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John Bunyan

The Pilgrim’s Progress

Bunyan’s 1678 allegory of the Christian life as a journey — Christian leaving the City of Destruction and travelling, through the Slough of Despond, Vanity Fair, and the Valley of the Shadow, to the Celestial City. Public domain and readable free in full, in the browser or as a download.

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Why this is listed

The book most likely to reshape how a new reader pictures the Christian life, and it costs nothing because the copyright lapsed centuries ago. The seventeenth-century English takes a chapter to settle into; a modernized edition is worth buying if the original slows you, but the free text is a real door in.

How to start

  1. Open ccel.org (opens an external site) and read what John Bunyan says about itself before you read anything else.
  2. Confirm the cost and level fit: free, introductory, over weeks.
  3. Note the tradition — Baptist. It will shape what you are taught, and that is worth knowing going in.
  4. Put the first session in your calendar now. The gap between reading about study and doing it is a calendar entry.

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