Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

John Bunyan’s extraordinary spiritual autobiography

In an age when religious radicalism was regarded as socially subversive, Bunyan’s Grace Abounding describes the spiritual regeneration of one who came from ‘that rank that is meanest and most despised’. God and Satan are the chief protagonists in Bunyan’s drama: they exist not as theological concepts but as terrifyingly immediate adversaries in the competition for Bunyan’s soul. ‘What care I,’ says Satan to Bunyan, ‘though I be seven years in chilling your heart, if I can do it at last?’ Bunyan finds his spiritual defences not so much in God as in the Bible, and Grace Abounding charts his passionate and imaginative involvement with this ultimate source of spiritual wisdom.

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