[John Bunyan was arguably the last and the greatest of the Puritans. An uneducated tinker by training, Bunyan spent nearly fourteen years of his life in prison because he refused to stop preaching the gospel without a license. Nonetheless, even the eminent Puritan theologian John Owen often came to hear him preach and once said of him, “I would give all my knowledge for the wisdom of John Bunyan.” During his many years in prison, Bunyan left a remarkable legacy through his many books, the best known of which is Pilgrim’s Progress, which has become the best-selling book of all time other than the Bible. -- Editor]
John Bunyan was brought up by his father in the craft of a brass worker. Although he was never a drunkard or a violent man, his special sins were profanity, Sabbath-breaking, and atheism. Before he was converted, he was notorious for the energy that he put into all his doings. He had a zeal for idle play and an enthusiasm in mischief that perversely manifested his forceful personality.
His biographer, Dr. Hamilton, gives the following description of Bunyan in his youth:
He is the noisiest of the party playing pitch-and-toss--that one with the shaggy eyebrows whose entire soul is ascending in the twirling penny. His energetic movements and authoritative exclamations identify him at once as a ringleader. The penny has come down on the wrong side, and a loud oath at once bellows from young Bunyan. You have only to remember that it is Sabbath evening, and you witness a scene often repeated on Elstow Green two hundred years ago.
The only restraining influence that Bunyan then felt was the power of terror. He was often depressed by fear of the impending wrath of God, and he frequently had terrible nightmares that the reckless diversions of his waking day could not always dispel. He would dream that the last day had come and that the quaking earth was opening its mouth to let him down to hell. Or he would find himself in the grasp of fiends who were dragging him away.
As he grew older, his conscience grew harder. He experienced some remarkable escapes from death, but these providences neither startled nor melted him. He married very early, and his wife was the daughter of a godly man. Her whole property consisted of two small books, The Plain Man’s Pathway to Heaven, and Practice of Piety, which her father had left her on his deathbed.
Young Bunyan read these books, and his wife often told him what a good man her father had been. The consequence was that he felt some desire to reform his vicious life, and he began to attend church twice a day. At the same time, he became overrun with a spirit of superstition. The mere sight of a priest bewitched him. However, while enamored with the garb and ritual of worship, Bunyan continued to curse and blaspheme and to spend his Sabbaths in the same riot as before.
One day, however, he heard a sermon on the sin of Sabbath-breaking, and it haunted his conscience throughout the day. When he was in the midst of the excitement of that afternoon’s diversions, a voice seemed to dart from heaven into his soul, “Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to heaven, or have thy sins and go to hell?” His arm, which was about to strike a ball, was stopped, and as he looked up to heaven, it seemed as if the Lord Jesus was looking down upon him in rebuke and deep displeasure.
At the same time, he was overcome with the conviction that he had sinned so long that repentance was now too late. His desperate conclusion was that he was beyond hope. In fact, he became so persuaded that he had forfeited heaven forever that he decided to enjoy the pleasures of sin as rapidly and intensely as possible. One day, as Bunyan was standing at a neighbor’s window cursing and swearing, the woman of the house protested that he was the ungodliest man that she had ever known in her life. Because the woman was herself a notoriously worthless character, her reproof had a dramatic effect on Bunyan’s mind. He was silenced in a moment. However, his swearing had become so habitual that he thought reform was impossible without returning to childhood and relearning how to speak.
Soon after this circumstance, Bunyan began to read the Bible. He took a special interest in the historical portions of the Scripture, and his outward life underwent much reformation. His own account of this period of his life says:
I did set the commandments before me for my way to heaven and I strived to keep them. I thought I kept them pretty well sometimes which would bring me comfort. Yet now and then I would break one, and so afflict my conscience. I would repent and promise God to do better next time. I then thought I pleased God as well as any man in England. Thus I continued about a year and all my neighbors considered me to be a very godly man, a new and religious man, and did marvel much to see such great alterations in my life and manners. And so it was although I knew not Christ, nor grace, nor faith, nor hope. I was nothing but a poor painted hypocrite, yet I loved to be talked of as one that was truly godly.
About a year later, Bunyan went to Bedford on business. While walking along the street, he noticed a few poor women sitting in a doorway and talking together. Their conversation surprised him. Although he had by this time become a great talker on sacred subjects, their themes were far beyond his reach. They spoke in a personal and vital way about God’s work in their souls, the views they had obtained of their sinfulness and of God’s love in Christ Jesus, and the words and promises that had particularly refreshed them and strengthened them against the temptations of Satan.
Bunyan felt as if these women had found a new world. Their conversation made a deep impression on his mind. He saw that there was something real in religion that he had not yet understood. What John Bunyan heard in the society of these humble instructors suggested to him a sort of waking vision:
I saw as if they were on the sunny side of some high mountain, there refreshing themselves with the pleasant beams of the sun, while I was shivering and shrinking in the cold, afflicted with frost, snow, and dark clouds. Between them and me, I saw a wall through which my soul did greatly desire to pass, but I could not find a passage. At the last I saw, as it were, a narrow gap, like a little doorway in the wall, through which I attempted to pass. After great striving, I pushed my body through. It showed me that none could enter into life but those who were in downright earnest, and unless they left that wicked world behind them, for here was only room for body and soul, but not for body and soul and sin.
Bunyan now fell into a very common error. The object to which the eye of an inquiring sinner should be directed is Christ and His finished work for salvation. Many, however, go in quest of actions that they hope will unite their soul to the Savior and assure them of salvation. By some such misdirection Bunyan was misled.
In quest of faith he went on a long and joyless journey and was wearied with the greatness of the way. There is scarcely a fear that can assail an inquiring spirit that did not at some stage of his progress arrest his mind. He was no longer a proud Pharisee but a deeply humbled sinner: “My original and inward pollution--that was my plague and affliction. I was more loathsome in my own eyes than a toad; and I thought I was so in God’s eyes too.”
Years of despondency passed over him before he came to the enjoyment of the peace of the gospel. The light in which his darkness finally melted away was a clear discovery of the person of Christ. He was greatly helped by an old copy of Luther’s Commentary on Galatians. He felt that the torment of guilt that Luther had experienced before understanding the grace of God was very similar to his own journey. In fact, such were the benefits he derived from this book that he preferred it before all the books he had ever seen, excepting the Holy Bible, for the rest of his life.
His happiness was now as intense as his misery had been. He wished he was old that he might die quickly and go to be with Christ. But another period of fearful agony awaited him, and like the last, it continued for a year. The trial that beset him was a diabolical temptation to exchange Christ for the things of this life. The words “Sell Him, sell Him” would be impressed upon his thoughts for weeks at a time.
During this period, the tempter would not let him eat his food in quiet but flooded his mind with the notion that if he did not immediately leave the table in order to pray, he would displease God. When he refused to give in to this temptation, his conscience accused him of loving his food more than God. The fear that he had committed the unpardonable sin had such an effect on Bunyan that it not only distressed his mind but gave him severe stomach disorders.
Thus his mind continued for years, “hanging,” as he expressed it, “as in a pair of scales; sometimes up and sometimes down: now in peace, and again in terror.”
One day, as he was passing into the field, these words fell upon his soul, “Thy righteousness is in heaven.” The eyes of his soul saw at the same time that Jesus Christ was at God’s right hand, and “there,” he said, “is my righteousness. I saw, moreover, that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor my bad frame that made my righteousness worse; for my righteousness was Jesus Christ Himself, ‘the same yesterday, today and forever’” (Heb. 13:8).
Now he was loosed from his afflictions and his irons. His temptations also fled away, and he went home rejoicing for the grace and love of God. The words “He is made of God unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption” (see 1 Cor. 1:30) became the blessed truth that was his peace with God. He was complete in Christ Jesus, and although he was sometimes interrupted by disquieting thoughts and strong temptations, his subsequent Christian experience was one of growing comfort and prevailing peace.
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John Bunyan (1628 - 1688)
Was the most famous of the Puritan writers and preachers. He was born at Harrowden (1 mile south-east of Bedford), in the Parish of Elstow, England. He is most well-known for his book “The Pilgrim's Progress”, one of the most printed books in history, which he composed while in prison for the crime of preaching the Gospel without a license.John Bunyan wrote The Pilgrim's Progress in two parts, of which the first appeared at London in 1678,which he had begun during his imprisonment in 1676. The second part appeared in 1684. The earliest edition in which the two parts were combined in one volume came out in 1728. A third part falsely attributed to Bunyan appeared in 1693. The Pilgrim's Progressis the most successful allegory ever written, and like the Bible has been extensively translated into other languages.
John Bunyan was an English Christian writer and preacher, famous for writing The Pilgrim's Progress, arguably the most published book besides the Bible. In the Church of England, he is remembered with a Lesser Festival on 30 August.
He had very little schooling (about 2-4 years). He was educated at his father's house with other poor country boys and what little education he received was to benefit his father and his own future trade.
Bunyan became a popular preacher as well as a prolific author, though most of his works consist of expanded sermons. Though a Baptist preacher, in theology he was a Puritan.
His affinity for the oral tradition and his voracious reading lead to his work being primarily influenced by sermons, homilies in dialog form, folk tales, books of emblems and allegories. "Most of the didactic works of Bunyan's era have vanished into oblivion. His allegory's power derives from the imaginative force with which he brings didactic themes to life and the wonderfully living prose in which he dramatizes the conflicts of the spirit".
Bunyan wrote about 60 books and tracts, of which The Holy War ranks next to The Pilgrim's Progress in popularity. A passage from Part Two of The Pilgrim's Progress beginning "Who would true Valour see" has been used in the hymn "To be a Pilgrim".
The name of John Bunyan is forever linked with the town of Bedford. Bunyan was born in 1628 just outside the village of Elstow, on the outskirts of modern Bedford. His precise birth site is unknown, though it seems likely he was born in a now lost cottage near two fields called "Further Bunyans" and "Bunyans". A plaque on the supposed site of the cottage was erected in 1951.
He was the son of a tinker, and may well have helped his father in that occupation during his youth. Bunyan reported on his own childhood that he loved to play "tip-cat", a form of rounders, on the village green in Elstow.
Bunyan fought in the Civil War on the side of Parliament and when the conflict ended he returned to Elstow and married a local woman who's name was probably Mary. He had four children with his first wife, including a girl who was blind from birth.
It may partly have been this occurrence that led him to question his rowdy lifestyle and search for a deeper sense of meaning in his life. Bunyan began attending a new religious congregation meeting at St. John's Church, Bedford. He became good friends with the pastor, John Gifford.
When Gifford died, Bunyan took his place as head of the congregation, and he travelled the district preaching, generally out of doors. When the Restoration of the monarchy took place in 1660 preaching was forbidden in an attempt to restrain the growth of Independent Congregations. Bunyan refused to stop preaching, and he was arrested in the village of Samsell. He was tried at Bedford Assizes and ordered held in the County Gaol until he agreed to conform.
For the next 12 years Bunyan remained in gaol, in generally poor conditions, though he was allowed visitors and occasionally he was allowed out on what we would today consider "day leave". His second wife Elizabeth appeared before the Lord Chief Justice of England, Matthew Hale, to plead for her husband's release, but her appeal was refused.
Bunyan spent his time in gaol writing a number of books on religious themes, including his biography. Most importantly, he produced the religious allegorical novel, The Pilgrim's Progress, which was eventually published in 1678.
In 1672 Charles II issued his Declaration of Religious Indulgences, and Bunyan, along with other religious offenders, was released from custody. He bought a barn on Mill Street and converted the building to a home for his Independent Congregation.
But in 1673 the king was pressured into repealing his Declaration, and Bunyan was cast back into gaol until 1677.
Bunyan wrote a further 40 books before his death 1n 1688. He is buried in Bunhill Fields, City Road, London.