Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T04:03:26.697Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

5 - Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners: John Bunyan and spiritual autobiography

from Part II - John Bunyan’s major works

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2010

Anne Dunan-Page
Affiliation:
Université de Provence
Get access

Summary

“One day I was very sad, I think sader [sic] then at any one time in my life; and this sadness was through a fresh sight of the greatness and vileness of my sins: And as I was then looking for nothing but Hell, and the everlasting damnation of my Soul, suddenly, as I thought, I saw the Lord Jesus look down from Heaven upon me, and saying, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. But I replyed, Lord, I am a great, a very great sinner; and he answered, My grace is sufficient for thee.” (P'sP, pp. 142-3) / This passage from Bunyan's most famous allegory commands our attention for two obvious reasons: first, because it gives us Hopeful's spiritual autobiography - a vivid account of his awakening into what Bunyan considers saving faith - and, secondly, because of its closeness to Bunyan's own conversion narrative, published twelve years before The Pilgrim's Progress appeared, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666). The same, yet not the same, Hopeful's story might seem little more than 'Grace Abounding in miniature'. It is useful to begin with Hopeful's conversion not only to spot connections between Grace Abounding and The Pilgrim's Progress, exemplary works of Bunyan's religious experience and imagination, but also because it illustrates 'in miniature' some key features of seventeenth-century spiritual autobiography: a form which, focusing on an individual's religious conversion, often excludes details of a straightforwardly biographical kind, concentrating more on the convert's 'inner world' than upon 'the ordinary historical course of a life'. What we notice about Hopeful's account, then, even from the short extract quoted above, is just how inward it is: the word 'I' dominates this narrative, and it is an 'I' contemplating its own sadness as 'a great, a very great sinner', before undergoing a remarkably direct communication with 'the Lord Jesus'.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×