Pilgrim's Progress §34: It is not the pleasure of the King that this place should remain so bad.
Source: John Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress (1678) (§34) · external_aligned
It is not the pleasure of the King that this place should remain so bad. His labourers also have, by the direction of His Majesty's surveyors, been for above these sixteen hundred years employed about this patch of ground, if perhaps it might have been mended: yea, and to my knowledge, said he, here have been swallowed up at least twenty thousand cart-loads, yea, millions of wholesome instructions, that have at all seasons been brought from all places of the King's dominions, and they that can tell, say they are the best materials to make good ground of the place; if so be, it might have been mended, but it is the Slough of Despond still, and so will be when they have done what they can.
Witnesses (Deuteronomy 19:15)
- manuscript_tradition: First edition Nathaniel Ponder, London 1678 — original imprint
- critical_edition: Oxford World's Classics — Roger Sharrock, 1960/1984
- republication: Project Gutenberg — Pilgrim's Progress
- republication: Internet Archive — multiple editions
- non_government_archive: Christian Classics Ethereal Library
- citation_tradition: Cited extensively by Spurgeon, Edwards, modern Reformed writers