A Turbulent, Seditious and Factious People by Christopher Hill

Author:Christopher Hill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso Books

20. The Holy War

Mansoul it was the very seat of war.

Diabolus: ‘If we get them a second time they shall be ours for ever’.

BUNYAN1

i. Allegory and Epic

BUNYAN’S epic combines at least four allegories. The first is the history of the universe from the fall of Diabolus/Satan and the rebel angels. In diabolical conclave they resolve to avenge themselves by seizing the town of Mansoul. Its inhabitants were tricked as Adam and Eve had been in Eden. ‘They looked, they considered, they were taken with the forbidden fruit.… So they opened the gates, Eargate and Eyegate’ (10–17). But The Holy War is also an allegory about the process of conversion within the individual soul, brought about by a combination of internal and external factors. Thirdly (part perhaps of the first allegory), the epic alludes to the history of the English Revolution, from the Anti-christian tyranny of Charles I and his bishops, through the all-too-brief rule of the saints, to the return of Diabolus in 1660, and his ultimate overthrow. Finally, it alludes to the history of Bedford corporation from 1650 to 1682, the date of publication. Bunyan’s vast cosmic drama is rooted in the politics of a small town.

Mr Mullet suggests that The Holy War was ‘a Puritan Absalom and Achitophel’. It certainly was intended to have contemporary relevance. Bunyan slyly hinted this when he said it would ‘serve to give a taste to them that love to hear tell of what is done beyond their knowledge, afar off in other countries’. Tindall, who worked out in detail the analogies between The Holy War and seventeenth-century English politics, pointed out acutely that whereas Bunyan’s marginal comments (which in his Preface he urged readers to consult) usually refer to the allegory of conversion, his marginal citation of texts bears on his political allegory.2

Commentators have noted similarities between The Holy War and the history of Bedford corporation. But the events which Bunyan so vividly describes seem to anticipate purges which took place in Bedford between 1683 and 1687, after the book had been published. This is confusing, but there are several points to be made. First, references in The Holy War are not only to post-restoration Bedford: to understand them we have to go back to 1650, when Bunyan was first beginning to take an interest in politics. Secondly, by 1682 there had been purges in corporate towns near Bedford. Thirdly, as in The Pilgrim’s Progress, the narrative unfolds psychologically, not chronologically: descriptions in the allegory of what appears to be the persecuting government of Charles I can perfectly well accommodate detail from Charles II’s reign. What matters is the atmosphere of persecution, its effect on the persecuted, the sufferings of the godly, and their endurance, not precise chronological accuracy.3

Sharrock suggested that the metaphor of military campaigning is less effective than the metaphor of a journey. It reinforces Bunyan’s tendency to reduce everything to black-and-white categories—as in Mr. Badman.4 In The Holy War we get something like the racial theory of inheritance of salvation held by the Muggletonians.

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