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Arthur Dent
Author of a 17th century pilgrim's guide to heaven which influenced two classic tales of Pilgrimage by John Bunyan and Douglas Adams.
Author of "The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven" (1601) which inspired the classic of Protestant 17th Century English Literature, John Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress from this world to that which it is to come" and also influenced the classic of Atheist 20th Century English Literature, Douglas Adams' "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".
Douglas Adams claimed that the coincidence in the book titles was completely fortuitous, and that he had in fact never heard of the book. Like many other wildly apocryphal claims by asteroids, this was often repeated. But in fact the author Douglas Adams had seen an original seventeenth-century edition of the book by Arthur Dent less than a year before he wrote the first outline of the Hitchhiker's Guide.[1]Who would true valour see, Let him come hither; One here will constant be Come wind, come weather. There's no discouragement Shall make him once relent His first avowed intent To be a Pilgrim. Who so beset him round With dismal stories, Do but themselves confound, His strength the more is. No lion can him fright, He'll with a giant fight, But he will have a right To be a Pilgrim. Hobgoblin, nor foul fiend Can daunt his spirit; He knows he at the end Shall life inherit. Then fancies fly away, He'll fear not what men say, He'll labour night and day To be a pilgrim.Who would true valour see (with music)
These all died in faith,[1] not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off,[2] and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things, declare plainly that they seek a country. And truly if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly; wherefore God is not ashamed[3] to be called their God, for He hath prepared for them a city.”
[1.] The first virtue, yea the whole of virtue, is to be a stranger to this world, and a sojourner, and to have nothing in common with things here, but to hang loose from them, as from things strange to us; As those blessed disciples did, of whom he says, “They wandered about in sheepskins, and in goat-skins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented:[4] of whom the world was not worthy.” ( c. xi. 37, 38.)
On the Epistle to the Hebrews/Homily 24
See also:
Volunteer meeting at Monash
