ABSTRACT

John Bunyan was suffered to go abroad at pleasure, visited the various assemblies of his sect, and was actually chosen pastor of the anabaptist congregation in the town. In a style of composition, rendered venerable by its antiquity, and still more so by the purposes to which it has been applied, Bunyan, however uneducated, was a distinguished master. The speedy popularity of The Pilgrim's Progress had the natural effect of inducing Bunyan again to indulge the vein of allegory in which his warm imagination and clear and forcible expression had procured him such success. The pilgrimage of Christiana, her friend Mercy and her children, commands sympathy at least as powerful as that of Christian himself, and it materially adds to the interest which we have taken in the progress of the husband, to trace the effects produced by similar events in the case of women and children.