BUNYAN, John, English preacher and author: b. Elstow, near Bedford, Bedfordshire, England, 1628; d. Swan Hill, London, 31 Aug. 1688. The Bunyans were an old family in Bed fordshire but Bunyan's immediate ancestors for several generations had been obscure, and Bun yan's own father, Thomas Bunyan, was a tinker. Of his mother, Margaret Bentley, little is known.. In spite of their lowliness, however, these parents trained Bunyan with some care and sent him to the Bedford schools. Then he took up the trade of tinker, at which, until he became an established preacher, he worked in dustriously. In the latter part of 1645 and the early months of the following year he fought in the Civil War, but on which side is uncertain. Froude maintains that he was in the Royalist army, whereas Macaulay and Brown, to whom the weight of authority must be given, state that the evidence goes to show that Bunyan was with the Parliamentarians. In 1646, he returned to his trade in Elstow, and at about the age of 20 married a wife, whose goodness of character is the accepted proof that Bunyan was better than he represented himself.
Of far more importance in giving character to Bunyan's career was his spiritual life. Be sides being brought up religiously and at a time of peculiarly strong belief in the literal truth of hell and heaven, of damnation and atone ment, of devils and evil spirits, Bunyan's boy hood and early manhood were not only a con tinual struggle between the inclinations of an active, pleasure-loving youth and the terror lest he be doomed to eternal perdition, but also a spiritual anguish heightened by one of the most imaginative of minds of which there is record. 'He was,' says William James (
him; he went to church regularly and was rev erent, though, he says, in a formal way. He still liked his sports and was in the habit of playing cat on the village green Sunday after noons. The effect of a peculiarly vivid vision of a warning voice from heaven while he was in the act of striking the cat was to make him despair of ever being redeemed from his wicked courses. Yet he began to mend his ways, first giving up his profanity, then his love of bell ringing, and lastly his dancing, though it took him "nearly a full year before he could quite leave that.° He became esteemed as a godly man, but he feared that he had no depth of re pentance. Overhearing some poor old women talking of the new birth and of the ways of resisting the devil, he became convinced that he "wanted the true tokens of a truly godly man.° Though he meditated much on their sayings, though he gave up all his evil companions and once or twice had visions of the way to sal vation, two questions obtruded themselves, "Whether he was elected?" and "How if the day of grace should now be past and gone?" After much questioning, distress of mind and manifold temptations that Satan put in his way, he gained some comfort from the Scrip tures. The preaching and talk of Gifford, the Bedford minister, made him feel worse and worse; he seemed to himself to be utterly base and corrupt. Temporary comfort came in the Song of Solomon, but about "a month after, a very great storm came down upon me, which handled me twenty times worst than all I had met with before.° Satan was continually with him; he feared that he had blasphemed against the Holy Ghost. This temptation lasted about a year, but partly from texts in the Bible, and partly from the ministrations of Gifford and Luther's (Comment on the Galatians,' he re ceived some comfort. Even so, he was sub ject to another temptation, which endured a year, "to sell and part with the most blessed Christ.° He feared that he had committed the unpardonable sin, and he was so torn between despair and hope that, after another conflict of three-quarters of a year, he fell into sickness. Even then he was tempted, but his mind and body grew whole together, and front this time on, about 1655, he seems to have felt himself redeemed.