Pilgrim's Progress: 2/18/1678

Pilgrim's Progress was published FEBRUARY 18, 1678. An allegory of a pilgrim traveller named "Christian" journeying to the Celestial City, it was written by John Bunyan, born in Bedford, England.

At age 29, Bunyan became a Baptist minister and was imprisoned over 12 years for preaching without a license. While in jail, he supported his family by making shoelaces. His book, found in nearly every colonial New England home, was the world's best-seller for centuries.

Benjamin Franklin wrote in his Autobiography: "From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books. Pleased with the Pilgrim's Progress, my first collection was of John Bunyan's works in separate little volumes."

Franklin continued: "My old favorite author, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress...has been translated into most of the languages of Europe, and suppose it has been more generally read than any other book, except perhaps the Bible."

In it, John Bunyan wrote: "Christian ran thus till he came at a place somewhat ascending, and upon that place stood a cross...So I saw in my dream, that just as Christian came up with the cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders, and fell from off his back."

American Minute with Bill Federer

02/05/1631

Guilty of preaching religious liberty in England, Roger Williams fled to Boston, FEBRUARY 5, 1631. He pastored briefly before being banished by Puritan John Cotton, who himself had been persecuted by Anglicans in England. Roger Williams befriended the Narragansett Indians, who gave him land for Providence Plantation, Rhode Island-the first place where church government was not controlled by the state government.

In 1639, Williams organized the first Baptist Church in America.

His "notorious disagreements" with John Cotton led to his publishing Mr. Cotton's Letter Lately Printed, Examined and Answered, 1644, in which Roger Williams wrote: "The church of the Jews under the Old Testament in the type, and the church of the Christians under the New Testament in the anti-type, were both separate from the world; and when they opened a gap in the hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world, God hath ever broken down the wall...therefore if He will ever please to restore His garden and paradise again, it must of necessity be walled in peculiarly unto Himself from the world." In 1802, Jefferson referred to Roger Williams' "wall of separation" in his letter to the Danbury Baptists.

American Minute with Bill Federer