Works of John Bunyan — by John Bunyan and George Offor— INTRODUCTION Part 2

 

This poverty-stricken, ragged tinker was the son of a working mechanic at Elston, near Bedford. So obscure was his origin that even the Christian name of his father is yet unknown: he was born in 1628, a year memorable as that in which the Bill of Rights was passed. Then began the struggle against arbitrary power, which was overthrown in 1688, the year of Bunyan's death, by the accession of William III. Of Bunyan's parents, his infancy, and childhood, little is recorded. All that we know is from his own account, and that principally contained in his doctrine of the Law and Grace, and in the extraordinary development of his spiritual life, under the title of Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. His birth would have shed a luster on the wealthiest mansion, and have imparted additional grandeur to any lordly palace. 

Had royal or noble gossips, and splendid entertainment attended his christening, it might have been pointed to with pride; but so obscure was his birth, that it has not been discovered that he was christened at all; while the fact of his new birth by the Holy Ghost is known over the whole world to the vast extent that his writings have been circulated. He entered this world in a laborer's cottage of the humblest class, at the village of Elstow, about a mile from Bedford. His pedigree is thus narrated by himself:—' My descent was of a low and inconsiderable generation, my father's house being of that rank that is meanest and most despised of all the families in the land.' Bunyan alludes to this very pointedly in the preface to A Few Sighs from Hell:—' I am thine, if thou be not ashamed to own me, because of my low and contemptible descent in the world.'

 His poor and abject parentage was so notorious, that his pastor, John Burton, apologized for it in his recommendation to The Gospel Truths Opened:—'Be not offended because Christ holds forth the glorious treasure of the gospel to thee in a poor earthen vessel, by one who hath neither the greatness nor the wisdom of this world to commend him to thee.' And in his most admirable treatise, on The Fear of God, Bunyan observes—' The poor Christian hath something to answer them that reproach him for his ignoble pedigree and shortness of the glory of the wisdom of this world. True may that man say I am taken out of the dunghill. 

I was born in a base and low estate, but I fear God. This is the highest and most noble; he hath the honor, the life, and glory that is lasting.' In his controversy with the Strict Baptists, he chides them for reviling his ignoble pedigree:—' You closely disdain my person because of my low descent among men, stigmatizing me as a person of THAT rank that need not be heeded or attended unto.' He inquired of his father—'Whether we were of the Israelites or not? for, finding in the Scripture that they were once the peculiar people of God, thought I if I were one of this race, my soul must need to be happy.' This somewhat justifies the conclusion that his father was a Gipsy tinker, that occupation being then followed by the Gipsy tribe. In the life of Bunyan appended to the forged third part of the Pilgrim's Progress, his father is described as 'an honest poor laboring man, who, like Adam unparadised, had all the world before him to get his bread in; and was very careful and industrious to maintain his family.'

Happily for Bunyan, he was born in a neighborhood in which it was a disgrace to any parents not to have their children educated. With gratitude, he records, that 'it pleased God to put it into their hearts to put me to school to learn both to read and to write.' In the neighborhood of his birthplace, a noble charity diffused the blessings of lettered knowledge. To this charity Bunyan was for a short period indebted for the rudiments of education; but, alas, evil associates made awful havoc of those slight unshapen literary impressions which had been made upon a mind boisterous and impatient of discipline. He says—'To my shame, I confess I did soon lose that little I learned, and that almost utterly.' This fact will recur to the reader's recollection when he peruses Israel's Hope Encouraged, in which, speaking of the all-important doctrine of justification, he says—'It is with many that begin with this doctrine as it is with boys that go to the Latin school; they learn till they have learned the grounds of their grammar, and then go home and forget all.'

As soon as his strength enabled him, he devoted his whole soul and body to licentiousness—'As for my own natural life, for the time that I was without God in the world, it was indeed according to the course of this world, and the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience. It was my delight to be taken captive by the devil at his will: being filled with all unrighteousness; that from a child I had but few equals, both for cursing, swearing, lying, and blaspheming the holy name of God.'

It has been supposed, that in delineating the early career of Badman, 'Bunyan drew the picture of his own boyhood.' But the difference is broadly given. Badman is the child of pious parents, who gave him a 'good education' in every sense, both moral and secular; the very reverse of Bunyan's training. His associates would enable him to draw the awful character and conduct of Badman, as a terrible example to deter others from the downward road to misery and perdition.