Although much of Bunyan’s literary activity was devoted to controversy, he had none of the narrowness or bitter spirit of a controversialist.  It is true that his zeal for what he deemed to be truth led him into vehemence of language in dealing with those whom he regarded as its perverters.  But this intensity of speech was coupled with the utmost charity of spirit towards those who differed from him.  Few ever had less of the sectarian temper which lays greater stress on the infinitely small points on which all true Christians differ than on the infinitely great truths on which they are agreed.  Bunyan inherited from his spiritual father, John Gifford, a truly catholic spirit.  External differences he regarded as insignificant where he found real Christian faith and love.  “I would be,” he writes, “as I hope I am, a Christian.  But for those factious titles of Anabaptist, Independent, Presbyterian, and the like, I conclude that they come neither from Jerusalem nor from Antioch, but from Hell or from Babylon.”  “He was,” writes one of his early biographers, “a true lover of all that love our Lord Jesus, and did often bewail the different and distinguishing appellations that are among the godly, saying he did believe a time would come when they should be all buried.”  The only persons he scrupled to hold communion with were those whose lives were openly immoral.  “Divisions about non-essentials,” he said, “were to churches what wars were to countries.  Those who talked most about religion cared least for it; and controversies about doubtful things and things of little moment, ate up all zeal for things which were practical and indisputable.”  His last sermon breathed the same catholic spirit, free from the trammels of narrow sectarianism.  “If you are the children of God live together lovingly.  If the world quarrel with you it is no matter; but it is sad if you quarrel together.  If this be among you it is a sign of ill-breeding.  Dost thou see a soul that has the image of God in him?  Love him, love him.  Say, ’This man and I must go to heaven one day.’  Serve one another.  Do good for one another.  If any wrong you pray to God to right you, and love the brotherhood.”  The closing words of this his final testimony are such as deserve to be written in letters of gold as the sum of all true Christian teaching:  “Be ye holy in all manner of conversation:  Consider that the holy God is your Father, and let this oblige you to live like the children of God, that you may look your Father in the face with comfort another day.”  “There is,” writes Dean Stanley, “no compromise in his words, no faltering in his convictions; but his love and admiration are reserved on the whole for that which all good men love, and his detestation on the whole is reserved for that which all good men detest.”  By the catholic spirit which breathes through his writings, especially through “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” the tinker of Elstow “has become the teacher not of any particular sect, but of the Universal Church.”