by Rev. Ian R. Tallach
Richard Baxter has succinctly defined Puritanism as ‘a serious effort to live a godly life, and a desire to achieve further reformation in the Church’. Taking its rise in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, it was a movement of protest, first against the ceremonial of the Church of England; later, it became a protest against her ecclesiastical polity. Finally, it percolated to the ordinary people and became a way of thought and a way of life. Bunyan was a typical Puritan. In his youth, Puritanism had reached its zenith, and its influence was to be felt in all aspects of social and individual life. The chief stimulus to Puritanism was the open Bible. G. M. Trevelyan sees in the lonely figure of Christian, with Bible in hand, ‘not only John Bunyan himself’, but ‘the representative Puritan of the English Puritan epoch’.
One of the distinctives of the Puritans was their vocalness. Hence the extraordinary flood of literature that issued from their pens and presses. Many may not realise it, but Bunyan was the author of no less than sixty books. In 1838, Charles Doe’s Circular of 1691 was discovered at Bedford, and this document presents a complete list of Bunyan’s works with their dates taken from the author’s own lips before his death. Robert Philip who wrote a chronological critique on the writings of Bunyan stresses the importance of this discovery towards the study of the progressive development of Bunyan’s intellectual powers. Whatever may be said of his development as a thinker and writer, an analysis of his works shows that the great impulse to write arose from his passion for souls. He was concerned above all to awaken men to a sense of sin, and to confront them with the cross for its remission. He was, as he himself puts it, ‘laden with pain, and travailed to bring forth children to God’.
In 1644, at the age of sixteen, Bunyan was drafted into the Parliamentary army, but his military service was soon to terminate. The battle of Naseby in June, 1645, brought the First Civil War to an end, and we find Bunyan back at his anvil in Elstow. About 1649, he married a poor girl who brought with her two books which belonged to her father — The Plain Man’s Pathway to Heaven and The Practice of Piety. Although these books did not reach his heart ‘to awaken it about his sad and sinful state’, they did beget in him some desires to reform his godless life. It was not long, however, before he began to pass through those trying spiritual experiences which he so vividly details in his Grace Abounding, and which ultimately issued in his conversion.
In 1653, Bunyan joined a Christian fellowship under the pastorate of the ‘holy Mr Gifford’, a converted royalist major. Soon Bunyan was required to address his brethren, and this led to his preaching in the Bedfordshire villages. His preaching brought him into conflict with the followers of George Fox. In his Some Gospel Truths Opened (1656), which was Bunyan’s first publication, he made a vigorous attack on the enthusiasms of Quakerism. Dr Southy describes it as ‘a calm, well-argued, and well-supported statement of the Scriptural doctrines on momentous points’. It was to be the first of many polemics, as Bunyan was often involved in theological controversy. He was, however, ‘more anxious to establish truth than to refute error’.
The death of Cromwell was followed by the downfall of Puritan rule, and the restoration of monarchy under Charles II. Those who had enjoyed the shelter of the Protectorate, soon found themselves exposed to the persecuting effects of the Restoration. Bunyan was among the first to suffer. He was arrested and committed to Bedford county gaol, where he was to spend twelve years of his life. During his period of imprisonment, Bunyan was not idle. It was at this time that he wrote Profitable Meditations, Praying in the Spirit, Christian Behaviour, The Holy City, The Resurrection of the Dead, And Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, as well as some smaller works.
Bunyan’s prime reason for writing Grace Abounding (1666) was not autobiographical. He wrote the book as a ‘brief and faithful relation of the exceeding mercy of God in Christ’ to himself, but it was ‘for the benefit of the tempted and dejected Christian’. His concern was for his brethren who were in danger of fainting under persecution, and to demonstrate to them how God had brought him through severe trial to victory. In the preface to this work, he writes: ‘I could have stepped into a style much higher, and could have adorned all things more; but I dare not. God did not play with me in trying me, nor did I play when I sank as into a bottomless pit, and the pains of hell got hold upon me; wherefore I may not play in relating them, but be plain and simple, and lay down the thing as it was’. Dr Cheever, one of the foremost authorities on Bunyan, remarks: ‘As you read Grace Abounding you are ready to say at every step. Here is the future author of Pilgrim’s Progress‘.
Bunyan’s next publication of importance is his Justification by an Imputed Righteousness. Although it was written in 1671, it was not published till after his death. In this treatise, Bunyan presents the reader with the following proposition: ‘That there is no other way for sinners to be justified from the curse of the law in the sight of God, than the imputation of that righteousness long ago performed by, and still residing in, the person of Jesus Christ’. In his explication, Bunyan has many excellent things to say. He stresses, for instance, that the righteousness of Christ is ‘a justifying virtue only by imputation’. The righteousness is still in Christ, not in us, even when we are the beneficiaries of it, ‘as the wing and feathers still abide in the hen when the chickens are covered and kept and warmed thereby’. He proceeds: ‘It is absolutely necessary that this be known of us; for if the understanding be muddy as to this, it is impossible that such shall be sound in the faith; also in temptation, that man will be at a loss that looketh for a righteousness for justification in himself, when it is to be found nowhere else but in Jesus Christ. The apostle who was his craftsman as to this, was always “looking unto Jesus” that he may be “found in him”, knowing that nowhere else could peace and safety be had. And indeed, this is one of the greatest mysteries in the world; namely, that a righteousness that resides with a person in heaven should justify me, a sinner on earth’. Of course, Bunyan had discovered the truth and virtue of this doctrine in the fires of temptation, as Grace Abounding evinces. It was then that a tattered copy of Luther’s Commentary on Galations, with its emphasis on justification by faith, came into his hands. Of it he wrote: ‘do prefer this book of Martin Luther upon Galations, excepting the Holy Bible, before all the books that ever I have seen, as most fit for a wounded conscience’.
In 1666, Bunyan was released from prison, but it was for only a short time. He had to return for another spell of six years. Robert Philip says that Bunyan had ‘no concessions to make to his enemies’. Upon his release in 1672, he published A Confession of My Faith and a Reason for My Practice. In his preface he appeals to his enemies to judge if there was anything in his doctrine that savoured of heresy or rebellion. Rather than permit his approaches to God to be governed by ‘the superstitious inventions’ of men, he was determined, the Almighty being his help, to suffer, as he affirms, ’till the moss shall grow upon my eyebrows’. Nothing could make him violate his faith and principles. Because of the view he held of Open Communion, as well as his thoroughly Calvinistic creed, Bunyan was in conflict not only with the authorities, but with the whole body of general Baptists, and his Confession provoked their ‘best and worst pens’. It may be of interest to observe that ‘at least three of Bunyan’s children were baptised in infancy — one a year after his own admission to the Bedford church by Mr Gifford, and another after his twelve years imprisonment for conscience’ sake’.
As a result of the restoration of monarchy under the profligate Charles II, the morality of the country quickly degenerated. While in prison, Bunyan wrote his Christian Behaviour, which has already been mentioned. Its design was the promotion of family morals, and it concludes with directions to backsliders. Upon his release in 1672, Bunyan was shocked to find ignorance and ungodliness rampant. From the moment he witnessed the apostasy, it haunted him, and he appropriately wrote his Light to Them that Sit in Darkness (1674). His object was to counteract some of the insidious errors into which the people of his itineracy had relapsed. The book recommends the gospel in its purity for their acceptance. ‘I have ventured my own soul thereon with gladness’, proclaims the author ‘and if all the souls in the world were mine, I would venture them all.’
Bunyan’s works are far too numerous to list or comment on here. We now come to his writing of the Pilgrim’s Progress, which has had such a profound influence for good and for which Bunyan is justly remembered most of all. Ifor Evans, in his Short History of English Literature, asserts that the greatest fiction writer of the seventeenth century was John Bunyan. By fiction, Evans has in mind Bunyan’s three great classics — The Life and Death of Mr Badman, The Holy War, and, of course, Pilgrim’s Progress. Considered as literature, they are fictional, but because of their spiritual import they are among the finest of our religious writings.
The Pilgrim’s Progress, it need hardly be said, is Bunyan’s magnum opus. His biographer, John Brown, tells us that on the highest authority, that of Bunyan himself, we know that it was written in prison. For a time, it was thought that the world was mistaken in supposing the Pilgrim’s Progress to be a prison production. But thanks to Dr Brown’s researches, it was discovered that Bunyan was recommitted to prison three years after his release in 1672. When the first complete edition of the book appeared in 1679, by the side of the word ‘den’ in the text, Bunyan placed the marginal note, ‘the Jail’. The reader will recall the opening words of the Pilgrim’s Progress: ‘As I walked through the wilderness of this world I lighted upon a certain place where was a den, and I laid me down in that place to sleep; and as I slept, I dreamed a dream’. How did the theme come to Bunyan’s mind? Mediaeval and French literature, as well as English, has been ransacked for an answer. Often absurd explanations have been advanced. No doubt Bunyan was influenced to some extent by traditional literary ideas, but it was unconsciously. He claims entire originality.
Matter and manner too, was all mine own,
Nor was it unto any mortal known
Till I had done it.
It is notorious that Bunyan did not possess many books. The Bible and Fox’s martyrology appear to have been his main companions. He informs us that he ‘never fished in others’ waters. My Bible and Concordance are my library in my writings’.
Dr Brown has attempted to define the elements which combine to make Pilgrim’s Progress the classic that it is. Among these is its ‘perfect spontaneousness’. It has ‘all the simple freedom of life. There are no signs of toil, no inartistic traces of elaboration; the vision grows up like a flower, effortless and fair’. Then there is its ‘dramatic unity’. The reader’s interest is aroused and retained from start to finish. ‘From the moment we see the man in rags setting out with his burden, our interest in his fortunes never flags till he is fairly within the portals of the celestial city.’ There is also the ‘great humanness’ of the book. ‘We have touches of pathos which, to use a favourite phrase of Bunyan’s, make the water to stand in our eyes; and strokes of pleasantry which bring back the smile to our faces.’
It is, however, as a great spiritual classic that the book is most loved. Dr Cheever who is second to none in his analysis of Bunyan’s work remarks that one of the ‘supremest merits’ of Pilgrim’s Progress is that ‘it belongs to no sect. It is Christianity, pure Christianity.’ One ‘cannot tell from perusal of that work that Bunyan was of any religious persuasion save that he was a living member of the Church of Christ.’ Cheever proceeds: ‘In Bunyan you do not meet with prejudices instead of truth, nor bigotries, nor reproaches, nor anything in the sweet fields through which he leads you that can drive away or repel any . . . He is a familiar friend, an angel from heaven, and not a partisan, walking with you through green pastures and leading you beside still waters; and conversing with you all the way so lovingly, so instructively, so frankly, there is nothing so delightful. You have in him more ubiquity, unity and harmony of divine truth, more of the pervading breath and stamp of inspiration than in almost any other uninspired writer.’
How many thousands, over the three centuries since the Pilgrim’s Progress was written, have identified themselves with the woebegone figure of Christian, with his Bible and the burden of his sin, seeking salvation with tears! How many have followed him to the cross, and, looking upon Him who was pierced, have sung with him: ‘He hath given me rest by his sorrow, and life by his death!’ How many have pursued his onward pilgrimage to the Delectable Mountains! The Pilgrim’s appeal is universal, but how much more so to those who understand its spiritual reference.
In 1684-5, the second part of the Pilgrim’s Progress issued from Bunyan’s pen. Here, the Pilgrim’s wife, Christiana, and her children set out for the Celestial City. But before this addendum, Bunyan had published The Life and Death of Mr Badman (1680) and The Holy War (1682). The former of these is regarded as a counterpart to the Pilgrim. It is presented to the world in a familiar dialogue between Mr Wiseman and Mr Attentive. Bunyan, in the use of dialogue, followed Arthur Dent’s Plain Man’s Pathway to Heaven, a book that has already been referred to. Mr Badman is a solemn biography of a scoundrel who, despite a godly upbringing, step by step degenerates until he expires, in horror and despair. Some may be shocked by the book’s ‘lurid truthfulness,’ but Bunyan’s intention was to shock. At the conclusion, Mr Attentive speaks of Badman’s death as ‘a staggering dispensation’. It is, he says, ‘full of the wisdom and anger of God,’ and he craves Mr Wiseman’s prayers, that God would give him grace that he may neither live nor die as Mr Badman. Apart from its seventeenth century connotations, it is a very modern book.
Bunyan’s Holy War is an epic of magnificent proportions. Like the Pilgrim’s Progress, it is written in allegorical form. Lord MacAulay estimates that if the Pilgrim’s Progress did not exist, The Holy War would be the best allegory that was ever written. No doubt Bunyan’s reminiscences of his military service in Cromwell’s new model army, and his recollection of the siege of Leicester, were enlisted in the composition of this book. Here our author tells of the war ‘made by Shaddai upon Diabolus for the regaining of the metropolis of the world; or the losing and taking of the town of Mansoul.’ Dean Hutton writes that Bunyan ‘had not been a soldier any more than he had been a doubter, for nothing.’ All his experiences went ‘hot-foot’ into his writings.
Many of Bunyan’s excellent productions have not even been mentioned in this article. Space will not allow. The past three hundred years attest to the permanent worth and relevance of what Bunyan wrote. Before his death in 1688, his Pilgrim’s Progress had passed through at least ten editions. Since then, it has been translated into approximately two hundred languages. No doubt Bunyan’s writings have been blessed to multitudes, and will continue to be used by God to the blessing of many more. Bunyan was ‘not taught in the schools of Plato and Aristotle,’ but he was an anointed genius, a star in the right hand of Christ. He still shines on. His work ‘transcends its age and is permanent’. He was buried in Bunhill Fields, the sancto campo of the Non-conformists. It is said that many puritans ‘begged with their dying breath’ that their coffins might be placed as near as possible to his. On a visit to Bunhill Fields, Dr MacGinn,
a short while before his death, after stooping a long time in pensive thought over Bunyan’s tomb, at last exclaimed: ‘Sleep on, thou Prince of Dreamers.’