One of the most influential authors of the seventeenth century. Although he had a bare minimum of education, a hyperconscientious religious sensitivity which at times seemed almost paralyzing led him into the depths of the gospel of grace that he discovered in the Bible.
Active as a lay preacher in the Parliamentary army and during the Commonwealth, he continued to preach during the Restoration and was imprisoned twelve years for doing so. Declining to be freed on the condition that he no longer preach, his famous reply was: "If I am freed today I will preach tomorrow."
During his imprisonment he wrote Pilgrim's Progress, the greatest book of its kind in English; Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, a spiritual autobiography; and Defense of Justification by Faith, an uncompromising criticism of the rising tide of Pelagianism among Nonconformity and latitudinarianism among the Anglican establishment. He was attacked by Bishop Edward Fowler in a book, Dirt Wiped Off, but favorably mentioned by the illustrious Bishop of Lincoln, Thomas Barlow.
Macauley claims that The Holy War, written after his imprisonment, "would be the best allegory ever written if Pilgrim's Progress did not exist." Except for the Bible itself, no book was held in such respect among the lower and middle classes of England during the eighteenth century as Pilgrim's Progress. In Scotland and colonial America, Bunyan's popularity exceeded that in England. Jonathan Swift and Samuel Johnson acknowledged his greatness, but on the whole he was ignored in literary circles until the romantic movement in the nineteenth century.
He is duly appreciated for his literary genius by contemporary scholars who have indicated some influences upon him not previously noticed but which have not detracted from their profound appreciation of the "sublime tinker." This literary interest, unfortunately, has not been matched by a comparable appreciation of his doctrine. The unforgettable imagery and unusual blend of thought and passion were grounded in the classical Reformation teachings concerning man's fallen nature, grace, imputation, justification, and the atonement, all of which Bunyan seemed to have derived directly from Scripture with little mediation through theologians.
C.F. ALLISON