Fox's Book of Martyrs
Chapter XIX
In
his youth he was a member of the parliamentary army for a year. The death of
his comrade close beside him deepened his tendency to serious thoughts, and
there were times when he seemed almost insane in his zeal and penitence. He was
at one time quite assured that he had sinned the unpardonable sin against the
Holy Ghost. While he was still a young man he married
a good woman who bought him a library of pious books which he read with
assiduity, thus confirming his earnestness and increasing his love of religious
controversies.
His
conscience was still further awakened through the persecution of the religious
body of Baptists to whom he had joined himself. Before he was thirty years old he had become a leading Baptist preacher.
Then
came his turn for persecution. He was arrested for preaching without license.
"Before I went down to the justice, I begged of God that His will be done;
for I was not without hopes that my imprisonment might be an awakening to the
saints in the country. Only in that matter did I commit the thing to God. And
verily at my return I did meet my God sweetly in the prison."
His
hardships were genuine, on account of the wretched condition of the prisons of
those days. To this confinement was added the personal grief of being parted
from his young and second wife and four small children, and particularly, his
little blind daughter. While he was in jail he was solaced by the two books
which he had brought with him, the Bible and Fox's "Book of Martyrs."
Although
he wrote some of his early books during this long imprisonment, it was not
until his second and shorter one, three years after the first, that he composed
his immortal "Pilgrim's Progress," which was published three years
later. In an earlier tract he had thought briefly of the similarity between
human life and a pilgrimage, and he now worked this theme out in fascinating
detail, using the rural scenery of England for his background, the splendid
city of London for his Vanity Fair, and the saints and villains of his own
personal acquaintance for the finely drawn characters of his allegory.
The
"Pilgrim's Progress" is truly the rehearsal of Bunyan's own spiritual
experiences. He himself had been the 'man cloathed in
Rags, with his Face from his own House, a Book in his hand, and a great Burden
upon his Back.' After he had realized that Christ was his Righteousness, and
that this did not depend on "the good frame of his Heart"-or, as we
should say, on his feelings-"now did the Chains fall off my legs
indeed." His had been Doubting Castle and Sloughs of Despond, with much of
the Valley of Humiliation and the Shadow of Death. But, above all, it is a book
of Victory. Once when he was leaving the doors of the
courthouse where he himself had been defeated, he wrote: "As I was going
forth of the doors, I had much ado to bear saying to them, that I carried the
peace of God along with me." In his vision was ever the Celestial City,
with all its bells ringing. He had fought Apollyon constantly, and often
wounded, shamed and fallen, yet in the end "more than conqueror through
Him that loved us."
His
book was at first received with much criticism from his Puritan friends, who
saw in it only an addition to the worldly literature of his day, but there was
not much then for Puritans to read, and it was not long before it was devoutly
laid beside their Bibles and perused with gladness and with profit. It was
perhaps two centuries later before literary critics began to realize that this
story, so full of human reality and interest and so marvelously modeled upon
the English of the King James translation of the Bible, is one of the glories
of English literature. In his later years he wrote several other allegories, of
which of one of them, "The Holy War," it has
been said that, "If the 'Pilgrim's Progress' had
never been written it would be regarded as the finest allegory in the
language."
During
the later years of his life, Bunyan remained in Bedford as a venerated local
pastor and preacher. He was also a favorite speaker in the non-conformist
pulpits of London. He became so national a leader and teacher that he was
frequently called "Bishop Bunyan."
In
his helpful and unselfish personal life he was
apostolic.
His
last illness was due to exposure upon a journey in which he was endeavoring to reconcile a father with his
son. His end came on the third of August, 1688. He was
buried in Bunhill Fields, a church yard in London.
There
is no doubt but that the "Pilgrim's Progress" has been more helpful
than any other book but the Bible. It was timely, for
they were still burning martyrs in Vanity Fair while he was writing. It is
enduring, for while it tells little of living the Christian life in the family
and community, it does interpret that life so far as it is an expression of the
solitary soul, in homely language. Bunyan indeed "showed how to build a
princely throne on humble truth." He has been his own Greatheart,
dauntless guide to pilgrims, to many.
Chapter 20 - Life of John Wesley