Heroes and Reformers of History … No. 4

JOHN BUNYAN: CAPTIVE OF THE WORD

Back in 1874 an impressive bronze statue, standing 10 feet tall and weighing almost three tons, was erected in Bedford, England. The occasion was one of the most celebrated in the town’s long history. Thousands of dignitaries from all over England gathered for the festive occasion. In view of the one being honored by the erection of the statue, it was fitting that 4,000 school children were there to help celebrate. A reporter figured that the children consumed over a ton of cake and 600 gallons of tea! The adults were lavishly entertained in the ballroom of a local hotel.

The statue is of “a very grave person,” a minister of the gospel who stands bold and erect with an open Bible in his hands and a cape about his shoulders. The pedestal, which almost doubles the height of the statue, has these words engraved upon it:

He had eyes uplifted to heaven;

The best of books in his hand;

The law of truth was written

Upon his lips. …

He stood as if he pleaded

With men.

A broken chain lay at his feet symbolizing his long imprisonment and his struggle to be free to preach the gospel to his fellow Englishmen. Three sides of the pedestal depict scenes from “Pilgrim’s Progress,” which he authored, one of which shows Pilgrim released from his load and angels pointing him to the Celestial city.

The name engraved below the statue is simply: John Bunyan.

Whether intended or not, the direction that the statue faces may say more than anything else about it. Bunyan’s back is to the elegant St. Peter’s Church, which stands in the background as a symbol of Anglicanism and the established church that dogged John Bunyan most of his life, a humble tinker whose only crime was that he preached the gospel when it was against the law to do so.

Even if he made a scarce living for his family by mending pots and pans, he became one of the most gifted and illustrious writers England ever produced. While he wrote scores of pamphlets, tracts, and books, he is known in history for writing the most famous of all English books, the full title of which gives witness to his strong Puritan faith: The Pilgrim’s Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come. It has sold millions of copies, has been translated into 108 languages, and in its first century of life went through 59 editions, which places it second only to the Bible in all-time circulation. While it is not all that popular in the 20th century, in early America it was present in most every home.

It is ironical that thousands would gather in Bedford to honor John Bunyan and erect a statue made in his likeness, for it was in that same English town that he spent a large part of his life in prison, rejected and despised as a criminal, at least by the powers that be. But almost two centuries had passed since Bunyan had died in 1688, and England had changed. Now he was a hero and author of England’s greatest literary work, surpassing anything done even by Shakespeare. The vicissitudes of history are amazing! Bunyan could little imagine back in 1678-84, the years he wrote his famous work while in jail, that the time would come when one could look out his cell window and see a monument erected in his honor and scenes from Pilgrim engraved in stone. And he was but a lowly tinker! Never sell a person short who has God on his or her side.

In the England of Bunyan’s day no one could preach the gospel unless he was an ordained priest in the Church of England. Because of the Puritan revolution the authorities had closed all churches except those of the Anglican faith. It was against the law to attend any service except those of the state church, and one could be fined or imprisoned for not attending those services. Secret gatherings were illegal. These were the days when John Locke, the Christian philosopher that we have included in this series, was urging tolerance toward all dissenters, even though he was himself an Anglican. He insisted that one sure mark of the true church is tolerance.

Nonetheless, under King Charles II, who broke his promise to allow religious liberty, many dissenters were fined, pilloried, and imprisoned, and some were executed. These included such new sects as Presbyterians, Quakers, and Baptists, as well as the Puritans who were seeking to reform the Anglican church from within. It was the Pilgrims, separatists from the mother church, who, because of persecution, came to America for the sake of religious freedom and set up the Plymouth colony in 1620. That was only eight years before John Bunyan was born in Elstow, near Bedford, of what he called “the meanest and most despised of all families in the land.”

Bunyan tells how he grew up committing those sins particularly disallowed by the Puritans, such as dancing, card playing, and drinking ale in the tavern. In lying and blaspheming he says he had no equals. He lived in fear of God’s wrath. At 16 he was drafted into England’s Civil War, but as a soldier he sinned even more and became more rebellious against God. At about 19 he married an orphan girl. He prospered at his humble trade, began going to church, and one by one abandoned the sins of his youth. He became deeply religious and read the Bible daily, the simple English of which became his writing style.

But his faith had its doubts, as to whether there really is a God and as to whether being a Christian is not a geographical accident. Had he been born among the Turks he would have been a disciple of Mahomet, he supposed. And perhaps the Bible is mere fable than the word of God.

One day as he walked in the countryside all his doubts vanished as his mind dwelt upon one line from the apostle Paul, “He hath made peace by the blood of His cross.” The realization that Christ had died for him turned his life around. He was baptized by immersion, joined the Baptist church, and was eventually ordained to preach. His message was that of the apostle Paul, “Jesus Christ and him crucified,” with sin, grace, and redemption his constant themes. But to Bunyan God was a God of wrath and judgment as well as a God of grace and forgiveness. Historians esteem him as one of the great preachers of his time.

When the old law forbidding non-Anglicans to preach was revived in 1660, Bunyan complied to the extent of closing his chapel, but he and his disciples went underground and he continued to preach. He was arrested but was offered release if he would promise not to preach. He explained that he was called of God to preach and could not do otherwise. He was imprisoned in a Bedford jail for six years. When he was freed he was warned not to preach, lest he again be arrested. To charge Bunyan not to preach was like telling the wind not to blow or the stars not to shine. He was God’s man, and like Paul, “Woe be unto me if! preach not the gospel.” He was imprisoned for six more years.

Now and again during his imprisonment he was offered his freedom if he would not preach. He would always say, “If you let me out today I will preach tomorrow.” In all this he was such a sweet and reasonable guy that he gained the respect and favor of the jailers. Like Paul the prisoner before him, he was allowed to preach to fellow prisoners and people who sought his counsel were allowed easy access to his cell. He was also allowed to make and market lace, which helped to support his destitute wife and four children. He was even allowed to leave the jail at will, sometimes traveling as far as London, but when he resumed his clandestine preaching on his brief furloughs he was placed under greater restriction. He became an inveterate reader, reading the Bible over and over, along with Fox’s Book of Martyrs.

And he was always free to write and was furnished all the paper he wanted. Like Luther a century before him, he turned out pamphlet after pamphlet, and one major work, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. which was autobiographical.

The proscription against preaching would occasionally be lifted for a time and Bunyan would be freed. He would return to his old Bedford church as pastor during such times, only to be arrested again. It was during his last term in prison that he wrote Pilgrim. which was several years in the writing. Like the “Prison Epistles” of Paul, it is a blessing that would be denied us had John Bunyan not been confined to jail again and again. God does his work among us, and his ways often amaze us. And we must be careful what we call adversity.

Some touching stories are told relative to Bunyan’s imprisonment. His impoverished wife would go before the judges pleading for her husband’s release so that he could support his family of four children, one of which was blind. Moved by her humility and tenderness, they would seek to respond to her plea. They would ask if she could keep her husband from preaching, to which she would say that was an impossible demand, for preach John Bunyan must. His little blind daughter was allowed to visit him often. She would run her hands across her fathers face to see if there were tears, and if so she would kiss them away.

A few years back I read large portions of Pilgrim’s Progress to Mother Pitts, my wife’s aged mother who lives with us, back when she was able to follow the story. Together we followed Christian as he left home on his journey to the Celestial city, willing to make any sacrifice in his search for Christ and Paradise. We listened as he was joined by the likes of Hopeful, Mercy, Faithful, Evangelist, Pliable, and Mr. Valiant-for-Truth, who struggle triumphantly. But then there was Poor Ignorance, who never quite got his faith together and was bundled off to hell when he knocked on the Celestial door without a passport! Adversaries include Giant Despair and Worldly Wiseman, and there are such obstacles as the City of Destruction, Valley of the Shadow, Vanity Fair, Doubting Castle, and the Slough of Despond.

Mother Pitts, who was then in her late 80’ s, had a twinkle of hope in her eyes when I read how Mr. Valiant-for-Truth gave his farewell to those who were still struggling toward the City. “I am going to my fathers,” he said, “and though with great difficulty I am got hither, yet now I do not repent me of all the trouble I have been at to arrive where I am.” Valiant leaves his sword with those who follow after him, and then says, “My marks and scars I carry with me to be a witness for me that I have fought his battles who will now be my rewarder.” The day came for him to pass over the river to the Celestial city. As he crossed the others could hear him cry out with joy, “O death where is thy sting,” and still later more faintly in the distance, “O grave, where is thy victory.” As he passed over the river the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.

He who wrote that engaging story was at last freed from prison for good when King Charles II issued his Declaration of Indulgence. So John Bunyan freely preached the last few years of his life. He also worked for unity among his scattered people. On one such mission of peace he was wetted down in a severe storm from which he contracted a fever that took his life at age 60.

They buried him near his birthplace in Bunhills Fields in the cemetery of the Dissenters. Where else would you bury John Bunyan except in a Dissenter’s grave? But in Bedford town he lives on, standing 18 feet tall in noble bronze. His hand is upon the Scriptures, his face is turned toward heaven, at his feet lay the shackles that could not confine him, and his back is turned against all forms of oppression, bigotry, and sectarianism. And as far away as Elstow, where he played as a boy with no idea of what God had in store for him, it seems that you can still hear him preach Jesus Christ and him crucified, with none forbidding him. In Pilgrim’s Progress John Bunyan told his own story and described his own victory. —the Editor