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Ⅱ. John Bunyan (1628-1688)
1 Life
Although Bunyan chiefly wrote during the Restoration period, he still
belongs to the Puritan Age because of his strong Puritanism.
John Bunyan, one of the most popular religious writers of any
age, was born at Elstow, near Bedford, in 1628. He was brought up to his
father's trade of tinker, and spent his youth in the practice of that humble
craft, of which his name alone now serves to lessen somewhat the disrepute.
It has generally been taken for granted that his early life was very loose
and profligate, on the sole ground of his terrible self accusations in after
years, when from the height of religious fervor and puritan strictness, he
looked back on dancing and bell ringing as sins. In his 16th or 17th year,
he enlisted in the Parliamentary army, and in 1645 was present at the siege
of Leicester, where he escaped death by the substitution of a comrade in his
place as sentry. Nothing further is known of his military career. After
leaving the army, he married, and soon after began to be visited by those
terrible compunctions of conscience, and fits of doubt, sometimes passing
into despair, which, with some quieter intervals, made his life for several
years, a journey through the valley of humiliation, of which he afterwards
gave so vivid a picture. Hope and peace came at last, and in 1655, Bunyan
became a member of the Baptist congregation at Bedford. Soon after he was
chosen its pastor, and for five years ministered with extraordinary
diligence and success, his preaching generally attracting great crowds. The
act against conventicles, passed on the Restoration, put a stop to his
labors; he was convicted, and sentenced to perpetual banishment. In the
meantime, he was committed to Bedford jail, where he spent the next twelve
years of his life, supporting the wants of his wife and children by making
tagged laces, and ministering to all posterity by writing the Pilgrim's
Progress. His library consisted of a Bible and Foxes Martyrs. The kindly
interposition of a high church Bishop, Dr. Barlow, of Lincoln, at length
released him, and he at once resumed his work as a preacher, itinerating
throughout the country. After the issuing of James II's declaration of
liberty of conscience, he again settled at Bedford, and ministered to the
Baptist congregation in Mill-lane till his death, at London, of fever, in
1688. Bunyan's whole works were published in 1736, in a two-volume folio.
The most popular of them after the Pilgrim's Progress, are the Holy War -
another
allegory, much less successful - and Grace Abounding to the Chief of
Sinners, an autobiographical narrative. It is supposed that no other book,
except the Bible, has gone through so many editions, and attained to so wide
a popularity in all languages as The Pilgrim's Progress.
Bunyan mainly wrote four prose works, Grace Abouding to
the Chief of Sinners (1666), The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678),
The Life and Death of Mr. Badman (1680), and The Holy War (1682).
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