John Bunyan: A Sectary or a Puritan or Both? A Historical Exploration of His Religious Identity

By Brian G. Najapfour [1]

Richard Greaves, a leading Bunyan scholar, proposed a thesis that studies John Bunyan (1628-1688) in the light of the sectarian tradition. [2] This thesis, however, is not original with him. William York Tindall, in his book John Bunyan: Mechanick Preacher (1934), had already set Bunyan in a sectarian context. [3] Twenty years later came Roger Sharrock’s biography of Bunyan, which devotes a chapter to Bunyan as a sectary. [4] Then, in the late 1980s Christopher Hill’s volume appeared, A Turbulent, Seditious, and Factious People: John Bunyan and his Church 1628-1688, which further places Bunyan in a radical sectarian milieu. [5] All these books have been supplanted by Greaves’s biography of Bunyan, Glimpses of Glory: John Bunyan and English Dissent (2002), which, from Greaves’s own mouth, is “the first to deal with all of his [Bunyan’s] works in the context of his life and the broader world of nonconformity.” [6]

Usually scholars who situate Bunyan within a sectarian framework question his identity as a Puritan, and consequently slight his spiritual riches, a treasure found in other Puritans. This paper will argue that Bunyan uniquely possessed the spirit of both sectarianism and Puritanism.

Bunyan as a Sectary

Bunyan came from a conformist home; his parents both conformed to the established Church of England. As a boy, he no doubt went with them to their parish church to hear traditional sermons. It was not until he joined the army as a teenager that he was first exposed to sectarian preachers. [7] “Among all the sectarian preachers there was a strong feeling that their religion gave them a key to [be effectively involved in] the great public events which were taking place. An opportunity was being offered to establish the ideal Christian society, but first Antichrist had to be fought.” [8] At the time when Bunyan was absorbing these sectarian ideas, he was not yet regenerated. Yet, to some degree, his theological thinking was affected by them; very probably his later millenarian beliefs were at least partially an outcome of this impact.

Bunyan’s millenarian views already became obvious in his first two writings: Some Gospel-Truths Opened (1656) and A Vindication of Some Gospel Truths (1657). In this second discourse, Bunyan states:

Christ hath two severall times wherein Satan must be bound by him, one is at the conversion of sinners, the other when he shall come the second time, and personally appear, and reign, in the world to come. [9]

That Bunyan believed in the imminent coming of Christ to destroy the Devil and to “set up his glorious kingdom on earth was not at all unusual in the 1650s. What was less usual,” says W. R. Owens, “and indicates that Bunyan had been influenced by more radical commentators, was his apparent belief at this time that Christ would rule with the saints for the entire period of a thousand years.” [10] Some of those who held this notion were the radical sectarian Fifth Monarchists, “though,” as Owen states, “they were not unanimous on this point.” [11] Greaves associates Bunyan with these Fifth Monarchy Men, the radical millenarians. He claims that Bunyan’s early millenarian views were influenced by them; thus, he “was at one time an adherent of Fifth Monarchist ideology.” [12] Although this may well be true, it does not signify that Bunyan was a Fifth Monarchist; in fact, Bunyan was against these radicals. The point here is that these Fifth Monarchists influenced his early millenarianism.

Furthermore, unlike the more extreme millenarians, Bunyan did not deem that the earthly millennial reign of Jesus would have to be inaugurated by governmental force. That Bunyan was not in favor of political insurrection is explicit in his reply to the interview about the insurrection that had taken place in London in 1661:

That practice of theirs [insurrection by the more radical millenarians], I abhor, said I; yet it doth not follow, that because they did so, therefore all others [sectaries as a whole which includes Bunyan himself] will do so. I look upon it as my duty to behave myself under the King’s government, both as becomes a man and a christian; and if an occasion was offered me, I should willingly manifest my loyalty to my Prince, both by word and deed. [13]

Some scholars have conjectured that Bunyan changed some elements of his millenarian position in the latter part of his life. [14] Other historians also link Bunyan to other radical groups such as the Ranters and the Quakers, but in reality these two sects are Bunyan’s favorite polemical targets in his writings. [15]

It is also noteworthy that among those sectarian preachers whom Bunyan heard when he was in the military service was Henry Denne, a General Baptist. [16] The Baptists, as part of the sectarian world, were “a kind of common denominator of radicalism.” [17] They were, in general, Bunyan’s close friends. [18] That is why historians find it easy to attach the title Baptist to Bunyan. But one needs to be careful in categorizing Bunyan as a Baptist, especially because in his time there were various types of Baptists: (1) the Strict and Particular Baptists, Calvinists who performed closed communion; (2) the Open and Particular Baptists, open communion Calvinists; (3) the Seventh-day and Particular Baptists, Calvinists who observed the Sabbath on Saturday; and (4) the General Baptists, who were not Calvinists. [19] Bunyan belonged to the second group. He was a Calvinistic Baptist, who practiced open communion; and, while he taught believers’ baptism, he also received members baptized as children. Yet, as Harry L. Poe clarifies:

One might easily tag him as a Calvinistic Baptist, if one were prepared to qualify all specificity from the designation by adding the phrase “in many respects”…. If one classifies Bunyan a Baptist, one should not think in terms of a fully developed denominational orientation. Though he practiced believers’ baptism, he distanced himself from the developing organization of Calvinistic Independent churches practicing believers’ baptism that came to be called the Particular Baptists. [20]

Bunyan’s view on the communion table put him into quite a few debates with the closed communion Baptists. [21] On Bunyan’s side, three treatises were published as a consequence of these disputes: A Confession of My Faith, and a Reason of My Practice (1672), Differences in Judgment about Water-Baptism, No Bar to Communion (1673), and Peaceable Principles and True (1674). In the first piece, Bunyan vents: “I count them [i.e. baptism and Lord’s Supper] not the fundamentals of our Christianity, nor grounds or rule to communion with Saints.” [22] This shows his attitude toward the issue—that he would not make baptism a condition for church communion. [23]

In his The Heavenly Footman (1698), published posthumously, Bunyan urged his readers not to “have too much Company with some Anabaptists,” though he goes “under that name” himself. (It should be noted that those who exercised adult believers’ baptism in Bunyan’s time were also known as Anabaptists, but they were not at all related to the Anabaptists of the Reformation in Germany. [24]) While Bunyan did not hesitate to take the name Anabaptist (or simply Baptist) for himself, when he received his license to preach under the Royal Declaration of Indulgence (1672) of Charles II, he identified himself as “a congregationall person.” [25] Then when his Baptist opponents asked him his real identity, his answer was this:

Since you would know by what Name I would be distinguished from others; I tell you, I would be, and hope I am, a Christian; and chuse, if God shall count me worthy, to be called a Christian, a Believer or other such Name which is approved by the Holy Ghost. And as for those Factious Titles of Anabaptists, Independents, Presbyterians, or the like, I conclude, that they came neither from Jerusalem, nor Antioch, but rather from Hell and Babylon; for they naturally tend to divisions, you may know them by their Fruits. [26]

In this quote Bunyan dislikes denominational labels, thinking that they are but factious. The result is that it is difficult to confirm his actual religious affiliation. Thus, Greaves sensibly concludes that it is “pointless to attempt to identify him as either a thorough-going Baptist or a staunch Congregationalist in the light of his liberal views on the subject of baptism and church membership.” [27] Hill likewise comments: “Bunyan was no conventicler: he belonged to the Church of Christ. He therefore disliked sectarian labels. It is anachronistic to attempt to decide whether he was a Baptist or a Congregationalist.” [28] Even Joseph D. Ban in his article “Was John Bunyan a Baptist?” arrived at the same conclusion. [29] What is important to mention here is the fact that Bunyan was part of the sectarian world. To borrow the words of Dewey D. Wallace, Jr.:

[Bunyan] belonged to the world of the sectarians, not of the more establishment and university Puritans, although he had contacts with such leaders among them as John Owen. This was a world in which Baptist, Quaker, Fifth Monarchist, and Ranter rubbed shoulders. Bunyan’s specific loyalty was to a congregation on the borderline between Independent and Baptist (it practiced believers’ baptism but accepted members baptized as infants; Bunyan himself preferred believers’ baptism but did not want to make it a badge of fellowship...he did not regard baptism as all that important). [30]

Nevertheless, this undeniable truth that Bunyan belonged to the sectarian world does not imply that Bunyan cannot be considered a Puritan.

Bunyan as a Puritan

The normal tendency among those who take Bunyan as a sectary is not to regard him as a Puritan at all. Greaves, for example, contends that Bunyan “was, first of all, a sectary and not a Puritan.” [31] He goes on to aver that the sectaries “carried the religious revolution one step beyond Puritanism.” [32] This claim can be grouped under three arguments.

Traditional understanding of the term “Puritan”

“Traditionally,” says Greaves, “Puritans had preferred the possibility of reforming the existing state church rather than separating from it, as did the sectaries” [33]—though, after the Restoration in 1660, some Puritans like Richard Baxter were compelled to detach themselves from the established church. [34] “Bunyan...was distinctly a Separatist in his ecclesiological thought, and manifested no desire to remain within the Anglican Church for its ‘purification.’” [35]

Sectarian theology versus Puritan theology

To some extent, sectarian theology was dissimilar from Puritan theology. [36] Greaves explains:

The Puritans were adherents of the Calvinist tradition, though occasionally defectors to Arminianism have been included within their ranks. Theologically the sectaries were not of one mind, but variously embraced Antinomianism, mysticism, and some Arminianism as well as Calvinism. Bunyan himself, although not without certain Antinomian tendencies, customarily agreed with the Calvinists on the issues most basic to their theological system. [37]

In mid-seventeenth-century England there were two types of Calvinists: the strict and the moderate. Greaves asserts that Bunyan “adhered essentially to those positions advocated by the strict Calvinists, though on occasion he demonstrated certain Antinomian leanings. Unlike most English writers of the seventeenth century, however, he was definitely indebted to the writings of Martin Luther for various emphases in his thought.” [38] “Such emphases,” Greaves adds, “tended to give his own thought something of a hybrid character, combining Lutheran and Calvinist concepts with certain ideas drawn from Antinomianism and the Separatist tradition.” [39]

Sectarian epistemology versus Puritan epistemology

For Greaves, it is in this area that the sectaries greatly differed from the Puritans:

A major point of distinction between Puritan and sectaries concerned their epistemological views. The Puritans differed from the sectaries by retaining rationalism as a significant element in their religious epistemology. That rationalism was, however, subordinated to faith and empiricism, though Puritans were generally agreed that Spirit and reason were to be juxtaposed. The sectaries, on the other hand, could be distinguished from the Puritans by their religious anti-rationalism and anti-intellectualism. [40]

According to Greaves, this particular sectarian character can be detected in Bunyan himself who did not have a good formal education, and yet “gloried in his relative ignorance because he believed it permitted the Spirit to work unhindered.” [41] Bunyan “specifically explained that the revelatory work of the Spirit through Scripture was sufficient for all religious knowledge.” [42]

Was Bunyan then a Puritan, and if he was, in what sense? Greaves may be correct in asserting that Bunyan was not a Puritan in the traditional sense of the word; [43] but, as Geoffrey Nuttall clearly explains:

The name [Puritan] in its narrower sense may be contrasted with the name Separatist. Both parties desired greater purity in the worship and government of the Church, and in the lives of the Church’s members; but while the Puritans had hopes of further reform within the Church as at present established, and therefore stayed, often in some discomfort, within its fold, the Separatists, in despair of any early or sufficient reform within the confines of the Established Church, felt driven to form entirely new congregations on an independent, extra-parochial basis…. 

In this contradistinguishing sense, Separatists were not Puritans; but their taking the final step of Separatism left undestroyed the greater part of those ideas and ideals which still, as hitherto, they had in common with the more conservative Puritans from among whom they came. In this wider sense Puritanism must be held to include Separatism. Similarly, the ministers who held livings within the Established Church during the Interregnum were by that very fact not Separatists; when in 1662 some of these were ejected from their livings, they became Nonconformists, but remained Puritans no less than before. Some of the Episcopalians within the Established Church, all the Presbyterians and Independents in it before 1662, most of the Separatist and sectarian leaders outside it, and the founders of Nonconformity after 1662, are thus all spiritually nearer to one another than is any of them to the Roman Catholic Church or to the Laudian party within the Church of England. They have their own internal differences, some of them sharp...but in a large sense they have much in common...and for this faith and experience which they share...there is no other name than Puritan. [44]

Nuttall’s point is this: sectarians such as Bunyan who shared much in common with the Puritans both in doctrine and in practice can also be placed under the Puritan umbrella. This umbrella covers more than those whose intention was merely to reform the established church without separating from it. After all, as Sharrock says, “Puritanism is a way of life rather than a rigid system of ideas.” [45] Thus, to let Erroll Hulse speak: “As a separatist, Bunyan does not qualify as a Puritan in the technical sense. Yet in spiritual experience, in doctrine, in preaching style, and in life, he is the perfect exemplar of the Puritans.” [46] Further, as Charles G. Harper expresses: “we have no evidence at all that Bunyan was a Puritan of this political cast. [Yet] [a]s one thirsting for the pure milk of the Gospel, he was a Puritan indeed.” [47]

Certainly, Bunyan possessed the spirit of Puritanism, which J. I. Packer simply defines as “at heart a spiritual movement, passionately concerned with God and godliness.” [48] In his An Anglican to Remember: William Perkins: Puritan Popularizer, Packer further elaborates this understanding of Puritanism: “The real Puritanism was an evangelical holiness movement seeking to implement its vision of spiritual renewal, national and personal, in the church, the state, and the home; in education, evangelism, and economics; in individual discipleship and devotion, in pastoral care and competence.” [49]

Looking into Bunyan’s life in light of this definition and considering it from spiritual, historical, social, political, and even literary angles, one cannot but call Bunyan a Puritan.

We should remember that Bunyan, even before his conversion, had been exposed to Puritanism. In his spiritual autobiography, he tells a story about his first wife, a poor but pious woman, who gave him a dowry of two books both written by Puritan authors: The Plaine Man’s Path-way to Heaven, by Arthur Dent, and The Practice of Piety, by Lewis Bayly:

In these two Books I should sometimes read with her, wherein I also found some things that were somewhat pleasing to me (but all this while I met with no conviction) …. 

These books, with this relation, though they did not reach my heart to awaken it about my sad and sinful state, yet they did beget within me some desires to Religion; so that, because I knew no better, I fell in very eagerly with the Religion of the times, to wit, to go to Church twice a day, that too with the foremost, and there should very devoutly both say and sing as others did. [50]

These volumes did not bring inward change to Bunyan, but based on his own testimony they created within him “some desires to Religion.” These books also influenced “his writing and his theology.” [51] His wife, whose father “was certainly a Puritan of the old-fashioned type,” had a puritanical impact on him, too: [52] “She also would be often telling of me what a godly man her Father was, and how he would reprove and correct Vice, both in his house, and amongst his neighbours; what a strict and holy life he lived in his day, both in word and deed.” [53]

So, in his early adult life, Bunyan was already living in a Puritan atmosphere. His description of his conversion in Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners was likewise “a classic Puritan conversion.” [54] Sharrock, commenting on Bunyan’s conversion, writes:

The process of religious conversion in an individual must always remain mysterious, whatever the psychological terms in which its outward progress may be interpreted…. 

A peculiar feature of his [Bunyan’s] experience [of conversion] is the blending of the slow, chequered progress usual in the classic Puritan case-histories with a vehement emotionalism in his moments of justification which is Lutheran rather than Calvinist. [55]

Besides this Puritan conversion, Bunyan’s preaching was typically Puritan in manner. Even Barrie R. White, who sides with Greaves, recognizes this: “Bunyan’s preaching was grounded firmly in the Puritan tradition: his chief themes were sin and grace and they were shaped by the Bible as understood by the English Calvinists.” [56] Like other Puritans, Bunyan preached with simplicity, appealing to the conscience of his hearers. As such, he was truly a spiritual son of the father of Puritanism, William Perkins, who, in his The Arte of Prophecying, summons preachers to apply the sermon “‘to the life and manners of men in a simple and plaine speech.’” [57] Bunyan was what Sharrock has described as “[t]he Puritan [who] advocated and practised the plain style, in contrast to the humanistic or metaphysical elegance of some high Anglican preachers; he took the simplicity of the Gospel as his model and aimed to reach the hearts of simple men.” [58] Bunyan was also Christ-centered in his focus—a vital mark of Puritan preaching. The Puritan preacher Richard Sibbes (1577-1635) once said, “To preach is to open the mystery of Christ, to open whatsoever is in Christ; to break open the box that the savour may be perceived of all. To open Christ’s natures and Person what it is; to open the offices of Christ….” [59]

Those who are familiar with Bunyan’s sermons will agree that his messages were never without Christ. However, Puritan preaching does not stop with preaching Christ. There has to be application of that message, as Sibbes again said:

But it is not sufficient to preach Christ to lay open all this in the view of others; but in the opening of them, there must be application of them to the use of God’s people, that they may see their interest [share] in them; and there must be an alluring of them, for to preach is to woo. The preachers are “paranymphi,” the friends of the bridegroom, that are to procure the marriage between Christ and his Church; therefore, they are not only to lay open the riches of the husband, Christ, but likewise to entreat for a marriage, and to use all the gifts and parts that God hath given them, to bring Christ and his Church together. [60]

In short, Bunyan was a champion of the Puritan preaching style: applicatory and experiential. It is well known that even the so-called prince of the Puritans, John Owen, was impressed by Bunyan’s extraordinary charisma to move men’s hearts. Owen is even quoted as saying that he would be willing to give up all his learning just to preach like him. [61]

Bunyan’s writings are also essentially puritanical in nature, as G. B. Harrison says: “Bunyan remains, in his writings and in his life, as the essence and epitome of English Puritanism.” [62] His Christian Behaviour (1663) “deals with the proper relation between father and family, master and servant; its scheme of values is typical of other conduct books by Puritan...divines, and it illustrates the conservatism of Bunyan’s social views.” [63] Furthermore, Bunyan’s strong stress on personal piety in his works, as explicitly seen in his A Holy Life (1684), surely certifies him as a Puritan. To quote Packer: “Bunyan’s mature view of godliness, as set forth in the sixty books he wrote during his thirty years of ministry (twelve of them in prison for nonconformity), is Puritan in every way.” [64]

Besides, Bunyan’s piety is not only seen in his pen, but more so in his person. His piety is well expressed in the preface to one of his works: “That he was a man of real religion and uncommon godliness, no man of sense can possibly doubt or deny. If true piety consists in the knowledge, the love, and the resemblance of the blessed God, John Bunyan was a man of piety.” [65]

Bunyan practiced what he penned and preached. Peter Lewis mentions that Puritanism for him “was not merely a set of rules or a larger creed, but a life-force: a vision and a compulsion which saw the beauty of a holy life and moved toward it, marveling at the possibilities and thrilling to the satisfaction of a God-centered life.” [66] Robert Alan Richey, commenting on Lewis’s words, remarks that this “life force was vital to [the] Puritan; to remove it would cause Puritanism to cease to exist.” [67] In the same manner, since piety was essential to Bunyan, to detach it from him would cause him to cease to exist.

Bunyan’s special application of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in connection to piety further distinguishes him as a Puritan. Unlike the Quakers of the sectarian world, Bunyan’s spirituality was harmoniously anchored both in the Spirit and the Scriptures. [68] Roland H. Bainton, speaking of the difference between Puritanism and Quakerism, says that the latter “emphasized a personal renewal through the power of the Spirit, which might speak apart from the Scripture and prompt men to eccentricities but primarily would work in them a drastic moral transformation.” [69] Puritanism, on the other hand, stressed both the role of the Spirit and the Scripture in Christian living. Indeed, Puritanism partly developed from “the need for biblical, personal piety that stresses the work of the Holy Spirit in the faith and life of the believer.” [70]

This “experiential pneumatology,” says Roy Walter Williams, is a “unique contribution of the Puritans.” [71] It was the Reformers who recovered “an understanding and experience of the role of the Holy Spirit in the church and in the individual,” [72] but it was the Puritans who developed it. Williams further claims that “the economy of the Holy Spirit in prayer was a central concept for both [the] Puritan doctrine of the Christian life and the worship of the church.” [73] Bunyan himself wrote a treatise on this very subject—I will Pray with the Spirit—in which he also expressed his forceful dislike of the common use of set forms in prayer, because of his understanding of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

The Puritans were actually divided on this issue: conservative Puritans, like Richard Baxter (1615-1691), allowed the use of both written and extemporaneous prayers, “whereas more liberal Puritans (‘proto-Independents’) and Separatists favoured extempore prayer.” [74] In comparison with the more liberal Puritans, “Bunyan was more extreme, expressing a position on extempore prayer akin to that of such sectarian contemporaries as John Saltmarsh and William Eebury.” [75] Michael Haykin notes that “Bunyan’s treatise on prayer [I will Pray with the Spirit] helped to secure what has become the traditional Baptist attitude to written and read prayers: an attitude of extreme wariness.” [76]

Insofar then as the use of set forms in prayer is concerned, Bunyan certainly does not reflect the description of a Puritan that the Oxonian Puritan John Geree sketches in his minute work The Character of An Old English Puritane, or Non-conformist:

The Old English Puritane was such an one that honoured God above all, and under God gave every one his due…. He was much in praier; with it he began and closed the day. In it he was exercised in his closet, family and publike assembly. He esteemed that manner of praier best, where by the gift of God, expressions were varied according to present wants and occasions. Yet he did not account set forms unlawful. Therefore in that circumstance of the Church he did not wholly reject the liturgy but the corruption of it. [77]

Hence, Ellyn Sanna is right to say: “Bunyan had much in common with other Puritan thinkers, but he also had his own unique qualities, and these are what help make his writing timeless.” [78] Bunyan’s radical view of the Spirit’s work in prayer reveals his unique character as what can be termed a sectarian Puritan. Bunyan as such would not hesitate to oppose even the general opinion of his Puritan comrades, when he felt it was unbiblical, because his allegiance was only to the Bible, not to any religious groups, whether they be sectarian or Puritan. In his preface to “Light for Them that Sit in Darkness” (1675), he informs his readers: “I have not writ at a venture, nor borrowed my Doctrine from Libraries. I depend upon the sayings of no man: I found it in the Scriptures of Truth, among the true sayings of God.” [79]

Harold Speight, who has portrayed Bunyan in the light of seventeenth-century Puritanism, pointedly observes: “The other distinctive feature of...Bunyan is found in the claim that he was in advance of most of his contemporaries in the Puritan movement because (contrary to common opinion) he was broad-minded enough to recognize that the Christian life need not, and indeed does not, conform to a single pattern.” [80]

Conclusion

Bunyan was an independent thinker. He did not confine himself to a single system of belief. Therefore, if we accept him as a Puritan, we must also be ready to receive him as a sectary (and conversely), because he was uniquely both a sectary and a Puritan in nature. He was a sectarian Puritan.

Notes

1. This paper is a revised version of Chapter 1 of my “‘The Very Heart of Prayer’: Reclaiming John Bunyan’s Spirituality” (Th.M. thesis, Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary, 2009).
2. Richard L. Greaves, John Bunyan and English Nonconformity (London: Hambledon Press, 1992), viii.
3. William York Tindall, John Bunyan: Mechanick Preacher (New York: Columbia University Press, 1934; reprint, New York: Russell & Russell, 1964).
4. See Chapter 2 of Roger Sharrock, John Bunyan (London: Hutchinson’s University Library, 1954; reprint, London: Macmillan, 1968), 29-51.
5. Christopher Hill, A Turbulent, Seditious, and Factious People: John Bunyan and his Church 1628-1688 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 19. Also published in the U.S. as A Tinker and A Poor Man: John Bunyan and His Church, 1628-1988.
6. Richard Greaves, Glimpses of Glory: John Bunyan and English Dissent (Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Press, 2002), viii.
7. Sharrock, John Bunyan, 11-13.
8. Ibid., 13.
9. John Bunyan, “A Vindication of Some Gospel Truths,” in The Miscellaneous Works of John Bunyan, vol. 1, gen. ed. Roger Sharrock, ed. T. L. Underwood (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 205.
10. W. R. Owens, “‘Antichrist must be Pulled Down’: Bunyan and the Millennium,” in John Bunyan and His England, eds. Anne Laurence, W. R. Owens, and Stuart Sim (London: The Hambledon Press, 1990), 80.
11. Ibid.
12. Greaves, John Bunyan and English Nonconformity, 141-42, 148. See also Owens, “‘Antichrist must be Pulled Down’: Bunyan and the Millennium,” 80.
13. John Bunyan, “A Relation of the Imprisonment of Mr. John Bunyan,” in Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, ed. Roger Sharrock (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), 120. For Bunyan’s moderate millenarianism see Greaves, John Bunyan and English Nonconformity, 144-46, 152-53.
14. I. M. Green, “Bunyan in Context: the Changing Face of Protestantism in Seventeenth-Century England,” in Bunyan in England and Abroad, eds. M. van Os and G. J. Schutte (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1990), 4, 7. W. R. Owens, “‘Anti­christ must be Pulled Down’: Bunyan and the Millennium,” 81. Greaves, John Bunyan and English Nonconformity, 146-47. For a good discussion of Bunyan’s millenarian view, see chapter 8 of Crawford Gribben’s The Puritan Millennium: Literary & Theology, 1550-1682 (Dublin, Ireland: Four Courts Press, 2000), 172-93.
15. Hill’s biography of Bunyan especially deals with this issue. See Hill, A Turbulent, Seditious, and Factious People: John Bunyan and his Church 1628-1688, 61-89. See also T. L. Underwood, Introduction to The Miscellaneous Works of John Bunyan, vol. 1, xv–xxxv.
16. Sharrock, John Bunyan, 23.
17. Barry Reay, “Radicalism and Religion in the English Revolution: an Introduction,” in Radical Religion in the English Revolution, eds. J. F. McGregor and Barry Reay (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 20.
18. Barrie R. White suggests that Bunyan’s closest friends were actually not the Baptists, but the Independents; and that he in fact belonged among the Independents. See Barrie R. White, “The Fellowship of Believers: Bunyan and Puritanism,” in John Bunyan Conventicle and Parnassus: Tercentenary Essays, ed. N. H. Keeble (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 19.
19. David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, The Puritans: Their Origins and Successors (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1987), 399.
20. Harry L. Poe, “John Bunyan,” in Baptist Theologians, eds. Timothy George and David S. Dockery (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1990), 40-41.
21. For a discussion of this debate, see Harry L. Poe, “John Bunyan’s Controversy with the Baptists,” Baptist History and Heritage 23 (1988): 25-35.
22. John Bunyan, “A Confession of My Faith, and a Reason of My Practice,” in The Miscellaneous Works of John Bunyan, vol. 4, 160.
23. White, “The Fellowship of Believers: Bunyan and Puritanism,” 17-18.
24. Sharrock, John Bunyan, 23.
25. Cited in John Brown, John Bunyan (1628-1688) His Life, Times, and Work, rev. Frank Mott Harrison (London: The Hulbert Publishing Company, 1928), 235. Hill comments that the title ‘congregationall’ or ‘Congregationalist’ indicates “no theological exclusiveness: in the church of Christ there were many congregations. In the mid-eighteenth century the Bedford church still called itself ‘Independent.’” Christopher Hill, “Bunyan’s Contemporary Reputation,” in John Bunyan and His England, eds. Anne Laurence, W. R. Owens, and Stuart Sim (London: The Hambledon Press, 1990), 3.
26. John Bunyan, “Peaceable Principles and True,” in The Miscellaneous Works of John Bunyan, vol. 4, 270.
27. Greaves, John Bunyan, 22.
28. Hill, “Bunyan’s Contemporary Reputation,” 3.
29. Joseph D. Ban, “Was John Bunyan A Baptist?: A Case-Study in Historiography,” Baptist Quarterly 30 (1984): 374-75.
30. Dewey D. Wallace, Jr., “John Bunyan: Tercentenary Publications and A Critical Edition of His Miscellaneous Writings,” Religious Studies Review, 19 (1993): 22.
31. Greaves, John Bunyan, 23.
32. Ibid., 15.
33. Ibid., 23.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid.
37. Ibid.
38. Ibid., 25. Galen K. Johnson believes that of all that influenced Bunyan’s writings, “none was stronger than his Luthero-Puritan religious beliefs.” See Galen K. Johnson, “‘Be Not Extream’: The Limits of Theory in Reading John Bunyan,” Christianity and Literature 49 (2000): 460. I owe this reference to David B. Calhoun, Grace Abounding: The Life, Books & Influence of John Bunyan (Ross-shire, Scotland: Christian Focus, 2005), 199.
39. Greaves, John Bunyan, 25.
40. Ibid., 23-24.
41. Ibid., 24.
42. Ibid.
43. There is one occasion in which Bunyan himself seems to have not considered himself a Puritan in the traditional sense of the word. In his A Holy Life, written in 1683, Bunyan, appealing to Christians to remain holy even though the majority of people in the world live a wicked life, encourages them to look back to the Puritans and especially to the Marian martyrs: “holiness is a rare thing now in the world. I told thee before that it is foretold by the word, that in the last dayes, perilous times shall come, and that men shall walk after their own lusts.... The iniquity of the last times will infect and pollute the godly. I mean the generality of them. Were but our times duly compared with those that went before, we should see that which now we are ignorant of. Did we but look back to the Puritans, but specially to those that but a little before them, suffered for the word of God, in the Marian days, we should see another life than is now among men, another manner of conversation, than now is among professors.” John Bunyan, “A Holy Life,” in The Miscellaneous Works of John Bunyan, 9:345. From Bunyan’s words it appears that he does not see himself as belonging to these Puritans, probably referring to those who sought to purify the state church but did not separate from it (whom Greaves regards as Puritans).
44. Geoffrey F. Nuttall, The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and Experience (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 9-10.
45. Sharrock, John Bunyan, 14.
46. Erroll Hulse, “The Story of the Puritans,” Reformation and Revival 5 (1996): 43. Horton Davies asserts: “While there is a radical difference between the Puritans and the Separatists, constituted by their relation to the State Church, there are also close resemblances. The Puritans remained within the State Church in the hope of reforming it from within. The Separatists, on the other hand, desired ‘Reformation without tarrying for any.’” Davies further avers “that the term ‘Separatists’ cannot be legitimately applied to the Independents, but that it is more properly reserved for the Barrowists, Brownists and Anabaptists.” He adds: “both American and English Independents regarded themselves as Puritans and not Separatists.” Assuming Davies’s terminology here, the fact that Bunyan did not stay in the Church of England and was called “Anabaptist” would make him a Separatist. Davies, however, later calls Bunyan a Puritan. He explains this by saying that, broadly speaking, all those who clamored for further, Bible-based reformation in England are known as Puritans. Strictly speaking, however, “Puritan” refers to that ecclesiastical party which pushed for reformation in the days of Elizabeth and James I. Nevertheless, the term can also be used to cover people like John Robinson, a clear Separatist, who still nonetheless believed the Church of England to be a true church. Horton Davies, The Worship of the English Puritans, (1948; reprint, Morgan, Penn.: Soli Deo Gloria Publications, 1997), 11, 77-80, 257.
47. Charles G. Harper, The Bunyan Country (Oxford: Fox, Jones & Co., 1928), 19.
48. James I. Packer, A Quest For Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 1990), 28.
49. James I. Packer, An Anglican to Remember: William Perkins: Puritan Popularizer (London: St Antholin’s Lectureship Charity lecture, 1996), 1-2. I follow Packer’s definition of Puritanism in this paper. In a word, “Puritanism” refers to those who held the Reformed doctrines of grace and sought to reform and purify the state church and whose ultimate end in all of life was personal piety. It seems that this definition is the one widely accepted among conservative evangelical scholars. For a brief discussion of how other authors understand the term Puritan, see Joel R. Beeke and Randall J. Pederson, Meet the Puritans (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2006), xv–xix. See also Patrick Collinson, “A Comment: Concerning the Name Puritan,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 31 (1980): 483-88; Horton Davies, “The Nature of English Puritanism,” in The Worship of the English Puritans, 1-12; Richard Greaves, “The Puritan-Nonconformist Tradition in England, 1560-1700: Historical Reflections,” Albion 17 (1985): 449-86; Basil Hall, “Puritanism: The Problem of Definition,” in Humanists and Protestants: 1500-1900 (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1990), 237-54; and Leonard Trinterud, “The Origins of Puritanism,” Church History 20 (1951): 37-57.
50. John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, ed. Roger Sharrock (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), 8.
51. Gordon Wakefield, Bunyan the Christian (London: Harper Collins Religious, 1992), 13.
52. Sharrock, John Bunyan, 26.
53. Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, 8.
54. Sharrock, John Bunyan, 27.
55. Ibid., 33-34. Greaves later feels that Bunyan’s description of his spiritual struggles in Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners was more than spiritual in nature. He believes that Bunyan was suffering from depression, which was also known in Bunyan’s time as melancholy. He concludes: “The evidence strongly suggests that Bunyan suffered from recurrent, chronic dysthymia [‘sometimes referred to as reactive, mild, neurotic, or psychogenic depression’] on which a major depressive episode was imposed about late 1653 or early 1654. The onset of the illness would have occurred about early 1651 and terminated, by Bunyan’s reckoning, in approximately late 1657 or early 1658. There would be at least one further apparent recurrence, triggered by anxiety about late 1663 or 1664 during his imprisonment. During his illness in the 1650s, he suffered from pronounced dysphoria, marked feelings of worthlessness, impaired rational ability at times, apparent insomnia, and diminished pleasure in normal activities. He thought periodically about death, even to the point that he was ‘a terror to myself,’ yet he was afraid to die because of the judgment he expected in the afterlife. In the absence of any comments about his diet, it is impossible to know if he underwent any significant weight changes in these years. Anxiety, a recognized symptom of depression in the standard diagnostic instruments, was pronounced, and probably triggered that onset of dysthymia.” Greaves, Glimpses of Glory: John Bunyan and English Dissent, 57-58.
56. White, “The Fellowship of Believers: Bunyan and Puritanism,” v.
57. Cited in Wakefield, Bunyan the Christian, 37.
58. Sharrock, John Bunyan, 21-22.
59. Cited in Peter Lewis, The Genius of Puritanism (Haywards Heath, Sussex: Carey Publication, 1975), 50-51.
60. Cited in ibid., 51.
61. George Offor, “Memoir of John Bunyan,” in John Bunyan, The Works of John Bunyan, vol. 1, ed. George Offor (Glasgow: W. G. Blackie and Son, 1854; reprint, Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1991), lxx.
62. G. B. Harrison, John Bunyan: A Study in Personality (London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1928), 11.
63. Roger Sharrock, Introduction to John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, ed. Roger Sharrock (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), xxv.
64. James I. Packer, “Pilgrims’ Progress by John Bunyan (1628-1688),” in The Devoted Life: An Introduction to the Puritan Classics, eds. Kelly M. Kapic and Randall C. Gleason (Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 186.
65. Preface to The Works of that Eminent Servant of Christ, John Bunyan, Minister of the Gospel, and Formerly Pastor of a Congregation at Bedford (Philadelphia: James Locken, 1832), vi.
66. Lewis, The Genius of Puritanism, 12.
67. Robert Alan Richey, “The Puritan Doctrine of Sanctification: Construction of the Saints’ Final and Complete Perseverance As Mirrored in Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress” (Th.D. diss., Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary, 1990), 28-29.
68. For instance, Bunyan, in the context of prayer, says: “indeed, the holy Ghost doth not immediately quicken and stir up the heart of the Christian without, but by, with, and through the Word, by bringing that to the heart, and by opening of that whereby the man is provoked to go to the Lord, and to tell him, how it is with him; and also to argue, and supplicate, according to the Word.” John Bunyan, “I will pray with the Spirit,” in The Miscellaneous Works of John Bunyan, 2:243.
69. Roland H. Bainton, Foreword to Hugh Barbour, The Quakers in Puritan England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964), vii.
70. Beeke and Pederson, Meet the Puritans, xviii.
71. Roy Walter Williams, “The Puritan Concept and Practice of Prayer” (Ph.D. diss., University of London, 1982), 81.
72. Sinclair Ferguson, “John Owen and the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit,” in John Owen—the man and his theology, ed. Robert W. Oliver (Phillipsburg, N.J.: P & R Publishing Company, 2002), 103.
73. Williams, “The Puritan Concept and Practice of Prayer,” 94.
74. Richard Greaves, Introduction to John Bunyan, “I will pray with the Spirit” in The Miscellaneous Works of John Bunyan, vol. 2, gen. ed. Roger Sharrock, ed. Richard L. Greaves (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), xlii.
75. Greaves, Introduction to John Bunyan, “I will pray with the Spirit,” xlii.
76. Michael A. G. Haykin, “The Holy Spirit and Prayer in John Bunyan,” Reformation & Revival 3 (1994): 91-92.
77. John Geree, The Character of An Old English Puritane, or Non-conformist (London: Printed by W. Wilson for Christopher Meredith at the Crane in Pauls Church-yard, 1646), 1, 2.
78. Ellyn Sanna, Introduction to John Bunyan, The Riches of Bunyan, ed. Elly Sanna (Ohio: Barbour Publishing, 1998), 15, 16.
79. John Bunyan, “Light for Them that Sit in Darkness,” in The Miscellaneous Works of John Bunyan, vol. 8, 51.
80. Harold E. B. Speight, The Life and Writings of John Bunyan (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1928), xxi.