One More Allegory

• Published in: Bunyan studies Vol. 2; no. 1; p. 73
• Main Author: Bossy, John
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Newcastle Upon Tyne Northumbria University, Department of Humanities, Faculty of Arts, Design and Social Sciences 01.04.1990
• Subjects: British & Irish literature; Bunyan, John (1628-1688); English literature
• ISSN: 0954-0970

Bunyan's dream of the Church on the sunny side of the mountain (Grace Abounding, 53-4) evokes it in the back-handed form of a congregational community separated from the cold world by the wall of the Word. [...]does his account, which Hill rather passes over, of his period of attraction to the (physical) church, clergy, services and vestments of the Church of England (GA, 16-17), which sounds extremely Laudian, though it can hardly be so, as it dates from after his first marriage, hence not earlier than 1650. What Luther stood for, in Bunyan's mind, were the notions that the purpose of the Law was not to make us holy by observing it, but to bring us to despair because we could not observe it; that our righteousness was alien righteousness; that it had been gained for us, on the Cross, by the human Jesus, the record of whose human life was the story of our salvation; and that the faith which binds us to Christ and our salvation was to be received among crosses and tribulations. The mental image, the 'similitude', the penitential psalms came flooding back; the seven deadly sins seemed once again a more attractive arrangement of Christian ethics than the ten commandments; from somewhere or other, Piers Plowman or something exceedingly like it loomed out of the mist, and the Protestant Pilgrim was launched on his way to the Holy Land.