one of the greatest works of all time

Today in 1678 John Bunyan brought out the first version of the Pilgrim’s Progress.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, famously sophisticated, called this simple book “incomparably the bestSumma Theologicae Evangelicaeever produced by a writer not miraculously inspired.” It’s a phrase worth pondering: The rough little allegory about following the road to the Celestial City is a summary of gospel theology, a synthesis of evangelical teaching, a Summa Theologicae Evangelicae. And it’s the best one ever written by anybody not directly inspired by God, according to Coleridge!

He goes on: “It is composed in the lowest style of English, without slang or false grammar. If you were to polish it, you would at once destroy the reality of the vision… This wonderful book is one of the few books which may be read repeatedly, at different times, and each time with a new and different pleasure. I read it once as a theologian, and let me assure you that there is great theological acument in the work; once with devotional feeling; and once as a poet. I could not have believed beforehand that Calvinism could be painted in such exquisitely delightful colors.”