uate
solution of it. It was composed exactly at the time when it was
possible for such a book to come into being; the close of the period
when the Puritan formula was a real belief, and was about to change
from a living principle into an intellectual opinion. So long as a
religion is fully alive, men do not talk about it or make allegories
about it. They assume its truth as out of reach of question, and they
simply obey its precepts as they obey the law of the land. It becomes
a subject of art and discourse only when men are unconsciously ceasing
to believe, and therefore the more vehemently think that they believe,
and repudiate with indignation the suggestion that doubt has found its
way into them. After this religion no longer governs their lives. It
governs only the language in which they express themselves, and they
preserve it eagerly, in the shape of elaborate observances or in the
agreeable forms of art and literature.

The 'Pilgrim's Progress' was written before the 'Holy War,' while
Bunyan was still in prison at Bedford, and was but half conscious of
the gifts which he possessed. It was written for his own
entertainment, and therefore without the thought--so fatal in its
effects and so hard to be resisted--of what the world would say about
it. It was written in compulsory quiet, when he was comparatively
unexcited by the effort of perpetual preaching, and the shapes of
things could present themselves to him as they really were,
undistorted by theological narrowness. It is the same story which he
has told of himself in 'Grace Abounding,' thrown out into an objective
form.

He tells us himself, in a metrical introduction, the circumstances
under which it was composed:--

When at the first I took my pen in hand,
Thus for to write, I did not understand
That I at all should make a little book
In such a mode. Nay, I had undertook
To make another, which when almost done,
Before I was aware I this begun.

And thus it was.--I writing of the way
And race of saints in this our Gospel day,
Fell suddenly into an Allegory
About the journey and the way to glory
In more than twenty things which I set down.
This done, I twenty more had in my crown,
And these again began to multiply,
Like sparks that from the coals of fire do fly.
Nay then, thought I, if that you breed so fast
I'll put you by yourselves, lest you at last
Should prove _ad Infinitum_,