John Bunyan
lived through tumultuous times in the 17th Century during which he
endured a 12-year sojourn in Bedford County jail. Imprisoned for his faith or,
as the charge sheet read, “For perniciously abstaining from Divine Service and for
holding unlawful meetings.” Bunyan used the time to write. Of his many works,
by far the most well known is his grand allegory entitled “Pilgrim’s Progress,”
in which first Christian and later his wife Christiana and their four children
journey from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City. It has been claimed
that only the Bible has enjoyed a wider readership. Pilgrim's Progress has been translated into
200 languages and has never been out of print.
During his
pilgrimage, Christian meets with various characters whose speech and actions
accord with their names.
Of
particular note are the various discourses between Christian and his traveling
companions from which a golden vein of sound Gospel truth emerges. Bunyan
himself comments at the end of the first part:
What of my dross thou findest here, be bold
To throw away, but yet preserve the gold.
What if my gold be wrapped in ore?
None throws away the apple for the core.
Here is an
excerpt in which Hopeful tells of his conversion:
Hopeful: If a man runs a hundred pounds into
the shopkeeper’s debt, and after this shall pay for all that he shall fetch;
yet if his old debt stands still in the book uncrossed, the shopkeeper may sue
him for it, and cast him in prison till he shall pay the debt.
Christian: Well and how did you apply this to
yourself?
Hopeful: Why, I thought thus with myself: I
have by my sins, run a great way into God’s book, and my now reforming will not
pay off that score; therefore I should think still, under all my present
amendments, but how shall I be freed from that damnation that I brought myself
in danger of by my former transgressions?
Christian: A very good application: but pray go
on.
Hopeful: Another thing that hath troubled me
ever since my late amendment is, that if I look narrowly into the best of what
I do now, I still see sin, new sin, mixing itself with the best that I can do;
so that now I am forced to conclude, that, notwithstanding my former fond
conceits of myself and duties, I have committed enough sin in one day to send
me to hell though my former life had been faultless.
Christian: And what did you then?
Hopeful: Do! I could not tell what to do, until
I broke my mind to Faithful, for he and I were well acquainted. And he told me
that unless I could obtain the righteousness of a man who had never sinned,
neither mine own nor all the righteousness of the world could save me.
Christian: And did you think he spake true?
Hopeful: Had he told me when I was pleased and
satisfied with mine own amendments, I had called him a fool for his pains; but
now since I see mine own infirmity, and the sin which cleaves to my best
performance, I have been forced to be of his opinion.
Christian: But did you think that when he first
suggested it to you that there was such a man to be found, of whom it might
justly be said that he never committed sin?
Hopeful: I must confess that the words at first
sounded strangely; but after a little more talk and company with him, I had
full conviction of it.
Christian: And did you ask him what man this was,
and how you must be justified by him? (Rom. iv; Col. i; Heb. x,; 2 Pet. i)
Hopeful: Yes, and he told me it was the Lord
Jesus, that dwelleth on the right hand of the Most High: and thus, said he. You
must be justified by Him, even by trusting to what he hath done by Himself in
the days of His flesh, and suffered when He did hang on the tree. I asked him
further, how this man’s righteousness could be of such efficacy as to justify
another before God. And he told me that He was the mighty God, and He did what
he did, and died the death also, not for Himself but for me, to whom His
doings, and the worthiness of them should be imputed, if I believed on Him.
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