The Pilgrim's Progress
Bunyan wrote
The Pilgrim's Progress in two parts, of which the first appeared in London in 1678 and the second in 1684. It was also first published in 1678. He had begun the work in his first period of imprisonment, and probably finished it during the second. The earliest edition in which the two parts combined in one volume came in 1728. A third part falsely attributed to Bunyan appeared in 1693, and was reprinted as late as 1852. Its full title is
The Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come.
The Pilgrim's Progress is the most successful
allegory ever written, and like the Bible has been extensively translated into other languages.
Protestant missionaries commonly translated it as the first thing after the
Bible.
Two other works of Bunyan's would have given him fame, but not as wide as that he now enjoys:
The Life and Death of Mr. Badman (1680), an imaginary biography, and
The Holy War (1682), an allegory. A third book which lays bare Bunyan's inner life and reveals his preparation for his appointed work is
Grace Abounding to the chief of sinners (1666). It is very prolix and, being all about Bunyan himself, would seem intolerably egotistical except that he plainly had the motive in writing it to exalt the Christian concept of grace and to comfort those passing through experiences somewhat like his own.
The works just named have appeared in numerous editions, and are accessible to all. There are several noteworthy collections of editions of
The Pilgrim's Progress, e.g., in the British Museum and in the New York Public Library, collected by the late James Lenox.
Bunyan became a popular preacher as well as a very voluminous author, though most of his works consist of expanded sermons. In theology he was a
Puritan, but not a partisan; nor was there anything gloomy about him.
The portrait which his friend Robert White drew, which has been often reproduced, is a most attractive one and this was his true character. He was tall, had reddish hair, prominent nose, a rather large mouth, and sparkling eyes.
He was no scholar, except of the English Bible, but that he knew thoroughly. He also drew much influence from Martin Luther's Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, in the translation of 1575.
Some time before his final release from prison Bunyan became involved in a controversy with Kiffin, Danvers, Deune, Paul, and others. In 1673 he published his
Differences in Judgement about Water-Baptism no Bar to Communion, in which he took the ground that "the Church of Christ hath not warrant to keep out of the communion the Christian that is discovered to be a visible saint of the word, the Christian that walketh according to his own light with God." While he owned "water baptism to be God's ordinance," he refused to make "an idol of it," as he thought those did who made the lack of it a ground for disfellowshiping those recognized as genuine Christians.
Kiffin and Paul published a rejoinder in
Serious Reflections (London, 1673), in which they ably set forth the argument in favor of the restriction of the Lord's Supper to baptized believers, and received the approval of Henry Danvers in his
Treatise of Baptism (London, 1673 or 1674).
The controversy resulted in the Particular (Calvinistic) Baptists leaving the question of communion with the unbaptized open. Bunyan's church admitted pedobaptists to fellowship and finally became pedobaptist (Congregationalist).
Bunyan has the distinction of having written, in
The Pilgrim's Progress, probably the most widely read book in the English language,
and one which has been translated into more tongues than any book except the Bible. The charm of the work, which makes it the joy of old and young, learned and ignorant, and of readers of all possible schools of thought and theology, lies in the interest of a story in which the intense imagination of the writer makes characters, incidents, and scenes alike live in that of his readers as things actually known and remembered by themselves, in its touches of tenderness and quaint humour, its bursts of heart-moving eloquence, and its pure, nervous, idiomatic English, Macaulay has said,
"Every reader knows the straight and narrow path as well as he knows a road on which he has been backwards and forwards a hundred times," and he adds that "In England during the latter half of the seventeenth century there were only two minds which possessed the imaginative faculty in a very eminent degree. One of these minds produced the Paradise Lost, the other The Pilgrim's Progress." Bunyan wrote about 60 books and tracts, of which The Holy War ranks next to The Pilgrim's Progress in popularity, while Grace Abounding is one of the most interesting pieces of biography in existence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bunyan