BUNYAN, JOHN, one of the most popular religious writers of any age, was b. at Elstow, near Bedford, in 1628. He was brought up to his father's trade of tinker, and spent his youth in the practice of that humble craft, of which his name alone now serves to lessen somewhat the disrepute. It has generally been taken for granted that his early life was very loose and profligate; on the sole ground of his terrible self-accusations in after-years, when, from the height of religious fervor and Puritan strictness, he looked back on dancing and bell-ringing as deadly sins. This point is satisfactorily disposed of by 3Iacaulay (Encycl. Britann., art. "Bunyan "). In his 16th or 17th year, lie enlisted in the parliamentary army, and in 1645, was present at the siege of Leicester, where he escaped death by the substitution of a comrade in his place as sentry. Nothing further is known of his military career. After leaving the army, he married, and soon after began to be visited by those terrible compunctions of conscience, and fits of doubt, sometimes passing into despair, which, with some quieter intervals, made his life, for several years, a journey through that valley of humiliation of which he afterwards gave so vivid a picture. Hope and peace came at last, and in 1655, B. become a member of the Baptist congregation at Bedford. Soon after, he was chosen its pastor, and for five years ministered with extraordinary diligence and success, his preaching generally attracting great crowds. The act against conventicler, passed on the restoration, put a
stop to his labors; he was convicted, and sentenced to perpetual banishment. In the mean time, he was committed to Bedford jail, where he spent the next 12 years of his life, supporting the wants of his wife and children by making tagged laces, and minis tering to all posterity by writing the Pilgrim's Progress. His library consisted of a Bible and Fox's Hartgra The kindly interposition of a high-church bishop, Dr. Barlow of Lincoln, at length released him, and he at once resumed his work as a preacher, itiner ating throughout the country. After the issuing of James II.'s declaration for liberty of conscience, he again settled at Bedford, and ministered to the Baptist congregation in Mill lane till his death, at London, of fever, in 1688. B.'s whole works were published in 1736, in 2 vols. folio. The most popular of them, after the Pilgrim's Progress, are the Holy War—another allegory, much less successful—and Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, an autobiographical narrative. It is supposed that no other book, except the Bible, has gone through so many editions, and attained to so wide a popularity, in all languages, as the Pilgrim's Progress. A facsimile reprint of the original edition of the Pilgrim's Progress was published in 1875. A statue of B. was unveiled at Bedford in 1874.