SOURCE: Knott, John R. “‘A Suffering People’: Bunyan and the Language of Martyrdom.” In Puritanism: Transatlantic Perspectives on a Seventeenth-Century Anglo-American Faith, edited by Francis J. Bremer, pp. 88-123. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1993.

In the following essay, Knott discusses the role of martyrdom in Bunyan's works as well as his belief that the persecution faced by Christians was a battle for truth that was part of God's plan.

A visitor to John Bunyan in the County Gaol of Bedford, where he was imprisoned from 1660 to 1672, reported that his library consisted of two books, the Bible and the “Book of Martyrs.”¹ Foxe's Acts and Monuments was one of a handful of books, including Luther's commentary on Galatians, that deeply influenced Bunyan. His frequent references to it, often citing the volume and page, sometimes quoting or paraphrasing, demonstrate a close familiarity with the text. Yet the influence is more pervasive...