Amersham is just on the edge of John Bunyan country as we back on to Bedfordshire. Indeed, the Delectable Mountains in
the book are thought to be based on the Chiltern Hills!
The 1600’s were years of religious turmoil in Britain, and it was all tied up
with the country becoming a brief Republic under Cromwell and then resorting
back to Monarchy under Charles II.
Throughout this period the Puritans were either guiding events or
suffering from them.
Bunyan, the Tinker Preacher, was a Puritan Christian who
was arrested because he preached outside the jurisdiction of the Church of
England. For that he was imprisoned in
Bedford Goal for twelve years.
Yet, and I find this wonderfully ironic, it was during these years that he found
a voice that would turn out to be greater than any sermon he could ever
have given, because it was whilst in prison that he wrote Pilgrim’s Progress,
published in 1678.
Today no one remembers the name of the priest who reported his illegal preaching,
or the judge who sentenced him. Yet Bunyan’s
magnum opus has never been out of print and is today translated into 200
languages.
It’s often strange how things work out; and I’d
say that even when he lost his freedom John Bunyan found a different sort of voice and used it for God!
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