At the very end of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Christian looks back from the Celestial City and sees a man called Ignorance approaching the gate.
Ignorance began to knock, supposing that entrance should have been quickly administered to him; but he was asked by the men that looked over the top of the gate: “Whence came you, and what would you have?” He answered: “I have eat and drank in the presence of the King, and he has taught in our streets.” Then they asked him for his certificate, that they might go in and show it to the King; so he fumbled in his bosom for one, and found none.
Since there was nothing to be found “in his bosom,” two angels are commanded to “go out and take Ignorance, and bind him hand and foot, and have him away.” With this, Christian learns the parting lesson of the book: “I saw that there was a way to hell, even from the gates of heaven.”
