Early in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Christian arrives at the house of a godly figure called Interpreter, who shows him a series of allegorical visions to assist him on his journey to Mount Zion. One of the visions is of a dark room in which a man sits in misery in an iron cage, representing the damnation that he cannot escape. Christian asks him a series of questions:

Chr. What wast thou once?