or Baptist persuasion remained unmolested. Baxter was in prison: Howe was driven into exile: Henry was arrested.
Two eminent Baptists, with whom Bunyan had been engaged in controversy, were in great peril and distress. Danvers was in danger of being hanged; and Kiffin’s grandsons were actually hanged. The tradition is that, during those evil days, Bunyan was forced to disguise himself as a wagoner, and that he preached to his congregation at Bedford in a smock-frock, with a cart-whip in his hand. But soon a great change took place. James II. was at open war with the church, and found it necessary to court the dissenters. Some of the creatures of the government tried to secure the aid of Bunyan. They probably knew that he had written in praise of the indulgence of 1672, and therefore hoped that he might be equally pleased with the indulgence of 1687. But fifteen years of thought, observation and commerce with the world had made him wiser. Nor were the cases exactly parallel. Charles was a professed Protestant; James was a professed Papist. The object of Charles’s indulgence was disguised; the object of James’s indulgence was patent. Bunyan was not deceived. He exhorted his hearers to prepare themselves by fasting and prayer for the danger which menaced their civil and religious liberties, and refused even to speak to the courtier who came down to remodel the corporation of Bedford, and who, as was supposed, had it in charge to offer some municipal dignity to the bishop of the Baptists.
Bunyan did not live to see the Revolution.[1] In the summer of 1688 he undertook to plead the cause of a son with an angry father, and at length prevailed on the old man not to disinherit the young one. This good work cost the benevolent intercessor his life. He had to ride through heavy rain. He came drenched to his lodgings on Snow Hill, was seized with a violent fever, and died in a few days (August 31). He was buried in Bunhill Fields; and many Puritans, to whom the respect paid by Roman Catholics to the reliques and tombs of saints seemed childish or sinful, are said to have begged with their dying breath that their coffins might be placed as near as possible to the coffin of the author of the Pilgrim’s Progress.
The fame of Bunyan during his life, and during the century which followed his death, was indeed great, but was almost entirely confined to religious families of the middle and lower classes. Very seldom was he during that time mentioned with respect by any writer of great literary eminence. Young coupled his prose with the poetry of the wretched D'Urfey. In the Spiritual Quixote, the adventures of Christian are ranked with those of Jack the Giant-Killer and John Hickathrift. Cowper ventured to praise the great allegorist, but did not venture to name him. It is a significant circumstance that, for a long time all the numerous editions of the Pilgrim’s Progress were evidently meant for the cottage and the servants’ hall. The paper, the printing, the plates, were all of the meanest description. In general, when the educated minority and the common people differ about the merit of a book, the opinion of the educated minority finally prevails. The Pilgrim’s Progress is perhaps the only book about which the educated minority has come over to the opinion of the common people.
The attempts which have been made to improve and to imitate this book are not to be numbered. It has been done into verse; it has been done into modern English. The Pilgrimage of Tender Conscience, the Pilgrimage of Good Intent, the Pilgrimage of Seek Truth, the Pilgrimage of Theophilus, the Infant Pilgrim, the Hindoo Pilgrim, are among the many feeble copies of the great original. But the peculiar glory of Bunyan is that those who most hated his doctrines have tried to borrow the help of his genius. A Catholic version of his parable may be seen with the head of the virgin in the title-page. On the other hand, those Antinomians for whom his Calvinism is not strong enough, may study the Pilgrimage of Hephzibah, in which nothing will be found which can be construed into an admission of free agency and universal redemption. But the most extraordinary of all the acts of Vandalism by which a fine work of art was ever defaced was committed in the year 1853. It was determined to transform the Pilgrim’s Progress into a Tractarian book. The task was not easy; for it was necessary to make two sacraments the most prominent objects in the allegory, and of all Christian theologians, avowed Quakers excepted, Bunyan was the one in whose system the sacraments held the least prominent place. However, the Wicket Gate became a type of baptism, and the House Beautiful of the eucharist. The effect of this change is such as assuredly the ingenious person who made it never contemplated. For, as not a single pilgrim passes through the Wicket Gate in infancy, and as Faithful hurries past the House Beautiful without stopping, the lesson which the fable in its altered shape teaches, is that none but adults ought to be baptized, and that the eucharist may safely be neglected. Nobody would have discovered from the original Pilgrim’s Progress that the author was not a Paedobaptist. To turn his book into a book against Paedobaptism, was an achievement reserved for an Anglo-Catholic divine. Such blunders must necessarily be committed by every man who mutilates parts of a great work, without taking a comprehensive view of the whole. (M.)
The above article has been slightly corrected as to facts, as compared with its form in the 9th edition. Bunyan’s works were first partially collected in a folio volume (1692) by his friend Charles Doe. A larger edition (2 vols., 1736–1737) was edited by Samuel Wilson of the Barbican. In 1853 a good edition (3 vols., Glasgow) was produced by George Offer. Southey’s edition (1830) of the Pilgrim’s Progress contained his Life of Bunyan. Since then various editions of the Pilgrim’s Progress, many illustrated (by Cruikshank, Byam Shaw, W. Strang and others), have appeared. An interesting life by “the author of Mark Rutherford” (W. Hale White) was published in 1904. Other lives are by J. A. Froude (1880) in the “English Men of Letters” series, and E. Venables (1888); but the standard work on the subject is John Bunyan; his Life, Times and Work (1885), by the Rev. J. Brown of Bedford. A bronze statue, by Boehm, was presented to the town by the duke of Bedford in 1874.
BUNZLAU, a town of Germany, in Prussian Silesia, on the right bank of the Bober, 27 m. from Liegnitz on the Berlin-Breslau railway, which crosses the river by a great viaduct. Pop. (1900) 14,590. It has a handsome market square, an Evangelical and a Roman Catholic church, and monuments to the Russian field marshal Kutusov, who died here, and to the poet Martin Opitz von Boberfeld. The Bunzlau pottery is famous; woollen and linen cloth are manufactured, and there is a considerable trade in grain and cattle. Bunzlau (Boleslavia) received its name in the 12th century from Duke Boleslav, who separated it from the duchy of Glogau. Its importance was increased by numerous privileges and the possession of extensive mining works. It was frequently captured and recaptured in the wars of the 17th century, and in 1739 was completely destroyed by fire. On the 30th of August 1813 the French were here defeated on the retreat from the Katzbach by the Silesian army of the allies.
BUONAFEDE, APPIANO (1716–1793), Italian philosopher, was born at Comachio, in Ferrara, and died in Rome. He became professor of theology at Naples in 1740, and, entering the religious body of the Celestines, rose to be general of the order. His principal works, generally published under the assumed name of “Agatopisto Cromazione,” are on the history of philosophy:—Della Istoria e delle Indole di ogni Filosofia, 7 vols., 1772 seq.; and Della Restaurazione di ogni Filosofia ne' Secoli, xvi., xvii., xviii., 3 vols., 1789 (German trans. by C. Heydenreich). The latter gives a valuable account of 16th-century Italian philosophy. His other works are Istoria critica e filosofica del suicidio (1761); Delle conquiste celebri esaminate col naturale diritto delle genti (1763); Storia critica del moderno diritto di natura e delle genti (1789); and a few poems and philosophic comedies.
BUOY (15th century “boye”; through O.Fr. or Dutch, from Lat. boia, fetter; the word is now usually pronounced as “boy,” and it has been spelt in that form; but Hakluyt’s
- ↑ He had resumed his pastorate in Bedford after his imprisonment of 1675, and, although he frequently preached in London to crowded congregations, and is said in the last year of his life to have been, of course unofficially, chaplain to Sir John Shorter, lord mayor of London, he remained faithful to his own congregation.
