CHAPTER IV.

THE PURITANS.  BUNYAN’S “PILGRIM’S PROGRESS.”

I.

The renaissance of learning, with its delight in a sense of existence, its enjoyment of a new life, a newly acquired knowledge, and a quickened intelligence, was gradually supplanted by that renaissance of religion which followed the general introduction of the Bible among the English people.  Weary of the oppression of the clergy, weary of giving an often ruinous obedience to the tyranny of men whose lives gave them no claim to control the conduct of others, the early Puritan found in the Bible the knowledge of God and the means of grace which he despaired of obtaining from the priest.  The Bible became in reality The Book.  It was the one volume possessed and read by the people at large.  The classical authors, the volumes of translations issued in Elizabeth’s time, the productions, even, of English genius had been familiar only to the upper and best-educated classes.  The great body of the people were without books, and the Bible became their one literary resource, and the sole teacher of the conditions by which salvation could be attained.  It was seized upon with extraordinary avidity and enthusiasm.  Old men learned to read, that they might study it for themselves.  Crowds gathered in churches and private houses to hear it read aloud.  A good reader became a public benefactor.  Alike in manor and in cottage, the family gathered at night to listen with awe-struck interest to the solemn words whose grandeur was not yet lessened by familiarity.  As we quote, often unconsciously, from a hundred different authors, the Puritans quoted from their one book.[82] Some, like Bunyan, at first preferred the historical chapters.  But the Bible soon came to have a far more powerful and absorbing interest than any of a literary nature.  There men looked for their sentence of eternal life or eternal torment.  There they sought the solution of the question:  “What shall I do to be saved?” And they sought it with all the fervor of conscientious men who realized, as we cannot realize, the doctrine of eternal damnation.  To understand the influence of the Bible, we must remember how completely men believed in a personal God, ruling England then, as He had ruled Israel of old; and in a devil who stalked through the world luring men to their perdition.  The Bible was studied with a fearful eagerness for the way to please the one and to escape the other.  Looked upon as the word of God, pointing out the only means of salvation, men placed themselves, through the Bible, in direct communication with the Deity, and, casting aside the authority of a church, acknowledged responsibility to Him alone.  The difficulty of interpreting obscure portions of the Scriptures drove many to frenzy and despair.  A hopeful or consoling passage was hailed with joy.  “Happy are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.”  “Lo,” wrote Tyndale, “here God hath made a covenant wyth us, to mercy full unto us, yf we wyll be mercy full one to another.”