Who was John Bunyan?

Within six months of his landing on British ground Charles II. issued an order that all preachers must use what was called The Book of Common Prayer, and that all preaching must be on lines ordered by the king. Any who refused to obey were liable to be sent to prison.

There were many godly men who felt that even when commanded by the king they must not, dared not, disobey God. These soon became known as Nonconformists. Among them John Bunyan was perhaps one of the best known in Bedford and the neighbourhood. For five or six years he had been preaching the gospel; God had blessed his labours, and many persons had been led to a saving knowledge of Christ.

Though during the first years of Bunyan’s imprisonment he had, owing to the kindness of the head jailer, been allowed a good deal of liberty, it was not to be continued. Many of his friends had urged him if possible to obtain leave of absence for two or three days, believing that if he could go to London and himself present a petition to the king, be might be set at liberty. Leave was granted, and there is every reason to believe that the journey was taken with no other object. But false reports were spread by his enemies, some even saying that his intention was to stir up a rebellion against the king. Though he was himself a loyal and peaceable subject, he did not get an opportunity of presenting his petition, and the only result of his journey appeared to be that his friend, the head jailer, received official notice during his absence that the prisoners committed to his charge were not to be allowed under any pretext to leave the prison.

Trying as this order must have seemed to Bunyan, he soon found that he had more leisure for writing. It was during the later years of his imprisonment that his great work, “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” was written. He also wrote “Grace Abounding,” in which, in simple, though well-chosen words, he told the story of his own conversion. His “Holy War” was also written while he was in prison, and one or two other less known works.

After he had spent six years in Bedford jail he was granted a short interval of liberty, but was again arrested on the old charge that he would not give up preaching the gospel. In the year of the great fire of London he was again sent to prison, where he remained another six years.

Early in 1672 his imprisonment came to an end. The long-closed gates were opened, and he went forth a free man, rejoicing in what he held dearer than personal liberty—freedom to preach the gospel.

The father and mother of John Bunyan were, as he himself believed, led by the guiding hand of God to send him to the village school, where he remained long enough to learn how to read and write. But it is not as a great writer, but as a simple, humble follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, that we care most to remember him.

It will be no marvel, then, to find (what any one with spiritual understanding must own) that a large proportion of those who "have not defiled their garments," in the history of Protestantism, have been in some way or other dissenters from the national system. The first generation of English reformers were dissenters from Rome, and Rome did her best to keep them pure by the fires she kindled for them. Afterwards a people began to be separated, who, from their honest endeavor to be right with God, were nicknamed "Puritans." I need not tell you what great names are found among this class, which after-generations have learnt to love and honor — a class with whom fine and pillory and imprisonment were familiar things. Everybody knows that Bedford jail was the "den" in which John Bunyan dreamed his memorable dream. In Scotland, the attempted enforcement of prelacy gave a succession of martyrs and confessors to the Presbyterian name, with whom, as elsewhere, their time of persecution was their time of real blessing, while Episcopalianism, which was riding roughshod over them, had gone already more than half way back to Rome. With the movement under Wesley and Whitefield, nearer to our own times, we are naturally still more familiar and that which issued in the Free Church of Scotland is still within the memory of a generation not yet passed away.

There is nothing more common among the prophets than this, that while during their lifetime they were hated, after they were dead and gone they became objects of the highest honour; and, what is so remarkable, the highest honour to the same class of people that hated them. They became not objects of honour so much to other people, but were honoured by the same unbelieving class that could not endure the prophets' words when they were alive. They are ready to kill the prophetic messenger when living, and all but worship him when he is dead. Well, it is the same unbelief that acts in both ways; which, when he was alive, scouted the word of God come through him, and condemned and hated him, but when he was dead, and no longer, therefore, a living character to puncture their conscience, the very people who had war with the prophet would build a fine monument to his memory; and so, getting the character of being men who had a great regard for the prophet, men, therefore, that were doing their best for religion, they gave their money to have erected a fine monument, or to have a fine statue made, or as grand a picture as they could pay for! So true it is, the flesh is quite remarkable for being ready to honour a man when he is dead and gone, whom it could not endure when alive. Our Lord drew attention to this very characteristic. It is not an idea of mine at all, it is the truth of God. Our Lord lays this down most strongly against the Jewish people; and it is not at all confined to Jewish people. If you go now to the town of Bedford — to take an instance from our own country — there you will find a fine monument to John Bunyan, who, when alive, was scouted, imprisoned, and regarded as a presumptuous, bad man. The very same class of people now buy his book, and at any rate are not sorry that the children should read it along with the Arabian Nights' Entertainments in the nursery. So there they have the Pilgrim's Progress and the Arabian Nights' tales, and they are all considered equally entertaining for the children. They thereby show that they think the imprisoned tinker was a genius — for that is their way of looking at it; and therefore they gain for themselves credit in all sorts of ways, both as being men of taste, and also as men not at all averse to religion when it does not touch their conscience. The thing, therefore, that I am speaking of is always true and always will be true till the Lord come, and then there will be no such thing as "the vile person called liberal, nor the churl said to be bountiful," nor, on the other hand, the unjust treated as righteous. Then there will be righteousness reigning, and everything and everyone will find their level according to God.

Wherever it became known that he was expected to preach crowds gathered to hear him, and though some, perhaps, were only curious to know what the “tinker” would have to say, numbers were aroused to a real concern about eternal things, and many were converted. Ought he not in simple faith to give himself wholly to the work of the Lord? was a question he often asked himself. He waited often and much upon God in prayer. The good Master he served had said to Andrew and Peter, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Matt. 4:19), and in the secret of his soul John Bunyan knew that the call of God had come to him, and he must not, dared not, disobey.

Towards the end of the 16th century there sprang up in England two classes of congregations:(a) Independents who baptised infants, one of whose parents was a believer, (b) Baptists who baptised believers only. The 17th century witnessed the rise of the Society of Friends who in spite of intense persecution bore unflinching testimony to the Holy Spirit's indwelling of believers and oral ministry thereby. But in pressing that truth they became lop-sided in dispensing with all ordinances including Baptism. Although a Baptist, John Bunyan declined to make Baptist views a ground of fellowship. In the first half of the 19th century, the early Brethren were not agreed as to the practice of baptism. J. N. Darby taught that baptism introduced a Christian's child into a place of privilege, but he condemned the Anglican theory of baptismal regeneration. At first he had only a small minority of his associates who shared his views. Many others of his associates were strong advocates of deferring baptism until a confession of faith was possible. Prominent amongst these were G. V. Wigram, William Kelly and C. H. Mackintosh. We shall make quotations from their writings later.

Bunyan is all wrong here, because he did not see redemption clearly; he gives experience without starting with being "in Christ," "strong in the Lord." You do not get a person in his "Pilgrim's Progress" quietly at peace saying, "If God be for us, who can be against us?" We have to go through the world, but we are "in Christ," a real place — a new position we have got into; you never get that in Bunyan. I get in him the pence but not the pounds in the account.

Is the evangelical school right in making Jordan to be the act of death at the end of our career when the saint departs to be with Christ? Clearly not; for in this case what would answer to the wars in Canaan? No! excellent as Bunyan was, in this he was mistaken, following the mistakes of others before him and perpetuating them far and wide to this day. Indeed, this is one of the tests of where the soul is and how far it is emancipated from traditional theology, which limits its disciples to a minimum of truth. Elsewhere, as for instance in their use of the Passover and Red Sea, there is defectiveness; here there is absolutely nothing, or error. And this I say, singling out the author of "Pilgrim's Progress" as a noble and most advanced specimen of popular views. The best of their day in the religious world are but his commentators — some of them literally so. Can there be a better proof how completely the gist of this epistle is ignored? The truth is that in the Red Sea we have Christ dead and risen for us; in Jordan, we have our death and resurrection with Him: the one ushering us into the world as the dreary waste of our pilgrimage, the other putting us in view of our heavenly blessing, which we have then to appropriate by victory over Satan. The distinction is as clear as it is important, though both are true of the Christian now. When the glorious day comes for the inheritance to be ours, not by the force of faith which thus in practice defeats the enemy and makes good the land God has given us, we shall not have to wrestle with these principalities and powers in heavenly places: the conflict will be closed for us and for ever. The expulsion of the dragon, "that old serpent," is not our work, but that of Michael and his angels. With overcoming him we have to do, but not with his forcible ejection from heaven. All the time the Church is here below, our conflict goes on with these spiritual wickednesses in heavenly places; when the actual casting out by God's providential power takes place, we shall not be here, but above.

We shall understand a little more clearly why so many of what we should call Bunyan’s best years were spent in prison, when we remember that “The Pilgrim’s Progress” was written in Bedford jail. We shall see the hand of God in his long imprisonment, giving him time and leisure during the weary years he spent in his prison cell, to write a book that has been read and enjoyed by countless thousands.