Glimpses of Glory: John Bunyan and English Dissent

by Richard Greaves

Overview

This is a major reinterpretation of John Bunyan, a prolific author best known for his two allegories, The Pilgrim's Progress and The Holy War, and his spiritual autobiography, Grace Abounding. In this book, Richard L. Greaves draws on recent literature on depression to demonstrate that Bunyan suffered from this mood disorder as a young man and then used this experience to help mold his literary works. Light and darkness, joy and sadness, despair and hope became key literary motifs.

In this biography, each of Bunyan's works, including the dozen published posthumously, is analyzed in its immediate historical context. The Pilgrim's Progress, although not published until 1678, takes its rightful place as a contribution to the momentous debate over conscience between 1667 and 1673. This historical approach, as distinct from the literary one favored by nearly all of Bunyan's biographers, reveals the changes in his views over time, including his interest in the millenarian Fifth Monarchists in the 1650s, his circumspect endorsement of militant action to block the anticipated succession of James, duke of York, in the 1680s, his retreat from this position following the disclosure of the Rye House conspiracy, and his cooperation with James II's government when it offered toleration to dissenters.

Bunyan's extraordinary ability to rouse the imaginations of his readers is shown to be rooted in his intense spirituality and powerful creativity, and given emotive force by his deep sympathy for the poor and oppressed and his fierce commitment to the principle that truth must be free. Two periods in prison, one lasting more than eleven years, failed to crush his spirit. Unbroken, he emerged from confinement to continue his preaching and writing, having honed a regime of composition that served him well as a free man. No less significant was his triumph over debilitating depressive moods that left him with a keen sensitivity to the importance of light, warmth, and love. Bunyan's potent creativity enabled him to turn his experiences into a gripping spiritual autobiography and two major allegories that attest to his triumph over crippling despair and a repressive government.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780804745307
Publisher:	Stanford University Press
Publication date:	04/29/2002
Edition description:	1
Pages:	720
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Richard L. Greaves is Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of History at Florida State University. He is the author, most recently, of Dublin's Merchant-Quaker: Anthony Sharp and the Community of Friends, 1643-1707 (Stanford, 1998) and God's Other Children: Protestant Nonconformists and the Emergence of Denominational Churches in Ireland, 1660-1700 (Stanford, 1997).

Table of Contents

	Abbreviations	xv
	Prologue	1
1.	The Early Years	3
	"My Heighth of Vanity": Bunyan's Youth	4
	"Kill, Kill, Was in Mine Ears": Bunyan in the Military	11
	"The Religion of the Times": Early Religious Influences	21
2.	Spiritual and Psychological Crisis	30
	"An Exceeding Maze": The Struggle with Despair	31
	"To Joyne in Fellowship": John Gifford and the Bedford Church	61
	"Thred-bare at an Ale-House": The Ranter Challenge	67
3.	The Young Preacher	75
	"A New Upstart Sect": Bunyan and the Quakers	75
	"These Dangerous Rocks": Sectarian Ferment	88
	"Scalding Lead": Professional Clergy and the Rich	96
	"Two Covenants in Their Right Places": Pulpit Theology	103
	"Inchantments, and Witchcrafts": Quakers and Witches	115
	"Throw Away All Thy Own Wisdome": Pulpit Controversy	121
4.	Confronting Persecution	127
	"Sweetly in the Prison": Arrest, Trial, and Appeal	130
	"Holding Fast the Good": The Early Prison Years	146
	"Gospelly Good": Christian Behaviour, a Last Testament	161
5.	Millenarian Expectations	173
	"Out of Babylon": The Return of the Holy City	176
	"Now Is the End Come": The Last Judgment	189
	"Read My Lines": Poetry and the End Times	199
	"A Drop of Honey": Autobiographical Reflections	207
6.	Charting the Pilgrimage	210
	"The Way He Runs": The Christian Life as Metaphor	211
	"Against Our Religion": The Setting of The Pilgrim's Progress	216
	"Whither Must I Fly?": The Pilgrimage	227
	"As I Pull'd, It Came": Inspiration and Experience	229
	"By Dint of Sword": Persecution and Allegorical Warfaring	243
	"Turn up My Metaphors": Interpreting the Allegory	252
7.	The Anvil of Debate	266
	"A Strict Separation": Church Membership and Communion	271
	"Like an Eel on the Angle": Edward Fowler and the Debate about Justification	278
	"Escape the Prison": Freedom	286
	"Union and Communion Among the Godly": The Baptismal Controversy	291
	"Cumber-ground Professors": Prophetic Admonitions	301
	"Shie of Women": The Agnes Beaumont Episode	309
8.	Evangelical Concerns	313
	"Anathematised of God": Enemies of the Faith	317
	"Wholsome Medicine": Teaching the Basic	323
	"Holy-day Saints": Damned Professors	328
	"Venture Heartily": Preaching Grace	334
	"What Chaines So Heavy?": Evangelical Outreach	341
9.	Popery's Long Shadows	355
	"This Day of Jacobs Trouble": The Popish Plot and the Godly	356
	"Good Coin in the Best of Tryals": A Sense of Impending Danger	366
	"O Debauchery, Debauchery": Restoration Society and the Reprobate	374
	"The Drum in the Day of Alarum": England in Crisis	390
10.	Holy Warfare	401
	"The Alarm of War": The Campaign to Repress Dissent	403
	"New Modelling the Town": Efforts to Control the Boroughs	411
	"Blood, Blood, Nothing but Blood": The Plot of The Holy War	414
	"If Thou Wouldest Know My Riddle": Interpreting the Allegory--Soteriology and Personal Experience	419
	"Things of Greatest Moment Be": Millenarian and Historical Concerns	426
	"Turn the World Upside Down": Challenging Unregenerate England	433
11.	The Struggle with Evil	439
	"Tyranny of the Antichristian Generation": Antichrist and the Tory-Anglicans	443
	"Vipers Will Come": Maintaining Priorities amid Political Turmoil	452
	"The Rage of the Enemy": Battling Persecution	455
	"A Place to Fight and Wrestle in": Repudiating Iniquity	470
12.	Nonconformity and the Tory Backlash	479
	"To Set You Right": Defining Women's Place	480
	"Kiss the Rod": Survival and the Ethic of Suffering	485
	"To Friends, Not Foes": A Return to The Pilgrim's Progress	498
	"His Own Executioner": The Suicide of John Child	515
	"The Christians Market-day": Repulsing the Seventh-day Sabbatarians	519
13.	Facing a Catholic Monarch	526
	"These Pretended Righteous Men": Denouncing Hypocritical, Persecuting Conformists	530
	"God's Iron Whip": Seeking Hope Amid Persecution	535
	"Catching Girls and Boys": Homely Rhymes and Poetic Diversions	538
	"Take Shelter": Christ as Refuge	548
	"Sack-cloth, Tears and Affliction": The Church in the Wilderness	554
14.	Toleration Renewed: Bunyan's Final Months	564
	"Liberty ... to Eat Freely": Dissent and the Lure of Toleration	565
	"Watchman, Watchman, Watch": Reinforcing the Faithful	573
	"A Voice from the Throne": Grace as a River, Christ as an Advocate	580
	"Where Promises Swarm": The Quest for Jerusalem Sinners	588
	"Ah! Pride, Pride!": A Transcript of the Heart	594
	Epilogue	601
	"Ah Goodman Bunyan!": A Retrospect	601
	"To Every Place": Bunyan and His Pilgrims Through the Ages	610
	"As Fancy Leads the Writers": Bunyan's Literary Reputation	619
Appendix	Provisional Dating of Bunyan's Publications	637
	Bibliography of Primary Sources	643
	Index of Biblical References	661
	General Index	665

Editorial Reviews

"No one is better equipped than Professor Greaves to read Bunyan's mind and personal contacts."

H-Net Reviews

"This work is the most comprehensive John Bunyan biography ever written and the crowning achievement of Richard Greaves's prolific writing career."

The Westminster Theological Journal

"A distinguished expert on the late-17th-century English dissenting movement, Greaves offers a monumental study of the movement's premier popular prose writer."

CHOICE

"The culmination of a lifetime of scholarly work, this book is essential reading for anyone pursuing serious work on Bunyan and on the religious history of the Restoration to 1688. It will probably stand as the definitive study on Bunyan for a generation."

Stanford University - Paul S. Seaver

"Greaves' credentials are impeccable, with his earlier works on English noncomformity and his editorial contributions to period scholarship well known to those in the field. He gives the impression of having read everything of possible relevance in English mid-century religious and political controversy, and often adduces illumination for well-known features of Bunyan's major works."

University of Illinois—Urbana-Champaign - U. Milo Kaufmann

"...the prolific Greaves now stands alone as the eminent living authority on Bunyan, and Glimpses of Glory: John Bunyan and English Dissent is not only the zenith of his notable forty-year career but also an inventory of the growth of Bunyan studies over that same time."

John Brown University - Galen K. Johnson

"This work is the most comprehensive John Bunyan biography ever written and the crowning achievement of Richard Greaves's prolific writing career."—The Westminster Theological Journal


"The culmination of a lifetime of scholarly work, this book is essential reading for anyone pursuing serious work on Bunyan and on the religious history of the Restoration to 1688. It will probably stand as the definitive study on Bunyan for a generation."—Paul S. Seaver, Stanford University


"A distinguished expert on the late-17th-century English dissenting movement, Greaves offers a monumental study of the movement's premier popular prose writer."—CHOICE


"...the prolific Greaves now stands alone as the eminent living authority on Bunyan, and Glimpses of Glory: John Bunyan and English Dissent is not only the zenith of his notable forty-year career but also an inventory of the growth of Bunyan studies over that same time."—Galen K. Johnson, John Brown University


"Greaves' credentials are impeccable, with his earlier works on English noncomformity and his editorial contributions to period scholarship well known to those in the field. He gives the impression of having read everything of possible relevance in English mid-century religious and political controversy, and often adduces illumination for well-known features of Bunyan's major works."—U. Milo Kaufmann, University of Illinois—Urbana-Champaign
"No one is better equipped than Professor Greaves to read Bunyan's mind and personal contacts."—H-Net Reviews

From the Publisher

Favoring a historical approach over a literary one, Greaves (history, Florida State U.) studies all of work of Bunyan (1628-1688), best known for and within the context of religious and political controversies at the time of Bunyan's penning of the works. The evolution of his dissent from the Church of England is compared with his own biography and the historical developments of religious politics in Britain. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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