THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS FROM THIS WORLD TO THAT WHICH IS TO COME DELIVERED UNDER THE SIMILITUDE OF A DREAM. WHEREIN IS DISCOVERED THE MANNER OF HIS SETTING OUT, HIS DANGEROUS JOURNEY AND SAFE ARRIVAL AT THE DESIRED COUNTRY. “I have used similitudes”—Hosea 12:10 LICENSED AND ENTERED ACCORDING TO ORDER. London: Printed for Nathaniel Ponder, at the Peacock in the Poultry, 1678. Now faithfully republished with all the additions and corrections made by the Author to the time of his decease in August 1688. INTRODUCTION BY THE EDITOR CHAPTER I. THE pilgrimage of life is a deeply-interesting subject, coextensive with human nature; every LIFE A PILGRIMAGE THROUGH A STATE individual of our race is upon pilgrimage, from OF SPIRITUAL CONFLICTS—“THE the cradle to the grave. It is the progress of the PILGRIM’S PROGRESS” A GUIDE TO ALL soul through time to enter upon a boundless HEAVENWARD PILGRIMS—THE AUTHOR eternity; beset on all sides, at every avenue, and FURNISHED WITH LEISURE TIME TO at every moment, with spiritual foes of the WRITE IT, BY BEING SHUT UP IN PRISON deepest subtilty, journeying from the com- FOR REFUSING TO VIOLATE HIS mencement to the close of the course through CONSCIENCE. an enemy’s country, uncertain of the term of existence, certain only that it must terminate Art thou for something rare and profitable? and usher us into an eternal state, either of Wouldest thou see a truth within a fable? exquisite happiness, or awful misery. How Art thou forgetful? Wouldest thou remember natural that every man’s life should be called by From New Year’s Day to the last of December? its proper name—a pilgrimage. Then read my fancies, they will stick like burs. The Patriarch felt this when he bowed before Bunyan’s Apology for his Book. Pharaoh, and said, “The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years: few and evil have the days of the years of my 2 THE WORKS OF JOHN BUNYAN life been, and have not attained unto the days To condense the instructions given to the of the years of the life of my fathers in the days pilgrim in the Inspired Writings into a map of of their pilgrimage” (Gen. 47:9). David sang the the road, a guide or hand-book to the celestial statutes of the Lord in the house of his city, a help to Zion’s travelers, and a faithful pilgrimage (Psa. 119:54). And after the lapse of warning to the votaries who crowd the broad ages, when the Volume of Inspiration was road to ruin, was a labour of love for its vast about to close, the Holy Spirit continued the importance, worthy of the highest powers of simile in the apostolic Epistles, “and confessed human intellect, the warmest Christian that they were strangers and pilgrims on the philanthropy. It is surprising that a work which earth” (Heb. 11:13). As such we are exhorted, so naturally suggests itself to the imagination, “I beseech you, as strangers and pilgrims, and which is of such universal interest, was abstain from fleshly lusts” (1 Peter 2:11). “See delayed so long. The abstruse dreams of Jewish then that ye walk circumspectly” (Eph. 5:15). rabbis, the splendid figures and scenery that “So run, that ye may obtain” (1 Cor. 9:24). floated before the minds of Oriental and Greek These are instructions that reach the heart of sages, and the intense subtlety of the schoolmen every Christian convert throughout the world; of the Middle Ages, were intended for a very all are warned of the necessity of sobriety and limited class, excluding all but those who were vigilant watchfulness, “because your adversary, their immediate disciples; and all their the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, instructions having a direct tendency to lead seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8). them from the highway of happiness, to wander “He shall cast some of you into prison, that ye in the mazes of a senseless sophistry, or, to use may be tried; be thou faithful unto death, and I the Apostle’s words, “spoil them through will give thee a crown of life” (Rev. 2:10). philosophy and vain deceit.” It was a work that All mankind are pilgrims; all are pressing could only be prepared by an expanded soul, through this world: the Christian willingly con- above all sectarian bias, by one who could, with siders that his life is a journey, because he is unbounded charity, embrace all nations, all seeking a better country; but the greater tongues, and every people, as brethren in the multitude are anxious to prevent the vast dominions of his God; by one who felt that recollection, that time is a preparation for human happiness would not be perfect until eternity, and, in consequence of this neglect, this universe became the kingdom of his Christ. they shudder when approaching the brink of Such a hallowed and sanctified mind alone the grave, into which they are irresistibly could furnish his fellow-sinners with an epitome plunged. Although perpetual examples warn of the way to the celestial city, equally them that suddenly, at a moment when they acceptable to Christians of all denominations. least expect the fatal catastrophe, it may befall To write for the instruction of the whole them, still, as if infatuated, they make no family of man, is not the province of a bigoted inquiry of the Holy Oracles as to how they can sectarian, whose visions of happiness extend no escape the second death; but take the miserable further than to embrace his own immediate counsel of some “worldly wise man,” and seek disciples. Had ancient sages, or more modern a refuge in lies, which death will terribly sweep schoolmen, felt their brotherhood to the whole away; or they wholly neglect any preparation human race, knowing that every individual, of for so important and certain, if not sudden, an all sects or parties, is fulfilling his pilgrimage event. All are on the advance; time hurries on through the short space of time allotted to fit those whose pilgrimage is limited to the foul, him for an unbounded eternity, surely some of but fascinating streets of the “city of the great and illustrious philosophers of bygone destruction,” to their eternal doom; while those ages would have attempted to complete an whose anxious cries lead them to the Christian allegory, the outline of which had been given in calling, press on in the narrow and difficult the earliest of records—the Holy Oracles. No path that leads to the heavenly Jerusalem. trace, however, has as yet been found in Hebrew, Oriental, Greek, or Latin literature, of INTRODUCTION BY THE EDITOR 3 such an attempt. The honour of producing this the three months’ end, if you do not submit, extraordinary work, in a surprising degree of and go to church to hear Divine service, and perfection, was reserved to a later age, and was leave your preaching, you must be banished the conferred upon an Englishman; a man, as to realm; and if, after such a day as shall be ap- human learning, unlettered, but deeply learned pointed you to be gone, you shall be found in in the school of Christ, and profoundly skilled this realm, you must stretch by the neck for it, I in all the subtleties of the human heart; upon a tell you plainly; and so he the justice bid the man connected with a denomination eminent jailer have him away.1 for love of Christian liberty, and for hazardous, This was soon after the restoration of but resolute obedience and conformity to every Charles II, when a persecuting hierarchy having institute which they found in the New been reinstated in power, revived obsolete and Testament; and therefore everywhere spoken tyrannical laws. The mechanic, or fisherman, against, and bitterly persecuted. shall not preach or teach, was the sullen, stern This important work was destined to be voice of despotic authority. But, at the accomplished by a preaching mechanic, not imminent risk of transportation, and even of vainly or falsely claiming, but really possessing death, the pious and highly-talented mechanic, the true evidence of apostolic descent in spirit John Bunyan, persevered in instructing the and in truth, as his works and afflictions fully peasantry who came within the reach of his proved; to a man, while suffering under the voice. He was for this, and for not attending his tyranny of Antichrist, whose judges and officers parish church, seized and sent to Bedford jail; shut him up to languish in a noisome prison for and, by the overruling power of his God, the twelve years and a half of the prime of his life; means that were thus used to prevent his voice thus vainly attempting to bend his free, his from being heard by a few poor labourers, Heaven-born spirit, to submit, or pretend to opened to this persecuted disciple of Christ the submit, to what he considered to be popish and path to honour, as well as to lasting and most unchristian forms and ceremonies, and to extensive usefulness. compel him to conform to the church Dragged from the arms of his affectionate established by law; having at its head, at that wife, who was brought to death’s door by time, the most debauched monarch in Europe. painful apprehensions that his life would be He was apprehended while conducting the sacrificed; bereaved of the company of his public worship of God, and sent to prison in children, and of personal communion with the Bedford jail.