Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners
John Bunyan · 1666
Bunyan's own story of years of fear and doubt, and how he found peace, told with startling honesty.
- Lived
- 1628–1688
- Where
- Bedford, England
- In the library
- 2 books
Author
John Bunyan
A Bedford tinker and preacher, author of The Pilgrim's Progress.
John Bunyan was born at Elstow, near Bedford, and learned his father's trade of mending pots and pans. He served as a young soldier in the Parliamentary army during the Civil War. In his twenties he went through years of anguish over whether God could forgive him, which he described in Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666).
He joined the independent congregation in Bedford and began to preach. After the Restoration, preaching without a licence from the Church of England was illegal. Bunyan would not agree to stop, and he spent most of 1660 to 1672 in the county jail, where he made laces to support his family and wrote.
The Pilgrim's Progress appeared in 1678. Bunyan died in London in 1688, after riding through heavy rain on a journey to settle a quarrel between a father and son, and was buried at Bunhill Fields.
“As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a den, and I laid me down in that place to sleep.”
The Pilgrim's Progress
