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John Bunyan and the Puritan idea of art

Page 3


'Neither did I out vacant, seasons spend In this my Scribble; Nor did I intend But to divert myself in doing this, From worser thoughts, which make me do amiss.'
(PP.pl35)

One cannot place too much emphasis on any 'Puritan’ attitude towards a minister actually writing and publishing his works; the sheer volume of Puritan writings would suggest that it was little more than a minor hindrance. Most preachers seemed to have recognised that the Bible needed commentaries to apply it to the demands of Christian life in the seventeenth century. Baxter saw such writings as
'...domestic, present, constant, judicious, yea and powerful sermons. (A Christian Directory .London 1673, P 60) In the light of the great popularity of Bayly's 'Practice of Piety, Dent's Pathway, and Fox's Acts and Monuments (the first editions of which are very rare, as they were literally read to pieces), a Puritan minister who condemned the need for such books would find a great challenge to his claims.

But even if we grant that a selection of Puritan views on writing points
to a consensus of opinion approaching that of Baxter's, we have still to account for the production of Bunyan's major works .We have so far been speaking of those dull, verbose Puritan tracts that were so abundant in the Seventeenth Century, rather than the imaginative vivacity of The Pilgrim's Progress. Bunyan’s view of the condemnation of anything imaginative that is often associated with Puritanism, had much to apologise for. But is this view of the Puritans a fair one?