most agreeable to the Scriptures. The christening of infants, we find by church history, to have been a very ancient practice; still we leave every one to give an account of himself to God. And if in any case debates between Christians are not plainly determinable by the Scriptures, we leave it to the second coming of Christ."
Sadly, this statement was omitted from the 1689 republished edition of the
Second London Baptist Confession—the year after Bunyan’s death. We concur with Bunyan, “I own water baptism to be God’s ordinance, but I make no idol of it.”
https://www.wordmp3.com/baptism-and-communion-by-bunyan-edited-by-strawbridge