John Bunyan (1628-1688)

Preacher and writer John Bunyan was born near Bedford in Elstow, England. When he was 16, his mother and sister died, his father remarried, and he was drafted into the parliamentary army. He served for three years without seeing combat, though one soldier who was sent to battle in his place was killed, leading Bunyan to believe that God had spared him.

Bunyan’s Puritan religious conversion, the central event of his life, was marked by an inner voice reciting Scripture, at times reassuring in its promise of salvation, and at times ominous in its threat of damnation. Bunyan came to believe that a greater appreciation of the weight of one’s sin corresponded to greater attention from God, and began to preach in a Baptist congregation. His first publication, Some Gospel-Truths Opened (1656), argued against the attention Quakers paid to divine inner light instead of Scripture.

In 1660 the Stuart monarchy was reinstated, outlawing proselytizing by anyone not ordained by the Church of England. Bunyan was jailed for most of the following 12 years, which enabled him to devote himself to his writing. His spiritual memoir, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666), stands out in the tradition of Puritan stories of the difficult path toward revelation. His poetry attends to the same spiritual concerns in clear, pared-down imagery.

After his release from prison he continued to travel and preach, and published several volumes of fiction, including two parts of the allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678 and 1684), The Life and Death of Mr. Badman (1680), and The Holy War (1682), as well as several dozen directly religious publications.

He is buried in the Nonconformist Cemetery of Bunhill Fields in London.

POEMS
The Pilgrim