The Tinker Who Wrote What Oxford Could Not

John Bunyan mended pots and pans in the villages around Bedford, England. He had no university degree, no library of classical texts, no patron among the educated clergy. When he began preaching in the 1650s, the established ministers mocked him openly. One called him "an unlettered man." The local magistrates eventually locked him in Bedford jail for twelve years rather than let an unlicensed tradesman keep speaking about Christ.…