Historical Context and John Bunyan's Defense of His Book Anonymous College

Someone’s comedy is another’s tragedy. While whole of the England was rejoicing on the ascension of Charles II to the throne of England, the Puritans were gazing in silence the arrival of a whirling tornado of discriminatory laws against them. As the Book of the common prayer to which Bunyan’s Worldly-wise man in the novel makes confirmation appeared on the stage, coupled up with the Uniformity Act of 1662, Bunyan’s life was decidedly changed. As a soldier who had taken deep interest in bringing down Charles I and as a preacher who had served when Puritanism celebrated Cromwell’s era, was completed as a write in 1667, when he began his trademark and seminal work, The Pilgrim’s Progress.

Those were sensitive times to say the least. England had recently seen her first King at the scaffold, a regicide on the land which had long held close to its heart the theory of Divine Rights of Kings. Followed by an overtly Catholic era was that of Cromwell, a Puritan Military Dictatorship. Cromwell, known as Lord Protector, was celebrated by the Puritans, preaching activities and setting up of Presbyterian churches, increased in this era while Cromwell’s attacks on other church orders, more out of an egotistical reason rather than religious...