The Miscellaneous Works of John Bunyan: The Miscellaneous Works of John Bunyan: Volume XII: 12 (Oxford English Texts) - Tapa dura

'Many of the introductions to the volumes of The Miscellaneous Works draw out the parallels between the major writings and the various religious tracts. The Bunyan of The Miscellaneous Works is very much a preacher and theologian. As a result of such work on Bunyan's sectarian milieu, Bunyan's relation to his context is coming into ever sharper focus. These beautifully bound and meticulously edited volumes are positive encouragements to the reader. It would be difficult to overpraise them.'Religious Studies Review, Volume 19, Number 1/January 1993

Bunyan died in August 1688 from a fever contracted while riding to London in heavy rain. He had made the journey to deliver the manuscript of his latest work, The Acceptable Sacrifice to the press, and to preach to a Dissenting congregation in Whitechapel. Perhaps surprisingly, in view of his enormous popularity as a writer, Bunyan left unpublished a considerable number of manuscripts. These eventually passed into the hands of his close friend and disciple, Charles Doe, a comb-maker from Southwark who, in 1692, published twelve of them, together with ten other works, in a folio volume.

Apart from The Acceptable Sacrifice and the Last Sermon, which are edited from first editions of 1689, texts of the other six works in the present volume are based on those in Doe's 1692 Folio. The most ambitious of these is a lengthy commentary on the first ten chapters of Genesis. No book of the Bible had attracted more attention from learned exegates, and the middle of the seventeenth century saw fierce controversies over its interpretation. Bunyan, though clearly aware of these great debates, seldom enters into them. Instead he offers a typological reading, enabling him to draw out the contemporary significance of the Genesis story for persecuted Dissenters.