3. Controversy
Matthew Vogan
5. The forgotten controversy behind The Pilgrim’s Progress. The issues of imagination and metaphorical language were by no means politically neutral in Restoration Britain. The Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Parker, went so far as to recommend in 1670 “an Act of Parliament to abridge [that is, curtail] preachers the use of fulsome and luscious metaphors”. This would guarantee a better state of affairs, he believed, and “might perhaps be an effectual cure of all our present distempers . . . were men obliged to speak sense as well as truth, all the swelling mysteries of fanaticism would immediately sink into flat and empty nonsense; and they would be ashamed of such . . . when they want [that is, lack] the varnish of fine metaphors and glittering allusions”. For Parker, the “sober Christians of the Church of England and our modern sectaries” (that is, nonconformists) could be dis-
1This series discusses aspects of Bunyan’s life and work that have been forgotten.
tinguished linguistically by “plain and intelligible terms” rather than “childish metaphors and allegories” and “barbarous and uncouth similitudes”.
It was as though using metaphorical language was in some way subversive and seditious. George Hascard’s tract against sectarianism (A Discourse about Edification: In Answer to a Question, Whether it is Lawful for any Man to forsake the Communion of the Church of England, and go to the Separate Meetings, because he can better Edifie there? 1683) dismissed nonconformist preaching as a mere attempt to “tickle . . . imaginations with conjectural discourses”. It was regarded as frenzied “puppet-play” designed to move the “sense and imaginations” of the audience rather than their “reason and judgement”.
Many of the dominant figures in the Church of England had an association with the Royal Society and championed a “strictly rational method of preaching”. John Owen resisted such attempts to denigrate figurative language, asking rhetorically, “What if the things condemned as ‘fulsome metaphors’ prove to be scriptural expressions of gospel mysteries?” This was an important challenge because, with some, the rejection of metaphor seemed to go hand in hand with a rejection of core gospel truths such as justification by faith alone. One London rector said that the doctrine of imputed righteousness was but “pretty words and phrases and allusions, types or metaphors” and compared it to Roman Catholic legends.
When Bunyan showed his draft of The Pilgrim’s Progress to nonconformist ministers some counselled against publishing it, while others encouraged it. It may well be that this context of controversy made some especially sensitive to something as entirely devoted to metaphor and allegory as The Pilgrim’s Progress. Perhaps they doubted it would pass the censor’s approval since there was such opposition from the establishment to metaphorical language. Bunyan refers to this division of opinion in the preface to The Pilgrim’s Progress (“The Author’s Apology”).
And some said, Let them live; some, Let them die;
Some said, John, print it; others said, Not so;
Some said, It might do good; others said, No.
Now was I in a strait, and did not see
Which was the best thing to be done by me:
At last I thought, Since you are thus divided,
I print it will, and so the case decided.
Owen was in the group of those who strongly encouraged publication, to the extent that he arranged for Bunyan to have it published through his own printer, Nathaniel Ponder, in 1678.
In 1675 a Scottish minister in London, Robert Ferguson, who was an assistant minister to John Owen, undertook to respond to this assault on biblical metaphor. He wrote The interest of Reason in Religion, with the Import & Use of Scripture-Metaphors. Ferguson notes the accusations of “turning religion into unaccountable fancies and enthusiasms, dressed up with empty schemes of speech; and for embracing a few gaudy metaphors and allegories”. He responds by pointing to biblical precedent and emphasising the plain didactic purpose of metaphorical language: “Metaphors are not used to impregnate our minds with gaudy fantasies, but to adjust the mysteries of religion to the weakness of our capacities”. Bunyan was closely associated with Owen and other leading nonconformists, and it is likely that he arrived in London about the time that Ferguson’s book was published. It is quite possible that Bunyan discussed the main issues of the book with Ferguson himself. He already had an interest in this aspect of Scripture, and it is arguable that Bunyan’s interest in typology was more fully awakened by this book.
The text that Bunyan quotes on the title page of The Pilgrim’s Progress is a defence of the use of metaphors: “I have used similitudes” (Hos 12:10). In The Advocateship of Jesus Christ, Bunyan defends his emphasis upon similitudes but, more than this, hints that he views biblical discourse as characteristically metaphorical: “I choose to follow the similitude . . . because the Scripture seems to smile upon such a way of discourse”. In defending his focus on metaphors in A Few Sighs from Hell, Bunyan also cautions: “O therefore, for Jesus Christ’s sake, do not slight the truth because it is discovered in a parable; for by this argument thou mayest also, nay thou wilt, slight almost all the things that our Lord Jesus Christ did speak; for He spake them for the most part (if not all) in parable. . . . I say, take heed of being a quarreller against Christ’s parables, lest Christ also objecteth against the salvation of thy soul at the judgement day.”
He speaks about the natural world as the Book of the Creatures from which Scripture so often draws lessons: “It is this book, out of which generally both Job and his friends did so profoundly discourse of the judgements of God. . . . This is the book out of which both Christ, the prophets and apostles, do so frequently discourse by their similitudes, proverbs, and parables” (The Resurrection of the Dead). Speaking of metaphor in The Water of Life he says, “These words are metaphorical, a word by which a thing most excellent is presented to and amplified before our faces”. The preface to The Pilgrim’s Progress further considers the Scriptural use of metaphor, and appropriately it is his longest defence of employing such visual language. Bunyan seeks to counter the objection to the allegory on the grounds that “metaphors make us blind” and that allegory lacks the solidity of other forms of writing.
Solidity, indeed, becomes the pen
Of him that writeth things divine to men;
But must I needs want solidness, because
By metaphors I speak? Were not God’s laws,
His gospel laws, in olden times held forth
By types, shadows, and metaphors? Yet loth
Will any sober man be to find fault
With them, lest he be found for to assault
The highest wisdom.
Be not too forward, therefore, to conclude
That I want solidness – that I am rude;
All things solid in show not solid be;
All things in parables despise not we;
Lest things most hurtful lightly we receive,
And things that good are, of our souls bereave.
He goes on to speak of how Christ and the apostles used such comparisons and then how full the whole of Scripture is of metaphorical language:
Am I afraid to say that holy writ,
Which for its style and phrase puts down all wit,
Is everywhere so full of all these things –
Dark figures, allegories? Yet there springs
From that same book that lustre, and those rays
Of light, that turn our darkest nights to days.
I find that holy writ in many places
Hath semblance with this method, where the cases
Do call for one thing, to set forth another;
Use it I may, then, and yet nothing smother
Truth’s golden beams: nay, by this method may
Make it cast forth its rays as light as day.
In The Greatness of the Soul, Bunyan gives a significant role to the imagination in the process of understanding and choosing. It first influences the mind, the memory and the affections, and then the will. This conviction is described in the poem prefacing The Pilgrim’s Progress:
Truth, although in swaddling-clouts, I find
Informs the judgement, rectifies the mind,
Pleases the understanding, makes the will
Submit; the memory too it doth fill
With what doth our imagination please.