Editing The Pilgrim's Progress (section)

=== Context in Christendom ===
''The Pilgrim's Progress'' was much more popular than its predecessors. Bunyan's plain style breathes life into the abstractions of the [[anthropomorphism|anthropomorphized]] temptations and abstractions that Christian encounters and with whom he converses on his course to Heaven.{{According to whom|date=December 2021}} [[Samuel Johnson]] said that "this is the great merit of the book, that the most cultivated man cannot find anything to praise more highly, and the child knows nothing more amusing". Three years after its publication (1681), it was reprinted in [[Thirteen Colonies|colonial America]], and was widely read in the [[Puritan]] colonies. The book was often divided into smaller parts or individual episodes that could be made into individual sermons, postcards, or wall charts. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Religious Tract Society produced the book into Sunday School prize editions and cheap abridgments. There were also Bunyan inspired jigsaw puzzles, and some followers crafted their landscapes in Bunyan theme parks.<ref name=":0" />

Because of its English Protestant theology, ''The Pilgrim's Progress'' shares the then-popular English antipathy toward the [[Catholic Church]]. It was published over the years of the [[Popish Plot]] (1678–1681) and ten years before the [[Glorious Revolution]] of 1688, and it shows the influence of [[John Foxe]]'s ''[[Foxe's Book of Martyrs|Acts and Monuments]]''. Bunyan presents a decrepit and harmless giant to confront Christian at the end of the Valley of the Shadow of Death that is explicitly named "Pope":<blockquote>Now I saw in my Dream, that at the end of this Valley lay blood, bones, ashes, and mangled bodies of men, even of Pilgrims that had gone this way formerly: And while I was musing what should be the reason, I espied a little before me a Cave, where two Giants, ''Pope'' and ''Pagan'', dwelt in old times, by whose Power and Tyranny the Men whose bones, blood ashes, &c. lay there, were cruelly put to death. But by this place ''Christian'' went without much danger, whereat I somewhat wondered; but I have learnt since, that ''Pagan'' has been dead many a day; and as for the other, though he be yet alive, he is by reason of age, and also of the many shrewd brushes that he met with in his younger dayes, grown so crazy and stiff in his joynts, that he can now do little more than sit in his Caves mouth, grinning at Pilgrims as they go by, and biting his nails, because he cannot come at them.<ref>Bunyan, ''The Pilgrim's Progress'', ed. Owens (2003), 66, 299.</ref></blockquote>

When Christian and Faithful travel through Vanity Fair, Bunyan adds the editorial comment:<blockquote>But as in other ''fairs'', some one Commodity is as the chief of all the ''fair'', so the Ware of ''[[Romanism|Rome]]'' and her Merchandize is greatly promoted in ''this fair'': Only our ''English'' Nation, with some others, have taken a dislike thereat.<ref>Bunyan, ''The Pilgrim's Progress'', ed. Owens (2003), pp. 86, 301.</ref></blockquote>

In the Second Part, while Christiana and her group of pilgrims led by Greatheart stay for some time in Vanity, the city is terrorized by a seven-headed beast<ref>[[s:Bible (American Standard)/Revelation#Chapter 17|Revelation 17:1–18]].</ref> which is driven away by Greatheart and other stalwarts.<ref>Bunyan, ''The Pilgrim's Progress'', ed. Owens (2003), pp. 258–259.</ref> In his endnotes, W. R. Owens notes about the woman that governs the beast: "This woman was believed by Protestants to represent Antichrist, the Church of Rome. In a posthumously published treatise, ''Of Antichrist, and his Ruine'' (1692), Bunyan gave an extended account of the rise and (shortly expected) fall of Antichrist."<ref>Bunyan, ''The Pilgrim's Progress'', ed. Owens (2003), 318: See ''Misc. Works'', xiii. 421–504.</ref>