Imposed risk, opposition

Literature is abundant on the opposition people have to risks they believe to be imposed on them. For some safety practitioners, their resistance to the acceptable risk concept derives from their view that imposed risks are objectionable and are to be rebelled against. Conversely, they accept the risks of activities in which they choose to engage—for example, skiing, bicycle riding, driving an automobile. 

Bunyan s works, like those of other Puritan authors, are hence to be read as oppositional texts produced at considerable risk to all involved. Nonconformist publishing was a collaborative enterprise requiring from printers, booksellers and other tradesmen a shared commitment with the author to challenge and outwit the agents of the state. These networks operating in Restoration London in defiance of the authorities included the publishers of Bunyan s works. It is perhaps small wonder that no bookseller risked public association with Bunyan s I Will Pray With the Spirit (1662 ) the imprint of this defiant rejection of the restored episcopal national church and of set forms of worship just when these were being re-imposed by the Act... 

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