Luther, Bunyan, Bible and Pain

by John Piper

January 19, 1999

Psalm 119:71

From 1660 to 1672, John Bunyan, the English Baptist preacher, and author of Pilgrim's Progress, was in the Bedford county jail. He could have been released if he had agreed not to preach. He did not know which was worse - the pain of the conditions or the torment of freely choosing it, in view of what it cost his wife and four children. His daughter, Mary, was blind. She was 10 when he was put in jail in 1660.

The parting with my Wife and poor children hath often been to me in this place as the pulling of the Flesh from my bones . . . not only because I am somewhat too fond of these great Mercies, but also because I . . . often brought to my mind the many hardships, miseries and wants that my poor Family was like to meet with should I be taken from them, especially my poor blind child, who lay nearer my heart than all I had besides; Oh the thoughts of the hardship I thought my Blind one might go under, would break my heart to pieces. (Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, Evangelical Press, 1978, p. 123). Link to rest here