{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_1037/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_1037","id":"gutenberg_1037","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1037","summary":null,"tags":["Authors, English -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- Biography","Bunyan, John, 1628-1688","Category: Biographies","Category: History - British","Category: History - Early Modern (c. 1450-1750)","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Puritans -- England -- Clergy -- Biography"],"text":"Transcribed from the 1888 Walter Scott edition by David Price, email\nccx074@coventry.ac.uk\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE LIFE OF JOHN BUNYAN\nby Edmund Venables, M.A.\n\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\n\nJohn Bunyan, the author of the book which has probably passed through\nmore editions, had a greater number of readers, and been translated into\nmore languages than any other book in the English tongue, was born in the\nparish of Elstow, in Bedfordshire, in the latter part of the year 1628,\nand was baptized in the parish church of the village on the last day of\nNovember of that year.\n\nThe year of John Bunyan's birth was a momentous one both for the nation\nand for the Church of England.  Charles I., by the extorted assent to the\nPetition of Right, had begun reluctantly to strip himself of the\nirresponsible authority he had claimed, and had taken the first step in\nthe struggle between King and Parliament which ended in the House of\nCommons seating itself in the place of the Sovereign.  Wentworth (better\nknown as Lord Strafford) had finally left the Commons, baffled in his\nnobly-conceived but vain hope of reconciling the monarch and his people,\nand having accepted a peerage and the promise of the Presidency of the\nCouncil of the North, was foreshadowing his policy of \"Thorough,\" which\nwas destined to bring both his own head and that of his weak master to\nthe block.  The Remonstrance of Parliament against the toleration of\nRoman Catholics and the growth of Arminianism, had been presented to the\nindignant king, who, wilfully blinded, had replied to it by the promotion\nto high and lucrative posts in the Church of the very men against whom it\nwas chiefly directed.  The most outrageous upholders of the royal\nprerogative and the irresponsible power of the sovereign, Montagu and\nMainwaring, had been presented, the one to the see of Chichester, the\nother--the impeached and condemned of the Commons--to the rich living\nMontagu's consecration had vacated.  Montaigne, the licenser of\nMainwaring's incriminated sermon, was raised to the Archbishopric of\nYork, while Neile and Laud, who were openly named in the Remonstrance as\nthe \"troublers of the English Israel,\" were rewarded respectively with\nthe rich see of Durham and the important and deeply-dyed Puritan diocese\nof London.  Charles was steadily sowing the wind, and destined to reap\nthe whirlwind which was to sweep him from his throne, and involve the\nmonarchy and the Church in the same overthrow.  Three months before\nBunyan's birth Buckingham, on the eve of his departure for the\nbeleaguered and famine-stricken city of Rochelle, sanguinely hoping to\nconclude a peace with the French king beneath its walls, had been struck\ndown by the knife of a fanatic, to the undisguised joy of the majority of\nthe nation, bequeathing a legacy of failure and disgrace in the fall of\nthe Protestant stronghold on which the eyes of Europe had been so long\nanxiously fixed.\n\nThe year was closing gloomily, with ominous forecasts of the coming\nhurricane, when the babe who was destined to leave so imperishable a name\nin English literature, first saw the light in an humble cottage in an\nobscure Bedfordshire village.  His father, Thomas Bunyan, though styling\nhimself in his will by the more dignified title of \"brazier,\" was more\nproperly what is known as a \"tinker\"; \"a mender of pots and kettles,\"\naccording to Bunyan's contemporary biographer, Charles Doe.  He was not,\nhowever, a mere tramp or vagrant, as travelling tinkers were and usually\nare still, much less a disreputable sot, a counterpart of Shakespeare's\nChristopher Sly, but a man with a recognized calling, having a settled\nhome and an acknowledged position in the village community of Elstow.  The\nfamily was of long standing there, but had for some generations been\ngoing down in the world.  Bunyan's grandfather, Thomas Bunyan, as we\nlearn from his still extant will, carried on the occupation of a \"petty\nchapman,\" or small retail dealer, in his own freehold cottage, which he\nbequeathed, \"with its appurtenances,\" to his second wife, Ann, to\ndescend, after her death, to her stepson, his namesake, Thomas, and her\nown son Edward, in equal shares.  This cottage, which was probably John\nBunyan's birthplace, persistent tradition, confirmed by the testimony of\nlocal names, warrants us in placing near the hamlet of Harrowden, a mile\nto the east of the village of Elstow, at a place long called \"Bunyan's\nEnd,\" where two fields are still called by the name of \"Bunyans\" and\n\"Further Bunyans.\"  This small freehold appears to have been all that\nremained, at the death of John Bunyan's grandfather, of a property once\nconsiderable enough to have given the name of its possessor to the whole\nlocality.\n\nThe family of Buingnon, Bunyun, Buniun, Boynon, Bonyon, or Binyan (the\nname is found spelt in no fewer than thirty-four different ways, of which\nthe now-established form, Bunyan, is almost the least frequent) is one\nthat had established itself in Bedfordshire from very early times.  The\nfirst place in connection with which the name appears is Pulloxhill,\nabout nine miles from Elstow.  In 1199, the year of King John's\naccession, the Bunyans had approached still nearer to that parish.  One\nWilliam Bunion held land at Wilstead, not more than a mile off.  In 1327,\nthe first year of Edward III., one of the same name, probably his\ndescendant, William Boynon, is found actually living at Harrowden, close\nto the spot which popular tradition names as John Bunyan's birthplace,\nand was the owner of property there.  We have no further notices of the\nBunyans of Elstow till the sixteenth century.  We then find them greatly\nfallen.  Their ancestral property seems little by little to have passed\ninto other hands, until in 1542 nothing was left but \"a messuage and\npightell {1} with the appurtenances, and nine acres of land.\"  This small\nresidue other entries on the Court Rolls show to have been still further\ndiminished by sale.  The field already referred to, known as \"Bonyon's\nEnd,\" was sold by \"Thomas Bonyon, of Elstow, labourer,\" son of William\nBonyon, the said Thomas and his wife being the keepers of a small\nroadside inn, at which their overcharges for their home-baked bread and\nhome-brewed beer were continually bringing them into trouble with the\npetty local courts of the day.  Thomas Bunyan, John Bunyan's father, was\nborn in the last days of Elizabeth, and was baptized February 24, 1603,\nexactly a month before the great queen passed away.  The mother of the\nimmortal Dreamer was one Margaret Bentley, who, like her husband, was a\nnative of Elstow and only a few months his junior.  The details of her\nmother's will, which is still extant, drawn up by the vicar of Elstow,\nprove that, like her husband, she did not, in the words of Bunyan's\nlatest and most complete biographer, the Rev. Dr. Brown, \"come of the\nvery squalid poor, but of people who, though humble in station, were yet\ndecent and worthy in their ways.\"  John Bunyan's mother was his father's\nsecond wife.  The Bunyans were given to marrying early, and speedily\nconsoled themselves on the loss of one wife with the companionship of a\nsuccessor.  Bunyan's grandmother cannot have died before February 24,\n1603, the date of his father's baptism.  But before the year was out his\ngrandfather had married again.  His father, too, had not completed his\ntwentieth year when he married his first wife, Anne Pinney, January 10,\n1623.  She died in 1627, apparently without any surviving children, and\nbefore the year was half-way through, on the 23rd of the following May,\nhe was married a second time to Margaret Bentley.  At the end of\nseventeen years Thomas Bunyan was again left a widower, and within two\nmonths, with grossly indecent haste, he filled the vacant place with a\nthird wife.  Bunyan himself cannot have been much more than twenty when\nhe married.  We have no particulars of the death of his first wife.  But\nhe had been married two years to his noble-minded second wife at the time\nof the assizes in 1661, and the ages of his children by his first wife\nwould indicate that no long interval elapsed between his being left a\nwidower and his second marriage.\n\nElstow, which, as the birthplace of the author of \"The Pilgrim's\nProgress,\" has gained a world-wide celebrity, is a quiet little village,\nwhich, though not much more than a mile from the populous and busy town\nof Bedford, yet, lying aside from the main stream of modern life,\npreserves its old-world look to an unusual degree.  Its name in its\noriginal form of \"Helen-stow,\" or \"Ellen-stow,\" the _stow_ or stockaded\nplace of St. Helena, is derived from a Benedictine nunnery founded in\n1078 by Judith, niece of William the Conqueror, the traitorous wife of\nthe judicially murdered Waltheof, Earl of Huntingdon, in honour of the\nmother of the Emperor Constantine.  The parish church, so intimately\nconnected with Bunyan's personal history, is a fragment of the church of\nthe nunnery, with a detached campanile, or \"steeple-house,\" built to\ncontain the bells after the destruction of the central tower and choir of\nthe conventual church.  Few villages are so little modernized as Elstow.\nThe old half-timbered cottages with overhanging storeys, peaked dormers,\nand gabled porches, tapestried with roses and honeysuckles, must be much\nwhat they were in Bunyan's days.  A village street, with detached\ncottages standing in gardens gay with the homely flowers John Bunyan knew\nand loved, leads to the village green, fringed with churchyard elms, in\nthe middle of which is the pedestal or stump of the market-cross, and at\nthe upper end of the old \"Moot Hall,\" a quaint brick and timber building,\nwith a projecting upper storey, a good example of the domestic\narchitecture of the fifteenth century, originally, perhaps, the Guesten-\nHall of the adjacent nunnery, and afterwards the Court House of the manor\nwhen lay-lords had succeeded the abbesses--\"the scene,\" writes Dr. Brown\n\"of village festivities, statute hirings, and all the public occasions of\nvillage life.\"  The whole spot and its surroundings can be but little\naltered from the time when our hero was the ringleader of the youth of\nthe place in the dances on the greensward, which he tells us he found it\nso hard to give up, and in \"tip-cat,\" and the other innocent games which\nhis diseased conscience afterwards regarded as \"ungodly practices.\"  One\nmay almost see the hole from which he was going to strike his \"cat\" that\nmemorable Sunday afternoon when he silenced the inward voice which\nrebuked him for his sins, and \"returned desperately to his sport again.\"\nOn the south side of the green, as we have said, stands the church, a\nfine though somewhat rude fragment of the chapel of the nunnery curtailed\nat both ends, of Norman and Early English date, which, with its detached\nbell tower, was the scene of some of the fierce spiritual conflicts so\nvividly depicted by Bunyan in his \"Grace Abounding.\"  On entering every\nobject speaks of Bunyan.  The pulpit--if it has survived the recent\nrestoration--is the same from which Christopher Hall, the then \"Parson\"\nof Elstow, preached the sermon which first awoke his sleeping conscience.\nThe font is that in which he was baptized, as were also his father and\nmother and remoter progenitors, as well as his children, Mary, his dearly-\nloved blind child, on July 20, 1650, and her younger sister, Elizabeth,\non April 14, 1654.  An old oaken bench, polished by the hands of\nthousands of visitors attracted to the village church by the fame of the\ntinker of Elstow, is traditionally shown as the seat he used to occupy\nwhen he \"went to church twice a day, and that, too, with the foremost\ncounting all things holy that were therein contained.\"  The five bells\nwhich hang in the belfry are the same in which Bunyan so much delighted,\nthe fourth bell, tradition says, being that he was used to ring.  The\nrough flagged floor, \"all worn and broken with the hobnailed boots of\ngenerations of ringers,\" remains undisturbed.  One cannot see the door,\nset in its solid masonry, without recalling the figure of Bunyan standing\nin it, after conscience, \"beginning to be tender,\" told him that \"such\npractice was but vain,\" but yet unable to deny himself the pleasure of\nseeing others ring, hoping that, \"if a bell should fall,\" he could \"slip\nout\" safely \"behind the thick walls,\" and so \"be preserved\nnotwithstanding.\"  Behind the church, on the south side, stand some\npicturesque ivy-clad remains of the once stately mansion of the\nHillersdons, erected on the site of the nunnery buildings in the early\npart of the seventeenth century, with a porch attributed to Inigo Jones,\nwhich may have given Bunyan the first idea of \"the very stately Palace,\nthe name of which was Beautiful.\"\n\nThe cottage where Bunyan was born, between the two brooks in the fields\nat Harrowden, has been so long destroyed that even the knowledge of its\nsite has passed away.  That in which he lived for six years (1649-1655)\nafter his first marriage, and where his children were born, is still\nstanding in the village street, but modern reparations have robbed it of\nall interest.\n\nFrom this description of the surroundings among which Bunyan passed the\nearliest and most impressionable years of his life, we pass to the\nsubject of our biography himself.  The notion that Bunyan was of gipsy\ndescent, which was not entirely rejected by Sir Walter Scott, and which\nhas more recently received elaborate support from writers on the other\nside of the Atlantic, may be pronounced absolutely baseless.  Even if\nBunyan's inquiry of his father \"whether the family was of Israelitish\ndescent or no,\" which has been so strangely pressed into the service of\nthe theory, could be supposed to have anything to do with the matter, the\ndecided negative with which his question was met--\"he told me, 'No, we\nwere not'\"--would, one would have thought, have settled the point.  But\nsome fictions die hard.  However low the family had sunk, so that in his\nown words, \"his father's house was of that rank that is meanest and most\ndespised of all the families in the land,\" \"of a low and inconsiderable\ngeneration,\" the name, as we have seen, was one of long standing in\nBunyan's native county, and had once taken far higher rank in it.  And\nhis parents, though poor, were evidently worthy people, of good repute\namong their village neighbours.  Bunyan seems to be describing his own\nfather and his wandering life when he speaks of \"an honest poor labouring\nman, who, like Adam unparadised, had all the world to get his bread in,\nand was very careful to maintain his family.\"  He and his wife were also\ncareful with a higher care that their children should be properly\neducated.  \"Notwithstanding the meanness and inconsiderableness of my\nparents,\" writes Bunyan, \"it pleased God to put it into their hearts to\nput me to school, to learn both to read and write.\"  If we accept the\nevidence of the \"Scriptural Poems,\" published for the first time twelve\nyears after his death, the genuineness of which, though questioned by Dr.\nBrown, there seems no sufficient reason to doubt, the little education he\nhad was \"gained in a grammar school.\"  This would have been that founded\nby Sir William Harpur in Queen Mary's reign in the neighbouring town of\nBedford.  Thither we may picture the little lad trudging day by day along\nthe mile and a half of footpath and road from his father's cottage by the\nbrookside, often, no doubt, wet and miry enough, not, as he says, to \"go\nto school to Aristotle or Plato,\" but to be taught \"according to the rate\nof other poor men's children.\"  The Bedford schoolmaster about this time,\nWilliam Barnes by name, was a negligent sot, charged with \"night-walking\"\nand haunting \"taverns and alehouses,\" and other evil practices, as well\nas with treating the poor boys \"when present\" with a cruelty which must\nhave made them wish that his absences, long as they were, had been more\nprotracted.  Whether this man was his master or no, it was little that\nBunyan learnt at school, and that little he confesses with shame he soon\nlost \"almost utterly.\"  He was before long called home to help his father\nat the Harrowden forge, where he says he was \"brought up in a very mean\ncondition among a company of poor countrymen.\"  Here, with but little to\nelevate or refine his character, the boy contracted many bad habits, and\ngrew up what Coleridge somewhat too strongly calls \"a bitter blackguard.\"\nAccording to his own remorseful confession, he was \"filled with all\nunrighteousness,\" having \"from a child\" in his \"tender years,\" \"but few\nequals both for cursing, swearing, lying and blaspheming the holy name of\nGod.\"  Sins of this kind he declares became \"a second nature to him;\" he\n\"delighted in all transgression against the law of God,\" and as he\nadvanced in his teens he became a \"notorious sinbreeder,\" the \"very\nringleader,\" he says, of the village lads \"in all manner of vice and\nungodliness.\"  But the unsparing condemnation passed by Bunyan, after his\nconversion, on his former self, must not mislead us into supposing him\never, either as boy or man, to have lived a vicious life.  \"The\nwickedness of the tinker,\" writes Southey, \"has been greatly overrated,\nand it is taking the language of self-accusation too literally to\npronounce of John Bunyan that he was at any time depraved.\"  The justice\nof this verdict of acquittal is fully accepted by Coleridge.  \"Bunyan,\"\nhe says, \"was never in our received sense of the word 'wicked.'  He was\nchaste, sober, and honest.\"  He hints at youthful escapades, such,\nperhaps, as orchard-robbing, or when a little older, poaching, and the\nlike, which might have brought him under \"the stroke of the laws,\" and\nput him to \"open shame before the face of the world.\"  But he confesses\nto no crime or profligate habit.  We have no reason to suppose that he\nwas ever drunk, and we have his own most solemn declaration that he was\nnever guilty of an act of unchastity.  \"In our days,\" to quote Mr.\nFroude, \"a rough tinker who could say as much for himself after he had\ngrown to manhood, would be regarded as a model of self-restraint.  If in\nBedford and the neighbourhood there was no young man more vicious than\nBunyan, the moral standard of an English town in the seventeenth century\nmust have been higher than believers in progress will be pleased to\nallow.\"  How then, it may be asked, are we to explain the passionate\nlanguage in which he expresses his self-abhorrence, which would hardly\nseem exaggerated in the mouth of the most profligate and licentious?  We\nare confident that Bunyan meant what he said.  So intensely honest a\nnature could not allow his words to go beyond his convictions.  When he\nspeaks of \"letting loose the reins to his lusts,\" and sinning \"with the\ngreatest delight and ease,\" we know that however exaggerated they may\nappear to us, his expressions did not seem to him overstrained.  Dr.\nJohnson marvelled that St. Paul could call himself \"the chief of\nsinners,\" and expressed a doubt whether he did so honestly.  But a highly-\nstrung spiritual nature like that of the apostle, when suddenly called\ninto exercise after a period of carelessness, takes a very different\nestimate of sin from that of the world, even the decent moral world, in\ngeneral.  It realizes its own offences, venial as they appear to others,\nas sins against infinite love--a love unto death--and in the light of the\nsacrifice on Calvary, recognizes the heinousness of its guilt, and while\nit doubts not, marvels that it can be pardoned.  The sinfulness of\nsin--more especially their own sin--is the intensest of all possible\nrealities to them.  No language is too strong to describe it.  We may not\nunreasonably ask whether this estimate, however exaggerated it may appear\nto those who are strangers to these spiritual experiences, is altogether\na mistaken one?\n\nThe spiritual instinct was very early awakened in Bunyan.  While still a\nchild \"but nine or ten years old,\" he tells us he was racked with\nconvictions of sin, and haunted with religious fears.  He was scared with\n\"fearful dreams,\" and \"dreadful visions,\" and haunted in his sleep with\n\"apprehensions of devils and wicked spirits\" coming to carry him away,\nwhich made his bed a place of terrors.  The thought of the Day of\nJudgment and of the torments of the lost, often came as a dark cloud over\nhis mind in the midst of his boyish sports, and made him tremble.  But\nthough these fevered visions embittered his enjoyment while they lasted,\nthey were but transient, and after a while they entirely ceased \"as if\nthey had never been,\" and he gave himself up without restraint to the\nyouthful pleasures in which his ardent nature made him ever the\nringleader.  The \"thoughts of religion\" became very grievous to him.  He\ncould not endure even to see others read pious books; \"it would be as a\nprison to me.\"  The awful realities of eternity which had once been so\ncrushing to his spirit were \"both out of sight and mind.\"  He said to\nGod, \"depart from me.\"  According to the later morbid estimate which\nstigmatized as sinful what were little more than the wild acts of a\nroystering dare-devil young fellow, full of animal spirits and with an\nunusually active imagination, he \"could sin with the greatest delight and\nease, and take pleasure in the vileness of his companions.\"  But that the\nsense of religion was not wholly dead in him even then, and that while\ndiscarding its restraints he had an inward reverence for it, is shown by\nthe horror he experienced if those who had a reputation for godliness\ndishonoured their profession.  \"Once,\" he says, \"when I was at the height\nof my vanity, hearing one to swear who was reckoned for a religious man,\nit had so great a stroke upon my spirit that it made my heart to ache.\"\n\nThis undercurrent of religious feeling was deepened by providential\nescapes from accidents which threatened his life--\"judgments mixed with\nmercy\" he terms them,--which made him feel that he was not utterly\nforsaken of God.  Twice he narrowly escaped drowning; once in \"Bedford\nriver\"--the Ouse; once in \"a creek of the sea,\" his tinkering rounds\nhaving, perhaps, carried him as far northward as the tidal inlets of the\nWash in the neighbourhood of Spalding or Lynn, or to the estuaries of the\nStour and Orwell to the east.  At another time, in his wild contempt of\ndanger, he tore out, while his companions looked on with admiration, what\nhe mistakenly supposed to be an adder's sting.\n\nThese providential deliverances bring us to that incident in his brief\ncareer as a soldier which his anonymous biographer tells us \"made so deep\nan impression upon him that he would never mention it, which he often\ndid, without thanksgiving to God.\"  But for this occurrence, indeed, we\nshould have probably never known that he had ever served in the army at\nall.  The story is best told in his own provokingly brief words--\"When I\nwas a soldier I with others were drawn out to go to such a place to\nbesiege it.  But when I was just ready to go, one of the company desired\nto go in my room; to which when I consented, he took my place, and coming\nto the siege, as he stood sentinel, he was shot in the head with a musket\nbullet and died.\"  Here, as is so often the case in Bunyan's\nautobiography, we have reason to lament the complete absence of details.\nThis is characteristic of the man.  The religious import of the\noccurrences he records constituted their only value in his eyes; their\ntemporal setting, which imparts their chief interest to us, was of no\naccount to him.  He gives us not the slightest clue to the name of the\nbesieged place, or even to the side on which he was engaged.  The date of\nthe event is left equally vague.  The last point however we are able to\ndetermine with something like accuracy.  November, 1644, was the earliest\nperiod at which Bunyan could have entered the army, for it was not till\nthen that he reached the regulation age of sixteen.  Domestic\ncircumstances had then recently occurred which may have tended to\nestrange him from his home, and turn his thoughts to a military life.  In\nthe previous June his mother had died, her death being followed within a\nmonth by that of his sister Margaret.  Before another month was out, his\nfather, as we have already said, had married again, and whether the new\nwife had proved the proverbial _injusta noverca_ or not, his home must\nhave been sufficiently altered by the double, if we may not say triple,\ncalamity, to account for his leaving the dull monotony of his native\nvillage for the more stirring career of a soldier.  Which of the two\ncauses then distracting the nation claimed his adherence, Royalist or\nParliamentarian, can never be determined.  As Mr. Froude writes, \"He does\nnot tell us himself.  His friends in after life did not care to ask him\nor he to inform them, or else they thought the matter of too small\nimportance to be worth mentioning with exactness.\"  The only evidence is\ninternal, and the deductions from it vary with the estimate of the\ncounter-balancing probabilities taken by Bunyan's various biographers.\nLord Macaulay, whose conclusion is ably, and, we think, convincingly\nsupported by Dr. Brown, decides in favour of the side of the Parliament.\nMr. Froude, on the other hand, together with the painstaking Mr. Offor,\nholds that \"probability is on the side of his having been with the\nRoyalists.\"  Bedfordshire, however, was one of the \"Associated Counties\"\nfrom which the Parliamentary army drew its main strength, and it was shut\nin by a strong line of defence from any combination with the Royalist\narmy.  In 1643 the county had received an order requiring it to furnish\n\"able and armed men\" to the garrison at Newport Pagnel, which was then\nthe base of operations against the King in that part of England.  All\nprobability therefore points to John Bunyan, the lusty young tinker of\nElstow, the leader in all manly sports and adventurous enterprises among\nhis mates, and probably caring very little on what side he fought, having\nbeen drafted to Newport to serve under Sir Samuel Luke, of Cople, and\nother Parliamentary commanders.  The place of the siege he refers to is\nequally undeterminable.  A tradition current within a few years of\nBunyan's death, which Lord Macaulay rather rashly invests with the\ncertainty of fact, names Leicester.  The only direct evidence for this is\nthe statement of an anonymous biographer, who professes to have been a\npersonal friend of Bunyan's, that he was present at the siege of\nLeicester, in 1645, as a soldier in the Parliamentary army.  This\nstatement, however, is in direct defiance of Bunyan's own words.  For the\none thing certain in the matter is that wherever the siege may have been,\nBunyan was not at it.  He tells us plainly that he was \"drawn to go,\" and\nthat when he was just starting, he gave up his place to a comrade who\nwent in his room, and was shot through the head.  Bunyan's presence at\nthe siege of Leicester, which has been so often reported that it has\nalmost been regarded as an historical truth, must therefore take its\nplace among the baseless creations of a fertile fancy.\n\nBunyan's military career, wherever passed and under whatever standard,\nwas very short.  The civil war was drawing near the end of its first\nstage when he enlisted.  He had only been a soldier a few months when the\nbattle of Naseby, fatal to the royal cause, was fought, June 14, 1645.\nBristol was surrendered by Prince Rupert, Sept. 10th.  Three days later\nMontrose was totally defeated at Philiphaugh; and after a vain attempt to\nrelieve Chester, Charles shut himself up in Oxford.  The royal garrisons\nyielded in quick succession; in 1646 the armies on both sides were\ndisbanded, and the first act in the great national tragedy having come to\na close, Bunyan returned to Elstow, and resumed his tinker's work at the\npaternal forge.  His father, old Thomas Bunyan, it may here be mentioned,\nlived all through his famous son's twelve years' imprisonment, witnessed\nhis growing celebrity as a preacher and a writer, and died in the early\npart of 1676, just when John Bunyan was passing through his last brief\nperiod of durance, which was to give birth to the work which has made him\nimmortal.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II.\n\n\nIt cannot have been more than two or three years after Bunyan's return\nhome from his short experience of a soldier's life, that he took the step\nwhich, more than any other, influences a man's future career for good or\nfor evil.  The young tinker married.  With his characteristic disregard\nof all facts or dates but such as concern his spiritual history, Bunyan\ntells us nothing about the orphan girl he made his wife.  Where he found\nher, who her parents were, where they were married, even her christian\nname, were all deemed so many irrelevant details.  Indeed the fact of his\nmarriage would probably have been passed over altogether but for the\nimportant bearing it hid on his inner life.  His \"mercy,\" as he calls it,\n\"was to light upon a wife whose father was counted godly,\" and who,\nthough she brought him no marriage portion, so that they \"came together\nas poor as poor might be,\" as \"poor as howlets,\" to adopt his own simile,\n\"without so much household stuff as a dish or a spoon betwixt\" them, yet\nbrought with her to the Elstow cottage two religious books, which had\nbelonged to her father, and which he \"had left her when he died.\"  These\nbooks were \"The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven,\" the work of Arthur Dent,\nthe puritan incumbent of Shoebury, in Essex--\"wearisomely heavy and\ntheologically narrow,\" writes Dr. Brown--and \"The Practise of Piety,\" by\nDr. Lewis Bayley, Bishop of Bangor, and previously chaplain to Prince\nHenry, which enjoyed a wide reputation with puritans as well as with\nchurchmen.  Together with these books, the young wife brought the still\nmore powerful influence of a religious training, and the memory of a holy\nexample, often telling her young graceless husband \"what a godly man her\nfather was, and how he would reprove and correct vice both in his house\nand amongst his neighbours, and what a strict and holy life he lived in\nhis days both in word and deed.\"  Much as Bunyan tells us he had lost of\nthe \"little he had learnt\" at school, he had not lost it \"utterly.\"  He\nwas still able to read intelligently.  His wife's gentle influence\nprevailed on him to begin \"sometimes to read\" her father's legacy \"with\nher.\"  This must have been entirely new reading for Bunyan, and certainly\nat first not much to his taste.  What his favourite reading had been up\nto this time, his own nervous words tell us, \"Give me a ballad, a news-\nbook, George on Horseback, or Bevis of Southampton; give me some book\nthat teaches curious arts, that tells of old fables.\"  But as he and his\nyoung wife read these books together at their fireside, a higher taste\nwas gradually awakened in Bunyan's mind; \"some things\" in them he \"found\nsomewhat pleasing\" to him, and they \"begot\" within him \"some desires to\nreligion,\" producing a degree of outward reformation.  The spiritual\ninstinct was aroused.  He would be a godly man like his wife's father.  He\nbegan to \"go to church twice a day, and that too with the foremost.\"  Nor\nwas it a mere formal attendance, for when there he tells us he took his\npart with all outward devotion in the service, \"both singing and saying\nas others did; yet,\" as he penitently confesses, \"retaining his wicked\nlife,\" the wickedness of which, however, did not amount to more than a\nliking for the sports and games of the lads of the village, bell-ringing,\ndancing, and the like.  The prohibition of all liturgical forms issued in\n1645, the observance of which varied with the strictness or laxity of the\nlocal authorities, would not seem to have been put in force very rigidly\nat Elstow.  The vicar, Christopher Hall, was an Episcopalian, who, like\nBishop Sanderson, retained his benefice unchallenged all through the\nProtectorate, and held it some years after the Restoration and the\npassing of the Act of Uniformity.  He seems, like Sanderson, to have kept\nhimself within the letter of the law by making trifling variations in the\nPrayer Book formularies, consistent with a general conformity to the old\norder of the Church, \"without persisting to his own destruction in the\nusage of the entire liturgy.\"  The decent dignity of the ceremonial of\nhis parish church had a powerful effect on Bunyan's freshly awakened\nreligious susceptibility--a \"spirit of superstition\" he called it\nafterwards--and helped to its fuller development.  \"I adored,\" he says,\n\"with great devotion, even all things, both the High Place\"--altars then\nhad not been entirely broken down and levelled in Bedfordshire--\"Priest,\nClerk, Vestment, Service, and what else belonging to the church, counting\nall things holy that were therein contained, and especially the Priest\nand Clerk most happy, and without doubt greatly blessed because they were\nthe servants of God and were principal in the Holy Temple, to do His work\ntherein, . . . their name, their garb, and work, did so intoxicate and\nbewitch me.\"  If it is questionable whether the Act forbidding the use of\nthe Book of Common Prayer was strictly observed at Elstow, it is certain\nthat the prohibition of Sunday sports was not.  Bunyan's narrative shows\nthat the aspect of a village green in Bedfordshire during the\nProtectorate did not differ much from what Baxter tells us it had been in\nShropshire before the civil troubles began, where, \"after the Common\nPrayer had been read briefly, the rest of the day even till dark night\nalmost, except eating time, was spent in dancing under a maypole and a\ngreat tree, when all the town did meet together.\"  These Sunday sports\nproved the battle-ground of Bunyan's spiritual experience, the scene of\nthe fierce inward struggles which he has described so vividly, through\nwhich he ultimately reached the firm ground of solid peace and hope.  As\na high-spirited healthy athletic young fellow, all kinds of manly sports\nwere Bunyan's delight.  On week days his tinker's business, which he\nevidently pursued industriously, left him small leisure for such\namusements.  Sunday therefore was the day on which he \"did especially\nsolace himself\" with them.  He had yet to learn the identification of\ndiversions with \"all manner of vice.\"  The teaching came in this way.  One\nSunday, Vicar Hall preached a sermon on the sin of Sabbath-breaking, and\nlike many hearers before and since, he imagined that it was aimed\nexpressly at him.  Sermon ended, he went home \"with a great burden upon\nhis spirit,\" \"sermon-stricken\" and \"sermon sick\" as he expresses it\nelsewhere.  But his Sunday's dinner speedily drove away his\nself-condemning thoughts.  He \"shook the sermon out of his mind,\" and\nwent out to his sports with the Elstow lads on the village green, with as\n\"great delight\" as ever.  But in the midst of his game of tip-cat or\n\"sly,\" just as he had struck the \"cat\" from its hole, and was going to\ngive it a second blow--the minuteness of the detail shows the\nunforgetable reality of the crisis--he seemed to hear a voice from heaven\nasking him whether \"he would leave his sins and go to heaven, or keep his\nsins and go to hell.\"  He thought also that he saw Jesus Christ looking\ndown on him with threatening countenance.  But like his own Hopeful he\n\"shut his eyes against the light,\" and silenced the condemning voice with\nthe feeling that repentance was hopeless.  \"It was too late for him to\nlook after heaven; he was past pardon.\"  If his condemnation was already\nsealed and he was eternally lost, it would not matter whether he was\ncondemned for many sins or for few.  Heaven was gone already.  The only\nhappiness he could look for was what he could get out of his sins--his\nmorbidly sensitive conscience perversely identifying sports with sin--so\nhe returned desperately to his games, resolved, he says, to \"take my fill\nof sin, still studying what sin was yet to be committed that I might\ntaste the sweetness of it.\"\n\nThis desperate recklessness lasted with him \"about a month or more,\" till\n\"one day as he was standing at a neighbour's shop-window, cursing and\nswearing and playing the madman after his wonted manner, the woman of the\nhouse, though a very loose and ungodly wretch,\" rebuked him so severely\nas \"the ungodliest fellow for swearing that ever she heard, able to spoil\nall the youth in a whole town,\" that, self-convicted, he hung down his\nhead in silent shame, wishing himself a little child again that he might\nunlearn the wicked habit of which he thought it impossible to break\nhimself.  Hopeless as the effort seemed to him, it proved effectual.  He\ndid \"leave off his swearing\" to his own \"great wonder,\" and found that he\n\"could speak better and with more pleasantness\" than when he \"put an oath\nbefore and another behind, to give his words authority.\"  Thus was one\nstep in his reformation taken, and never retraced; but, he adds\nsorrowfully, \"all this while I knew not Jesus Christ, neither did I leave\nmy sports and plays.\"  We might be inclined to ask, why should he leave\nthem?  But indifferent and innocent in themselves, an overstrained\nspirituality had taught him to regard them as sinful.  To indulge in them\nwounded his morbidly sensitive conscience, and so they were sin to him.\n\nThe next step onward in this religious progress was the study of the\nBible, to which he was led by the conversation of a poor godly neighbour.\nNaturally he first betook himself to the historical books, which, he\ntells us, he read \"with great pleasure;\" but, like Baxter who, beginning\nhis Bible reading in the same course, writes, \"I neither understood nor\nrelished much the doctrinal part,\" he frankly confesses, \"Paul's Epistles\nand such like Scriptures I could not away with.\"  His Bible reading\nhelped forward the outward reformation he had begun.  He set the keeping\nthe Ten Commandments before him as his \"way to Heaven\"; much comforted\n\"sometimes\" when, as he thought, \"he kept them pretty well,\" but humbled\nin conscience when \"now and then he broke one.\"  \"But then,\" he says, \"I\nshould repent and say I was sorry for it, and promise God to do better\nnext time, and then get help again; for then I thought I pleased God as\nwell as any man in England.\"  His progress was slow, for each step\ninvolved a battle, but it was steadily onwards.  He had a very hard\nstruggle in relinquishing his favourite amusements.  But though he had\nmuch yet to learn, his feet were set on the upward way, and he had no\nmind to go back, great as the temptation often was.  He had once\ndelighted in bell-ringing, but \"his conscience beginning to be\ntender\"--morbid we should rather say--\"he thought such practise to be\nvain, and therefore forced himself to leave it.\"  But \"hankering after it\nstill,\" he continued to go while his old companions rang, and look on at\nwhat he \"durst not\" join in, until the fear that if he thus winked at\nwhat his conscience condemned, a bell, or even the tower itself, might\nfall and kill him, put a stop even to that compromise.  Dancing, which\nfrom his boyhood he had practised on the village green, or in the old\nMoot Hall, was still harder to give up.  \"It was a full year before I\ncould quite leave that.\"  But this too was at last renounced, and\nfinally.  The power of Bunyan's indomitable will was bracing itself for\nsevere trials yet to come.\n\nMeanwhile Bunyan's neighbours regarded with amazement the changed life of\nthe profane young tinker.  \"And truly,\" he honestly confesses, \"so they\nwell might for this my conversion was as great as for Tom of Bedlam to\nbecome a sober man.\"  Bunyan's reformation was soon the town's talk; he\nhad \"become godly,\" \"become a right honest man.\"  These commendations\nflattered is vanity, and he laid himself out for them.  He was then but a\n\"poor painted hypocrite,\" he says, \"proud of his godliness, and doing all\nhe did either to be seen of, or well spoken of by man.\"  This state of\nself-satisfaction, he tells us, lasted \"for about a twelvemonth or more.\"\nDuring this deceitful calm he says, \"I had great peace of conscience, and\nshould think with myself, 'God cannot choose but now be pleased with me,'\nyea, to relate it in mine own way, I thought no man in England could\nplease God better than I.\"  But no outward reformation can bring lasting\ninward peace.  When a man is honest with himself, the more earnestly he\nstruggles after complete obedience, the more faulty does his obedience\nappear.  The good opinion of others will not silence his own inward\ncondemnation.  He needs a higher righteousness than his own; a firmer\nstanding-ground than the shifting quicksand of his own good deeds.  \"All\nthis while,\" he writes, \"poor wretch as I was, I was ignorant of Jesus\nChrist, and going about to establish my own righteousness, and had\nperished therein had not God in mercy showed me more of my state by\nnature.\"\n\nThis revolution was nearer than he imagined.  Bunyan's self-satisfaction\nwas rudely shaken, and his need of something deeper in the way of\nreligion than he had yet experienced was shown him by the conversation of\nthree or four poor women whom, one day, when pursuing his tinker's\ncalling at Bedford, he came upon \"sitting at a door in the sun, and\ntalking of the things of God.\"  These women were members of the\ncongregation of \"the holy Mr. John Gifford,\" who, at that time of\necclesiastical confusion, subsequently became rector of St. John's\nChurch, in Bedford, and master of the hospital attached to it.  Gifford's\ncareer had been a strange one.  We hear of him first as a young major in\nthe king's army at the outset of the Civil War, notorious for his loose\nand debauched life, taken by Fairfax at Maidstone in 1648, and condemned\nto the gallows.  By his sister's help he eluded his keepers' vigilance,\nescaped from prison, and ultimately found his way to Bedford, where for a\ntime he practised as a physician, though without any change of his loose\nhabits.  The loss of a large sum of money at gaming awoke a disgust at\nhis dissolute life.  A few sentences of a pious book deepened the\nimpression.  He became a converted man, and joined himself to a handful\nof earnest Christians in Bedford, who becoming, in the language of the\nday, \"a church,\" he was appointed its first minister.  Gifford exercised\na deep and vital though narrow influence, leaving behind him at his\ndeath, in 1655, the character of a \"wise, tolerant, and truly Christian\nman.\"  The conversation of the poor women who were destined to exercise\nso momentous an influence on Bunyan's spiritual life, evidenced how\nthoroughly they had drunk in their pastor's teaching.  Bunyan himself was\nat this time a \"brisk talker in the matters of religion,\" such as he drew\nfrom the life in his own Talkative.  But the words of these poor women\nwere entirely beyond him.  They opened a new and blessed land to which he\nwas a complete stranger.  \"They spoke of their own wretchedness of heart,\nof their unbelief, of their miserable state by nature, of the new birth,\nand the work of God in their souls, and how the Lord refreshed them, and\nsupported them against the temptations of the Devil by His words and\npromises.\"  But what seems to have struck Bunyan the most forcibly was\nthe happiness which their religion shed in the hearts of these poor\nwomen.  Religion up to this time had been to him a system of rules and\nrestrictions.  Heaven was to be won by doing certain things and not doing\ncertain other things.  Of religion as a Divine life kindled in the soul,\nand flooding it with a joy which creates a heaven on earth, he had no\nconception.  Joy in believing was a new thing to him.  \"They spake as if\njoy did make them speak; they spake with such pleasantness of Scripture\nlanguage, and with such appearance of grace in all they said, that they\nwere to me as if they had found a new world,\" a veritable \"El Dorado,\"\nstored with the true riches.  Bunyan, as he says, after he had listened\nawhile and wondered at their words, left them and went about his work\nagain.  But their words went with him.  He could not get rid of them.  He\nsaw that though he thought himself a godly man, and his neighbours\nthought so too, he wanted the true tokens of godliness.  He was convinced\nthat godliness was the only true happiness, and he could not rest till he\nhad attained it.  So he made it his business to be going again and again\ninto the company of these good women.  He could not stay away, and the\nmore he talked with them the more uneasy he became--\"the more I\nquestioned my own condition.\"  The salvation of his soul became all in\nall to him.  His mind \"lay fixed on eternity like a horse-leech at the\nvein.\"  The Bible became precious to him.  He read it with new eyes, \"as\nI never did before.\"  \"I was indeed then never out of the Bible, either\nby reading or meditation.\"  The Epistles of St. Paul, which before he\n\"could not away with,\" were now \"sweet and pleasant\" to him.  He was\nstill \"crying out to God that he might know the truth and the way to\nHeaven and glory.\"  Having no one to guide him in his study of the most\ndifficult of all books, it is no wonder that he misinterpreted and\nmisapplied its words in a manner which went far to unsettle his brain.  He\nread that without faith he could not be saved, and though he did not\nclearly know what faith was, it became a question of supreme anxiety to\nhim to determine whether he had it or not.  If not, he was a castaway\nindeed, doomed to perish for ever.  So he determined to put it to the\ntest.  The Bible told him that faith, \"even as a grain of mustard seed,\"\nwould enable its possessor to work miracles.  So, as Mr. Froude says,\n\"not understanding Oriental metaphors,\" he thought he had here a simple\ntest which would at once solve the question.  One day as he was walking\nalong the miry road between Elstow and Bedford, which he had so often\npaced as a schoolboy, \"the temptation came hot upon him\" to put the\nmatter to the proof, by saying to the puddles that were in the horse-pads\n\"be dry,\" and to the dry places, \"be ye puddles.\"  He was just about to\nutter the words when a sudden thought stopped him.  Would it not be\nbetter just to go under the hedge and pray that God would enable him?\nThis pause saved him from a rash venture, which might have landed him in\ndespair.  For he concluded that if he tried after praying and nothing\ncame of it, it would prove that he had no faith, but was a castaway.\n\"Nay, thought I, if it be so, I will never try yet, but will stay a\nlittle longer.\"  \"Then,\" he continues, \"I was so tossed betwixt the Devil\nand my own ignorance, and so perplexed, especially at sometimes, that I\ncould not tell what to do.\"  At another time his mind, as the minds of\nthousands have been and will be to the end, was greatly harassed by the\ninsoluble problems of predestination and election.  The question was not\nnow whether he had faith, but \"whether he was one of the elect or not,\nand if not, what then?\"  \"He might as well leave off and strive no\nfurther.\"  And then the strange fancy occurred to him, that the good\npeople at Bedford whose acquaintance he had recently made, were all that\nGod meant to save in that part of the country, and that the day of grace\nwas past and gone for him; that he had overstood the time of mercy.  \"Oh\nthat he had turned sooner!\" was then his cry.  \"Oh that he had turned\nseven years before!  What a fool he had been to trifle away his time till\nhis soul and heaven were lost!\"  The text, \"compel them to come in, and\nyet there is room,\" came to his rescue when he was so harassed and faint\nthat he was \"scarce able to take one step more.\"  He found them \"sweet\nwords,\" for they showed him that there was \"place enough in heaven for\nhim,\" and he verily believed that when Christ spoke them He was thinking\nof him, and had them recorded to help him to overcome the vile fear that\nthere was no place left for him in His bosom.  But soon another fear\nsucceeded the former.  Was he truly called of Christ?  \"He called to them\nwhen He would, and they came to Him.\"  But they could not come unless He\ncalled them.  Had He called him?  Would He call him?  If He did how\ngladly would he run after Him.  But oh, he feared that He had no liking\nto him; that He would not call him.  True conversion was what he longed\nfor.  \"Could it have been gotten for gold,\" he said, \"what could I have\ngiven for it!  Had I a whole world, it had all gone ten thousand times\nover for this, that my soul might have been in a converted state.\"  All\nthose whom he thought to be truly converted were now lovely in his eyes.\n\"They shone, they walked like people that carried the broad seal of\nheaven about them.  Oh that he were like them, and shared in their goodly\nheritage!\"\n\nAbout this time Bunyan was greatly troubled, though at the same time\nencouraged in his endeavours after the blessedness he longed for so\nearnestly but could not yet attain to, by \"a dream or vision\" which\npresented itself to him, whether in his waking or sleeping hours he does\nnot tell us.  He fancied he saw his four Bedford friends refreshing\nthemselves on the sunny side of a high mountain while he was shivering\nwith dark and cold on the other side, parted from them by a high wall\nwith only one small gap in it, and that not found but after long\nsearching, and so strait and narrow withal that it needed long and\ndesperate efforts to force his way through.  At last he succeeded.\n\"Then,\" he says, \"I was exceeding glad, and went and sat down in the\nmidst of them, and so was comforted with the light and heat of their\nsun.\"\n\nBut this sunshine shone but in illusion, and soon gave place to the old\nsad questioning, which filled his soul with darkness.  Was he already\ncalled, or should he be called some day?  He would give worlds to know.\nWho could assure him?  At last some words of the prophet Joel (chap. iii,\n21) encouraged him to hope that if not converted already, the time might\ncome when he should be converted to Christ.  Despair began to give way to\nhopefulness.\n\nAt this crisis Bunyan took the step which he would have been wise if he\nhad taken long before.  He sought the sympathy and counsel of others.  He\nbegan to speak his mind to the poor people in Bedford whose words of\nreligious experiences had first revealed to him his true condition.  By\nthem he was introduced to their pastor, \"the godly Mr. Gifford,\" who\ninvited him to his house and gave him spiritual counsel.  He began to\nattend the meetings of his disciples.\n\nThe teaching he received here was but ill-suited for one of Bunyan's\nmorbid sensitiveness.  For it was based upon a constant introspection and\na scrupulous weighing of each word and action, with a torturing suspicion\nof its motive, which made a man's ever-varying spiritual feelings the\nstandard of his state before God, instead of leading him off from self to\nthe Saviour.  It is not, therefore, at all surprising that a considerable\nperiod intervened before, in the language of his school, \"he found\npeace.\"  This period, which seems to have embraced two or three years,\nwas marked by that tremendous inward struggle which he has described, \"as\nwith a pen of fire,\" in that marvellous piece of religious autobiography,\nwithout a counterpart except in \"The Confessions of St. Augustine,\" his\n\"Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners.\"  Bunyan's first experiences\nafter his introduction to Mr. Gifford and the inner circle of his\ndisciples were most discouraging.  What he heard of God's dealings with\ntheir souls showed him something of \"the vanity and inward wretchedness\nof his wicked heart,\" and at the same time roused all its hostility to\nGod's will.  \"It did work at that rate for wickedness as it never did\nbefore.\"  \"The Canaanites _would_ dwell in the land.\"  \"His heart\nhankered after every foolish vanity, and hung back both to and in every\nduty, as a clog on the leg of a bird to hinder her from flying.\"  He\nthought that he was growing \"worse and worse,\" and was \"further from\nconversion than ever before.\"  Though he longed to let Christ into his\nheart, \"his unbelief would, as it were, set its shoulder to the door to\nkeep Him out.\"\n\nYet all the while he was tormented with the most perverse scrupulosity of\nconscience.  \"As to the act of sinning, I never was more tender than now;\nI durst not take a pin or a stick, though but so big as a straw, for my\nconscience now was sore, and would smart at every twist.  I could not now\ntell how to speak my words, for fear I should misplace them.  Oh! how\ngingerly did I then go in all I did or said: I found myself in a miry\nbog, that shook if I did but stir, and was as those left both of God, and\nChrist, and the Spirit, and all good things.\"  All the misdoings of his\nearlier years rose up against him.  There they were, and he could not rid\nhimself of them.  He thought that no one could be so bad as he was; \"not\neven the Devil could be his equal: he was more loathsome in his own eyes\nthan a toad.\"  What then must God think of him?  Despair seized fast hold\nof him.  He thought he was \"forsaken of God and given up to the Devil,\nand to a reprobate mind.\"  Nor was this a transient fit of despondency.\n\"Thus,\" he writes, \"I continued a long while, even for some years\ntogether.\"\n\nThis is not the place minutely to pursue Bunyan's religious history\nthrough the sudden alternations of hopes and fears, the fierce\ntemptations, the torturing illusions, the strange perversions of isolated\nscraps of Bible language--texts torn from their context--the harassing\ndoubts as to the truth of Christianity, the depths of despair and the\nelevations of joy, which he has portrayed with his own inimitable graphic\npower.  It is a picture of fearful fascination that he draws.  \"A great\nstorm\" at one time comes down upon him, \"piece by piece,\" which \"handled\nhim twenty times worse than all he had met with before,\" while \"floods of\nblasphemies were poured upon his spirit,\" and would \"bolt out of his\nheart.\"  He felt himself driven to commit the unpardonable sin and\nblaspheme the Holy Ghost, \"whether he would or no.\"  \"No sin would serve\nbut that.\"  He was ready to \"clap his hand under his chin,\" to keep his\nmouth shut, or to leap head-foremost \"into some muckhill-hole,\" to\nprevent his uttering the fatal words.  At last he persuaded himself that\nhe had committed the sin, and a good but not overwise man, \"an ancient\nChristian,\" whom he consulted on his sad case, told him he thought so\ntoo, \"which was but cold comfort.\"  He thought himself possessed by the\ndevil, and compared himself to a child \"carried off under her apron by a\ngipsy.\"  \"Kick sometimes I did, and also shriek and cry, but yet I was as\nbound in the wings of the temptation, and the wind would carry me away.\"\nHe wished himself \"a dog or a toad,\" for they \"had no soul to be lost as\nhis was like to be;\" and again a hopeless callousness seemed to settle\nupon him.  \"If I would have given a thousand pounds for a tear I could\nnot shed one; no, nor sometimes scarce desire to shed one.\"  And yet he\nwas all the while bewailing this hardness of heart, in which he thought\nhimself singular.  \"This much sunk me.  I thought my condition was alone;\nbut how to get out of, or get rid of, these things I could not.\"  Again\nthe very ground of his faith was shaken.  \"Was the Bible true, or was it\nnot rather a fable and cunning story?\"  All thought \"their own religion\ntrue.  Might not the Turks have as good Scriptures to prove their Mahomet\nSaviour as Christians had for Christ?  What if all we believed in should\nbe but 'a think-so' too?\"  So powerful and so real were his illusions\nthat he had hard work to keep himself from praying to things about him,\nto \"a bush, a bull, a besom, or the like,\" or even to Satan himself.  He\nheard voices behind him crying out that Satan desired to have him, and\nthat \"so loud and plain that he would turn his head to see who was\ncalling him;\" when on his knees in prayer he fancied he felt the foul\nfiend pull his clothes from behind, bidding him \"break off, make haste;\nyou have prayed enough.\"\n\nThis \"horror of great darkness\" was not always upon him.  Bunyan had his\nintervals of \"sunshine-weather\" when Giant Despair's fits came on him,\nand the giant \"lost the use of his hand.\"  Texts of Scripture would give\nhim a \"sweet glance,\" and flood his soul with comfort.  But these\nintervals of happiness were but short-lived.  They were but \"hints,\ntouches, and short visits,\" sweet when present, but \"like Peter's sheet,\nsuddenly caught up again into heaven.\"  But, though transient, they\nhelped the burdened Pilgrim onward.  So vivid was the impression\nsometimes made, that years after he could specify the place where these\nbeams of sunlight fell on him--\"sitting in a neighbour's\nhouse,\"--\"travelling into the country,\"--as he was \"going home from\nsermon.\"  And the joy was real while it lasted.  The words of the\npreacher's text, \"Behold, thou art fair, my love,\" kindling his spirit,\nhe felt his \"heart filled with comfort and hope.\"  \"Now I could believe\nthat my sins would be forgiven.\"  He was almost beside himself with\necstasy.  \"I was now so taken with the love and mercy of God that I\nthought I could have spoken of it even to the very crows that sat upon\nthe ploughed lands before me, had they been capable to have understood\nme.\"  \"Surely,\" he cried with gladness, \"I will not forget this forty\nyears hence.\"  \"But, alas! within less than forty days I began to\nquestion all again.\"  It was the Valley of the Shadow of Death which\nBunyan, like his own Pilgrim, was travelling through.  But, as in his\nallegory, \"by and by the day broke,\" and \"the Lord did more fully and\ngraciously discover Himself unto him.\"  \"One day,\" he writes, \"as I was\nmusing on the wickedness and blasphemy of my heart, that scripture came\ninto my mind, 'He hath made peace by the Blood of His Cross.'  By which I\nwas made to see, both again and again and again that day, that God and my\nsoul were friends by this blood: Yea, I saw the justice of God and my\nsinful soul could embrace and kiss each other.  This was a good day to\nme.  I hope I shall not forget it.\"  At another time the \"glory and joy\"\nof a passage in the Hebrews (ii. 14-15) were \"so weighty\" that \"I was\nonce or twice ready to swoon as I sat, not with grief and trouble, but\nwith solid joy and peace.\"  \"But, oh! now how was my soul led on from\ntruth to truth by God; now had I evidence of my salvation from heaven,\nwith many golden seals thereon all banging in my sight, and I would long\nthat the last day were come, or that I were fourscore years old, that I\nmight die quickly that my soul might be at rest.\"\n\nAt this time he fell in with an old tattered copy of Luther's \"Commentary\non the Galatians,\" \"so old that it was ready to fall piece from piece if\nI did but turn it over.\"  As he read, to his amazement and thankfulness,\nhe found his own spiritual experience described.  \"It was as if his book\nhad been written out of my heart.\"  It greatly comforted him to find that\nhis condition was not, as he had thought, solitary, but that others had\nknown the same inward struggles.  \"Of all the books that ever he had\nseen,\" he deemed it \"most fit for a wounded conscience.\"  This book was\nalso the means of awakening an intense love for the Saviour.  \"Now I\nfound, as I thought, that I loved Christ dearly.  Oh, methought my soul\ncleaved unto Him, my affections cleaved unto Him; I felt love to Him as\nhot as fire.\"\n\nAnd very quickly, as he tells us, his \"love was tried to some purpose.\"\nHe became the victim of an extraordinary temptation--\"a freak of fancy,\"\nMr. Froude terms it--\"fancy resenting the minuteness with which he\nwatched his own emotions.\"  He had \"found Christ\" and felt Him \"most\nprecious to his soul.\"  He was now tempted to give Him up, \"to sell and\npart with this most blessed Christ, to exchange Him for the things of\nthis life; for anything.\"  Nor was this a mere passing, intermittent\ndelusion.  \"It lay upon me for the space of a year, and did follow me so\ncontinually that I was not rid of it one day in a month, no, not\nsometimes one hour in many days together, except when I was asleep.\"\nWherever he was, whatever he was doing day and night, in bed, at table,\nat work, a voice kept sounding in his ears, bidding him \"sell Christ\" for\nthis or that.  He could neither \"eat his food, stoop for a pin, chop a\nstick, or cast his eyes on anything\" but the hateful words were heard,\n\"not once only, but a hundred times over, as fast as a man could speak,\n'sell Him, sell Him, sell Him,'\" and, like his own Christian in the dark\nvalley, he could not determine whether they were suggestions of the\nWicked One, or came from his own heart.  The agony was so intense, while,\nfor hours together, he struggled with the temptation, that his whole body\nwas convulsed by it.  It was no metaphorical, but an actual, wrestling\nwith a tangible enemy.  He \"pushed and thrust with his hands and elbows,\"\nand kept still answering, as fast as the destroyer said \"sell Him,\" \"No,\nI will not, I will not, I will not! not for thousands, thousands,\nthousands of worlds!\" at least twenty times together.  But the fatal\nmoment at last came, and the weakened will yielded, against itself.  One\nmorning as he lay in his bed, the voice came again with redoubled force,\nand would not be silenced.  He fought against it as long as he could,\n\"even until I was almost out of breath,\" when \"without any conscious\naction of his will\" the suicidal words shaped themselves in his heart,\n\"Let Him go if He will.\"\n\nNow all was over.  He had spoken the words and they could not be\nrecalled.  Satan had \"won the battle,\" and \"as a bird that is shot from\nthe top of a tree, down fell he into great guilt and fearful despair.\"  He\nleft his bed, dressed, and went \"moping into the field,\" where for the\nnext two hours he was \"like a man bereft of life, and as one past all\nrecovery and bound to eternal punishment.\"  The most terrible examples in\nthe Bible came trooping before him.  He had sold his birthright like\nEsau.  He a betrayed his Master like Judas--\"I was ashamed that I should\nbe like such an ugly man as Judas.\"  There was no longer any place for\nrepentance.  He was past all recovery; shut up unto the judgment to come.\nHe dared hardly pray.  When he tried to do so, he was \"as with a tempest\ndriven away from God,\" while something within said, \"'Tis too late; I am\nlost; God hath let me fall.\"  The texts which once had comforted him gave\nhim no comfort now; or, if they did, it was but for a brief space.  \"About\nten or eleven o'clock one day, as I was walking under a hedge and\nbemoaning myself for this hard hap that such a thought should arise\nwithin me, suddenly this sentence bolted upon me, 'The blood of Christ\ncleanseth from all sin,'\" and gave me \"good encouragement.\"  But in two\nor three hours all was gone.  The terrible words concerning Esau's\nselling his birthright took possession of his mind, and \"held him down.\"\nThis \"stuck with him.\"  Though he \"sought it carefully with tears,\" there\nwas no restoration for him.  His agony received a terrible aggravation\nfrom a highly coloured narrative of the terrible death of Francis Spira,\nan Italian lawyer of the middle of the sixteenth century, who, having\nembraced the Protestant religion, was induced by worldly motives to\nreturn to the Roman Catholic Church, and died full of remorse and\ndespair, from which Bunyan afterwards drew the awful picture of \"the man\nin the Iron Cage\" at \"the Interpreter's house.\"  The reading of this book\nwas to his \"troubled spirit\" as \"salt when rubbed into a fresh wound,\"\n\"as knives and daggers in his soul.\"  We cannot wonder that his health\nbegan to give way under so protracted a struggle.  His naturally sturdy\nframe was \"shaken by a continual trembling.\"  He would \"wind and twine\nand shrink under his burden,\" the weight of which so crushed him that he\n\"could neither stand, nor go, nor lie, either at rest or quiet.\"  His\ndigestion became disordered, and a pain, \"as if his breastbone would have\nsplit asunder,\" made him fear that as he had been guilty of Judas' sin,\nso he was to perish by Judas' end, and \"burst asunder in the midst.\"  In\nthe trembling of his limbs he saw Cain's mark set upon him; God had\nmarked him out for his curse.  No one was ever so bad as he.  No one had\never sinned so flagrantly.  When he compared his sins with those of David\nand Solomon and Manasseh and others which had been pardoned, he found his\nsin so much exceeded theirs that he could have no hope of pardon.  Theirs,\n\"it was true, were great sins; sins of a bloody colour.  But none of them\nwere of the nature of his.  He had sold his Saviour.  His sin was point\nblank against Christ.\"  \"Oh, methought this sin was bigger than the sins\nof a country, of a kingdom, or of the whole world; not all of them\ntogether was able to equal mine; mine outwent them every one.\"\n\nIt would be wearisome to follow Bunyan through all the mazes of his self-\ntorturing illusions.  Fierce as the storm was, and long in its\nduration--for it was more than two years before the storm became a\ncalm--the waves, though he knew it not, in their fierce tossings which\nthreatened to drive his soul like a broken vessel headlong on the rocks\nof despair, were bearing him nearer and nearer to the \"haven where he\nwould be.\"  His vivid imagination, as we have seen, surrounded him with\naudible voices.  He had heard, as he thought, the tempter bidding him\n\"Sell Christ;\" now he thought he heard God \"with a great voice, as it\nwere, over his shoulder behind him,\" saying, \"Return unto Me, for I have\nredeemed thee;\" and though he felt that the voice mocked him, for he\ncould not return, there was \"no place of repentance\" for him, and fled\nfrom it, it still pursued him, \"holloaing after him, 'Return, return!'\"\nAnd return he did, but not all at once, or without many a fresh struggle.\nWith his usual graphic power he describes the zigzag path by which he\nmade his way.  His hot and cold fits alternated with fearful suddenness.\n\"As Esau beat him down, Christ raised him up.\"  \"His life hung in doubt,\nnot knowing which way he should tip.\"  More sensible evidence came.  \"One\nday,\" he tells us, \"as I walked to and fro in a good man's shop\"--we can\nhardly be wrong in placing it in Bedford--\"bemoaning myself for this hard\nhap of mine, for that I should commit so great a sin, greatly fearing\nthat I should not be pardoned, and ready to sink with fear, suddenly\nthere was as if there had rushed in at the window the noise of wind upon\nme, but very pleasant, and I heard a voice speaking, 'Did'st ever refuse\nto be justified by the Blood of Christ?'\"  Whether the voice were\nsupernatural or not, he was not, \"in twenty years' time,\" able to\ndetermine.  At the time he thought it was.  It was \"as if an angel had\ncome upon me.\"  \"It commanded a great calm upon me.  It persuaded me\nthere might be hope.\"  But this persuasion soon vanished.  \"In three or\nfour days I began to despair again.\"  He found it harder than ever to\npray.  The devil urged that God was weary of him; had been weary for\nyears past; that he wanted to get rid of him and his \"bawlings in his\nears,\" and therefore He had let him commit this particular sin that he\nmight be cut off altogether.  For such an one to pray was but to add sin\nto sin.  There was no hope for him.  Christ might indeed pity him and\nwish to help him; but He could not, for this sin was unpardonable.  He\nhad said \"let Him go if He will,\" and He had taken him at his word.\n\"Then,\" he says, \"I was always sinking whatever I did think or do.\"  Years\nafterwards he remembered how, in this time of hopelessness, having walked\none day, to a neighbouring town, wearied out with his misery, he sat down\non a settle in the street to ponder over his fearful state.  As he looked\nup, everything he saw seemed banded together for the destruction of so\nvile a sinner.  The \"sun grudged him its light, the very stones in the\nstreets and the tiles on the house-roofs seemed to bend themselves\nagainst him.\"  He burst forth with a grievous sigh, \"How can God comfort\nsuch a wretch as I?\"  Comfort was nearer than he imagined.  \"No sooner\nhad I said it, but this returned to me, as an echo doth answer a voice,\n'This sin is not unto death.'\"  This breathed fresh life into his soul.\nHe was \"as if he had been raised out of a grave.\"  \"It was a release to\nme from my former bonds, a shelter from my former storm.\"  But though the\nstorm was allayed it was by no means over.  He had to struggle hard to\nmaintain his ground.  \"Oh, how did Satan now lay about him for to bring\nme down again.  But he could by no means do it, for this sentence stood\nlike a millpost at my back.\"  But after two days the old despairing\nthoughts returned, \"nor could his faith retain the word.\"  A few hours,\nhowever, saw the return of his hopes.  As he was on his knees before\ngoing to bed, \"seeking the Lord with strong cries,\" a voice echoed his\nprayer, \"I have loved Thee with an everlasting love.\"  \"Now I went to bed\nat quiet, and when I awaked the next morning it was fresh upon my soul\nand I believed it.\"\n\nThese voices from heaven--whether real or not he could not tell, nor did\nhe much care, for they were real to him--were continually sounding in his\nears to help him out of the fresh crises of his spiritual disorder.  At\none time \"O man, great is thy faith,\" \"fastened on his heart as if one\nhad clapped him on the back.\"  At another, \"He is able,\" spoke suddenly\nand loudly within his heart; at another, that \"piece of a sentence,\" \"My\ngrace is sufficient,\" darted in upon him \"three times together,\" and he\nwas \"as though he had seen the Lord Jesus look down through the tiles\nupon him,\" and was sent mourning but rejoicing home.  But it was still\nwith him like an April sky.  At one time bright sunshine, at another\nlowering clouds.  The terrible words about Esau \"returned on him as\nbefore,\" and plunged him in darkness, and then again some good words, \"as\nit seemed writ in great letters,\" brought back the light of day.  But the\nsunshine began to last longer than before, and the clouds were less\nheavy.  The \"visage\" of the threatening texts was changed; \"they looked\nnot on him so grimly as before;\" \"that about Esau's birthright began to\nwax weak and withdraw and vanish.\"  \"Now remained only the hinder part of\nthe tempest.  The thunder was gone; only a few drops fell on him now and\nthen.\"\n\nThe long-expected deliverance was at hand.  As he was walking in the\nfields, still with some fears in his heart, the sentence fell upon his\nsoul, \"Thy righteousness is in heaven.\"  He looked up and \"saw with the\neyes of his soul our Saviour at God's right hand.\"  \"There, I say, was my\nrighteousness; so that wherever I was, or whatever I was a-doing, God\ncould not say of me, 'He wants my righteousness,' for that was just\nbefore Him.  Now did the chains fall off from my legs.  I was loosed from\nmy affliction and irons.  My temptations also fled away, so that from\nthat time those dreadful Scriptures left off to trouble me.  Oh methought\nChrist, Christ, there was nothing but Christ that was before mine eyes.  I\ncould look from myself to Him, and should reckon that all those graces of\nGod that now were green upon me, were yet but like those crack-groats,\nand fourpence-halfpennies that rich men carry in their purses, while\ntheir gold is in their trunks at home.  Oh, I saw my gold was in my trunk\nat home.  In Christ my Lord and Saviour.  Further the Lord did lead me\ninto the mystery of union with the Son of God.  His righteousness was\nmine, His merits mine, His victory also mine.  Now I could see myself in\nheaven and earth at once; in heaven by my Christ, by my Head, by my\nRighteousness and Life, though on earth by my body or person.  These\nblessed considerations were made to spangle in mine eyes.  Christ was my\nall; all my Wisdom, all my Righteousness, all my Sanctification, and all\nmy Redemption.\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III.\n\n\nThe Pilgrim, having now floundered through the Slough of Despond, passed\nthrough the Wicket Gate, climbed the Hill Difficulty, and got safe by the\nLions, entered the Palace Beautiful, and was \"had in to the family.\"  In\nplain words, Bunyan united himself to the little Christian brotherhood at\nBedford, of which the former loose-living royalist major, Mr. Gifford,\nwas the pastor, and was formally admitted into their society.  In Gifford\nwe recognize the prototype of the Evangelist of \"The Pilgrim's Progress,\"\nwhile the Prudence, Piety, and Charity of Bunyan's immortal narrative had\ntheir human representatives in devout female members of the congregation,\nknown in their little Bedford world as Sister Bosworth, Sister Munnes,\nand Sister Fenne, three of the poor women whose pleasant words on the\nthings of God, as they sat at a doorway in the sun, \"as if joy did make\nthem speak,\" had first opened Bunyan's eyes to his spiritual ignorance.\nHe was received into the church by baptism, which, according to his\nearliest biographer, Charles Doe \"the Struggler,\" was performed publicly\nby Mr. Gifford, in the river Ouse, the \"Bedford river\" into which Bunyan\ntells us he once fell out of a boat, and barely escaped drowning.  This\nwas about the year 1653.  The exact date is uncertain.  Bunyan never\nmentions his baptism himself, and the church books of Gifford's\ncongregation do not commence till May, 1656, the year after Gifford's\ndeath.  He was also admitted to the Holy Communion, which for want, as he\ndeemed, of due reverence in his first approach to it, became the occasion\nof a temporary revival of his old temptations.  While actually at the\nLord's Table he was \"forced to bend himself to pray\" to be kept from\nuttering blasphemies against the ordinance itself, and cursing his fellow\ncommunicants.  For three-quarters of a year he could \"never have rest or\nease\" from this shocking perversity.  The constant strain of beating off\nthis persistent temptation seriously affected his health.  \"Captain\nConsumption,\" who carried off his own \"Mr. Badman,\" threatened his life.\nBut his naturally robust constitution \"routed his forces,\" and brought\nhim through what at one time he anticipated would prove a fatal illness.\nAgain and again, during his period of indisposition, the Tempter took\nadvantage of his bodily weakness to ply him with his former despairing\nquestionings as to his spiritual state.  That seemed as bad as bad could\nbe.  \"Live he must not; die he dare not.\"  He was repeatedly near giving\nup all for lost.  But a few words of Scripture brought to his mind would\nrevive his drooping spirits, with a natural reaction on his physical\nhealth, and he became \"well both in body and mind at once.\"  \"My sickness\ndid presently vanish, and I walked comfortably in my work for God again.\"\nAt another time, after three or four days of deep dejection, some words\nfrom the Epistle to the Hebrews \"came bolting in upon him,\" and sealed\nhis sense of acceptance with an assurance he never afterwards entirely\nlost.  \"Then with joy I told my wife, 'Now I know, I know.'  That night\nwas a good night to me; I never had but few better.  I could scarce lie\nin my bed for joy and peace and triumph through Christ.\"\n\nDuring this time Bunyan, though a member of the Bedford congregation,\ncontinued to reside at Elstow, in the little thatched wayside tenement,\nwith its lean-to forge at one end, already mentioned, which is still\npointed out as \"Bunyan's Cottage.\"  There his two children, Mary, his\npassionately loved blind daughter, and Elizabeth were born; the one in\n1650, and the other in 1654.  It was probably in the next year, 1655,\nthat he finally quitted his native village and took up his residence in\nBedford, and became a deacon of the congregation.  About this time also\nhe must have lost the wife to whom he owed so much.  Bunyan does not\nmention the event, and our only knowledge of it is from the conversation\nof his second wife, Elizabeth, with Sir Matthew Hale.  He sustained also\nan even greater loss in the death of his friend and comrade, Mr. Gifford,\nwho died in September, 1655.  The latter was succeeded by a young man\nnamed John Burton, of very delicate health, who was taken by death from\nhis congregation, by whom he was much beloved, in September, 1660, four\nmonths after the restoration of the Monarchy and the Church.  Burton\nthoroughly appreciated Bunyan's gifts, and stood sponsor for him on the\npublication of his first printed work.  This was a momentous year for\nBunyan, for in it Dr. Brown has shown, by a \"comparison of dates,\" that\nwe may probably place the beginning of Bunyan's ministerial life.  Bunyan\nwas now in his twenty-seventh year, in the prime of his manly vigour,\nwith a vivid imagination, ready speech, minute textual knowledge of the\nBible, and an experience of temptation and the wiles of the evil one,\nsuch as few Christians of double his years have ever reached.  \"His gifts\ncould not long be hid.\"  The beginnings of that which was to prove the\ngreat work of his life were slender enough.  As Mr. Froude says, \"he was\nmodest, humble, shrinking.\"  The members of his congregation, recognizing\nthat he had \"the gift of utterance\" asked him to speak \"a word of\nexhortation\" to them.  The request scared him.  The most truly gifted are\nusually the least conscious of their gifts.  At first it did much \"dash\nand abash his spirit.\"  But after earnest entreaty he gave way, and made\none or two trials of his gift in private meetings, \"though with much\nweakness and infirmity.\"  The result proved the correctness of his\nbrethren's estimate.  The young tinker showed himself no common preacher.\nHis words came home with power to the souls of his hearers, who\n\"protested solemnly, as in the sight of God, that they were both affected\nand comforted by them, and gave thanks to the Father of mercies for the\ngrace bestowed on him.\"  After this, as the brethren went out on their\nitinerating rounds to the villages about, they began to ask Bunyan to\naccompany them, and though he \"durst not make use of his gift in an open\nway,\" he would sometimes, \"yet more privately still, speak a word of\nadmonition, with which his hearers professed their souls edified.\"  That\nhe had a real Divine call to the ministry became increasingly evident,\nboth to himself and to others.  His engagements of this kind multiplied.\nAn entry in the Church book records \"that Brother Bunyan being taken off\nby the preaching of the gospel\" from his duties as deacon, another member\nwas appointed in his room.  His appointment to the ministry was not long\ndelayed.  After \"some solemn prayer with fasting,\" he was \"called forth\nand appointed a preacher of the word,\" not, however, so much for the\nBedford congregation as for the neighbouring villages.  He did not\nhowever, like some, neglect his business, or forget to \"show piety at\nhome.\"  He still continued his craft as a tinker, and that with industry\nand success.  \"God,\" writes an early biographer, \"had increased his\nstores so that he lived in great credit among his neighbours.\"  He\nspeedily became famous as a preacher.  People \"came in by hundreds to\nhear the word, and that from all parts, though upon sundry and divers\naccounts,\"--\"some,\" as Southey writes, \"to marvel, and some perhaps to\nmock.\"  Curiosity to hear the once profane tinker preach was not one of\nthe least prevalent motives.  But his word proved a word of power to\nmany.  Those \"who came to scoff remained to pray.\"  \"I had not preached\nlong,\" he says, \"before some began to be touched and to be greatly\nafflicted in their minds.\"  His success humbled and amazed him, as it\nmust every true man who compares the work with the worker.  \"At first,\"\nhe says, \"I could not believe that God should speak by me to the heart of\nany man, still counting myself unworthy; and though I did put it from me\nthat they should be awakened by me, still they would confess it and\naffirm it before the saints of God.  They would also bless God for\nme--unworthy wretch that I am--and count me God's instrument that showed\nto them the way of salvation.\"  He preached wherever he found\nopportunity, in woods, in barns, on village greens, or even in churches.\nBut he liked best to preach \"in the darkest places of the country, where\npeople were the furthest off from profession,\" where he could give the\nfullest scope to \"the awakening and converting power\" he possessed.  His\nsuccess as a preacher might have tempted him to vanity.  But the\nconviction that he was but an instrument in the hand of a higher power\nkept it down.  He saw that if he had gifts and wanted grace he was but as\na \"tinkling cymbal.\"  \"What, thought I, shall I be proud because I am a\nsounding brass?  Is it so much to be a fiddle?\"  This thought was, \"as it\nwere, a maul on the head of the pride and vainglory\" which he found\n\"easily blown up at the applause and commendation of every unadvised\nchristian.\"  His experiences, like those of every public speaker,\nespecially the most eloquent, were very varied, even in the course of the\nsame sermon.  Sometimes, he tells us, he would begin \"with much\nclearness, evidence, and liberty of speech,\" but, before he had done, he\nfound himself \"so straitened in his speech before the people,\" that he\n\"scarce knew or remembered what he had been about,\" and felt \"as if his\nhead had been in a bag all the time of the exercise.\"  He feared that he\nwould not be able to \"speak sense to the hearers,\" or he would be \"seized\nwith such faintness and strengthlessness that his legs were hardly able\nto carry him to his place of preaching.\"  Old temptations too came back.\nBlasphemous thoughts formed themselves into words, which he had hard work\nto keep himself from uttering from the pulpit.  Or the tempter tried to\nsilence him by telling him that what he was going to say would condemn\nhimself, and he would go \"full of guilt and terror even to the pulpit\ndoor.\"  \"'What,' the devil would say, 'will you preach this?  Of this\nyour own soul is guilty.  Preach not of it at all, or if you do, yet so\nmince it as to make way for your own escape.'\"  All, however, was in\nvain.  Necessity was laid upon him.  \"Woe,\" he cried, \"is me, if I preach\nnot the gospel.\"  His heart was \"so wrapped up in the glory of this\nexcellent work, that he counted himself more blessed and honoured of God\nthan if he had made him emperor of the Christian world.\"  Bunyan was no\npreacher of vague generalities.  He knew that sermons miss their mark if\nthey hit no one.  Self-application is their object.  \"Wherefore,\" he\nsays, \"I laboured so to speak the word, as that the sin and person guilty\nmight be particularized by it.\"  And what he preached he knew and felt to\nbe true.  It was not what he read in books, but what he had himself\nexperienced.  Like Dante he had been in hell himself, and could speak as\none who knew its terrors, and could tell also of the blessedness of\ndeliverance by the person and work of Christ.  And this consciousness\ngave him confidence and courage in declaring his message.  It was \"as if\nan angel of God had stood at my back.\"  \"Oh it hath been with such power\nand heavenly evidence upon my own soul while I have been labouring to\nfasten it upon the conscience of others, that I could not be contented\nwith saying, 'I believe and am sure.'  Methought I was more than sure, if\nit be lawful so to express myself, that the things I asserted were true.\"\n\nBunyan, like all earnest workers for God, had his disappointments which\nwrung his heart.  He could be satisfied with nothing less than the\nconversion and sanctification of his hearers.  \"If I were fruitless, it\nmattered not who commanded me; but if I were fruitful, I cared not who\ndid condemn.\"  And the result of a sermon was often very different from\nwhat he anticipated: \"When I thought I had done no good, then I did the\nmost; and when I thought I should catch them, I fished for nothing.\"  \"A\nword cast in by-the-bye sometimes did more execution than all the Sermon\nbesides.\"  The tie between him and his spiritual children was very close.\nThe backsliding of any of his converts caused him the most extreme grief;\n\"it was more to me than if one of my own children were going to the\ngrave.  Nothing hath gone so near me as that, unless it was the fear of\nthe loss of the salvation of my own soul.\"\n\nA story, often repeated, but too characteristic to be omitted,\nillustrates the power of his preaching even in the early days of his\nministry.  \"Being to preach in a church in a country village in\nCambridgeshire\"--it was before the Restoration--\"and the public being\ngathered together in the churchyard, a Cambridge scholar, and none of the\nsoberest neither, inquired what the meaning of that concourse of people\nwas (it being a week-day); and being told that one Bunyan, a tinker, was\nto preach there, he gave a lad twopence to hold his horse, saying he was\nresolved to hear the tinker prate; and so he went into the church to hear\nhim.  But God met him there by His ministry, so that he came out much\nchanged; and would by his good will hear none but the tinker for a long\ntime after, he himself becoming a very eminent preacher in that country\nafterwards.\"  \"This story,\" continues the anonymous biographer, \"I know\nto be true, having many times discoursed with the man.\"  To the same ante-\nRestoration period, Dr. Brown also assigns the anecdote of Bunyan's\nencounter, on the road near Cambridge, with the university man who asked\nhim how he dared to preach not having the original Scriptures.  With\nready wit, Bunyan turned the tables on the scholar by asking whether he\nhad the actual originals, the copies written by the apostles and\nprophets.  The scholar replied, \"No,\" but they had what they believed to\nbe a true copy of the original.  \"And I,\" said Bunyan, \"believe the\nEnglish Bible to be a true copy, too.\"  \"Then away rid the scholar.\"\n\nThe fame of such a preacher, naturally, soon spread far and wide; all the\ncountryside flocked eagerly to hear him.  In some places, as at Meldreth\nin Cambridgeshire, and Yelden in his own county of Bedfordshire, the\npulpits of the parish churches were opened to him.  At Yelden, the\nRector, Dr. William Dell, the Puritan Master of Caius College, Cambridge,\nformerly Chaplain to the army under Fairfax, roused the indignation of\nhis orthodox parishioners by allowing him--\"one Bunyon of Bedford, a\ntinker,\" as he is ignominiously styled in the petition sent up to the\nHouse of Lords in 1660--to preach in his parish church on Christmas Day.\nBut, generally, the parochial clergy were his bitterest enemies.  \"When I\nfirst went to preach the word abroad,\" he writes, \"the Doctors and\npriests of the country did open wide against me.\"  Many were envious of\nhis success where they had so signally failed.  In the words of Mr. Henry\nDeane, when defending Bunyan against the attacks of Dr. T. Smith,\nProfessor of Arabic and Keeper of the University Library at Cambridge,\nwho had come upon Bunyan preaching in a barn at Toft, they were \"angry\nwith the tinker because he strove to mend souls as well as kettles and\npans,\" and proved himself more skilful in his craft than those who had\ngraduated at a university.  Envy is ever the mother of detraction.\nSlanders of the blackest dye against his moral character were freely\ncirculated, and as readily believed.  It was the common talk that he was\na thorough reprobate.  Nothing was too bad for him.  He was \"a witch, a\nJesuit, a highwayman, and the like.\"  It was reported that he had \"his\nmisses and his bastards; that he had two wives at once,\" &c.  Such\ncharges roused all the man in Bunyan.  Few passages in his writings show\nmore passion than that in \"Grace Abounding,\" in which he defends himself\nfrom the \"fools or knaves\" who were their authors.  He \"begs belief of no\nman, and if they believe him or disbelieve him it is all one to him.  But\nhe would have them know how utterly baseless their accusations are.\"  \"My\nfoes,\" he writes, \"have missed their mark in their open shooting at me.  I\nam not the man.  If all the fornicators and adulterers in England were\nhanged by the neck till they be dead, John Bunyan would be still alive.  I\nknow not whether there is such a thing as a woman breathing under the\ncopes of the whole heaven but by their apparel, their children, or by\ncommon fame, except my wife.\"  He calls not only men, but angels, nay,\neven God Himself, to bear testimony to his innocence in this respect.  But\nthough they were so absolutely baseless, nay, the rather because they\nwere so baseless, the grossness of these charges evidently stung Bunyan\nvery deeply.\n\nSo bitter was the feeling aroused against him by the marvellous success\nof his irregular ministry, that his enemies, even before the restoration\nof the Church and Crown, endeavoured to put the arm of the law in motion\nto restrain him.  We learn from the church books that in March, 1658, the\nlittle Bedford church was in trouble for \"Brother Bunyan,\" against whom\nan indictment had been laid at the Assizes for \"preaching at Eaton\nSocon.\"  Of this indictment we hear no more; so it was probably dropped.\nBut it is an instructive fact that, even during the boasted religious\nliberty of the Protectorate, irregular preaching, especially that of the\nmuch dreaded Anabaptists, was an indictable offence.  But, as Dr. Brown\nobserves, \"religious liberty had not yet come to mean liberty all round,\nbut only liberty for a certain recognized section of Christians.\"  That\nthere was no lack of persecution during the Commonwealth is clear from\nthe cruel treatment to which Quakers were subjected, to say nothing of\nthe intolerance shown to Episcopalians and Roman Catholics.  In Bunyan's\nown county of Bedford, Quakeresses were sentenced to be whipped and sent\nto Bridewell for reproving a parish priest, perhaps well deserving of it,\nand exhorting the folks on a market day to repentance and amendment of\nlife.  \"The simple truth is,\" writes Robert Southey, \"all parties were\nagreed on the one catholic opinion that certain doctrines were not to be\ntolerated:\" the only points of difference between them were \"what those\ndoctrines were,\" and how far intolerance might be carried.  The withering\nlines are familiar to us, in which Milton denounces the \"New Forcers of\nConscience,\" who by their intolerance and \"super-metropolitan and\nhyperarchiepiscopal tyranny,\" proved that in his proverbial words, \"New\nPresbyter is but old Priest writ large\"--\n\n   \"Because you have thrown off your prelate lord,\n   And with stiff vows renounce his liturgy\n   Dare ye for this adjure the civil sword\n   To force our consciences that Christ set free!\"\n\nHow Bunyan came to escape we know not.  But the danger he was in was\nimminent enough for the church at Bedford to meet to pray \"for counsail\nwhat to doe\" in respect of it.\n\nIt was in these closing years of the Protectorate that Bunyan made his\nfirst essay at authorship.  He was led to it by a long and tiresome\ncontroversy with the Quakers, who had recently found their way to\nBedford.  The foundations of the faith, he thought, were being\nundermined.  The Quakers' teaching as to the inward light seemed to him a\nserious disparagement of the Holy Scriptures, while their mystical view\nof the spiritual Christ revealed to the soul and dwelling in the heart,\ncame perilously near to a denial of the historic reality of the personal\nChrist.  He had had public disputations with male and female Quakers from\ntime to time, at the Market Cross at Bedford, at \"Paul's Steeple-house in\nBedford town,\" and other places.  One of them, Anne Blackley by name,\nopenly bade him throw away the Scriptures, to which Bunyan replied, \"No;\nfor then the devil would be too hard for me.\"  The same enthusiast\ncharged him with \"preaching up an idol, and using conjuration and\nwitchcraft,\" because of his assertion of the bodily presence of Christ in\nheaven.\n\nThe first work of one who was to prove himself so voluminous an author,\ncannot but be viewed with much interest.  It was a little volume in\nduodecimo, of about two hundred pages, entitled \"Some Gospel Truths\nOpened, by that unworthy servant of Christ, John Bunyan, of Bedford, by\nthe Grace of God, preacher of the Gospel of His dear Son,\" published in\n1656.  The little book, which, as Dr. Brown says, was \"evidently thrown\noff at a heat,\" was printed in London and published at Newport Pagnel.\nBunyan being entirely unknown to the world, his first literary venture\nwas introduced by a commendatory \"Epistle\" written by Gifford's\nsuccessor, John Burton.  In this Burton speaks of the young author--Bunyan\nwas only in his twenty-ninth year--as one who had \"neither the greatness\nnor the wisdom of the world to commend him,\" \"not being chosen out of an\nearthly but out of a heavenly university, the Church of Christ,\" where\n\"through grace he had taken three heavenly degrees, to wit, union with\nChrist, the anointing of the Spirit, and experience of the temptations of\nSatan,\" and as one of whose \"soundness in the faith, godly conversation,\nand his ability to preach the Gospel, not by human aid, but by the Spirit\nof the Lord,\" he \"with many other saints had had experience.\"  This book\nmust be pronounced a very remarkable production for a young travelling\ntinker, under thirty, and without any literary or theological training\nbut such as he had gained for himself after attaining to manhood.  Its\narrangement is excellent, the arguments are ably marshalled, the style is\nclear, the language pure and well chosen.  It is, in the main, a well-\nreasoned defence of the historical truth of the Articles of the Creed\nrelating to the Second Person of the Trinity, against the mystical\nteaching of the followers of George Fox, who, by a false spiritualism,\nsublimated the whole Gospel narrative into a vehicle for the\nrepresentation of truths relating to the inner life of the believer.  No\none ever had a firmer grasp than Bunyan of the spiritual bearing of the\nfacts of the recorded life of Christ on the souls of men.  But he would\nnot suffer their \"subjectivity\"--to adopt modern terms--to destroy their\n\"objectivity.\"  If the Son of God was not actually born of the Virgin\nMary, if He did not live in a real human body, and in that body die, lie\nin the grave, rise again, and ascend up into heaven, whence He would\nreturn--and that Bunyan believed shortly--in the same Body He took of His\nmortal mother, His preaching was vain; their faith was vain; they were\nyet in their sins.  Those who \"cried up a Christ within, _in opposition_\nto a Christ without,\" who asserted that Christ had no other Body but the\nChurch, that the only Crucifixion, rising again, and ascension of Christ\nwas that _within_ the believer, and that every man had, as an inner\nlight, a measure of Christ's Spirit within him sufficient to guide him to\nsalvation, he asserted were \"possessed with a spirit of delusion;\"\ndeceived themselves, they were deceiving others to their eternal ruin.  To\nthe refutation of such fundamental errors, substituting a mystical for an\nhistorical faith, Bunyan's little treatise is addressed; and it may be\ntruly said the work is done effectually.  To adopt Coleridge's expression\nconcerning Bunyan's greater and world-famous work, it is an admirable\n\"_Summa Theologiae Evangelicae_,\" which, notwithstanding its obsolete\nstyle and old-fashioned arrangement, may be read even now with advantage.\n\nBunyan's denunciation of the tenets of the Quakers speedily elicited a\nreply.  This was written by a certain Edward Burrough, a young man of\nthree and twenty, fearless, devoted, and ardent in the propagation of the\ntenets of his sect.  Being subsequently thrown into Newgate with hundreds\nof his co-religionists, at the same time that his former antagonist was\nimprisoned in Bedford Gaol, Burrough met the fate Bunyan's stronger\nconstitution enabled him to escape; and in the language of the times,\n\"rotted in prison,\" a victim to the loathsome foulness of his place of\nincarceration, in the year of the \"Bartholomew Act,\" 1662.\n\nBurrough entitled his reply, \"The Gospel of Peace, contended for in the\nSpirit of Meekness and Love against the secret opposition of John Bunyan,\na professed minister in Bedfordshire.\"  His opening words, too\ncharacteristic of the entire treatise, display but little of the meekness\nprofessed.  \"How long, ye crafty fowlers, will ye prey upon the innocent?\nHow long shall the righteous be a prey to your teeth, ye subtle foxes!\nYour dens are in darkness, and your mischief is hatched upon your beds of\nsecret whoredoms?\"  Of John Burton and the others who recommended\nBunyan's treatise, he says, \"They have joined themselves with the broken\narmy of Magog, and have showed themselves in the defence of the dragon\nagainst the Lamb in the day of war betwixt them.\"  We may well echo Dr.\nBrown's wish that \"these two good men could have had a little free and\nfriendly talk face to face.  There would probably have been better\nunderstanding, and fewer hard words, for they were really not so far\napart as they thought.  Bunyan believed in the inward light, and Burrough\nsurely accepted an objective Christ.  But failing to see each other's\nexact point of view, Burrough thunders at Bunyan, and Bunyan swiftly\nreturns the shot.\"\n\nThe rapidity of Bunyan's literary work is amazing, especially when we\ntake his antecedents into account.  Within a few weeks he published his\nrejoinder to Friend Burrough, under the title of \"A Vindication of Gospel\nTruths Opened.\"  In this work, which appeared in 1667, Bunyan repays\nBurrough in his own coin, styling him \"a proved enemy to the truth,\" a\n\"grossly railing Rabshakeh, who breaks out with a taunt and a jeer,\" is\nvery \"censorious and utters many words without knowledge.\"  In vigorous,\nnervous language, which does not spare his opponent, he defends himself\nfrom Burrough's charges, and proves that the Quakers are \"deceivers.\"  \"As\nfor you thinking that to drink water, and wear no hatbands is not walking\nafter your own lusts, I say that whatsoever man do make a religion out\nof, having no warrant for it in Scripture, is but walking after their own\nlusts, and not after the Spirit of God.\"  Burrough had most unwarrantably\nstigmatized Bunyan as one of \"the false prophets, who love the wages of\nunrighteousness, and through covetousness make merchandise of souls.\"\nBunyan calmly replies, \"Friend, dost thou speak this as from thy own\nknowledge, or did any other tell thee so?  However that spirit that led\nthee out this way is a lying spirit.  For though I be poor and of no\nrepute in the world as to outward things, yet through grace I have\nlearned by the example of the Apostle to preach the truth, and also to\nwork with my hands both for mine own living, and for those that are with\nme, when I have opportunity.  And I trust that the Lord Jesus who hath\nhelped me to reject the wages of unrighteousness hitherto, will also help\nme still so that I shall distribute that which God hath given me freely,\nand not for filthy lucre's sake.\"  The fruitfulness of his ministry which\nBurrough had called in question, charging him with having \"run before he\nwas sent,\" he refuses to discuss.  Bunyan says, \"I shall leave it to be\ntaken notice of by the people of God and the country where I dwell, who\nwill testify the contrary for me, setting aside the carnal ministry with\ntheir retinue who are so mad against me as thyself.\"\n\nIn his third book, published in 1658, at \"the King's Head, in the Old\nBailey,\" a few days before Oliver Cromwell's death, Bunyan left the\nthorny domain of polemics, for that of Christian exhortation, in which\nhis chief work was to be done.  This work was an exposition of the\nparable of \"the Rich Man and Lazarus,\" bearing the horror-striking title,\n\"A Few Sighs from Hell, or the Groans of a Damned Soul.\"  In this work,\nas its title would suggest, Bunyan, accepting the literal accuracy of the\nparable as a description of the realities of the world beyond the grave,\ngives full scope to his vivid imagination in portraying the condition of\nthe lost.  It contains some touches of racy humour, especially in the\nsimiles, and is written in the nervous homespun English of which he was\nmaster.  Its popularity is shown by its having gone through nine editions\nin the author's lifetime.  To take an example or two of its style:\ndealing with the excuses people make for not hearing the Gospel, \"O,\nsaith one, I dare not for my master, my brother, my landlord; I shall\nlose his favour, his house of work, and so decay my calling.  O, saith\nanother, I would willingly go in this way but for my father; he chides me\nand tells me he will not stand my friend when I come to want; I shall\nnever enjoy a pennyworth of his goods; he will disinherit me--And I dare\nnot, saith another, for my husband, for he will be a-railing, and tells\nme he will turn me out of doors, he will beat me and cut off my legs;\"\nand then turning from the hindered to the hinderers: \"Oh, what red lines\nwill there be against all those rich ungodly landlords that so keep under\ntheir poor tenants that they dare not go out to hear the word for fear\nthat their rent should be raised or they turned out of their houses.\nThink on this, you drunken proud rich, and scornful landlords; think on\nthis, you madbrained blasphemous husbands, that are against the godly and\nchaste conversation of your wives; also you that hold your servants so\nhard to it that you will not spare them time to hear the Word, unless it\nwill be where and when your lusts will let you.\"  He bids the ungodly\nconsider that \"the profits, pleasures, and vanities of the world\" will\none day \"give thee the slip, and leave thee in the sands and the brambles\nof all that thou hast done.\"  The careless man lies \"like the smith's dog\nat the foot of the anvil, though the fire sparks flee in his face.\"  The\nrich man remembers how he once despised Lazarus, \"scrubbed beggarly\nLazarus.  What, shall I dishonour my fair sumptuous and gay house with\nsuch a scabbed creephedge as he?  The Lazaruses are not allowed to warn\nthem of the wrath to come, because they are not gentlemen, because they\ncannot with Pontius Pilate speak Hebrew, Greek, and Latin.  Nay, they\nmust not, shall not, speak to them, and all because of this.\"\n\nThe fourth production of Bunyan's pen, his last book before his twelve\nyears of prison life began, is entitled, \"The Doctrine of Law and Grace\nUnfolded.\"  With a somewhat overstrained humility which is hardly worthy\nof him, he describes himself in the title-page as \"that poor contemptible\ncreature John Bunyan, of Bedford.\"  It was given to the world in May,\n1659, and issued from the same press in the Old Bailey as his last work.\nIt cannot be said that this is one of Bunyan's most attractive writings.\nIt is as he describes it, \"a parcel of plain yet sound, true, and home\nsayings,\" in which with that clearness of thought and accuracy of\narrangement which belongs to him, and that marvellous acquaintance with\nScripture language which he had gained by his constant study of the\nBible, he sets forth the two covenants--the covenant of works, and the\ncovenant of Grace--\"in their natures, ends, bounds, together with the\nstate and condition of them that are under the one, and of them that are\nunder the other.\"  Dr. Brown describes the book as \"marked by a firm\ngrasp of faith and a strong view of the reality of Christ's person and\nwork as the one Priest and Mediator for a sinful world.\"  To quote a\npassage, \"Is there righteousness in Christ? that is mine.  Is there\nperfection in that righteousness? that is mine.  Did He bleed for sin?  It\nwas for mine.  Hath He overcome the law, the devil, and hell?  The\nvictory is mine, and I am come forth conqueror, nay, more than a\nconqueror through Him that hath loved me. . . Lord, show me continually\nin the light of Thy Spirit, through Thy word, that Jesus that was born in\nthe days of Caesar Augustus, when Mary, a daughter of Judah, went with\nJoseph to be taxed in Bethlehem, that He is the very Christ.  Let me not\nrest contented without such a faith that is so wrought even by the\ndiscovery of His Birth, Crucifying Death, Blood, Resurrection, Ascension,\nand Second--which is His Personal--Coming again, that the very faith of\nit may fill my soul with comfort and holiness.\"  Up and down its pages we\nmeet with vivid reminiscences of his own career, of which he can only\nspeak with wonder and thankfulness.  In the \"Epistle to the Reader,\"\nwhich introduces it, occurs the passage already referred to describing\nhis education.  \"I never went to school to Aristotle or Plato, but was\nbrought up at my father's house in a very mean condition, among a company\nof poor countrymen.\"  Of his own religious state before his conversion he\nthus speaks: \"When it pleased the Lord to begin to instruct my soul, He\nfound me one of the black sinners of the world.  He found me making a\nsport of oaths, and also of lies; and many a soul-poisoning meal did I\nmake out of divers lusts, such as drinking, dancing, playing, pleasure\nwith the wicked ones of the world; and so wedded was I to my sins, that\nthought I to myself, 'I will have them though I lose my soul.'\"  And\nthen, after narrating the struggles he had had with his conscience, the\nalternations of hope and fear which he passed through, which are more\nfully described in his \"Grace Abounding,\" he thus vividly depicts the\nfull assurance of faith he had attained to: \"I saw through grace that it\nwas the Blood shed on Mount Calvary that did save and redeem sinners, as\nclearly and as really with the eyes of my soul as ever, methought, I had\nseen a penny loaf bought with a penny. . . O let the saints know that\nunless the devil can pluck Christ out of heaven he cannot pull a true\nbeliever out of Christ.\"  In a striking passage he shows how, by turning\nSatan's temptations against himself, Christians may \"Get the art as to\noutrun him in his own shoes, and make his own darts pierce himself.\"\n\"What! didst thou never learn to outshoot the devil in his own bow, and\ncut off his head with his own sword as David served Goliath?\"  The whole\ntreatise is somewhat wearisome, but the pious reader will find much in it\nfor spiritual edification.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV.\n\n\nWe cannot doubt that one in whom loyalty was so deep and fixed a\nprinciple as Bunyan, would welcome with sincere thankfulness the\ntermination of the miserable interval of anarchy which followed the death\nof the Protector and the abdication of his indolent and feeble son, by\nthe restoration of monarchy in the person of Charles the Second.  Even if\nsome forebodings might have arisen that with the restoration of the old\nmonarchy the old persecuting laws might be revived, which made it\ncriminal for a man to think for himself in the matters which most nearly\nconcerned his eternal interests, and to worship in the way which he found\nmost helpful to his spiritual life, they would have been silenced by the\npromise, contained in Charles's \"Declaration from Breda,\" of liberty to\ntender consciences, and the assurance that no one should be disquieted\nfor differences of opinion in religion, so long as such differences did\nnot endanger the peace and well-being of the realm.  If this declaration\nmeant anything, it meant a breadth of toleration larger and more liberal\nthan had been ever granted by Cromwell.  Any fears of the renewal of\npersecution must be groundless.\n\nBut if such dreams of religious liberty were entertained they were\nspeedily and rudely dispelled, and Bunyan was one of the first to feel\nthe shock of the awakening.  The promise was coupled with a reference to\nthe \"mature deliberation of Parliament.\"  With such a promise Charles's\neasy conscience was relieved of all responsibility.  Whatever he might\npromise, the nation, and Parliament which was its mouthpiece, might set\nhis promise aside.  And if he knew anything of the temper of the people\nhe was returning to govern, he must have felt assured that any scheme of\ncomprehension was certain to be rejected by them.  As Mr. Froude has\nsaid, \"before toleration is possible, men must have learnt to tolerate\ntoleration,\" and this was a lesson the English nation was very far from\nhaving learnt; at no time, perhaps, were they further from it.  Puritanism\nhad had its day, and had made itself generally detested.  Deeply\nenshrined as it was in many earnest and devout hearts, such as Bunyan's,\nit was necessarily the religion not of the many, but of the few; it was\nthe religion not of the common herd, but of a spiritual aristocracy.  Its\nstern condemnation of all mirth and pastime, as things in their nature\nsinful, of which we have so many evidences in Bunyan's own writings; its\nrepression of all that makes life brighter and more joyous, and the sour\nsanctimoniousness which frowned upon innocent relaxation, had rendered\nits yoke unbearable to ordinary human nature, and men took the earliest\nopportunity of throwing the yoke off and trampling it under foot.  They\nhailed with rude and boisterous rejoicings the restoration of the\nMonarchy which they felt, with a true instinct, involved the restoration\nof the old Church of England, the church of their fathers and of the\nolder among themselves, with its larger indulgence for the instincts of\nhumanity, its wider comprehensiveness, and its more dignified and\ndecorous ritual.\n\nThe reaction from Puritanism pervaded all ranks.  In no class, however,\nwas its influence more powerful than among the country gentry.  Most of\nthem had been severe sufferers both in purse and person during the\nProtectorate.  Fines and sequestrations had fallen heavily upon them, and\nthey were eager to retaliate on their oppressors.  Their turn had come;\ncan we wonder that they were eager to use it?  As Mr. J. R. Green has\nsaid: \"The Puritan, the Presbyterian, the Commonwealthsman, all were at\ntheir feet. . . Their whole policy appeared to be dictated by a\npassionate spirit of reaction. . . The oppressors of the parson had been\nthe oppressors of the squire.  The sequestrator who had driven the one\nfrom his parsonage had driven the other from his manor-house.  Both had\nbeen branded with the same charge of malignity.  Both had suffered\ntogether, and the new Parliament was resolved that both should triumph\ntogether.\"\n\nThe feeling thus eloquently expressed goes far to explain the harshness\nwhich Bunyan experienced at the hands of the administrators of justice at\nthe crisis of his life at which we have now arrived.  Those before whom\nhe was successively arraigned belonged to this very class, which, having\nsuffered most severely during the Puritan usurpation, was least likely to\nshow consideration to a leading teacher of the Puritan body.  Nor were\nreasons wanting to justify their severity.  The circumstances of the\ntimes were critical.  The public mind was still in an excitable state,\nagitated by the wild schemes of political and religious enthusiasts\nplotting to destroy the whole existing framework both of Church and\nState, and set up their own chimerical fabric.  We cannot be surprised\nthat, as Southey has said, after all the nation had suffered from\nfanatical zeal, \"The government, rendered suspicious by the constant\nsense of danger, was led as much by fear as by resentment to seventies\nwhich are explained by the necessities of self-defence,\" and which the\nnervous apprehensions of the nation not only condoned, but incited.\nAlready Churchmen in Wales had been taking the law into their own hands,\nand manifesting their orthodoxy by harrying Quakers and Nonconformists.\nIn the May and June of this year, we hear of sectaries being taken from\ntheir beds and haled to prison, and brought manacled to the Quarter\nSessions and committed to loathsome dungeons.  Matters had advanced since\nthen.  The Church had returned in its full power and privileges together\nwith the monarchy, and everything went back into its old groove.  Every\nAct passed for the disestablishment and disendowment of the Church was\ndeclared a dead letter.  Those of the ejected incumbents who remained\nalive entered again into their parsonages, and occupied their pulpits as\nof old; the surviving bishops returned to their sees; and the whole\nexisting statute law regarding the Church revived from its suspended\nanimation.  No new enactment was required to punish Nonconformists and to\nsilence their ministers; though, to the disgrace of the nation and its\nparliament, many new ones were subsequently passed, with ever-increasing\ndisabilities.  The various Acts of Elizabeth supplied all that was\nneeded.  Under these Acts all who refused to attend public worship in\ntheir parish churches were subject to fines; while those who resorted to\nconventicles were to be imprisoned till they made their submissions; if\nat the end of three months they refused to submit they were to be\nbanished the realm, and if they returned from banishment, without\npermission of the Crown, they were liable to execution as felons.  This\nlong-disused sword was now drawn from its rusty sheath to strike terror\ninto the hearts of Nonconformists.  It did not prove very effectual.  All\nthe true-hearted men preferred to suffer rather than yield in so sacred a\ncause.  Bunyan was one of the earliest of these, as he proved one of the\nstaunchest.\n\nEarly in October, 1660, the country magistrates meeting in Bedford issued\nan order for the public reading of the Liturgy of the Church of England.\nSuch an order Bunyan would not regard as concerning him.  Anyhow he would\nnot give obeying it a thought.  One of the things we least like in Bunyan\nis the feeling he exhibits towards the Book of Common Prayer.  To him it\nwas an accursed thing, the badge and token of a persecuting party, a\nrelic of popery which he exhorted his adherents to \"take heed that they\ntouched not\" if they would be \"steadfast in the faith of Jesus Christ.\"\nNothing could be further from his thoughts than to give any heed to the\nmagistrates' order to go to church and pray \"after the form of men's\ninventions.\"\n\nThe time for testing Bunyan's resolution was now near at hand.  Within\nsix months of the king's landing, within little more than a month of the\nissue of the magistrate's order for the use of the Common Prayer Book,\nhis sturdy determination to yield obedience to no authority in spiritual\nmatters but that of his own conscience was put to the proof.  Bunyan may\nsafely be regarded as at that time the most conspicuous of the\nNonconformists of the neighbourhood.  He had now preached for five or six\nyears with ever-growing popularity.  No name was so rife in men's mouths\nas his.  At him, therefore, as the representative of his brother\nsectaries, the first blow was levelled.  It is no cause of surprise that\nin the measures taken against him he recognized the direct agency of\nSatan to stop the course of the truth: \"That old enemy of man's\nsalvation,\" he says, \"took his opportunity to inflame the hearts of his\nvassals against me, insomuch that at the last I was laid out for the\nwarrant of a justice.\"  The circumstances were these, on November 12,\n1660, Bunyan had engaged to go to the little hamlet of Lower Samsell near\nHarlington, to hold a religious service.  His purpose becoming known, a\nneighbouring magistrate, Mr. Francis Wingate, of Harlington House, was\ninstructed to issue a warrant for his apprehension under the Act of\nElizabeth.  The meeting being represented to him as one of seditious\npersons bringing arms, with a view to the disturbance of the public\npeace, he ordered that a strong watch should be kept about the house, \"as\nif,\" Bunyan says, \"we did intend to do some fearful business to the\ndestruction of the country.\"  The intention to arrest him oozed out, and\non Bunyan's arrival the whisperings of his friends warned him of his\ndanger.  He might have easily escaped if he \"had been minded to play the\ncoward.\"  Some advised it, especially the brother at whose house the\nmeeting was to take place.  He, \"living by them,\" knew \"what spirit\" the\nmagistrates \"were of,\" before whom Bunyan would be taken if arrested, and\nthe small hope there would be of his avoiding being committed to gaol.\nThe man himself, as a \"harbourer of a conventicle,\" would also run no\nsmall danger of the same fate, but Bunyan generously acquits him of any\nselfish object in his warning: \"he was, I think, more afraid of (for) me,\nthan of (for) himself.\"  The matter was clear enough to Bunyan.  At the\nsame time it was not to be decided in a hurry.  The time fixed for the\nservice not being yet come, Bunyan went into the meadow by the house, and\npacing up and down thought the question well out.  \"If he who had up to\nthis time showed himself hearty and courageous in his preaching, and had\nmade it his business to encourage others, were now to run and make an\nescape, it would be of an ill savour in the country.  If he were now to\nflee because there was a warrant out for him, would not the weak and\nnewly-converted brethren be afraid to stand when great words only were\nspoken to them.  God had, in His mercy, chosen him to go on the forlorn\nhope; to be the first to be opposed for the gospel; what a discouragement\nit must be to the whole body if he were to fly.  No, he would never by\nany cowardliness of his give occasion to the enemy to blaspheme the\ngospel.\"  So back to the house he came with his mind made up.  He had\ncome to hold the meeting, and hold the meeting he would.  He was not\nconscious of saying or doing any evil.  If he had to suffer it was the\nLord's will, and he was prepared for it.  He had a full hour before him\nto escape if he had been so minded, but he was resolved \"not to go away.\"\nHe calmly waited for the time fixed for the brethren to assemble, and\nthen, without hurry or any show of alarm, he opened the meeting in the\nusual manner, with prayer for God's blessing.  He had given out his text,\nthe brethren had just opened their Bibles and Bunyan was beginning to\npreach, when the arrival of the constable with the warrant put an end to\nthe exercise.  Bunyan requested to be allowed to say a few parting words\nof encouragement to the terrified flock.  This was granted, and he\ncomforted the little company with the reflection that it was a mercy to\nsuffer in so good a cause; and that it was better to be the persecuted\nthan the persecutors; better to suffer as Christians than as thieves or\nmurderers.  The constable and the justice's servant soon growing weary of\nlistening to Bunyan's exhortations, interrupted him and \"would not be\nquiet till they had him away\" from the house.\n\nThe justice who had issued the warrant, Mr. Wingate, not being at home\nthat day, a friend of Bunyan's residing on the spot offered to house him\nfor the night, undertaking that he should be forthcoming the next day.\nThe following morning this friend took him to the constable's house, and\nthey then proceeded together to Mr. Wingate's.  A few inquiries showed\nthe magistrate that he had entirely mistaken the character of the Samsell\nmeeting and its object.  Instead of a gathering of \"Fifth Monarchy men,\"\nor other turbulent fanatics as he had supposed, for the disturbance of\nthe public peace, he learnt from the constable that they were only a few\npeaceable, harmless people, met together \"to preach and hear the word,\"\nwithout any political meaning.  Wingate was now at a nonplus, and \"could\nnot well tell what to say.\"  For the credit of his magisterial character,\nhowever, he must do something to show that he had not made a mistake in\nissuing the warrant.  So he asked Bunyan what business he had there, and\nwhy it was not enough for him to follow his own calling instead of\nbreaking the law by preaching.  Bunyan replied that his only object in\ncoming there was to exhort his hearers for their souls' sake to forsake\ntheir sinful courses and close in with Christ, and this he could do and\nfollow his calling as well.  Wingate, now feeling himself in the wrong,\nlost his temper, and declared angrily that he would \"break the neck of\nthese unlawful meetings,\" and that Bunyan must find securities for his\ngood behaviour or go to gaol.  There was no difficulty in obtaining the\nsecurity.  Bail was at once forthcoming.  The real difficulty lay with\nBunyan himself.  No bond was strong enough to keep him from preaching.  If\nhis friends gave them, their bonds would be forfeited, for he \"would not\nleave speaking the word of God.\"  Wingate told him that this being so, he\nmust be sent to gaol to be tried at the next Quarter Sessions, and left\nthe room to make out his mittimus.  While the committal was preparing,\none whom Bunyan bitterly styles \"an old enemy to the truth,\" Dr. Lindall,\nVicar of Harlington, Wingate's father-in-law, came in and began \"taunting\nat him with many reviling terms,\" demanding what right he had to preach\nand meddle with that for which he had no warrant, charging him with\nmaking long prayers to devour widows houses, and likening him to \"one\nAlexander the Coppersmith he had read of,\" \"aiming, 'tis like,\" says\nBunyan, \"at me because I was a tinker.\"  The mittimus was now made out,\nand Bunyan in the constable's charge was on his way to Bedford, when he\nwas met by two of his friends, who begged the constable to wait a little\nwhile that they might use their interest with the magistrate to get\nBunyan released.  After a somewhat lengthened interview with Wingate,\nthey returned with the message that if Bunyan would wait on the\nmagistrate and \"say certain words\" to him, he might go free.  To satisfy\nhis friends, Bunyan returned with them, though not with any expectation\nthat the engagement proposed to him would be such as he could lawfully\ntake.  \"If the words were such as he could say with a good conscience he\nwould say them, or else he would not.\"\n\nAfter all this coming and going, by the time Bunyan and his friends got\nback to Harlington House, night had come on.  As he entered the hall,\none, he tells us, came out of an inner room with a lighted candle in his\nhand, whom Bunyan recognized as one William Foster, a lawyer of Bedford,\nWingate's brother-in-law, afterwards a fierce persecutor of the\nNonconformists of the district.  With a simulated affection, \"as if he\nwould have leapt on my neck and kissed me,\" which put Bunyan on his\nguard, as he had ever known him for \"a close opposer of the ways of God,\"\nhe adopted the tone of one who had Bunyan's interest at heart, and begged\nhim as a friend to yield a little from his stubbornness.  His brother-in-\nlaw, he said, was very loath to send him to gaol.  All he had to do was\nonly to promise that he would not call people together, and he should be\nset at liberty and might go back to his home.  Such meetings were plainly\nunlawful and must be stopped.  Bunyan had better follow his calling and\nleave off preaching, especially on week-days, which made other people\nneglect their calling too.  God commanded men to work six days and serve\nHim on the seventh.  It was vain for Bunyan to reply that he never\nsummoned people to hear him, but that if they came he could not but use\nthe best of his skill and wisdom to counsel them for their soul's\nsalvation; that he could preach and the people could come to hear without\nneglecting their callings, and that men were bound to look out for their\nsouls' welfare on week-days as well as Sundays.  Neither could convince\nthe other.  Bunyan's stubbornness was not a little provoking to Foster,\nand was equally disappointing to Wingate.  They both evidently wished to\ndismiss the case, and intentionally provided a loophole for Bunyan's\nescape.  The promise put into his mouth--\"that he would not call the\npeople together\"--was purposely devised to meet his scrupulous\nconscience.  But even if he could keep the promise in the letter, Bunyan\nknew that he was fully purposed to violate its spirit.  He was the last\nman to forfeit self-respect by playing fast and loose with his\nconscience.  All evasion was foreign to his nature.  The long interview\ncame to an end at last.  Once again Wingate and Foster endeavoured to\nbreak down Bunyan's resolution; but when they saw he was \"at a point, and\nwould not be moved or persuaded,\" the mittimus was again put into the\nconstable's hands, and he and his prisoner were started on the walk to\nBedford gaol.  It was dark, as we have seen, when this protracted\ninterview began.  It must have now been deep in the night.  Bunyan gives\nno hint whether the walk was taken in the dark or in the daylight.  There\nwas however no need for haste.  Bedford was thirteen miles away, and the\nconstable would probably wait till the morning to set out for the prison\nwhich was to be Bunyan's home for twelve long years, to which he went\ncarrying, he says, the \"peace of God along with me, and His comfort in my\npoor soul.\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V.\n\n\nA long-standing tradition has identified Bunyan's place of imprisonment\nwith a little corporation lock-up-house, some fourteen feet square,\npicturesquely perched on one of the mid-piers of the many-arched mediaeval\nbridge which, previously to 1765, spanned the Ouse at Bedford, and as Mr.\nFroude has said, has \"furnished a subject for pictures,\" both of pen and\npencil, \"which if correct would be extremely affecting.\"  Unfortunately,\nhowever, for the lovers of the sensational, these pictures are not\n\"correct,\" but are based on a false assumption which grew up out of a\ndesire to heap contumely on Bunyan's enemies by exaggerating the severity\nof his protracted, but by no means harsh imprisonment.  Being arrested by\nthe warrant of a county magistrate for a county offence, Bunyan's place\nof incarceration was naturally the county gaol.  There he undoubtedly\npassed the twelve years of his captivity, and there the royal warrant for\nhis release found him \"a prisoner in the common gaol for our county of\nBedford.\"  But though far different from the pictures which writers,\ndesirous of exhibiting the sufferings of the Puritan confessor in the\nmost telling form, have drawn--if not \"a damp and dreary cell\" into which\n\"a narrow chink admits a few scanty rays of light to render visible the\nprisoner, pale and emaciated, seated on the humid earth, pursuing his\ndaily task to earn the morsel which prolongs his existence and his\nconfinement together,\"--\"the common gaol\" of Bedford must have been a\nsufficiently strait and unwholesome abode, especially for one, like the\ntravelling tinker, accustomed to spend the greater part of his days in\nthe open-air in unrestricted freedom.  Prisons in those days, and indeed\nlong afterwards, were, at their best, foul, dark, miserable places.  A\ncentury later Howard found Bedford gaol, though better than some, in what\nwould now be justly deemed a disgraceful condition.  One who visited\nBunyan during his confinement speaks of it as \"an uncomfortable and close\nprison.\"  Bunyan however himself, in the narrative of his imprisonment,\nmakes no complaint of it, nor do we hear of his health having in any way\nsuffered from the conditions of his confinement, as was the case with not\na few of his fellow-sufferers for the sake of religion in other English\ngaols, some of them even unto death.  Bad as it must have been to be a\nprisoner, as far as his own testimony goes, there is no evidence that his\nimprisonment, though varying in its strictness with his various gaolers,\nwas aggravated by any special severity; and, as Mr. Froude has said, \"it\nis unlikely that at any time he was made to suffer any greater hardships\nthan were absolutely inevitable.\"\n\nThe arrest of one whose work as a preacher had been a blessing to so\nmany, was not at once tamely acquiesced in by the religious body to which\nhe belonged.  A few days after Bunyan's committal to gaol, some of \"the\nbrethren\" applied to Mr. Crompton, a young magistrate at Elstow, to bail\nhim out, offering the required security for his appearance at the Quarter\nSessions.  The magistrate was at first disposed to accept the bail; but\nbeing a young man, new in his office, and thinking it possible that there\nmight be more against Bunyan than the \"mittimus\" expressed, he was afraid\nof compromising himself by letting him go at large.  His refusal, though\nit sent him back to prison, was received by Bunyan with his usual calm\ntrust in God's overruling providence.  \"I was not at all daunted, but\nrather glad, and saw evidently that the Lord had heard me.\"  Before he\nset out for the justice's house, he tells us he had committed the whole\nevent to God's ordering, with the prayer that \"if he might do more good\nby being at liberty than in prison,\" the bail might be accepted, \"but if\nnot, that His will might be done.\"  In the failure of his friends' good\noffices he saw an answer to his prayer, encouraging the hope that the\nuntoward event, which deprived them of his personal ministrations, \"might\nbe an awaking to the saints in the country,\" and while \"the slender\nanswer of the justice,\" which sent him back to his prison, stirred\nsomething akin to contempt, his soul was full of gladness.  \"Verily I did\nmeet my God sweetly again, comforting of me, and satisfying of me, that\nit was His will and mind that I should be there.\"  The sense that he was\nbeing conformed to the image of his great Master was a stay to his soul.\n\"This word,\" he continues, \"did drop in upon my heart with some life, for\nhe knew that 'for envy they had delivered him.'\"\n\nSeven weeds after his committal, early in January, 1661, the Quarter\nSessions came on, and \"John Bunyan, of the town of Bedford, labourer,\"\nwas indicted in the customary form for having \"devilishly and\nperniciously abstained from coming to church to hear Divine Service,\" and\nas \"a common upholder of several unlawful meetings and conventions, to\nthe great disturbance and distraction of the good subjects of the\nkingdom.\"  The chairman of the bench was the brutal and blustering Sir\nJohn Keeling, the prototype of Bunyan's Lord Hategood in Faithful's trial\nat Vanity Fair, who afterwards, by his base subserviency to an infamous\ngovernment, climbed to the Lord Chief Justice's seat, over the head of\nSir Matthew Hale.  Keeling had suffered much from the Puritans during the\ngreat Rebellion, when, according to Clarendon, he was \"always in gaol,\"\nand was by no means disposed to deal leniently with an offender of that\npersuasion.  His brethren of the bench were country gentlemen hating\nPuritanism from their heart, and eager for retaliation for the wrongs it\nhad wrought them.  From such a bench, even if Bunyan had been less\nuncompromising, no leniency was to be anticipated.  But Bunyan's attitude\nforbade any leniency.  As the law stood he had indisputably broken it,\nand he expressed his determination, respectfully but firmly, to take the\nfirst opportunity of breaking it again.  \"I told them that if I was let\nout of prison today I would preach the gospel again to-morrow by the help\nof God.\"  We may dislike the tone adopted by the magistrates towards the\nprisoner; we may condemn it as overbearing and contemptuous; we may smile\nat Keeling's expositions of Scripture and his stock arguments against\nunauthorized prayer and preaching, though we may charitably believe that\nBunyan misunderstood him when he makes him say that \"the Book of Common\nPrayer had been ever since the apostles' time\"; we may think that the\nprisoner, in his \"canting pedlar's French,\" as Keeling called it, had the\nbetter of his judges in knowledge of the Bible, in Christian charity, as\nwell as in dignity and in common sense, and that they showed their wisdom\nin silencing him in court--\"Let him speak no further,\" said one of them,\n\"he will do harm,\"--since they could not answer him more convincingly:\nbut his legal offence was clear.  He confessed to the indictment, if not\nin express terms, yet virtually.  He and his friends had held \"many\nmeetings together, both to pray to God and to exhort one another.  I\nconfessed myself guilty no otherwise.\"  Such meetings were forbidden by\nthe law, which it was the duty of the justices to administer, and they\nhad no choice whether they would convict or no.  Perhaps they were not\nsorry they had no such choice.  Bunyan was a most \"impracticable\"\nprisoner, and as Mr. Froude says, the \"magistrates being but unregenerate\nmortals may be pardoned if they found him provoking.\"  The sentence\nnecessarily followed.  It was pronounced, not, we are sure reluctantly,\nby Keeling, in the terms of the Act.  \"He was to go back to prison for\nthree months.  If at three months' end he still refused to go to church\nto hear Divine service and leave his preaching, he was to be banished the\nrealm,\"--in modern language \"transported,\" and if \"he came back again\nwithout special royal license,\" he must \"stretch by the neck for it.\"\n\n\"This,\" said Keeling, \"I tell you plainly.\"  Bunyan's reply that \"as to\nthat matter he was at a point with the judge,\" for \"that he would repeat\nthe offence the first time he could,\" provoked a rejoinder from one of\nthe bench, and the unseemly wrangling might have been still further\nprolonged, had it not been stopped by the gaoler, who \"pulling him away\nto be gone,\" had him back to prison, where he says, and \"blesses the Lord\nJesus Christ for it,\" his heart was as \"sweetly refreshed\" in returning\nto it as it had \"been during his examination.  So that I find Christ's\nwords more than bare trifles, where He saith, He will give a mouth and\nwisdom, even such as all the adversaries shall not gainsay or resist.  And\nthat His peace no man can take from us.\"\n\nThe magistrates, however, though not unnaturally irritated by what seemed\nto them Bunyan's unreasonable obstinacy, were not desirous to push\nmatters to extremity.  The three months named in his sentence, at the\nexpiration of which he was either to conform or be banished the realm,\nwere fast drawing to an end, without any sign of submission on his part.\nAs a last resort Mr. Cobb, the Clerk of the Peace, was sent to try what\ncalm and friendly reasoning might effect.  Cobb, who evidently knew\nBunyan personally, did his best, as a kind-hearted, sensible man, to\nbring him to reason.  Cobb did not profess to be \"a man that could\ndispute,\" and Bunyan had the better of him in argument.  His position,\nhowever, was unassailable.  The recent insurrection of Venner and his\nFifth Monarchy men, he said, had shown the danger to the public peace\nthere was in allowing fanatical gatherings to assemble unchecked.  Bunyan,\nwhose loyalty was unquestioned, must acknowledge the prudence of\nsuppressing meetings which, however good their ostensible aim, might\nissue in nothing less than the ruin of the kingdom and commonwealth.\nBunyan had confessed his readiness to obey the apostolic precept by\nsubmitting himself to the king as supreme.  The king forbade the holding\nof private meetings, which, under colour of religion, might be\nprejudicial to the State.  Why then did he not submit?  This need not\nhinder him from doing good in a neighbourly way.  He might continue to\nuse his gifts and exhort his neighbours in private discourse, provided he\ndid not bring people together in public assemblies.  The law did not\nabridge him of this liberty.  Why should he stand so strictly on public\nmeetings?  Or why should he not come to church and hear?  Was his gift so\nfar above that of others that he could learn of no one?  If he could not\nbe persuaded, the judges were resolved to prosecute the law against him.\nHe would be sent away beyond the seas to Spain or Constantinople--either\nCobb's or Bunyan's colonial geography was rather at fault here--or some\nother remote part of the world, and what good could he do to his friends\nthen?  \"Neighbour Bunyan\" had better consider these things seriously\nbefore the Quarter Session, and be ruled by good advice.  The gaoler here\nput in his word in support of Cobb's arguments: \"Indeed, sir, I hope he\nwill be ruled.\"  But all Cobb's friendly reasonings and expostulations\nwere ineffectual to bend Bunyan's sturdy will.  He would yield to no-one\nin his loyalty to his sovereign, and his readiness to obey the law.  But,\nhe said, with a hairsplitting casuistry he would have indignantly\ncondemned in others, the law provided two ways of obeying, \"one to obey\nactively, and if his conscience forbad that, then to obey passively; to\nlie down and suffer whatever they might do to him.\"  The Clerk of the\nPeace saw that it was no use to prolong the argument any further.  \"At\nthis,\" writes Bunyan, \"he sat down, and said no more; which, when he had\ndone, I did thank him for his civil and meek discoursing with me; and so\nwe parted: O that we might meet in heaven!\"\n\nThe Coronation which took place very soon after this interview, April 13,\n1661, afforded a prospect of release without unworthy submission.  The\ncustomary proclamation, which allowed prisoners under sentence for any\noffence short of felony to sue out a pardon for twelve months from that\ndate, suspended the execution of the sentence of banishment and gave a\nhope that the prison doors might be opened for him.  The local\nauthorities taking no steps to enable him to profit by the royal\nclemency, by inserting his name in the list of pardonable offenders, his\nsecond wife, Elizabeth, travelled up to London,--no slight venture for a\nyoung woman not so long raised from the sick bed on which the first news\nof her husband's arrest had laid her,--and with dauntless courage made\nher way to the House of Lords, where she presented her petition to one of\nthe peers, whom she calls Lord Barkwood, but whom unfortunately we cannot\nnow identify.  He treated her kindly, and showed her petition to other\npeers, who appear to have been acquainted with the circumstances of\nBunyan's case.  They replied that the matter was beyond their province,\nand that the question of her husband's release was committed to the\njudges at the next assizes.  These assizes were held at Bedford in the\nfollowing August.  The judges of the circuit were Twisden and Sir Matthew\nHale.  From the latter--the friend of Richard Baxter, who, as Burnet\nrecords, took great care to \"cover the Nonconformists, whom he thought\ntoo hardly used, all he could from the seventies some designed; and\ndiscouraged those who were inclined to stretch the laws too much against\nthem\"--Bunyan's case would be certain to meet with sympathetic\nconsideration.  But being set to administer the law, not according to his\nprivate wishes, but according to its letter and its spirit, he was\npowerless to relieve him.  Three several times did Bunyan's noble-hearted\nwife present her husband's petition that he might be heard, and his case\ntaken impartially into consideration.  But the law forbad what Burnet\ncalls Sir Matthew Hale's \"tender and compassionate nature\" to have free\nexercise.  He \"received the petition very mildly at her hand, telling her\nthat he would do her and her husband the best good he could; but he\nfeared he could do none.\"  His brother judge's reception of her petition\nwas very different.  Having thrown it into the coach, Twisden \"snapt her\nup,\" telling her, what after all was no more than the truth, that her\nhusband was a convicted person, and could not be released unless he would\npromise to obey the law and abstain from preaching.  On this the High\nSheriff, Edmund Wylde, of Houghton Conquest, spoke kindly to the poor\nwoman, and encouraged her to make a fresh application to the judges\nbefore they left the town.  So she made her way, \"with abashed face and\ntrembling heart,\" to the large chamber at the Old Swan Inn at the Bridge\nFoot, where the two judges were receiving a large number of the justices\nof the peace and other gentry of the county.  Addressing Sir Matthew Hale\nshe said, \"My lord, I make bold to come again to your lordship to know\nwhat may be done with my husband.\"  Hale received her with the same\ngentleness as before, repeated what he had said previously, that as her\nhusband had been legally convicted, and his conviction was recorded,\nunless there was something to undo that he could do her no good.  Twisden,\non the other hand, got violently angry, charged her brutally with making\npoverty her cloak, told her that her husband was a breaker of the peace,\nwhose doctrine was the doctrine of the devil, and that he ran up and down\nand did harm, while he was better maintained by his preaching than by\nfollowing his tinker's craft.  At last he waxed so violent that \"withal\nshe thought he would have struck her.\"  In the midst of all his coarse\nabuse, however, Twisden hit the mark when he asked: \"What! you think we\ncan do what we list?\"  And when we find Hale, confessedly the soundest\nlawyer of the time, whose sympathies were all with the prisoner, after\ncalling for the Statute Book, thus summing up the matter: \"I am sorry,\nwoman, that I can do thee no good.  Thou must do one of these three\nthings, viz., either apply thyself to the king, or sue out his pardon, or\nget a writ of error,\" which last, he told her, would be the cheapest\ncourse--we may feel sure that Bunyan's Petition was not granted because\nit could not be granted legally.  The blame of his continued imprisonment\nlay, if anywhere, with the law, not with its administrators.  This is not\nalways borne in mind as it ought to be.  As Mr. Froude remarks, \"Persons\noften choose to forget that judges are sworn to administer the law which\nthey find, and rail at them as if the sentences which they are obliged by\ntheir oath to pass were their own personal acts.\"  It is not surprising\nthat Elizabeth Bunyan was unable to draw this distinction, and that she\nleft the Swan chamber in tears, not, however, so much at what she thought\nthe judges' \"hardheartedness to her and her husband,\" as at the thought\nof \"the sad account such poor creatures would have to give\" hereafter,\nfor what she deemed their \"opposition to Christ and His gospel.\"\n\nNo steps seem to have been taken by Bunyan's wife, or any of his\ninfluential friends, to carry out either of the expedients named by Hale.\nIt may have been that the money needed was not forthcoming, or, what\nSouthey remarks is \"quite probable,\"--\"because it is certain that Bunyan,\nthinking himself in conscience bound to preach in defiance of the law,\nwould soon have made his case worse than it then was.\"\n\nAt the next assizes, which were held in January, 1662, Bunyan again made\nstrenuous efforts to get his name put on the calendar of felons, that he\nmight have a regular trial before the king's judges and be able to plead\nhis cause in person.  This, however, was effectually thwarted by the\nunfriendly influence of the county magistrates by whom he had been\ncommitted, and the Clerk of the Peace, Mr. Cobb, who having failed in his\nkindly meant attempt to induce \"Neighbour Bunyan\" to conform, had turned\nbitterly against him and become one of his chief enemies.  \"Thus,\" writes\nBunyan, \"was I hindered and prevented at that time also from appearing\nbefore the judge, and left in prison.\"  Of this prison, the county gaol\nof Bedford, he remained an inmate, with one, short interval in 1666, for\nthe next twelve years, till his release by order of the Privy Council,\nMay 17, 1672.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI.\n\n\nThe exaggeration of the severity of Bunyan's imprisonment long current,\nnow that the facts are better known, has led, by a very intelligible\nreaction, to an undue depreciation of it.  Mr. Froude thinks that his\nincarceration was \"intended to be little more than nominal,\" and was\nreally meant in kindness by the authorities who \"respected his\ncharacter,\" as the best means of preventing him from getting himself into\ngreater trouble by \"repeating an offence that would compel them to adopt\nharsh measures which they were earnestly trying to avoid.\"  If convicted\nagain he must be transported, and \"they were unwilling to drive him out\nof the country.\"  It is, however, to be feared that it was no such kind\nconsideration for the tinker-preacher which kept the prison doors closed\non Bunyan.  To the justices he was simply an obstinate law-breaker, who\nmust be kept in prison as long as he refused compliance with the Act.  If\nhe rotted in gaol, as so many of his fellow sufferers for conscience'\nsake did in those unhappy times, it was no concern of theirs.  He and his\nstubbornness would be alone to blame.\n\nIt is certainly true that during a portion of his captivity, Bunyan, in\nDr. Brown's words, \"had an amount of liberty which in the case of a\nprisoner nowadays would be simply impossible.\"  But the mistake has been\nmade of extending to the whole period an indulgence which belonged only\nto a part, and that a very limited part of it.  When we are told that\nBunyan was treated as a prisoner at large, and like one \"on parole,\" free\nto come and go as he pleased, even as far as London, we must remember\nthat Bunyan's own words expressly restrict this indulgence to the six\nmonths between the Autumn Assizes of 1661 and the Spring Assizes of 1662.\n\"Between these two assizes,\" he says, \"I had by my jailer some liberty\ngranted me more than at the first.\"  This liberty was certainly of the\nlargest kind consistent with his character of a prisoner.  The church\nbooks show that he was occasionally present at their meetings, and was\nemployed on the business of the congregation.  Nay, even his preaching,\nwhich was the cause of his imprisonment, was not forbidden.  \"I\nfollowed,\" he says, writing of this period, \"my wonted course of\npreaching, taking all occasions that were put into my hand to visit the\npeople of God.\"  But this indulgence was very brief and was brought\nsharply to an end.  It was plainly irregular, and depended on the\nconnivance of his jailer.  We cannot be surprised that when it came to\nthe magistrates' ears--\"my enemies,\" Bunyan rather unworthily calls\nthem--they were seriously displeased.  Confounding Bunyan with the Fifth\nMonarchy men and other turbulent sectaries, they imagined that his visits\nto London had a political object, \"to plot, and raise division, and make\ninsurrections,\" which, he honestly adds, \"God knows was a slander.\"  The\njailer was all but \"cast out of his place,\" and threatened with an\nindictment for breach of trust, while his own liberty was so seriously\n\"straitened\" that he was prohibited even \"to look out at the door.\"  The\nlast time Bunyan's name appears as present at a church meeting is October\n28, 1661, nor do we see it again till October 9, 1668, only four years\nbefore his twelve years term of imprisonment expired.\n\nBut though his imprisonment was not so severe, nor his prison quite so\nnarrow and wretched as some word-painters have described them, during the\ngreater part of the time his condition was a dreary and painful one,\nespecially when spent, as it sometimes was, \"under cruel and oppressive\njailers.\"  The enforced separation from his wife and children, especially\nhis tenderly loved blind daughter, Mary, was a continually renewed\nanguish to his loving heart.  \"The parting with them,\" he writes, \"hath\noften been to me as pulling the flesh from the bones; and that not only\nbecause I am somewhat too fond of these great mercies, but also because I\nshould often have brought to my mind the many hardships, miseries, and\nwants my poor family was like to meet with, should I be taken from them;\nespecially my poor blind child, who lay nearer to my heart than all\nbeside.  Poor child, thought I, thou must be beaten, thou must beg, thou\nmust suffer hunger, cold, nakedness, and a thousand calamities, though I\ncannot now endure the wind should blow on thee.  O, the thoughts of the\nhardships my blind one might go under would break my heart to pieces.\"  He\nseemed to himself like a man pulling down his house on his wife and\nchildren's head, and yet he felt, \"I must do it; O, I must do it.\"  He\nwas also, he tells us, at one time, being but \"a young prisoner,\" greatly\ntroubled by the thoughts that \"for aught he could tell,\" his\n\"imprisonment might end at the gallows,\" not so much that he dreaded\ndeath as that he was apprehensive that when it came to the point, even if\nhe made \"a scrabbling shift to clamber up the ladder,\" he might play the\ncoward and so do discredit to the cause of religion.  \"I was ashamed to\ndie with a pale face and tottering knees for such a cause as this.\"  The\nbelief that his imprisonment might be terminated by death on the\nscaffold, however groundless, evidently weighed long on his mind.  The\nclosing sentences of his third prison book, \"Christian Behaviour,\"\npublished in 1663, the second year of his durance, clearly point to such\nan expectation.  \"Thus have I in few words written to you before I die,\n.  . . not knowing the shortness of my life, nor the hindrances that\nhereafter I may have of serving my God and you.\"  The ladder of his\napprehensions was, as Mr. Froude has said, \"an imaginary ladder,\" but it\nwas very real to Bunyan.  \"Oft I was as if I was on the ladder with a\nrope about my neck.\"  The thought of it, as his autobiography shows,\ncaused him some of his deepest searchings of heart, and noblest ventures\nof faith.  He was content to suffer by the hangman's hand if thus he\nmight have an opportunity of addressing the crowd that he thought would\ncome to see him die.  \"And if it must be so, if God will but convert one\nsoul by my very last words, I shall not count my life thrown away or\nlost.\"  And even when hours of darkness came over his soul, and he was\ntempted to question the reality of his Christian profession, and to doubt\nwhether God would give him comfort at the hour of death, he stayed\nhimself up with such bold words as these.  \"I was bound, but He was free.\nYea, 'twas my duty to stand to His word whether He would ever look on me\nor no, or save me at the last.  If God doth not come in, thought I, I\nwill leap off the ladder even blindfold into Eternity, sink or swim, come\nheaven, come hell.  Lord Jesus, if Thou wilt catch me, do.  If not, I\nwill venture for Thy name.\"\n\nBunyan being precluded by his imprisonment from carrying on his brazier's\ncraft for the support of his wife and family, and his active spirit\ncraving occupation, he got himself taught how to make \"long tagged\nlaces,\" \"many hundred gross\" of which, we are told by one who first\nformed his acquaintance in prison, he made during his captivity, for \"his\nown and his family's necessities.\"  \"While his hands were thus busied,\"\nwrites Lord Macaulay, \"he had often employment for his mind and for his\nlips.\"  \"Though a prisoner he was a preacher still.\"  As with St. Paul in\nhis Roman chains, \"the word of God was not bound.\"  The prisoners for\nconscience' sake, who like him, from time to time, were cooped up in\nBedford gaol, including several of his brother ministers and some of his\nold friends among the leading members of his own little church, furnished\na numerous and sympathetic congregation.  At one time a body of some\nsixty, who had met for worship at night in a neighbouring wood, were\nmarched off to gaol, with their minister at their head.  But while all\nabout him was in confusion, his spirit maintained its even calm, and he\ncould at once speak the words of strength and comfort that were needed.\nIn the midst of the hurry which so many \"newcomers occasioned,\" writes\nthe friend to whom we are indebted for the details of his prison life, \"I\nhave heard Mr. Bunyan both preach and pray with that mighty spirit of\nfaith and plerophory of Divine assistance that has made me stand and\nwonder.\"  These sermons addressed to his fellow prisoners supplied, in\nmany cases, the first outlines of the books which, in rapid succession,\nflowed from his pen during the earlier years of his imprisonment,\nrelieving the otherwise insupportable tedium of his close confinement.\nBunyan himself tells us that this was the case with regard to his \"Holy\nCity,\" the first idea of which was borne in upon his mind when addressing\n\"his brethren in the prison chamber,\" nor can we doubt that the case was\nthe same with other works of his.  To these we shall hereafter return.\nNor was it his fellow prisoners only who profited by his counsels.  In\nhis \"Life and Death of Mr. Badman,\" he gives us a story of a woman who\ncame to him when he was in prison, to confess how she had robbed her\nmaster, and to ask his help.  Hers was probably a representative case.\nThe time spared from his handicraft, and not employed in religious\ncounsel and exhortation, was given to study and composition.  For this\nhis confinement secured him the leisure which otherwise he would have\nlooked for in vain.  The few books he possessed he studied indefatigably.\nHis library was, at least at one period, a very limited one,--\"the least\nand the best library,\" writes a friend who visited him in prison, \"that I\never saw, consisting only of two books--the Bible, and Foxe's 'Book of\nMartyrs.'\"  \"But with these two books,\" writes Mr. Froude, \"he had no\ncause to complain of intellectual destitution.\"  Bunyan's mode of\ncomposition, though certainly exceedingly rapid,--thoughts succeeding one\nanother with a quickness akin to inspiration,--was anything but careless.\nThe \"limae labor\" with him was unsparing.  It was, he tells us, \"first\nwith doing, and then with undoing, and after that with doing again,\" that\nhis books were brought to completion, and became what they are, a mine of\nEvangelical Calvinism of the richest ore, entirely free from the narrow\ndogmatism and harsh predestinarianism of the great Genevan divine; books\nwhich for clearness of thought, lucidity of arrangement, felicity of\nlanguage, rich even if sometimes homely force of illustration, and\nearnestness of piety have never been surpassed.\n\nBunyan's prison life when the first bitterness of it was past, and habit\nhad done away with its strangeness, was a quiet and it would seem, not an\nunhappy one.  A manly self-respect bore him up and forbade his dwelling\non the darker features of his position, or thinking or speaking harshly\nof the authors of his durance.  \"He was,\" writes one who saw him at this\ntime, \"mild and affable in conversation; not given to loquacity or to\nmuch discourse unless some urgent occasion required.  It was observed he\nnever spoke of himself or his parents, but seemed low in his own eyes.  He\nwas never heard to reproach or revile, whatever injury he received, but\nrather rebuked those who did so.  He managed all things with such\nexactness as if he had made it his study not to give offence.\"\n\nAccording to his earliest biographer, Charles Doe, in 1666, the year of\nthe Fire of London, after Bunyan had lain six years in Bedford gaol, \"by\nthe intercession of some interest or power that took pity on his\nsufferings,\" he enjoyed a short interval of liberty.  Who these friends\nand sympathisers were is not mentioned, and it would be vain to\nconjecture.  This period of freedom, however, was very short.  He at once\nresumed his old work of preaching, against which the laws had become even\nmore stringent during his imprisonment, and was apprehended at a meeting\njust as he was about to preach a sermon.  He had given out his text,\n\"Dost thou believe on the Son of God?\" (John ix. 35), and was standing\nwith his open Bible in his hand, when the constable came in to take him.\nBunyan fixed his eyes on the man, who turned pale, let go his hold, and\ndrew back, while Bunyan exclaimed, \"See how this man trembles at the word\nof God!\"  This is all we know of his second arrest, and even this little\nis somewhat doubtful.  The time, the place, the circumstances, are as\nprovokingly vague as much else of Bunyan's life.  The fact, however, is\ncertain.  Bunyan returned to Bedford gaol, where he spent another six\nyears, until the issuing of the \"Declaration of Indulgence\" early in 1672\nopened the long-closed doors, and he walked out a free man, and with what\nhe valued far more than personal liberty, freedom to deliver Christ's\nmessage as he understood it himself, none making him afraid, and to\ndeclare to his brother sinners what their Saviour had done for them, and\nwhat he expected them to do that they might obtain the salvation He died\nto win.\n\nFrom some unknown cause, perhaps the depressing effect of protracted\nconfinement, during this second six years Bunyan's pen was far less\nprolific than during the former period.  Only two of his books are dated\nin these years.  The last of these, \"A Defence of the Doctrine of\nJustification by Faith,\" a reply to a work of Edward Fowler, afterwards\nBishop of Gloucester, the rector of Northill, was written in hot haste\nimmediately before his release, and issued from the press\ncontemporaneously with it, the prospect of liberty apparently breathing\nnew life into his wearied soul.  When once Bunyan became a free man\nagain, his pen recovered its former copiousness of production, and the\nworks by which he has been immortalized, \"The Pilgrim's Progress\"--which\nhas been erroneously ascribed to Bunyan's twelve years' imprisonment--and\nits sequel, \"The Holy War,\" and the \"Life and Death of Mr. Badman,\" and a\nhost of more strictly theological works, followed one another in rapid\nsuccession.\n\nBunyan's second term of imprisonment was certainly less severe than that\nwhich preceded it.  At its commencement we learn that, like Joseph in\nEgypt, he found favour in his jailer's eyes, who \"took such pity of his\nrigorous suffering, that he put all care and trust into his hands.\"\nTowards the close of his imprisonment its rigour was still further\nrelaxed.  The Bedford church book begins its record again in 1688, after\nan interval of ominous silence of five years, when the persecution was at\nthe hottest.  In its earliest entries we find Bunyan's name, which occurs\nrepeatedly up to the date of his final release in 1672.  Not one of these\nnotices gives the slightest allusion of his being a prisoner.  He is\ndeputed with others to visit and remonstrate with backsliding brethren,\nand fulfil other commissions on behalf of the congregation, as if he were\nin the full enjoyment of his liberty.  This was in the two years'\ninterval between the expiration of the Conventicle Act, March 2, 1667-8,\nand the passing of the new Act, styled by Marvell, \"the quintessence of\narbitrary malice,\" April 11, 1670.  After a few months of hot\npersecution, when a disgraceful system of espionage was set on foot and\nthe vilest wretches drove a lucrative trade as spies on \"meetingers,\" the\nseverity greatly lessened.  Charles II. was already meditating the\nissuing of a Declaration of Indulgence, and signified his disapprobation\nof the \"forceable courses\" in which, \"the sad experience of twelve years\"\nshowed, there was \"very little fruit.\"  One of the first and most notable\nconsequences of this change of policy was Bunyan's release.\n\nMr. Offor's patient researches in the State Paper Office have proved that\nthe Quakers, than whom no class of sectaries had suffered more severely\nfrom the persecuting edicts of the Crown, were mainly instrumental in\nthrowing open the prison doors to those who, like Bunyan, were in bonds\nfor the sake of their religion.  Gratitude to John Groves, the Quaker\nmate of Tattersall's fishing boat, in which Charles had escaped to France\nafter the battle of Worcester, had something, and the untiring advocacy\nof George Whitehead, the Quaker, had still more, to do with this act of\nroyal clemency.  We can readily believe that the good-natured Charles was\nnot sorry to have an opportunity of evidencing his sense of former\nservices rendered at a time of his greatest extremity.  But the main\ncause lay much deeper, and is connected with what Lord Macaulay justly\nstyles \"one of the worst acts of one of the worst governments that\nEngland has ever seen\"--that of the Cabal.  Our national honour was at\nits lowest ebb.  Charles had just concluded the profligate Treaty of\nDover, by which, in return for the \"protection\" he sought from the French\nking, he declared himself a Roman Catholic at heart, and bound himself to\ntake the first opportunity of \"changing the present state of religion in\nEngland for a better,\" and restoring the authority of the Pope.  The\nannouncement of his conversion Charles found it convenient to postpone.\nNor could the other part of his engagement be safely carried into effect\nat once.  It called for secret and cautious preparation.  But to pave the\nway for it, by an unconstitutional exercise of his prerogative he issued\na Declaration of Indulgence which suspended all penal laws against\n\"whatever sort of Nonconformists or Recusants.\"  The latter were\nevidently the real object of the indulgence; the former class were only\nintroduced the better to cloke his infamous design.  Toleration, however,\nwas thus at last secured, and the long-oppressed Nonconformists hastened\nto profit by it.  \"Ministers returned,\" writes Mr. J. R. Green, \"after\nyears of banishment, to their homes and their flocks.  Chapels were re-\nopened.  The gaols were emptied.  Men were set free to worship God after\ntheir own fashion.  John Bunyan left the prison which had for twelve\nyears been his home.\"  More than three thousand licenses to preach were\nat once issued.  One of the earliest of these, dated May 9, 1672, four\nmonths before his formal pardon under the Great Seal, was granted to\nBunyan, who in the preceding January had been chosen their minister by\nthe little congregation at Bedford, and \"giving himself up to serve\nChrist and His Church in that charge, had received of the elders the\nright hand of fellowship.\"  The place licensed for the exercise of\nBunyan's ministry was a barn standing in an orchard, once forming part of\nthe Castle Moat, which one of the congregation, Josias Roughead, acting\nfor the members of his church, had purchased.  The license bears date May\n9, 1672.  This primitive place of worship, in which Bunyan preached\nregularly till his death, was pulled down in 1707, when a \"three-ridged\nmeeting-house\" was erected in its place.  This in its turn gave way, in\n1849, to the existing more seemly chapel, to which the present Duke of\nBedford, in 1876, presented a pair of noble bronze doors bearing scenes,\nin high relief, from \"The Pilgrim's Progress,\" the work of Mr. Frederick\nThrupp.  In the vestry are preserved Bunyan's chair, and other relics of\nthe man who has made the name of Bedford famous to the whole civilized\nworld.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII.\n\n\nMr. Green has observed that Bunyan \"found compensation for the narrow\nbounds of his prison in the wonderful activity of his pen.  Tracts,\ncontroversial treatises, poems, meditations, his 'Grace Abounding,' and\nhis 'Holy War,' followed each other in quick succession.\"  Bunyan's\nliterary fertility in the earlier half of his imprisonment was indeed\namazing.  Even if, as seems almost certain, we have been hitherto in\nerror in assigning the First Part of \"The Pilgrim's Progress\" to this\nperiod, while the \"Holy War\" certainly belongs to a later, the works\nwhich had their birth in Bedford Gaol during the first six years of his\nconfinement, are of themselves sufficient to make the reputation of any\nordinary writer.  As has been already remarked, for some unexplained\ncause, Bunyan's gifts as an author were much more sparingly called into\nexercise during the second half of his captivity.  Only two works appear\nto have been written between 1666 and his release in 1672.\n\nMr. Green has spoken of \"poems\" as among the products of Bunyan's pen\nduring this period.  The compositions in verse belonging to this epoch,\nof which there are several, hardly deserve to be dignified with so high a\ntitle.  At no part of his life had Bunyan much title to be called a poet.\nHe did not aspire beyond the rank of a versifier, who clothed his\nthoughts in rhyme or metre instead of the more congenial prose, partly\nfor the pleasure of the exercise, partly because he knew by experience\nthat the lessons he wished to inculcate were more likely to be remembered\nin that form.  Mr. Froude, who takes a higher estimate of Bunyan's verse\nthan is commonly held, remarks that though it is the fashion to apply the\nepithet of \"doggerel\" to it, the \"sincere and rational meaning\" which\npervades his compositions renders such an epithet improper.  \"His ear for\nrhythm,\" he continues, \"though less true than in his prose, is seldom\nwholly at fault, and whether in prose or verse, he had the superlative\nmerit that he could never write nonsense.\"  Bunyan's earliest prison\nwork, entitled \"Profitable Meditations,\" was in verse, and neither this\nnor his later metrical ventures before his release--his \"Four Last\nThings,\" his \"Ebal and Gerizim,\" and his \"Prison Meditations\"--can be\nsaid to show much poetical power.  At best he is a mere rhymester, to\nwhom rhyme and metre, even when self-chosen, were as uncongenial\naccoutrements \"as Saul's armour was to David.\"  The first-named book,\nwhich is entitled a \"Conference between Christ and a Sinner,\" in the form\nof a poetical dialogue, according to Dr. Brown has \"small literary merit\nof any sort.\"  The others do not deserve much higher commendation.  There\nis an individuality about the \"Prison Meditations\" which imparts to it a\npersonal interest, which is entirely wanting in the other two works,\nwhich may be characterized as metrical sermons, couched in verse of the\nSternhold and Hopkins type.  A specimen or two will suffice.  The \"Four\nLast Things\" thus opens:--\n\n   \"These lines I at this time present\n   To all that will them heed,\n   Wherein I show to what intent\n   God saith, 'Convert with speed.'\n   For these four things come on apace,\n   Which we should know full well,\n   Both death and judgment, and, in place\n   Next to them, heaven and hell.\"\n\nThe following lines are from \"Ebal and Gerizim\":--\n\n   \"Thou art like one that hangeth by a thread\n   Over the mouth of hell, as one half dead;\n   And oh, how soon this thread may broken be,\n   Or cut by death, is yet unknown to thee.\n   But sure it is if all the weight of sin,\n   And all that Satan too hath doing been\n   Or yet can do, can break this crazy thread,\n   'Twill not be long before among the dead\n   Thou tumble do, as linked fast in chains,\n   With them to wait in fear for future pains.\"\n\nThe poetical effusion entitled \"Prison Meditations\" does not in any way\nrise above the prosaic level of its predecessors.  But it can be read\nwith less weariness from the picture it presents of Bunyan's prison life,\nand of the courageous faith which sustained him.  Some unnamed friend, it\nwould appear, fearing he might flinch, had written him a letter\ncounselling him to keep \"his head above the flood.\"  Bunyan replied in\nseventy stanzas in ballad measure, thanking his correspondent for his\ngood advice, of which he confesses he stood in need, and which he takes\nit kindly of him to send, even though his feet stand upon Mount Zion, and\nthe gaol is to him like a hill from which he could see beyond this world,\nand take his fill of the blessedness of that which remains for the\nChristian.  Though in bonds his mind is free, and can wander where it\nwill.\n\n   \"For though men keep my outward man\n   Within their locks and bars,\n   Yet by the faith of Christ, I can\n   Mount higher than the stars.\"\n\nMeanwhile his captivity is sweetened by the thought of what it was that\nbrought him there:--\n\n   \"I here am very much refreshed\n   To think, when I was out,\n   I preached life, and peace, and rest,\n   To sinners round about.\n\n   My business then was souls to save\n   By preaching grace and faith,\n   Of which the comfort now I have\n   And have it shall till death.\n\n   That was the work I was about\n   When hands on me they laid.\n   'Twas this for which they plucked me out\n   And vilely to me said,\n\n   'You heretic, deceiver, come,\n   To prison you must go,\n   You preach abroad, and keep not home,\n   You are the Church's foe.'\n\n   Wherefore to prison they me sent,\n   Where to this day I lie,\n   And can with very much content\n   For my profession die.\n\n   The prison very sweet to me\n   Hath been since I came here,\n   And so would also hanging be\n   If God would there appear.\n\n   To them that here for evil lie\n   The place is comfortless;\n   But not to me, because that I\n   Lie here for righteousness.\n\n   The truth and I were both here cast\n   Together, and we do\n   Lie arm in arm, and so hold fast\n   Each other, this is true.\n\n   Who now dare say we throw away\n   Our goods or liberty,\n   When God's most holy Word doth say\n   We gain thus much thereby?\"\n\nIt will be seen that though Bunyan's verses are certainly not high-class\npoetry, they are very far removed from doggerel.  Nothing indeed that\nBunyan ever wrote, however rugged the rhymes and limping the metre, can\nbe so stigmatized.  The rude scribblings on the margins of the copy of\nthe \"Book of Martyrs,\" which bears Bunyan's signature on the title-pages,\nthough regarded by Southey as \"undoubtedly\" his, certainly came from a\nlater and must less instructed pen.  And as he advanced in his literary\ncareer, his claim to the title of a poet, though never of the highest,\nwas much strengthened.  The verses which diversify the narrative in the\nSecond Part of \"The Pilgrim's Progress\" are decidedly superior to those\nin the First Part, and some are of high excellence.  Who is ignorant of\nthe charming little song of the Shepherd Boy in the Valley of\nHumiliation, \"in very mean clothes, but with a very fresh and\nwell-favoured countenance, and wearing more of the herb called Heartsease\nin his bosom than he that is clad in silk and velvet?\"--\n\n   \"He that is down need fear no fall;\n   He that is low, no pride;\n   He that is humble, ever shall\n   Have God to be his guide.\n\n   I am content with what I have,\n   Little be it or much,\n   And, Lord, contentment still I crave,\n   Because Thou savest such.\n\n   Fulness to such a burden is\n   That go on Pilgrimage,\n   Here little, and hereafter Bliss\n   Is best from age to age.\"\n\nBunyan reaches a still higher flight in Valiant-for-Truth's song, later\non, the Shakesperian ring of which recalls Amiens' in \"As You Like It,\"\n\n   \"Under the greenwood tree,\n   Who loves to lie with me. . .\n   Come hither, come hither,\"\n\nand has led some to question whether it can be Bunyan's own.  The\nresemblance, as Mr. Froude remarks, is \"too near to be accidental.\"\n\"Perhaps he may have heard the lines, and the rhymes may have clung to\nhim without his knowing whence they came.\"\n\n   \"Who would true Valour see,\n   Let him come hither,\n   One here will constant be,\n   Come wind, come weather.\n   There's no discouragement\n   Shall make him once relent\n   His first avowed intent\n   To be a Pilgrim.\n\n   Who so beset him round\n   With dismal stories,\n   Do but themselves confound\n   His strength the more is.\n   No lion can him fright,\n   He'll with a giant fight,\n   But he will have a right\n   To be a Pilgrim.\n\n   Hobgoblin nor foul fiend\n   Can daunt his spirit,\n   He knows he at the end\n   Shall life inherit.\n   Then fancies fly away\n   He'll fear not what men say,\n   He'll labour night and day\n   To be a Pilgrim.\"\n\nAll readers of \"The Pilgrim's Progress\" and \"The Holy War\" are familiar\nwith the long metrical compositions giving the history of these works by\nwhich they are prefaced and the latter work is closed.  No more\ncharacteristic examples of Bunyan's muse can be found.  They show his\nexcellent command of his native tongue in racy vernacular, homely but\nnever vulgar, and his power of expressing his meaning \"with sharp defined\noutlines and without the waste of a word.\"\n\nTake this account of his perplexity, when the First Part of his\n\"Pilgrim's Progress\" was finished, whether it should be given to the\nworld or no, and the characteristic decision with which he settled the\nquestion for himself:--\n\n   \"Well, when I had then put mine ends together,\n   I show'd them others that I might see whether\n   They would condemn them, or them justify;\n   And some said Let them live; some, Let them die.\n   Some said, John, print it; others said, Not so;\n   Some said it might do good; others said No.\n   Now was I in a strait, and did not see\n   Which was the best thing to be done by me;\n   At last I thought since you are thus divided\n   I print it will; and so the case decided;\"\n\nor the lines in which he introduces the Second Part of the Pilgrim to the\nreaders of the former part:--\n\n   \"Go now, my little Book, to every place\n   Where my first Pilgrim hath but shown his face:\n   Call at their door: If any say, 'Who's there?'\n   Then answer that Christiana is here.\n   If they bid thee come in, then enter thou\n   With all thy boys.  And then, as thou knowest how,\n   Tell who they are, also from whence they came;\n   Perhaps they'll know them by their looks or name.\n   But if they should not, ask them yet again\n   If formerly they did not entertain\n   One Christian, a pilgrim.  If they say\n   They did, and were delighted in his way:\n   Then let them know that these related are\n   Unto him, yea, his wife and children are.\n   Tell them that they have left their house and home,\n   Are turned Pilgrims, seek a world to come;\n   That they have met with hardships on the way,\n   That they do meet with troubles night and day.\"\n\nHow racy, even if the lines are a little halting, is the defence of the\ngenuineness of his Pilgrim in \"The Advertisement to the Reader\" at the\nend of \"The Holy War.\"\n\n   \"Some say the Pilgrim's Progress is not mine,\n   Insinuating as if I would shine\n   In name or fame by the worth of another,\n   Like some made rich by robbing of their brother;\n   Or that so fond I am of being sire\n   I'll father bastards; or if need require,\n   I'll tell a lie or print to get applause.\n   I scorn it.  John such dirt-heap never was\n   Since God converted him. . .\n   Witness my name, if anagram'd to thee\n   The letters make _Nu hony in a B_.\n   IOHN BUNYAN.\"\n\nHow full of life and vigour his sketch of the beleaguerment and\ndeliverance of \"Mansoul,\" as a picture of his own spiritual experience,\nin the introductory verses to \"The Holy War\"!--\n\n   \"For my part I, myself, was in the town,\n   Both when 'twas set up, and when pulling down;\n   I saw Diabolus in possession,\n   And Mansoul also under his oppression.\n   Yes, I was there when she crowned him for lord,\n   And to him did submit with one accord.\n   When Mansoul trampled upon things divine,\n   And wallowed in filth as doth a swine,\n   When she betook herself unto her arms,\n   Fought her Emmanuel, despised his charms:\n   Then I was there, and did rejoice to see\n   Diabolus and Mansoul so agree.\n   I saw the prince's armed men come down\n   By troops, by thousands, to besiege the town,\n   I saw the captains, heard the trumpets sound,\n   And how his forces covered all the ground,\n   Yea, how they set themselves in battle array,\n   I shall remember to my dying day.\"\n\nBunyan's other essays in the domain of poetry need not detain us long.\nThe most considerable of these--at least in bulk--if it be really his, is\na version of some portions of the Old and New Testaments: the life of\nJoseph, the Book of Ruth, the history of Samson, the Book of Jonah, the\nSermon on the Mount, and the General Epistle of St. James.  The attempt\nto do the English Bible into verse has been often made and never\nsuccessfully: in the nature of things success in such a task is\nimpossible, nor can this attempt be regarded as happier than that of\nothers.  Mr. Froude indeed, who undoubtingly accepts their genuineness,\nis of a different opinion.  He styles the \"Book of Ruth\" and the \"History\nof Joseph\" \"beautiful idylls,\" of such high excellence that, \"if we found\nthem in the collected works of a poet laureate, we should consider that a\ndifficult task had been accomplished successfully.\"  It would seem almost\ndoubtful whether Mr. Froude can have read the compositions that he\ncommends so largely, and so much beyond their merit.  The following\nspecimen, taken haphazard, will show how thoroughly Bunyan or the\nrhymester, whoever he may be, has overcome what Mr. Froude regards as an\nalmost insuperable difficulty, and has managed to \"spoil completely the\nfaultless prose of the English translation\":--\n\n   \"Ruth replied,\n   Intreat me not to leave thee or return;\n   For where thou goest I'll go, where thou sojourn\n   I'll sojourn also--and what people's thine,\n   And who thy God, the same shall both be mine.\n   Where thou shalt die, there will I die likewise,\n   And I'll be buried where thy body lies.\n   The Lord do so to me and more if I\n   Do leave thee or forsake thee till I die.\"\n\nThe more we read of these poems, not given to the world till twelve years\nafter Bunyan's death, and that by a publisher who was \"a repeated\noffender against the laws of honest dealing,\" the more we are inclined to\nagree with Dr. Brown, that the internal evidence of their style renders\ntheir genuineness at the least questionable.  In the dull prosaic level\nof these compositions there is certainly no trace of the \"force and\npower\" always present in Bunyan's rudest rhymes, still less of the \"dash\nof genius\" and the \"sparkle of soul\" which occasionally discover the hand\nof a master.\n\nOf the authenticity of Bunyan's \"Divine Emblems,\" originally published\nthree years after his death under the title of \"Country Rhymes for\nChildren,\" there is no question.  The internal evidence confirms the\nexternal.  The book is thoroughly in Bunyan's vein, and in its homely\nnaturalness of imagery recalls the similitudes of the \"Interpreter's\nHouse,\" especially those expounded to Christiana and her boys.  As in\nthat \"house of imagery\" things of the most common sort, the sweeping of a\nroom, the burning of a fire, the drinking of a chicken, a robin with a\nspider in his mouth, are made the vehicle of religious teaching; so in\nthis \"Book for Boys and Girls,\" a mole burrowing in the ground, a swallow\nsoaring in the air, the cuckoo which can do nothing but utter two notes,\na flaming and a blinking candle, or a pound of candles falling to the\nground, a boy chasing a butterfly, the cackling of a hen when she has\nlaid her egg, all, to his imaginative mind, set forth some spiritual\ntruth or enforce some wholesome moral lesson.  How racy, though homely,\nare these lines on a Frog!--\n\n   \"The Frog by nature is but damp and cold,\n   Her mouth is large, her belly much will hold,\n   She sits somewhat ascending, loves to be\n   Croaking in gardens, though unpleasantly.\n\n   The hypocrite is like unto this Frog,\n   As like as is the puppy to the dog.\n   He is of nature cold, his mouth is wide\n   To prate, and at true goodness to deride.\n   And though this world is that which he doth love,\n   He mounts his head as if he lived above.\n   And though he seeks in churches for to croak,\n   He neither seeketh Jesus nor His yoke.\"\n\nThere is some real poetry in those on the Cuckoo, though we may be\ninclined to resent his harsh treatment of our universal favourite:--\n\n   \"Thou booby says't thou nothing but Cuckoo?\n   The robin and the wren can that outdo.\n   They to us play thorough their little throats\n   Not one, but sundry pretty tuneful notes.\n   But thou hast fellows, some like thee can do\n   Little but suck our eggs, and sing Cuckoo.\n\n   Thy notes do not first welcome in our spring,\n   Nor dost thou its first tokens to us bring.\n   Birds less than thee by far like prophets do\n   Tell us 'tis coming, though not by Cuckoo,\n   Nor dost thou summer bear away with thee\n   Though thou a yawling bawling Cuckoo be.\n   When thou dost cease among us to appear,\n   Then doth our harvest bravely crown our year.\n   But thou hast fellows, some like thee can do\n   Little but suck our eggs, and sing Cuckoo.\n\n   Since Cuckoos forward not our early spring\n   Nor help with notes to bring our harvest in,\n   And since while here, she only makes a noise\n   So pleasing unto none as girls and boys,\n   The Formalist we may compare her to,\n   For he doth suck our eggs and sing Cuckoo.\"\n\nA perusal of this little volume with its roughness and quaintness,\nsometimes grating on the ear but full of strong thought and picturesque\nimages, cannot fail to raise Bunyan's pretensions as a poet.  His muse,\nit is true, as Alexander Smith has said, is a homely one.  She is \"clad\nin russet, wears shoes and stockings, has a country accent, and walks\nalong the level Bedfordshire roads.\"  But if the lines are unpolished,\n\"they have pith and sinew, like the talk of a shrewd peasant,\" with the\n\"strong thought and the knack of the skilled workman who can drive by a\nsingle blow the nail home to the head.\"\n\nDuring his imprisonment Bunyan's pen was much more fertile in prose than\nin poetry.  Besides his world-famous \"Grace Abounding,\" he produced\nduring the first six years of his gaol life a treatise on prayer,\nentitled \"Praying in the Spirit;\" a book on \"Christian Behaviour,\"\nsetting forth with uncompromising plainness the relative duties of\nhusbands and wives, parents and children, masters and servants, by which\nthose who profess a true faith are bound to show forth its reality and\npower; the \"Holy City,\" an exposition of the vision in the closing\nchapters of the Book of Revelation, brilliant with picturesque\ndescription and rich in suggestive thought, which, he tells us, had its\norigin in a sermon preached by him to his brethren in bonds in their\nprison chamber; and a work on the \"Resurrection of the Dead and Eternal\nJudgment.\"  On these works we may not linger.  There is not one of them\nwhich is not marked by vigour of thought, clearness of language, accuracy\nof arrangement, and deep spiritual experience.  Nor is there one which\ndoes not here and there exhibit specimens of Bunyan's picturesque\nimaginative power, and his command of forcible and racy language.  Each\nwill reward perusal.  His work on \"Prayer\" is couched in the most exalted\nstrain, and is evidently the production of one who by long and agonizing\nexperience had learnt the true nature of prayer, as a pouring out of the\nsoul to God, and a wrestling with Him until the blessing, delayed not\ndenied, is granted.  It is, however, unhappily deformed by much ignorant\nreviling of the Book of Common Prayer.  He denounces it as \"taken out of\nthe papistical mass-book, the scraps and fragments of some popes, some\nfriars, and I know not what;\" and ridicules the order of service it\npropounds to the worshippers.  \"They have the matter and the manner of\ntheir prayer at their fingers' ends; they set such a prayer for such a\nday, and that twenty years before it comes: one for Christmas, another\nfor Easter, and six days after that.  They have also bounded how many\nsyllables must be said in every one of them at their public exercises.\nFor each saint's day also they have them ready for the generations yet\nunborn to say.  They can tell you also when you shall kneel, when you\nshall stand, when you should abide in your seats, when you should go up\ninto the chancel, and what you should do when you come there.  All which\nthe apostles came short of, as not being able to compose so profound a\nmanner.\"  This bitter satirical vein in treating of sacred things is\nunworthy of its author, and degrading to his sense of reverence.  It has\nits excuse in the hard measure he had received from those who were so\nunwisely endeavouring to force the Prayer Book on a generation which had\nlargely forgotten it.  In his mind, the men and the book were identified,\nand the unchristian behaviour of its advocates blinded his eyes to its\nmerits as a guide to devotion.  Bunyan, when denouncing forms in worship,\nforgot that the same apostle who directs that in our public assemblies\neverything should be done \"to edification,\" directs also that everything\nshould be done \"decently and in order.\"\n\nBy far the most important of these prison works--\"The Pilgrim's\nProgress,\" belonging, as will be seen, to a later period--is the \"Grace\nAbounding,\" in which with inimitable earnestness and simplicity Bunyan\ngives the story of his early life and his religious history.  This book,\nif he had written no other, would stamp Bunyan as one of the greatest\nmasters of the English language of his own or any other age.  In graphic\ndelineation of the struggles of a conscience convicted of sin towards a\nhardly won freedom and peace, the alternations of light and darkness, of\nhope and despair, which chequered its course, its morbid self-torturing\nquestionings of motive and action, this work of the travelling tinker, as\na spiritual history, has never been surpassed.  Its equal can hardly be\nfound, save perhaps in the \"Confessions of St. Augustine.\"  These,\nhowever, though describing a like spiritual conflict, are couched in a\nmore cultured style, and rise to a higher metaphysical region than Bunyan\nwas capable of attaining to.  His level is a lower one, but on that level\nBunyan is without a rival.  Never has the history of a soul convinced of\nthe reality of eternal perdition in its most terrible form as the most\ncertain of all possible facts, and of its own imminent danger of\nhopeless, irreversible doom--seeing itself, to employ his own image,\nhanging, as it were, over the pit of hell by a thin line, which might\nsnap any moment--been portrayed in more nervous and awe-inspiring\nlanguage.  And its awfulness is enhanced by its self-evident truth.\nBunyan was drawing no imaginary picture of what others might feel, but\nsimply telling in plain unadorned language what he had felt.  The\nexperience was a very tremendous reality to him.  Like Dante, if he had\nnot actually been in hell, he had been on the very threshold of it; he\nhad in very deed traversed \"the Valley of the Shadow of Death,\" had heard\nits \"hideous noises,\" and seen \"the Hobgoblins of the Pit.\"  He \"spake\nwhat he knew and testified what he had seen.\"  Every sentence breathes\nthe most tremendous earnestness.  His words are the plainest, drawn from\nhis own homely vernacular.  He says in his preface, which will amply\nrepay reading, as one of the most characteristic specimens of his style,\nthat he could have stepped into a higher style, and adorned his narrative\nmore plentifully.  But he dared not.  \"God did not play in convincing\nhim.  The devil did not play in tempting him.  He himself did not play\nwhen he sunk as into a bottomless pit, and the pangs of hell caught hold\non him.  Nor could he play in relating them.  He must be plain and simple\nand lay down the thing as it was.  He that liked it might receive it.  He\nthat did not might produce a better.\"  The remembrance of \"his great\nsins, his great temptations, his great fears of perishing for ever,\nrecalled the remembrance of his great help, his great support from\nheaven, the great grace God extended to such a wretch as he was.\"  Having\nthus enlarged on his own experience, he calls on his spiritual children,\nfor whose use the work was originally composed and to whom it is\ndedicated,--\"those whom God had counted him worthy to beget to Faith by\nhis ministry in the Word\"--to survey their own religious history, to\n\"work diligently and leave no corner unsearched.\"  He would have them\n\"remember their tears and prayers to God; how they sighed under every\nhedge for mercy.  Had they never a hill Mizar (Psa. xlii. 6) to remember?\nHad they forgotten the close, the milkhouse, the stable, the barn, where\nGod visited their souls?  Let them remember the Word on which the Lord\nhad caused them to hope.  If they had sinned against light, if they were\ntempted to blaspheme, if they were down in despair, let them remember\nthat it had been so with him, their spiritual father, and that out of\nthem all the Lord had delivered him.\"  This dedication ends thus: \"My\ndear children, the milk and honey is beyond this wilderness.  God be\nmerciful to you, and grant you be not slothful to go in to possess the\nland.\"\n\nThis remarkable book, as we learn from the title-page, was \"written by\nhis own hand in prison.\"  It was first published by George Larkin in\nLondon, in 1666, the sixth year of his imprisonment, the year of the Fire\nof London, about the time that he experienced his first brief release.  As\nwith \"The Pilgrim's Progress,\" the work grew in picturesque detail and\ngraphic power in the author's hand after its first appearance.  The later\neditions supply some of the most interesting personal facts contained in\nthe narrative, which were wanting when it first issued from the press.\nHis two escapes from drowning, and from the supposed sting of an adder;\nhis being drawn as a soldier, and his providential deliverance from\ndeath; the graphic account of his difficulty in giving up bell-ringing at\nElstow Church, and dancing on Sundays on Elstow Green--these and other\nminor touches which give a life and colour to the story, which we should\nbe very sorry to lose, are later additions.  It is impossible to over-\nestimate the value of the \"Grace Abounding,\" both for the facts of\nBunyan's earlier life and for the spiritual experience of which these\nfacts were, in his eyes only the outward framework.  Beginning with his\nparentage and boyhood, it carries us down to his marriage and life in the\nwayside-cottage at Elstow, his introduction to Mr. Gifford's congregation\nat Bedford, his joining that holy brotherhood, and his subsequent call to\nthe work of the ministry among them, and winds up with an account of his\napprehension, examinations, and imprisonment in Bedford gaol.  The work\nconcludes with a report of the conversation between his noble-hearted\nwife and Sir Matthew Hale and the other judges at the Midsummer assizes,\nnarrated in a former chapter, \"taken down,\" he says, \"from her own\nmouth.\"  The whole story is of such sustained interest that our chief\nregret on finishing it is that it stops where it does, and does not go on\nmuch further.  Its importance for our knowledge of Bunyan as a man, as\ndistinguished from an author, and of the circumstances of his life, is\nseen by a comparison of our acquaintance with his earlier and with his\nlater years.  When he laid down his pen no one took it up, and beyond two\nor three facts, and a few hazy anecdotes we know little or nothing of all\nthat happened between his final release and his death.\n\nThe value of the \"Grace Abounding,\" however, as a work of experimental\nreligion may be easily over-estimated.  It is not many who can study\nBunyan's minute history of the various stages of his spiritual life with\nreal profit.  To some temperaments, especially among the young, the book\nis more likely to prove injurious than beneficial; it is calculated\nrather to nourish morbid imaginations, and a dangerous habit of\nintrospection, than to foster the quiet growth of the inner life.\nBunyan's unhappy mode of dealing with the Bible as a collection of texts,\neach of Divine authority and declaring a definite meaning entirely\nirrespective of its context, by which the words hide the Word, is also\nutterly destructive of the true purpose of the Holy Scriptures as a\nrevelation of God's loving and holy mind and will.  Few things are more\ntouching than the eagerness with which, in his intense self-torture,\nBunyan tried to evade the force of those \"fearful and terrible\nScriptures\" which appeared to seal his condemnation, and to lay hold of\nthe promises to the penitent sinner.  His tempest-tossed spirit could\nonly find rest by doing violence to the dogma, then universally accepted\nand not quite extinct even in our own days, that the authority of the\nBible--that \"Divine Library\"--collectively taken, belongs to each and\nevery sentence of the Bible taken for and by itself, and that, in\nColeridge's words, \"detached sentences from books composed at the\ndistance of centuries, nay, sometimes at a millenium from each other,\nunder different dispensations and for different objects,\" are to be\nbrought together \"into logical dependency.\"  But \"where the Spirit of the\nLord is there is liberty.\"  The divinely given life in the soul of man\nsnaps the bonds of humanly-constructed logical systems.  Only those,\nhowever, who have known by experience the force of Bunyan's spiritual\ncombat, can fully appreciate and profit by Bunyan's narrative.  He tells\nus on the title-page that it was written \"for the support of the weak and\ntempted people of God.\"  For such the \"Grace Abounding to the chief of\nsinners\" will ever prove most valuable.  Those for whom it was intended\nwill find in it a message--of comfort and strength.\n\nAs has been said, Bunyan's pen was almost idle during the last six years\nof his imprisonment.  Only two of his works were produced in this period:\nhis \"Confession of Faith,\" and his \"Defence of the Doctrine of\nJustification by Faith.\"  Both were written very near the end of his\nprison life, and published in the same year, 1672, only a week or two\nbefore his release.  The object of the former work was, as Dr. Brown\ntells us, \"to vindicate his teaching, and if possible, to secure his\nliberty.\"  Writing as one \"in bonds for the Gospel,\" his professed\nprinciples, he asserts, are \"faith, and holiness springing therefrom,\nwith an endeavour so far as in him lies to be at peace with all men.\"  He\nis ready to hold communion with all whose principles are the same; with\nall whom he can reckon as children of God.  With these he will not\nquarrel about \"things that are circumstantial,\" such as water baptism,\nwhich he regards as something quite indifferent, men being \"neither the\nbetter for having it, nor the worse for having it not.\"  \"He will receive\nthem in the Lord as becometh saints.  If they will not have communion\nwith him, the neglect is theirs not his.  But with the openly profane and\nungodly, though, poor people! they have been christened and take the\ncommunion, he will have no communion.  It would be a strange community,\nhe says, that consisted of men and beasts.  Men do not receive their\nhorse or their dog to their table; they put them in a room by\nthemselves.\"  As regards forms and ceremonies, he \"cannot allow his soul\nto be governed in its approach to God by the superstitious inventions of\nthis world.  He is content to stay in prison even till the moss grows on\nhis eyelids rather than thus make of his conscience a continual butchery\nand slaughter-shop by putting out his eyes and committing himself to the\nblind to lead him.  Eleven years' imprisonment was a weighty argument to\npause and pause again over the foundation of the principles for which he\nhad thus suffered.  Those principles he had asserted at his trial, and in\nthe tedious tract of time since then he had in cold blood examined them\nby the Word of God and found them good; nor could he dare to revolt from\nor deny them on pain of eternal damnation.\"\n\nThe second-named work, the \"Defence of the Doctrine of Justification by\nFaith,\" is entirely controversial.  The Rev. Edward Fowler, afterwards\nBishop of Gloucester, then Rector of Northill, had published in the early\npart of 1671, a book entitled \"The Design of Christianity.\"  A copy\nhaving found its way into Bunyan's hands, he was so deeply stirred by\nwhat he deemed its subversion of the true foundation of Evangelical\nreligion that he took up his pen and in the space of six weeks composed a\nlong and elaborate examination of the book, chapter by chapter, and a\nconfutation of its teaching.  Fowler's doctrines as Bunyan understood\nthem--or rather misunderstood them--awoke the worst side of his impetuous\nnature.  His vituperation of the author and his book is coarse and\nunmeasured.  He roundly charges Fowler with having \"closely, privily, and\ndevilishly turned the grace of God into a licentious doctrine,\nbespattering it with giving liberty to lasciviousness;\" and he calls him\n\"a pretended minister of the Word,\" who, in \"his cursed blasphemous book\nvilely exposes to public view the rottenness of his heart, in principle\ndiametrically opposite to the simplicity of the Gospel of Christ, a\nglorious latitudinarian that can, as to religion, turn and twist like an\neel on the angle, or rather like the weathercock that stands on the\nsteeple;\" and describes him as \"contradicting the wholesome doctrine of\nthe Church of England.\"  He \"knows him not by face much less his personal\npractise.\"  He may have \"kept himself clear of the ignorant Sir Johns who\nhad for a long time, as a judgment of God, been made the mouth to the\npeople--men of debauched lives who for the love of filthy lucre and the\npampering of their idle carcases had made shipwreck of their former\nfaith;\" but he does know that having been ejected as a Nonconformist in\n1662, he had afterwards gone over to the winning side, and he fears that\n\"such an unstable weathercock spirit as he had manifested would stumble\nthe work and give advantage to the adversary to speak vilifyingly of\nreligion.\"  No excuse can be offered for the coarse violence of Bunyan's\nlanguage in this book; but it was too much the habit of the time to load\na theological opponent with vituperation, to push his assertions to the\nfurthest extreme, and make the most unwarrantable deductions from them.\nIt must be acknowledged that Bunyan does not treat Fowler and his\ndoctrines with fairness, and that, if the latter may be thought to\ndepreciate unduly the sacrifice of the Death of Christ as an expiation\nfor man's guilt, and to lay too great a stress on the moral faculties\nremaining in the soul after the Fall, Bunyan errs still more widely on\nthe other side in asserting the absolute, irredeemable corruption of\nhuman nature, leaving nothing for grace to work upon, but demanding an\nabsolutely fresh creation, not a revivification of the Divine nature\ngrievously marred but not annihilated by Adam's sin.\n\nA reply to Bunyan's severe strictures was not slow to appear.  The book\nbears the title, characteristic of the tone and language of its contents,\nof \"_Dirt wip't off_; or, a manifest discovery of the Gross Ignorance,\nErroneousness, and most Unchristian and Wicked Spirit of one John Bunyan,\nLay-preacher in Bedford.\"  It professes to be written by a friend of\nFowler's, but Fowler was generally accredited with it.  Its violent\ntirades against one who, he says, had been \"near these twenty years or\nlonger very infamous in the Town and County of Bedford as a very\nPestilent Schismatick,\" and whom he suggests the authorities have done\nwrong in letting out of prison, and had better clap in gaol again as \"an\nimpudent and malicious Firebrand,\" have long since been consigned to a\nmerciful oblivion, where we may safely leave them.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII.\n\n\nBunyan's protracted imprisonment came to an end in 1672.  The exact date\nof his actual liberation is uncertain.  His pardon under the Great Seal\nbears date September 13th.  But we find from the church books that he had\nbeen appointed pastor of the congregation to which he belonged as early\nas the 21st of January of that year, and on the 9th of May his\nministerial position was duly recognized by the Government, and a license\nwas granted to him to act \"as preacher in the house of Josias Roughead,\"\nfor those \"of the Persuasion commonly called Congregational.\"  His\nrelease would therefore seem to have anticipated the formal issue of his\npardon by four months.  Bunyan was now half way through his forty-fourth\nyear.  Sixteen years still remained to him before his career of\nindefatigable service in the Master's work was brought to a close.  Of\nthese sixteen years, as has already been remarked, we have only a very\ngeneral knowledge.  Details are entirely wanting; nor is there any known\nsource from which they can be recovered.  If he kept any diary it has not\nbeen preserved.  If he wrote letters--and one who was looked up to by so\nlarge a circle of disciples as a spiritual father and guide, and whose\npen was so ready of exercise, cannot fail to have written many--not one\nhas come down to us.  The pages of the church books during his pastorate\nare also provokingly barren of record, and little that they contain is in\nBunyan's handwriting.  As Dr. Brown has said, \"he seems to have been too\nbusy to keep any records of his busy life.\"  Nor can we fill up the blank\nfrom external authorities.  The references to Bunyan in contemporary\nbiographies are far fewer than we might have expected; certainly far\nfewer than we could have desired.  But the little that is recorded is\neminently characteristic.  We see him constantly engaged in the great\nwork to which he felt God had called him, and for which, \"with much\ncontent through grace,\" he had suffered twelve years' incarceration.  In\naddition to the regular discharge of his pastoral duties to his own\ncongregation, he took a general oversight of the villages far and near\nwhich had been the scene of his earlier ministry, preaching whenever\nopportunity offered, and, ever unsparing of his own personal labour,\nmaking long journeys into distant parts of the country for the\nfurtherance of the gospel.  We find him preaching at Leicester in the\nyear of his release.  Reading also is mentioned as receiving occasional\nvisits from him, and that not without peril after the revival of\npersecution; while the congregations in London had the benefit of his\nexhortations at stated intervals.  Almost the first thing Bunyan did,\nafter his liberation from gaol, was to make others sharers in his hardly\nwon \"liberty of prophesying,\" by applying to the Government for licenses\nfor preachers and preaching places in Bedfordshire and the neighbouring\ncounties, under the Declaration of Indulgence.  The still existing list\nsent in to the authorities by him, in his own handwriting, contains the\nnames of twenty-five preachers and thirty buildings, besides \"Josias\nRoughead's House in his orchard at Bedford.\"  Nineteen of these were in\nhis own native county, three in Northamptonshire, three in\nBuckinghamshire, two in Cambridgeshire, two in Huntingdonshire, and one\nin Hertfordshire.  The places sought to be licensed were very various,\nbarns, malthouses, halls belonging to public companies, &c., but more\nusually private houses.  Over these religious communities, bound together\nby a common faith and common suffering, Bunyan exercised a\nquasi-episcopal superintendence, which gained for him the playful title\nof \"Bishop Bunyan.\"  In his regular circuits,--\"visitations\" we may not\nimproperly term them,--we are told that he exerted himself to relieve the\ntemporal wants of the sufferers under the penal laws,--so soon and so\ncruelly revived,--ministered diligently to the sick and afflicted, and\nused his influence in reconciling differences between \"professors of the\ngospel,\" and thus prevented the scandal of litigation among Christians.\nThe closing period of Bunyan's life was laborious but happy, spent\n\"honourably and innocently\" in writing, preaching, visiting his\ncongregations, and planting daughter churches.  \"Happy,\" writes Mr.\nFroude, \"in his work; happy in the sense that his influence was daily\nextending--spreading over his own country and to the far-off settlements\nof America,--he spent his last years in his own land of Beulah, Doubting\nCastle out of sight, and the towers and minarets of Immanuel's Land\ngrowing nearer and clearer as the days went on.\"\n\nWith his time so largely occupied in his spiritual functions, he could\nhave had but small leisure to devote to his worldly calling.  This,\nhowever, one of so honest and independent a spirit is sure not to have\nneglected, it was indeed necessary that to a certain extent he should\nwork for his living.  He had a family to maintain.  His congregation were\nmostly of the poorer sort, unable to contribute much to their pastor's\nsupport.  Had it been otherwise, Bunyan was the last man in the world to\nmake a trade of the gospel, and though never hesitating to avail himself\nof the apostolic privilege to \"live of the gospel,\" he, like the apostle\nof the Gentiles, would never be ashamed to \"work with his own hands,\"\nthat he might \"minister to his own necessities,\" and those of his family.\nBut from the time of his release he regarded his ministerial work as the\nchief work of his life.  \"When he came abroad,\" says one who knew him,\n\"he found his temporal affairs were gone to wreck, and he had as to them\nto begin again as if he had newly come into the world.  But yet he was\nnot destitute of friends, who had all along supported him with\nnecessaries and had been very good to his family, so that by their\nassistance getting things a little about him again, he resolved as much\nas possible to decline worldly business, and give himself wholly up to\nthe service of God.\"  The anonymous writer to whom we are indebted for\ninformation concerning his imprisonment and his subsequent life, says\nthat Bunyan, \"contenting himself with that little God had bestowed upon\nhim, sequestered himself from all secular employments to follow that of\nhis call to the ministry.\"  The fact, however, that in the \"deed of gift\"\nof all his property to his wife in 1685, he still describes himself as a\n\"brazier,\" puts it beyond all doubt that though his ministerial duties\nwere his chief concern, he prudently kept fast hold of his handicraft as\na certain means of support for himself and those dependent on him.  On\nthe whole, Bunyan's outward circumstances were probably easy.  His wants\nwere few and easily supplied.  \"Having food and raiment\" for himself, his\nwife, and his children, he was \"therewith content.\"  The house in the\nparish of St. Cuthbert's which was his home from his release to his death\n(unhappily demolished fifty years back), shows the humble character of\nhis daily life.  It was a small cottage, such as labourers now occupy,\nwith three small rooms on the ground floor, and a garret with a\ndiminutive dormer window under the high-pitched tiled roof.  Behind stood\nan outbuilding which served as his workshop.  We have a passing glimpse\nof this cottage home in the diary of Thomas Hearne, the Oxford antiquary.\nOne Mr. Bagford, otherwise unknown to us, had once \"walked into the\ncountry\" on purpose to see \"the study of John Bunyan,\" and the student\nwho made it famous.  On his arrival the interviewer--as we should now\ncall him--met with a civil and courteous reception from Bunyan; but he\nfound the contents of his study hardly larger than those of his prison\ncell.  They were limited to a Bible, and copies of \"The Pilgrim's\nProgress,\" and a few other books, chiefly his own works, \"all lying on a\nshelf or shelves.\"  Slight as this sketch is, it puts us more in touch\nwith the immortal dreamer than many longer and more elaborate paragraphs.\n\nBunyan's celebrity as a preacher, great before he was shut up in gaol,\nwas naturally enhanced by the circumstance of his imprisonment.  The barn\nin Josias Roughead's orchard, where he was licensed as a preacher, was\n\"so thronged the first time he appeared there to edify, that many were\nconstrained to stay without; every one that was of his persuasion\nstriving to partake of his instructions.\"  Wherever he ministered,\nsometimes, when troublous days returned, in woods, and in dells, and\nother hiding-places, the announcement that John Bunyan was to preach\ngathered a large and attentive auditory, hanging on his lips and drinking\nfrom them the word of life.  His fame grew the more he was known and\nreached its climax when his work was nearest its end.  His biographer\nCharles Doe tells us that just before his death, \"when Mr. Bunyan\npreached in London, if there were but one day's notice given, there would\nbe more people come together than the meeting-house could hold.  I have\nseen, by my computation, about twelve hundred at a morning lecture by\nseven o'clock on a working day, in the dark winter time.  I also computed\nabout three thousand that came to hear him one Lord's Day in London, at a\ntown's-end meeting-house, so that half were fain to go back again for\nwant of room, and then himself was fain at a back door to be pulled\nalmost over people to get upstairs to his pulpit.\"  This \"town's-end\nmeeting house\" has been identified by some with a quaint straggling long\nbuilding which once stood in Queen Street, Southwark, of which there is\nan engraving in Wilkinson's \"Londina Illustrata.\"  Doe's account,\nhowever, probably points to another building, as the Zoar Street meeting-\nhouse was not opened for worship till about six months before Bunyan's\ndeath, and then for Presbyterian service.  Other places in London\nconnected with his preaching are Pinners' Hall in Old Broad Street,\nwhere, on one of his occasional visits, he delivered his striking sermon\non \"The Greatness of the Soul and the Unspeakableness of the Loss\nthereof,\" first published in 1683; and Dr. Owen's meeting-house in\nWhite's Alley, Moorfields, which was the gathering-place for titled folk,\ncity merchants, and other Nonconformists of position and degree.  At\nearlier times, when the penal laws against Nonconformists were in\nvigorous exercise, Bunyan had to hold his meetings by stealth in private\nhouses and other places where he might hope to escape the lynx-eyed\ninformer.  It was at one of these furtive meetings that his earliest\nbiographer, the honest combmaker at the foot of London Bridge, Charles\nDoe, first heard him preach.  His choice of an Old Testament text at\nfirst offended Doe, who had lately come into New Testament light and had\nhad enough of the \"historical and doing-for-favour of the Old Testament.\"\nBut as he went on he preached \"so New Testament like\" that his hearer's\nprejudices vanished, and he could only \"admire, weep for joy, and give\nthe preacher his affections.\"\n\nBunyan was more than once urged to leave Bedford and settle in the\nmetropolis.  But to all these solicitations he turned a deaf ear.  Bedford\nwas the home of his deepest affections.  It was there the holy words of\nthe poor women \"sitting in the sun,\" speaking \"as if joy did make them\nspeak,\" had first \"made his heart shake,\" and shown him that he was still\na stranger to vital godliness.  It was there he had been brought out of\ndarkness into light himself, and there too he had been the means of\nimparting the same blessing to others.  The very fact of his long\nimprisonment had identified him with the town and its inhabitants.  There\nhe had a large and loving congregation, to whom he was bound by the ties\nof a common faith and common sufferings.  Many of these recognized in\nBunyan their spiritual father; all, save a few \"of the baser sort,\"\nreverenced him as their teacher and guide.  No prospect of a wider field\nof usefulness, still less of a larger income, could tempt him to desert\nhis \"few sheep in the wilderness.\"  Some of them, it is true, were\nwayward sheep, who wounded the heart of their pastor by breaking from the\nfold, and displaying very un-lamb-like behaviour.  He had sometimes to\nrealize painfully that no pale is so close but that the enemy will creep\nin somewhere and seduce the flock; and that no rules of communion,\nhowever strict, can effectually exclude unworthy members.  Brother John\nStanton had to be admonished \"for abusing his wife and beating her often\nfor very light matters\" (if the matters had been less light, would the\nbeating in these days have been thought justifiable?); and Sister Mary\nFoskett, for \"privately whispering of a horrid scandal, 'without culler\nof truth,' against Brother Honeylove.\"  Evil-speaking and backbiting set\nbrother against brother.  Dissensions and heartburnings grieved Bunyan's\nspirit.  He himself was not always spared.  A letter had to be written to\nSister Hawthorn \"by way of reproof for her unseemly language against\nBrother Scot and the whole Church.\"  John Wildman was had up before the\nChurch and convicted of being \"an abominable liar and slanderer,\"\n\"extraordinary guilty\" against \"our beloved Brother Bunyan himself.\"  And\nthough Sister Hawthorn satisfied the Church by \"humble acknowledgment of\nher miscariag,\" the bolder misdoer only made matters worse by \"a frothy\nletter,\" which left no alternative but a sentence of expulsion.  But\nthough Bunyan's flock contained some whose fleeces were not as white as\nhe desired, these were the exception.  The congregation meeting in Josias\nRoughead's barn must have been, take them as a whole, a quiet,\nGod-fearing, spiritually-minded folk, of whom their pastor could think\nwith thankfulness and satisfaction as \"his hope and joy and crown of\nrejoicing.\"  From such he could not be severed lightly.  Inducements\nwhich would have been powerful to a meaner nature fell dead on his\nindependent spirit.  He was not \"a man that preached by way of bargain\nfor money,\" and, writes Doe, \"more than once he refused a more plentiful\nincome to keep his station.\"  As Dr. Brown says: \"He was too deeply\nrooted on the scene of his lifelong labours and sufferings to think of\nstriking his tent till the command came from the Master to come up to the\nhigher service for which he had been ripening so long.\"  At Bedford,\ntherefore, he remained; quietly staying on in his cottage in St.\nCuthbert's, and ministering to his humble flock, loving and beloved, as\nMr. Froude writes, \"through changes of ministry, Popish plots, and\nMonmouth rebellions, while the terror of a restoration of Popery was\nbringing on the Revolution; careless of kings and cabinets, and confident\nthat Giant Pope had lost his power for harm, and thenceforward could only\nbite his nails at the passing pilgrims.\"\n\nBunyan's peace was not, however, altogether undisturbed.  Once it\nreceived a shock in a renewal of his imprisonment, though only for a\nbrief period, in 1675, to which we owe the world-famous \"Pilgrim's\nProgress\"; and it was again threatened, though not actually disturbed ten\nyears later, when the renewal of the persecution of the Nonconformists\ninduced him to make over all his property--little enough in good sooth--to\nhis wife by deed of gift.\n\nThe former of these events demands our attention, not so much for itself\nas for its connection with Bishop Barlow's interference in Bunyan's\nbehalf, and, still more, for its results in the production of \"The\nPilgrim's Progress.\"  Until very recently the bare fact of this later\nimprisonment, briefly mentioned by Charles Doe and another of his early\nbiographers, was all that was known to us.  They even leave the date to\nbe gathered, though both agree in limiting its duration to six months or\nthereabouts.  The recent discovery, among the Chauncey papers, by Mr. W.\nG. Thorpe, of the original warrant under which Bunyan was at this time\nsent to gaol, supplies the missing information.  It has been already\nnoticed that the Declaration of Indulgence, under which Bunyan was\nliberated in 1672, was very short-lived.  Indeed it barely lasted in\nforce a twelvemonth.  Granted on the 15th of March of that year, it was\nwithdrawn on the 9th of March of the following year, at the instance of\nthe House of Commons, who had taken alarm at a suspension of the laws of\nthe realm by the \"inherent power\" of the sovereign, without the advice or\nsanction of Parliament.  The Declaration was cancelled by Charles II.,\nthe monarch, it is said, tearing off the Great Seal with his own hands, a\nsubsidy being promised to the royal spendthrift as a reward for his\ncomplaisance.  The same year the Test Act became law.  Bunyan therefore\nand his fellow Nonconformists were in a position of greater peril, as far\nas the letter of the law was concerned, than they had ever been.  But, as\nDr. Stoughton has remarked, \"the letter of the law is not to be taken as\nan accurate index of the Nonconformists' condition.  The pressure of a\nbad law depends very much upon the hands employed in its administration.\"\nUnhappily for Bunyan, the parties in whose hands the execution of the\npenal statutes against Nonconformists rested in Bedfordshire were his\nbitter personal enemies, who were not likely to let them lie inactive.\nThe prime mover in the matter was doubtless Dr. William Foster, that\n\"right Judas\" whom we shall remember holding the candle in Bunyan's face\nin the hall of Harlington House at his first apprehension, and showing\nsuch feigned affection \"as if he would have leaped on his neck and kissed\nhim.\"  He had some time before this become Chancellor of the Bishop of\nLincoln, and Commissary of the Court of the Archdeacon of Bedford,\noffices which put in his hands extensive powers which he had used with\nthe most relentless severity.  He has damned himself to eternal infamy by\nthe bitter zeal he showed in hunting down Dissenters, inflicting\nexorbitant fines, and breaking into their houses and distraining their\ngoods for a full discharge, maltreating their wives and daughters, and\nhaling the offenders to prison.  Having been chiefly instrumental in\nBunyan's first committal to gaol, he doubtless viewed his release with\nindignation as the leader of the Bedfordshire sectaries who was doing\nmore mischief to the cause of conformity, which it was his province at\nall hazards to maintain, than any other twenty men.  The church would\nnever be safe till he was clapped in prison again.  The power to do this\nwas given by the new proclamation.  By this act the licenses to preach\npreviously granted to Nonconformists were recalled.  Henceforward no\nconventicle had \"any authority, allowance, or encouragement from his\nMajesty.\"  We can easily imagine the delight with which Foster would hail\nthe issue of this proclamation.  How he would read and read again with\never fresh satisfaction its stringent clauses.  That pestilent fellow,\nBunyan, was now once more in his clutches.  This time there was no chance\nof his escape.  All licences were recalled, and he was absolutely\ndefenceless.  It should not be Foster's fault if he failed to end his\ndays in the prison from which he ought never to have been released.  The\nproclamation is dated the 4th of March, 1674-5, and was published in the\n_Gazette_ on the 9th.  It would reach Bedford on the 11th.  It placed\nBunyan at the mercy of \"his enemies, who struck at him forthwith.\"  A\nwarrant was issued for his apprehension, undoubtedly written by our old\nfriend, Paul Cobb, the clerk of the peace, who, it will be remembered,\nhad acted in the same capacity on Bunyan's first committal.  It is dated\nthe 4th of March, and bears the signature of no fewer than thirteen\nmagistrates, ten of them affixing their seals.\n\nThat so unusually large a number took part in the execution of this\nwarrant, is sufficient indication of the importance attached to Bunyan's\nimprisonment by the gentry of the county.  The following is the\ndocument:--\n\n   \"To the Constables of Bedford and to every of them\n\n   Whereas information and complaint is made unto us that\n   (notwithstanding the Kings Majties late Act of most gracious generall\n   and free pardon to all his subjects for past misdemeanours that by his\n   said clemencie and indulgent grace and favor they might bee mooved and\n   induced for the time to come more carefully to observe his Highenes\n   lawes and Statutes and to continue in theire loyall and due obedience\n   to his Majtie) Yett one John Bunnyon of youre said Towne Tynker hath\n   divers times within one month last past in contempt of his Majtie's\n   good Lawes preached or teached at a Conventicle Meeting or Assembly\n   under color or ptence of exercise of Religion in other manner than\n   according to the Liturgie or practiss of the Church of England  These\n   are therefore in his Majties name to comand you forthwith to apprehend\n   and bring the Body of the said John Bunnion before us or any of us or\n   other his Majties Justice of Peace within the said County to answer\n   the premisses and further to doo and receave as to Lawe and Justice\n   shall appertaine and hereof you are not to faile.  Given under our\n   handes and seales this ffourth day of March in the seven and twentieth\n   yeare of the Raigne of our most gracious Soveraigne Lord King Charles\n   the Second  A que Dni., juxta &c 1674\n\n   J Napier     W Beecher     G Blundell      Hum: Monoux\n   Will ffranklin     John Ventris\n   Will Spencer\n   Will Gery       St Jo Chernocke          Wm Daniels\n   T Browne          W ffoster\n   Gaius Squire\"\n\nThere would be little delay in the execution of the warrant.\n\nJohn Bunyan was a marked man and an old offender, who, on his arrest,\nwould be immediately committed for trial.  Once more, then, Bunyan became\na prisoner, and that, there can be little doubt, in his old quarters in\nthe Bedford gaol.  Errors die hard, and those by whom they have been once\naccepted find it difficult to give them up.  The long-standing tradition\nof Bunyan's twelve years' imprisonment in the little lock-up-house on the\nOuse bridge, having been scattered to the winds by the logic of fact and\ncommon sense, those to whom the story is dear, including the latest and\nablest of his biographers, Dr. Brown, see in this second brief\nimprisonment a way to rehabilitate it.  Probability pointing to this\nimprisonment as the time of the composition of \"The Pilgrim's Progress,\"\nthey hold that on this occasion Bunyan was committed to the bridge-gaol,\nand that he there wrote his immortal work, though they fail to bring\nforward any satisfactory reasons for the change of the place of his\nconfinement.  The circumstances, however, being the same, there can be no\nreasonable ground for questioning that, as before, Bunyan was imprisoned\nin the county gaol.\n\nThis last imprisonment of Bunyan's lasted only half as many months as his\nformer imprisonment had lasted years.  At the end of six months he was\nagain a free man.  His release was due to the good officers of Owen,\nCromwell's celebrated chaplain, with Barlow, Bishop of Lincoln.  The\nsuspicion which hung over this intervention from its being erroneously\nattributed to his release in 1672, three years before Barlow became a\nbishop, has been dispelled by the recently discovered warrant.  The dates\nand circumstances are now found to tally.  The warrant for Bunyan's\napprehension bears date March 4, 1675.  On the 14th of the following May\nthe supple and time-serving Barlow, after long and eager waiting for a\nmitre, was elected to the see of Lincoln vacated by the death of Bishop\nFuller, and consecrated on the 27th of June.  Barlow, a man of very\ndubious churchmanship, who had succeeded in keeping his university\nappointments undisturbed all through the Commonwealth, and who was yet\namong the first with effusive loyalty to welcome the restoration of\nmonarchy, had been Owen's tutor at Oxford, and continued to maintain\nfriendly relations with him.  As bishop of the diocese to which\nBedfordshire then, and long after, belonged, Barlow had the power, by the\nthen existing law, of releasing a prisoner for nonconformity on a bond\ngiven by two persons that he would conform within half a year.  A friend\nof Bunyan's, probably Ichabod Chauncey, obtained a letter from Owen to\nthe bishop requesting him to employ this prerogative in Bunyan's behalf.\nBarlow with hollow complaisance expressed his particular kindness for Dr.\nOwen, and his desire to deny him nothing he could legally grant.  He\nwould even strain a point to serve him.  But he had only just been made a\nbishop, and what was asked was a new thing to him.  He desired a little\ntime to consider of it.  If he could do it, Owen might be assured of his\nreadiness to oblige him.  A second application at the end of a fortnight\nfound this readiness much cooled.  It was true that on inquiry he found\nhe might do it; but the times were critical, and he had many enemies.  It\nwould be safer for him not to take the initiative.  Let them apply to the\nLord Chancellor, and get him to issue an order for him to release Bunyan\non the customary bond.  Then he would do what Owen asked.  It was vain to\ntell Barlow that the way he suggested was chargeable, and Bunyan poor.\nVain also to remind him that there was no point to be strained.  He had\nsatisfied himself that he might do the thing legally.  It was hoped he\nwould remember his promise.  But the bishop would not budge from the\nposition he had taken up.  They had his ultimatum; with that they must be\ncontent.  If Bunyan was to be liberated, his friends must accept Barlow's\nterms.  \"This at last was done, and the poor man was released.  But\nlittle thanks to the bishop.\"\n\nThis short six months' imprisonment assumes additional importance from\nthe probability, first suggested by Dr. Brown, which the recovery of its\ndate renders almost a certainty, that it was during this period that\nBunyan began, if he did not complete, the first part of \"The Pilgrim's\nProgress.\"  We know from Bunyan's own words that the book was begun in\ngaol, and its composition has been hitherto unhesitatingly assigned to\nhis twelve years' confinement.  Dr. Brown was, we believe, the first to\ncall this in question.  Bunyan's imprisonment, we know, ended in 1672.\nThe first edition of \"The Pilgrim's Progress\" did not appear till 1678.\nIf written during his earlier imprisonment, six years must have elapsed\nbetween its writing and its publication.  But it was not Bunyan's way to\nkeep his works in manuscript so long after their completion.  His books\nwere commonly put in the printers' hands as soon as they were finished.\nThere are no sufficient reasons--though some have been suggested--for his\nmaking an exception to this general habit in the case of \"The Pilgrim's\nProgress.\"  Besides we should certainly conclude, from the poetical\nintroduction, that there was little delay between the finishing of the\nbook and its being given to the world.  After having written the book, he\ntells us, simply to gratify himself, spending only \"vacant seasons\" in\nhis \"scribble,\" to \"divert\" himself \"from worser thoughts,\" he showed it\nto his friends to get their opinion whether it should be published or\nnot.  But as they were not all of one mind, but some counselled one thing\nand some another, after some perplexity, he took the matter into his own\nhands.\n\n   \"Now was I in a strait, and did not see\n   Which was the best thing to be done by me;\n   At last I thought, Since you are so divided,\n   I print it will, and so the case decided.\"\n\nWe must agree with Dr. Brown that \"there is a briskness about this which,\nto say the least, is not suggestive of a six years' interval before\npublication.\"  The break which occurs in the narrative after the visit of\nthe Pilgrims to the Delectable Mountains, which so unnecessarily\ninterrupts the course of the story--\"So I awoke from my dream; and I\nslept and dreamed again\"--has been not unreasonably thought by Dr. Brown\nto indicate the point Bunyan had reached when his six months'\nimprisonment ended, and from which he continued the book after his\nrelease.\n\nThe First Part of \"The Pilgrim's Progress\" issued from the press in 1678.\nA second edition followed in the same year, and a third with large and\nimportant additions in 1679.  The Second Part, after an interval of seven\nyears, followed early in 1685.  Between the two parts appeared two of his\nmost celebrated works--the \"Life and Death of Mr. Badman,\" published in\n1680, originally intended to supply a contrast and a foil to \"The\nPilgrim's Progress,\" by depicting a life which was scandalously bad; and,\nin 1682, that which Macaulay, with perhaps exaggerated eulogy, has said,\n\"would have been our greatest allegory if the earlier allegory had never\nbeen written,\" the \"Holy War made by Shaddai upon Diabolus.\"  Superior to\n\"The Pilgrim's Progress\" as a literary composition, this last work must\nbe pronounced decidedly inferior to it in attractive power.  For one who\nreads the \"Holy War,\" five hundred read the \"Pilgrim.\"  And those who\nread it once return to it again and again, with ever fresh delight.  It\nis a book that never tires.  One or two perusals of the \"Holy War\"\nsatisfy: and even these are not without weariness.  As Mr. Froude has\nsaid, \"The 'Holy War' would have entitled Bunyan to a place among the\nmasters of English literature.  It would never have made his name a\nhousehold word in every English-speaking family on the globe.\"\n\nLeaving the further notice of these and his other chief literary\nproductions to another chapter, there is little more to record in\nBunyan's life.  Though never again seriously troubled for his\nnonconformity, his preaching journeys were not always without risk.  There\nis a tradition that when he visited Reading to preach, he disguised\nhimself as a waggoner carrying a long whip in his hand to escape\ndetection.  The name of \"Bunyan's Dell,\" in a wood not very far from\nHitchin, tells of the time when he and his hearers had to conceal their\nmeetings from their enemies' quest, with scouts planted on every side to\nwarn them of the approach of the spies and informers, who for reward were\nactively plying their odious trade.  Reference has already been made to\nBunyan's \"deed of gift\" of all that he possessed in the world--his\n\"goods, chattels, debts, ready money, plate, rings, household stuff,\napparel, utensils, brass, pewter, bedding, and all other his substance\nwhatsoever--to his well-beloved wife Elizabeth Bunyan.\"  Towards the\nclose of the first year of James the Second, 1685, the apprehensions\nunder which Bunyan executed this document were far from groundless.  At\nno time did the persecution of Nonconformists rage with greater\nfierceness.  Never, not even under the tyranny of Laud, as Lord Macaulay\nrecords had the condition of the Puritans been so deplorable.  Never had\nspies been so actively employed in detecting congregations.  Never had\nmagistrates, grand-jurors, rectors, and churchwardens been so much on the\nalert.  Many Nonconformists were cited before the ecclesiastical courts.\nOthers found it necessary to purchase the connivance of the agents of the\nGovernment by bribes.  It was impossible for the sectaries to pray\ntogether without precautions such as are employed by coiners and\nreceivers of stolen goods.  Dissenting ministers, however blameless in\nlife, however eminent in learning, could not venture to walk the streets\nfor fear of outrages which were not only not repressed, but encouraged by\nthose whose duty it was to preserve the peace.  Richard Baxter was in\nprison.  Howe was afraid to show himself in London for fear of insult,\nand had been driven to Utrecht.  Not a few who up to that time had borne\nup boldly lost heart and fled the kingdom.  Other weaker spirits were\nterrified into a show of conformity.  Through many subsequent years the\nautumn of 1685 was remembered as a time of misery and terror.  There is,\nhowever, no indication of Bunyan having been molested.  The \"deed of\ngift\" by which he sought to avoid the confiscation of his goods was never\ncalled into exercise.  Indeed its very existence was forgotten by his\nwife in whose behalf it had been executed.  Hidden away in a recess in\nhis house in St. Cuthbert's, this interesting document was accidentally\ndiscovered at the beginning of the present century, and is preserved\namong the most valued treasures of the congregation which bears his name.\n\nQuieter times for Nonconformists were however at hand.  Active\npersecution was soon to cease for them, and happily never to be renewed\nin England.  The autumn of 1685 showed the first indications of a great\nturn of fortune, and before eighteen months had elapsed, the intolerant\nking and the intolerant Church were eagerly bidding against each other\nfor the support of the party which both had so deeply injured.  A new\nform of trial now awaited the Nonconformists.  Peril to their personal\nliberty was succeeded by a still greater peril to their honesty and\nconsistency of spirit.  James the Second, despairing of employing the\nTories and the Churchmen as his tools, turned, as his brother had turned\nbefore him, to the Dissenters.  The snare was craftily baited with a\nDeclaration of Indulgence, by which the king, by his sole authority,\nannulled a long series of statutes and suspended all penal laws against\nNonconformists of every sort.  These lately political Pariahs now held\nthe balance of power.  The future fortunes of England depended mainly on\nthe course they would adopt.  James was resolved to convert the House of\nCommons from a free deliberative assembly into a body subservient to his\nwishes, and ready to give parliamentary sanction to any edict he might\nissue.  To obtain this end the electors must be manipulated.  Leaving the\ncounty constituencies to be dealt with by the lords-lieutenants, half of\nwhom preferred dismissal to carrying out the odious service peremptorily\ndemanded of them, James's next concern was to \"regulate\" the\nCorporations.  In those days of narrowly restricted franchise, the\nmunicipalities virtually returned the town members.  To obtain an\nobedient parliament, he must secure a roll of electors pledged to return\nthe royal nominees.  A committee of seven privy councillors, all Roman\nCatholics but the infamous Jeffreys, presided over the business, with\nlocal sub-committees scattered over the country to carry out the details.\nBedford was dealt with in its turn.  Under James's policy of courting the\nPuritans, the leading Dissenters were the first persons to be approached.\nTwo are specially named, a Mr. Margetts, formerly Judge-Advocate-General\nof the Army under General Monk, and John Bunyan.  It is no matter of\nsurprise that Bunyan, who had been so severe a sufferer under the old\npenal statutes, should desire their abrogation, and express his readiness\nto \"steer his friends and followers\" to support candidates who would\npledge themselves to vote for their repeal.  But no further would he go.\nThe Bedford Corporation was \"regulated,\" which means that nearly the\nwhole of its members were removed and others substituted by royal order.\nOf these new members some six or seven were leading persons of Bunyan's\ncongregation.  But, with all his ardent desire for religious liberty,\nBunyan was too keen-witted not to see through James's policy, and too\nhonest to give it any direct insidious support.  \"In vain is the net\nspread in the sight of any bird.\"  He clearly saw that it was not for any\nlove of the Dissenters that they were so suddenly delivered from their\npersecutions, and placed on a kind of equality with the Church.  The\nking's object was the establishment of Popery.  To this the Church was\nthe chief obstacle.  That must be undermined and subverted first.  That\ndone, all other religious denominations would follow.  All that the\nNonconformists would gain by yielding, was the favour Polyphemus promised\nUlysses, to be devoured last.  Zealous as he was for the \"liberty of\nprophesying,\" even that might be purchased at too high a price.  The boon\noffered by the king was \"good in itself,\" but not \"so intended.\"  So, as\nhis biographer describes, when the regulators came, \"he expressed his\nzeal with some weariness as perceiving the bad consequences that would\nensue, and laboured with his congregation\" to prevent their being imposed\non by the fair promises of those who were at heart the bitterest enemies\nof the cause they professed to advocate.  The newly-modelled corporation\nof Bedford seems like the other corporations through the country, to have\nproved as unmanageable as the old.  As Macaulay says, \"The sectaries who\nhad declared in favour of the Indulgence had become generally ashamed of\ntheir error, and were desirous to make atonement.\"  Not knowing the man\nthey had to deal with, the \"regulators\" are said to have endeavoured to\nbuy Bunyan's support by the offer of some place under government.  The\nbribe was indignantly rejected.  Bunyan even refused to see the\ngovernment agent who offered it,--\"he would, by no means come to him, but\nsent his excuse.\"  Behind the treacherous sunshine he saw a black cloud,\nready to break.  The Ninevites' remedy he felt was now called for.  So he\ngathered his congregation together and appointed a day of fasting and\nprayer to avert the danger that, under a specious pretext, again menaced\ntheir civil and religious liberties.  A true, sturdy Englishman, Bunyan,\nwith Baxter and Howe, \"refused an indulgence which could only be\npurchased by the violent overthrow of the law.\"\n\nBunyan did not live to see the Revolution.  Four months after he had\nwitnessed the delirious joy which hailed the acquittal of the seven\nbishops, the Pilgrim's earthly Progress ended, and he was bidden to cross\nthe dark river which has no bridge.  The summons came to him in the very\nmidst of his religious activity, both as a preacher and as a writer.  His\npen had never been more busy than when he was bidden to lay it down\nfinally.  Early in 1688, after a two years' silence, attributable perhaps\nto the political troubles of the times, his \"Jerusalem Sinner Saved, or a\nHelp to Despairing Souls,\" one of the best known and most powerfully\ncharacteristic of his works, had issued from the press, and had been\nfollowed by four others between March and August, the month of his death.\nThese books were, \"The Work of Jesus Christ as an Advocate;\" a poetical\ncomposition entitled \"The Building, Nature, and Excellency of the House\nof God,\" a discourse on the constitution and government of the Christian\nChurch; the \"Water of Life,\" and \"Solomon's Temple Spiritualized.\"  At\nthe time of his death he was occupied in seeing through the press a sixth\nbook, \"The Acceptable Sacrifice,\" which was published after his funeral.\nIn addition to these, Bunyan left behind him no fewer than fourteen works\nin manuscript, written at this time, as the fruit of his fertile\nimagination and untiring pen.  Ten of these were given to the world soon\nafter Bunyan's death, by one of Bunyan's most devoted followers, Charles\nDoe, the combmaker of London Bridge (who naively tells us how one day\nbetween the stairhead and the middle of the stairs, he resolved that the\nbest work he could do for God was to get Bunyan's books printed and sell\nthem--adding, \"I have sold about 3,000\"), and others, a few years later,\nincluding one of the raciest of his compositions, \"The Heavenly Footman,\"\nbought by Doe of Bunyan's eldest son, and, he says, \"put into the World\nin Print Word for Word as it came from him to Me.\"\n\nAt the time that death surprised him, Bunyan had gained no small\ncelebrity in London as a popular preacher, and approached the nearest to\na position of worldly honour.  Though we must probably reject the idea\nthat he ever filled the office of Chaplain to the Lord Mayor of London,\nSir John Shorter, the fact that he is styled \"his Lordship's teacher\"\nproves that there was some relation more than that of simple friendship\nbetween the chief magistrate and the Bedford minister.  But the society\nof the great was never congenial to him.  If they were godly as well as\ngreat, he would not shrink from intercourse, with those of a rank above\nhis own, but his heart was with his own humble folk at Bedford.  Worldly\nadvancement he rejected for his family as well as for himself.  A London\nmerchant, it is said, offered to take his son Joseph into his house of\nbusiness without the customary premium.  But the offer was declined with\nwhat we may consider an overstrained independence.  \"God,\" he said, \"did\nnot send me to advance my family but to preach the gospel.\"  \"An instance\nof other-worldliness,\" writes Dr. Brown, \"perhaps more consistent with\nthe honour of the father than with the prosperity of the son.\"\n\nBunyan's end was in keeping with his life.  He had ever sought to be a\npeacemaker and to reconcile differences, and thus had \"hindered many\nmishaps and saved many families from ruin.\"  His last effort of the kind\ncaused his death.  The father of a young man in whom he took an interest,\nhad resolved, on some offence, real or supposed, to disinherit his son.\nThe young man sought Bunyan's mediation.  Anxious to heal the breach,\nBunyan mounted his horse and took the long journey to the father's house\nat Reading--the scene, as we have noticed, of his occasional\nministrations--where he pleaded the offender's cause so effectually as to\nobtain a promise of forgiveness.  Bunyan returned homewards through\nLondon, where he was appointed to preach at Mr. Gamman's meeting-house\nnear Whitechapel.  His forty miles' ride to London was through heavy\ndriving rain.  He was weary and drenched to the skin when he reached the\nhouse of his \"very loving friend,\" John Strudwick, grocer and chandler,\nat the sign of the Star, Holborn Bridge, at the foot of Snow Hill, and\ndeacon of the Nonconformist meeting in Red Cross Street.  A few months\nbefore Bunyan had suffered from the sweating sickness.  The exposure\ncaused a return of the malady, and though well enough to fulfil his\npulpit engagement on Sunday, the 19th of August, on the following Tuesday\ndangerous symptoms declared themselves, and in ten days the disease\nproved fatal.  He died within two months of completing his sixtieth year,\non the 31st of August, 1688, just a month before the publication of the\nDeclaration of the Prince of Orange opened a new era of civil and\nreligious liberty, and between two and three months before the Prince's\nlanding in Torbay.  He was buried in Mr. Strudwick's newly-purchased\nvault, in what Southey has termed the Campo Santo of Nonconformists, the\nburial-ground in Finsbury, taking its name of Bunhill or Bonehill Field,\nfrom a vast mass of human remains removed to it from the charnel house of\nSt. Paul's Cathedral in 1549.  At a later period it served as a place of\ninterment for those who died in the Great Plague of 1665.  The day after\nBunyan's funeral, his powerful friend, Sir John Shorter, the Lord Mayor,\nhad a fatal fall from his horse in Smithfield, and \"followed him across\nthe river.\"\n\nBy his first wife, whose Christian name is nowhere recorded, Bunyan had\nfour children--two sons and two daughters; and by his second wife, the\nheroic Elizabeth, one son and one daughter.  All of these survived him\nexcept his eldest daughter Mary, his tenderly-loved blind child, who died\nbefore him.  His wife only survived him for a brief period, \"following\nher faithful pilgrim from this world to the other whither he was gone\nbefore her\" either in 1691 or 1692.  Forgetful of the \"deed of gift,\" or\nignorant of its bearing, Bunyan's widow took out letters of\nadministration of her late husband's estate, which appears from the\nRegister Book to have amounted to no more than, 42 pounds 19s.  On this,\nand the proceeds of his books, she supported herself till she rejoined\nhim.\n\nBunyan's character and person are thus described by Charles Doe: \"He\nappeared in countenance to be of a stern and rough temper.  But in his\nconversation he was mild and affable, not given to loquacity or much\ndiscourse in company, unless some urgent occasion required it.  Observing\nnever to boast of himself or his parts, but rather to seem low in his own\neyes and submit himself to the judgment of others.  Abhorring lying and\nswearing, being just, in all that lay in his power, to his word.  Not\nseeming to revenge injuries; loving to reconcile differences and make\nfriendship with all.  He had a sharp, quick eye, with an excellent\ndiscerning of persons, being of good judgment and quick wit.  He was tall\nof stature, strong-boned, though not corpulent; somewhat of a ruddy face,\nwith sparkling eyes, wearing his hair on his upper lip after the old\nBritish fashion.  His hair reddish, but in his later days time had\nsprinkled it with grey.  His nose well set, but not declining or bending.\nHis mouth moderately large, his forehead something high, and his habit\nalways plain and modest.  Not puffed up in prosperity, nor shaken in\nadversity, always holding the golden mean.\"\n\nWe may add the portrait drawn by one who had been his companion and\nfellow-sufferer for many years, John Nelson: \"His countenance was grave\nand sedate, and did so to the life discover the inward frame of his\nheart, that it was convincing to the beholders and did strike something\nof awe into them that had nothing of the fear of God.\"\n\nThe same friend speaks thus of Bunyan's preaching: \"As a minister of\nChrist he was laborious in his work of preaching, diligent in his\npreparation for it, and faithful in dispensing the Word, not sparing\nreproof whether in the pulpit or no, yet ready to succour the tempted; a\nson of consolation to the broken-hearted, yet a son of thunder to secure\nand dead sinners.  His memory was tenacious, it being customary with him\nto commit his sermons to writing after he had preached them.  A rich\nanointing of the Spirit was upon him, yet this great saint was always in\nhis own eyes the chiefest of sinners and the least of saints.\"\n\nAn anecdote is told which, Southey says, \"authenticates itself,\" that one\nday when he had preached \"with peculiar warmth and enlargement,\" one of\nhis hearers remarked \"what a sweet sermon he had delivered.\"  \"Ay,\" was\nBunyan's reply, \"you have no need to tell me that, for the devil\nwhispered it to me before I was well out of the pulpit.\"  As an evidence\nof the estimation in which Bunyan was held by the highly-educated, it is\nrecorded that Charles the Second expressed his surprise to Dr. Owen that\n\"a learned man such as he could sit and listen to an illiterate tinker.\"\n\"May it please your Majesty,\" Owen replied.  \"I would gladly give up all\nmy learning if I could preach like that tinker.\"\n\nAlthough much of Bunyan's literary activity was devoted to controversy,\nhe had none of the narrowness or bitter spirit of a controversialist.  It\nis true that his zeal for what he deemed to be truth led him into\nvehemence of language in dealing with those whom he regarded as its\nperverters.  But this intensity of speech was coupled with the utmost\ncharity of spirit towards those who differed from him.  Few ever had less\nof the sectarian temper which lays greater stress on the infinitely small\npoints on which all true Christians differ than on the infinitely great\ntruths on which they are agreed.  Bunyan inherited from his spiritual\nfather, John Gifford, a truly catholic spirit.  External differences he\nregarded as insignificant where he found real Christian faith and love.\n\"I would be,\" he writes, \"as I hope I am, a Christian.  But for those\nfactious titles of Anabaptist, Independent, Presbyterian, and the like, I\nconclude that they come neither from Jerusalem nor from Antioch, but from\nHell or from Babylon.\"  \"He was,\" writes one of his early biographers, \"a\ntrue lover of all that love our Lord Jesus, and did often bewail the\ndifferent and distinguishing appellations that are among the godly,\nsaying he did believe a time would come when they should be all buried.\"\nThe only persons he scrupled to hold communion with were those whose\nlives were openly immoral.  \"Divisions about non-essentials,\" he said,\n\"were to churches what wars were to countries.  Those who talked most\nabout religion cared least for it; and controversies about doubtful\nthings and things of little moment, ate up all zeal for things which were\npractical and indisputable.\"  His last sermon breathed the same catholic\nspirit, free from the trammels of narrow sectarianism.  \"If you are the\nchildren of God live together lovingly.  If the world quarrel with you it\nis no matter; but it is sad if you quarrel together.  If this be among\nyou it is a sign of ill-breeding.  Dost thou see a soul that has the\nimage of God in him?  Love him, love him.  Say, 'This man and I must go\nto heaven one day.'  Serve one another.  Do good for one another.  If any\nwrong you pray to God to right you, and love the brotherhood.\"  The\nclosing words of this his final testimony are such as deserve to be\nwritten in letters of gold as the sum of all true Christian teaching: \"Be\nye holy in all manner of conversation: Consider that the holy God is your\nFather, and let this oblige you to live like the children of God, that\nyou may look your Father in the face with comfort another day.\"  \"There\nis,\" writes Dean Stanley, \"no compromise in his words, no faltering in\nhis convictions; but his love and admiration are reserved on the whole\nfor that which all good men love, and his detestation on the whole is\nreserved for that which all good men detest.\"  By the catholic spirit\nwhich breathes through his writings, especially through \"The Pilgrim's\nProgress,\" the tinker of Elstow \"has become the teacher not of any\nparticular sect, but of the Universal Church.\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX.\n\n\nWe have, in this concluding chapter, to take a review of Bunyan's merits\nas a writer, with especial reference to the works on which his fame\nmainly rests, and, above all, to that which has given him his chief title\nto be included in a series of Great Writers, \"The Pilgrim's Progress.\"\nBunyan, as we have seen, was a very copious author.  His works, as\ncollected by the late industrious Mr. Offor, fill three bulky quarto\nvolumes, each of nearly eight hundred double-columned pages in small\ntype.  And this copiousness of production is combined with a general\nexcellence in the matter produced.  While few of his books approach the\nhigh standard of \"The Pilgrim's Progress\" or \"Holy War,\" none, it may be\ntruly said, sink very far below that standard.  It may indeed be affirmed\nthat it was impossible for Bunyan to write badly.  His genius was a\nnative genius.  As soon as he began to write at all, he wrote well.\nWithout any training, is he says, in the school of Aristotle or Plato, or\nany study of the great masters of literature, at one bound he leapt to a\nhigh level of thought and composition.  His earliest book, \"Some Gospel\nTruths Opened,\" \"thrown off,\" writes Dr. Brown, \"at a heat,\" displays the\nsame ease of style and directness of speech and absence of stilted\nphraseology which he maintained to the end.  The great charm which\npervades all Bunyan's writings is their naturalness.  You never feel that\nhe is writing for effect, still less to perform an uncongenial piece of\ntask-work.  He writes because he had something to say which was worth\nsaying, a message to deliver on which the highest interests of others\nwere at stake, which demanded nothing more than a straightforward\nearnestness and plainness of speech, such as coming from the heart might\nbest reach the hearts of others.  He wrote as he spoke, because a\nnecessity was laid upon him which he dared not evade.  As he says in a\npassage quoted in a former chapter, he might have stepped into a much\nhigher style, and have employed more literary ornament.  But to attempt\nthis would be, to one of his intense earnestness, to degrade his calling.\nHe dared not do it.  Like the great Apostle, \"his speech and preaching\nwas not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the\nSpirit and in power.\"  God had not played with him, and he dared not play\nwith others.  His errand was much too serious, and their need and danger\ntoo urgent to waste time in tricking out his words with human skill.  And\nit is just this which, with all their rudeness, their occasional bad\ngrammar, and homely colloquialisms, gives to Bunyan's writings a power of\nriveting the attention and stirring the affections which few writers have\nattained to.  The pent-up fire glows in every line, and kindles the\nhearts of his readers.  \"Beautiful images, vivid expressions, forcible\narguments all aglow with passion, tender pleadings, solemn warnings, make\nthose who read him all eye, all ear, all soul.\"  This native vigour is\nattributable, in no small degree, to the manner in which for the most\npart Bunyan's works came into being.  He did not set himself to compose\ntheological treatises upon stated subjects, but after he had preached\nwith satisfaction to himself and acceptance with his audience, he usually\nwrote out the substance of his discourse from memory, with the\nenlargements and additions it might seem to require.  And thus his\nreligious works have all the glow and fervour of the unwritten utterances\nof a practised orator, united with the orderliness and precision of a\ntheologian, and are no less admirable for the excellence of their\narrangement than for their evangelical spirit and scriptural doctrine.\nOriginally meant to be heard, they lose somewhat by being read.  But few\ncan read them without being delighted with the opulence of his\nimagination and impressed with the solemn earnestness of his convictions.\nLike the subject of the portrait described by him in the House of the\nInterpreter, he stands \"like one who pleads with men, the law of truth\nwritten upon his lips, the world behind his back, and a crown of gold\nabove his head.\"\n\nThese characteristics, which distinguish Bunyan as a writer from most of\nhis Puritan contemporaries, are most conspicuous in the works by which he\nis chiefly known, \"The Pilgrim's Progress,\" the \"Holy War,\" the \"Grace\nAbounding,\" and we may add, though from the repulsiveness of the subject\nthe book is now scarcely read at all, the \"Life and Death of Mr. Badman.\"\n\nOne great charm of these works, especially of \"The Pilgrim's Progress,\"\nlies in the pure Saxon English in which they are written, which render\nthem models of the English speech, plain but never vulgar, homely but\nnever coarse, and still less unclean, full of imagery but never obscure,\nalways intelligible, always forcible, going straight to the point in the\nfewest and simplest words; \"powerful and picturesque,\" writes Hallam,\n\"from concise simplicity.\"  Bunyan's style is recommended by Lord\nMacaulay as an invaluable study to every person who wishes to gain a wide\ncommand over his mother tongue.  Its vocabulary is the vocabulary of the\ncommon people.  \"There is not,\" he truly says, \"in 'The Pilgrim's\nProgress' a single expression, if we except a few technical terms of\ntheology, that would puzzle the rudest peasant.\"  We may, look through\nwhole pages, and not find a word of more than two syllables.  Nor is the\nsource of this pellucid clearness and imaginative power far to seek.\nBunyan was essentially a man of one book, and that book the very best,\nnot only for its spiritual teaching but for the purity of its style, the\nEnglish Bible.  \"In no book,\" writes Mr. J. R. Green, \"do we see more\nclearly than in 'The Pilgrim's Progress' the new imaginative force which\nhad been given to the common life of Englishmen by their study of the\nBible.  Bunyan's English is the simplest and homeliest English that has\never been used by any great English writer, but it is the English of the\nBible.  His images are the images of prophet and evangelist.  So\ncompletely had the Bible become Bunyan's life that one feels its phrases\nas the natural expression of his thoughts.  He had lived in the Bible\ntill its words became his own.\"\n\nAll who have undertaken to take an estimate of Bunyan's literary genius\ncall special attention to the richness of his imaginative power.  Few\nwriters indeed have possessed this power in so high a degree.  In\nnothing, perhaps, is its vividness more displayed than in the reality of\nits impersonations.  The _dramatis persons_ are not shadowy abstractions,\nmoving far above us in a mystical world, or lay figures ticketed with\ncertain names, but solid men and women of our own flesh and blood, living\nin our own everyday world, and of like passions with ourselves.  Many of\nthem we know familiarly; there is hardly one we should be surprised to\nmeet any day.  This lifelike power of characterization belongs in the\nhighest degree to \"The Pilgrim's Progress.\"  It is hardly inferior in\n\"The Holy War,\" though with some exceptions the people of \"Mansoul\" have\nfailed to engrave themselves on the popular memory as the characters of\nthe earlier allegory have done.  The secret of this graphic power, which\ngives \"The Pilgrim's Progress\" its universal popularity, is that Bunyan\ndescribes men and women of his own day, such as he had known and seen\nthem.  They are not fancy pictures, but literal portraits.  Though the\nfeatures may be exaggerated, and the colours laid on with an unsparing\nbrush, the outlines of his bold personifications are truthfully drawn\nfrom his own experience.  He had had to do with every one of them.  He\ncould have given a personal name to most of them, and we could do the\nsame to many.  We are not unacquainted with Mr Byends of the town of Fair\nSpeech, who \"always has the luck to jump in his judgment with the way of\nthe times, and to get thereby,\" who is zealous for Religion \"when he goes\nin his silver slippers,\" and \"loves to walk with him in the streets when\nthe sun shines and the people applaud him.\"  All his kindred and\nsurroundings are only too familiar to us--his wife, that very virtuous\nwoman my Lady Feigning's daughter, my Lord Fair-speech, my Lord\nTime-server, Mr. Facingbothways, Mr. Anything, and the Parson of the\nParish, his mother's own brother by the father's side, Mr. Twotongues.\nNor is his schoolmaster, one Mr. Gripeman, of the market town of\nLovegain, in the county of Coveting, a stranger to us.  Obstinate, with\nhis dogged determination and stubborn common-sense, and Pliable with his\nshallow impressionableness, are among our acquaintances.  We have, before\nnow, come across \"the brisk lad Ignorance from the town of Conceit,\" and\nhave made acquaintance with Mercy's would-be suitor, Mr. Brisk, \"a man of\nsome breeding and that pretended to religion, but who stuck very close to\nthe world.\"  The man Temporary who lived in a town two miles off from\nHonesty, and next door to Mr. Turnback; Formalist and Hypocrisy, who were\n\"from the land of Vainglory, and were going for praise to Mount Sion\";\nSimple, Sloth, and Presumption, \"fast asleep by the roadside with fetters\non their heels,\" and their companions, Shortwind, Noheart,\nLingerafterlust, and Sleepyhead, we know them all.  \"The young woman\nwhose name was Dull\" taxes our patience every day.  Where is the town\nwhich does not contain Mrs. Timorous and her coterie of gossips, Mrs.\nBats-eyes, Mrs. Inconsiderate, Mrs. Lightmind, and Mrs. Knownothing, \"all\nas merry as the maids,\" with that pretty fellow Mr. Lechery at the house\nof Madam Wanton, that \"admirably well-bred gentlewoman\"?  Where shall we\nfind more lifelike portraits than those of Madam Bubble, a \"tall, comely\ndame, somewhat of a swarthy complexion, speaking very smoothly with a\nsmile at the end of each sentence, wearing a great purse by her side,\nwith her hand often in it, fingering her money as if that was her chief\ndelight;\" of poor Feeblemind of the town of Uncertain, with his \"whitely\nlook, the cast in his eye, and his trembling speech;\" of Littlefaith, as\n\"white as a clout,\" neither able to fight nor fly when the thieves from\nDead Man's Lane were on him; of Ready-to-halt, at first coming along on\nhis crutches, and then when Giant Despair had been slain and Doubting\nCastle demolished, taking Despondency's daughter Much-afraid by the hand\nand dancing with her in the road?  \"True, he could not dance without one\ncrutch in his hand, but I promise you he footed it well.  Also the girl\nwas to be commanded, for she answered the musick handsomely.\"  In\nBunyan's pictures there is never a superfluous detail.  Every stroke\ntells, and helps to the completeness of the portraiture.\n\nThe same reality characterizes the descriptive part of \"The Pilgrim's\nProgress.\"  As his characters are such as he must meet with every day in\nhis native town, so also the scenery and surroundings of his allegory are\npart of his own everyday life, and reproduce what he had been brought up\namidst in his native county, or had noticed in his tinker's wanderings.\n\"Born and bred,\" writes Kingsley, \"in the monotonous Midland, he had no\nnatural images beyond the pastures and brooks, the town and country\nhouses, he saw about him.\"  The Slough of Despond, with its treacherous\nquagmire in the midst of the plain, into which a wayfarer might\nheedlessly fall, with its stepping-stones half drowned in mire;\nByepathmeadow, promising so fair, with its stile and footpath on the\nother side of the fence; the pleasant river fringed with meadows, green\nall the year long and overshadowed with trees; the thicket all overgrown\nwith briars and thorns, where one tumbled over a bush, another stuck fast\nin the dirt, some lost their shoes in the mire, and others were fastened\nfrom behind with the brambles; the high wall by the roadside over which\nthe fruit trees shot their boughs and tempted the boys with their unripe\nplums; the arbour with its settle tempting the footsore traveller to\ndrowsiness; the refreshing spring at the bottom of Hill Difficulty; all\nare evidently drawn from his own experience.  Bunyan, in his long tramps,\nhad seen them all.  He had known what it was to be in danger of falling\ninto a pit and being dashed to pieces with Vain Confidence, of being\ndrowned in the flooded meadows with Christian and Hopeful; of sinking in\ndeep water when swimming over a river, going down and rising up half\ndead, and needing all his companion's strength and skill to keep his head\nabove the stream.  Vanity Fair is evidently drawn from the life.  The\ngreat yearly fair of Stourbridge, close to Cambridge, which Bunyan had\nprobably often visited in his tinker days, with its streets of booths\nfilled with \"wares of all kinds from all countries,\" its \"shows,\njugglings, cheats games, plays, fools, apes, knaves, and rogues, and that\nof every kind,\" its \"great one of the fair,\" its court of justice and\npower of judgment, furnished him with the materials for his picture.\nScenes like these he draws with sharp defined outlines.  When he had to\ndescribe what he only knew by hearsay, his pictures are shadowy and cold.\nNever having been very far from home, he had had no experience of the\nhigher types of beauty and grandeur in nature, and his pen moves in\nfetters when he attempts to describe them.  When his pilgrims come to the\nHill Difficulty and the Delectable Mountains, the difference is at once\nseen.  All his nobler imagery is drawn from Scripture.  As Hallam has\nremarked, \"There is scarcely a circumstance or metaphor in the Old\nTestament which does not find a place bodily and literally in 'The\nPilgrim's Progress,' and this has made his imagination appear more\ncreative than it really is.\"\n\nIt would but weary the reader to follow the details of a narrative which\nis so universally known.  Who needs to be told that in the pilgrimage\nhere described is represented in allegorical dress the course of a human\nsoul convinced of sin, struggling onwards to salvation through the trials\nand temptations that beset its path to its eternal home?  The book is so\ncompletely wrought into the mind and memory, that most of us can at once\nrecall the incidents which chequer the pilgrim's way, and realize their\nmeaning; the Slough of Despond, in which the man convinced of his guilt\nand fleeing from the wrath to come, in his agonizing self-consciousness\nis in danger of being swallowed up in despair; the Wicket Gate, by which\nhe enters on the strait and narrow way of holiness; the Interpreter's\nHouse, with his visions and acted parables; the Wayside Cross, at the\nsight of which the burden of guilt falls from the pilgrim's back, and he\nis clothed with change of raiment; the Hill Difficulty, which stands\nright in his way, and which he must surmount, not circumvent; the lions\nwhich he has to pass, not knowing that they are chained; the Palace\nBeautiful, where he is admitted to the communion of the faithful, and\nsits down to meat with them; the Valley of Humiliation, the scene of his\ndesperate but victorious encounter with Apollyon; the Valley of the\nShadow of Death, with its evil sights and doleful sounds, where one of\nthe wicked ones whispers into his ear thoughts of blasphemy which he\ncannot distinguish from the suggestions of his own mind; the cave at the\nvalley's mouth, in which, Giant Pagan having been dead this many a day,\nhis brother, Giant Pope, now sits alone, grinning at pilgrims as they\npass by, and biting his nails because he cannot get at them; Vanity Fair,\nthe picture of the world, as St. John describes it, hating the light that\nputs to shame its own self-chosen darkness, and putting it out if it can,\nwhere the Pilgrim's fellow, Faithful, seals his testimony with his death,\nand the Pilgrim himself barely escapes; the \"delicate plain\" called Ease,\nand the little hill, Lucre, where Demas stood \"gentlemanlike,\" to invite\nthe passersby to come and dig in his silver mine; Byepath Meadow, into\nwhich the Pilgrim and his newly-found companion stray, and are made\nprisoners by Giant Despair and shut up in the dungeons of Doubting\nCastle, and break out of prison by the help of the Key of Promise; the\nDelectable Mountains in Immanuel's Land, with their friendly shepherds\nand the cheering prospect of the far-off heavenly city; the Enchanted\nLand, with its temptations to spiritual drowsiness at the very end of the\njourney; the Land of Beulah, the ante-chamber of the city to which they\nwere bound; and, last stage of all, the deep dark river, without a\nbridge, which had to be crossed before the city was entered; the entrance\ninto its heavenly gates, the pilgrim's joyous reception with all the\nbells in the city ringing again for joy; the Dreamer's glimpse of its\nglories through the opened portals--is not every stage of the journey,\nevery scene of the pilgrimage, indelibly printed on our memories, for our\nwarning, our instruction, our encouragement in the race we, as much as\nthey, have each one to run?  Have we not all, again and again, shared the\nDreamer's feelings--\"After that they shut up the Gates; which, when I had\nseen, I wished myself among them,\" and prayed, God helping us, that our\n\"dangerous journey\"--ever the most dangerous when we see its dangers the\nleast--might end in our \"safe arrival at the desired country\"?\n\n\"The Pilgrim's Progress\" exhibits Bunyan in the character by which he\nwould have most desired to be remembered, as one of the most influential\nof Christian preachers.  Hallam, however, claims for him another\ndistinction which would have greatly startled and probably shocked him,\nas the father of our English novelists.  As an allegorist Bunyan had many\npredecessors, not a few of whom, dating from early times, had taken the\nnatural allegory of the pilgrimage of human life as the basis of their\nworks.  But as a novelist he had no one to show him the way.  Bunyan was\nthe first to break ground in a field which has since then been so\noverabundantly worked that the soil has almost lost its productiveness;\nwhile few novels written purely with the object of entertainment have\never proved so universally entertaining.  Intensely religious as it is in\npurpose, \"The Pilgrim's Progress\" may be safely styled the first English\nnovel.  \"The claim to be the father of English romance,\" writes Dr.\nAllon, \"which has been sometimes preferred for Defoe, really pertains to\nBunyan.  Defoe may claim the parentage of a species, but Bunyan is the\ncreator of the genus.\"  As the parent of fictitious biography it is that\nBunyan has charmed the world.  On its vivid interest as a story, its\nuniversal interest and lasting vitality rest.  \"Other allegorises,\"\nwrites Lord Macaulay, \"have shown great ingenuity, but no other\nallegorist has ever been able to touch the heart, and to make its\nabstractions objects of terror, of pity, and of love.\"  Whatever its\ndeficiencies, literary and religious, may be; if we find incongruities in\nthe narrative, and are not insensible to some grave theological\ndeficiencies; if we are unable without qualification to accept\nColeridge's dictum that it is \"incomparably the best 'Summa Theologiae\nEvangelicae' ever produced by a writer not miraculously inspired;\" even\nif, with Hallam, we consider its \"excellencies great indeed, but not of\nthe highest order,\" and deem it \"a little over-praised,\" the fact of its\nuniversal popularity with readers of all classes and of all orders of\nintellect remains, and gives this book a unique distinction.  \"I have,\"\nsays Dr. Arnold, when reading it after a long interval, \"always been\nstruck by its piety.  I am now struck equally or even more by its\nprofound wisdom.  It seems to be a complete reflexion of Scripture.\"  And\nto turn to a critic of very different character, Dean Swift: \"I have been\nbetter entertained and more improved,\" writes that cynical pessimist, \"by\na few pages of this book than by a long discourse on the will and\nintellect.\"  The favourite of our childhood, as \"the most perfect and\ncomplex of fairy tales, so human and intelligible,\" read, as Hallam says,\n\"at an age when the spiritual meaning is either little perceived or\nlittle regarded,\" the \"Pilgrim's Progress\" becomes the chosen companion\nof our later years, perused with ever fresh appreciation of its teaching,\nand enjoyment of its native genius; \"the interpreter of life to all who\nare perplexed with its problems, and the practical guide and solace of\nall who need counsel and sympathy.\"\n\nThe secret of this universal acceptableness of \"The Pilgrim's Progress\"\nlies in the breadth of its religious sympathies.  Rigid Puritan as Bunyan\nwas, no book is more completely free from sectarian narrowness.  Its\nreach is as wide as Christianity itself, and it takes hold of every human\nheart because it is so intensely human.  No apology is needed for\npresenting Mr. Froude's eloquent panegyric: \"The Pilgrim, though in\nPuritan dress, is a genuine man.  His experience is so truly human\nexperience that Christians of every persuasion can identify themselves\nwith him; and even those who regard Christianity itself as but a natural\noutgrowth of the conscience and intellect, and yet desire to live nobly\nand make the best of themselves, can recognize familiar footprints in\nevery step of Christian's journey.  Thus 'The Pilgrim's Progress' is a\nbook which when once read can never be forgotten.  We too, every one of\nus, are pilgrims on the same road; and images and illustrations come back\nto us from so faithful an itinerary, as we encounter similar trials, and\nlearn for ourselves the accuracy with which Bunyan has described them.\nTime cannot impair its interest, or intellectual progress make it cease\nto be true to experience.\"  Dr. Brown's appreciative words may be added:\n\"With deepest pathos it enters into the stern battle so real to all of\nus, into those heart-experiences which make up, for all, the discipline\nof life.  It is this especially which has given to it the mighty hold\nwhich it has always had upon the toiling poor, and made it the one book\nabove all books well-thumbed and torn to tatters among them.  And it is\nthis which makes it one of the first books translated by the missionary\nwho seeks to give true thoughts of God and life to heathen men.\"\n\nThe Second Part of \"The Pilgrim's Progress\" partakes of the character of\nalmost all continuations.  It is, in Mr. Froude's words, \"only a feeble\nreverberation of the first part, which has given it a popularity it would\nhave hardly attained by its own merits.  Christiana and her children are\ntolerated for the pilgrim's sake to whom they belong.\"  Bunyan seems not\nto have been insensible of this himself, when in his metrical preface he\nthus introduces his new work:\n\n   \"Go now my little book to every place\n   Where my first Pilgrim has but shown his face.\n   Call at their door; if any say 'Who's there?'\n   Then answer thus, 'Christiana is here.'\n   If they bid thee come in, then enter thou\n   With all thy boys.  And then, as thou know'st how,\n   Tell who they are, also from whence they came;\n   Perhaps they'll know them by their looks or name.\"\n\nBut although the Second Part must be pronounced inferior, on the whole,\nto the first, it is a work of striking individuality and graphic power,\nsuch as Bunyan alone could have written.  Everywhere we find strokes of\nhis peculiar genius, and though in a smaller measure than the first, it\nhas added not a few portraits to Bunyan's spiritual picture gallery we\nshould be sorry to miss, and supplied us with racy sayings which stick to\nthe memory.  The sweet maid Mercy affords a lovely picture of gentle\nfeminine piety, well contrasted with the more vigorous but still\nthoroughly womanly character of Christiana.  Great-Heart is too much of\nan abstraction: a preacher in the uncongenial disguise of a knightly\nchampion of distressed females and the slayer of giants.  But the other\nnew characters have generally a vivid personality.  Who can forget Old\nHonesty, the dull good man with no mental gifts but of dogged sincerity,\nwho though coming from the Town of Stupidity, four degrees beyond the\nCity of Destruction, was \"known for a cock of the right kind,\" because he\nsaid the truth and stuck to it; or his companion, Mr. Fearing, that most\ntroublesome of pilgrims, stumbling at every straw, lying roaring at the\nSlough of Despond above a month together, standing shaking and shrinking\nat the Wicket Gate, but making no stick at the Lions, and at last getting\nover the river not much above wetshod; or Mr. Valiant for Truth, the\nnative of Darkland, standing with his sword drawn and his face all bloody\nfrom his three hours' fight with Wildhead, Inconsiderate, and Pragmatick;\nMr. Standfast, blushing to be found on his knees in the Enchanted Ground,\none who loved to hear his Lord spoken of, and coveted to set his foot\nwherever he saw the print of his shoe; Mr. Feeblemind, the sickly,\nmelancholy pilgrim, at whose door death did usually knock once a day,\nbetaking himself to a pilgrim's life because he was never well at home,\nresolved to run when he could, and go when he could not run, and creep\nwhen he could not go, an enemy to laughter and to gay attire, bringing up\nthe rear of the company with Mr. Readytohalt hobbling along on his\ncrutches; Giant Despair's prisoners, Mr. Despondency, whom he had all but\nstarved to death--and Mistress Much-afraid his daughter, who went through\nthe river singing, though none could understand what she said?  Each of\nthese characters has a distinct individuality which lifts them from\nshadowy abstractions into living men and women.  But with all its\nexcellencies, and they are many, the general inferiority of the history\nof Christiana and her children's pilgrimage to that of her husband's must\nbe acknowledged.  The story is less skilfully constructed; the interest\nis sometimes allowed to flag; the dialogues that interrupt the narrative\nare in places dry and wearisome--too much of sermons in disguise.  There\nis also a want of keeping between the two parts of the allegory.  The\nWicket Gate of the First Part has become a considerable building with a\nsummer parlour in the Second; the shepherds' tents on the Delectable\nMountains have risen into a palace, with a dining-room, and a looking-\nglass, and a store of jewels; while Vanity Fair has lost its former bad\ncharacter, and has become a respectable country town, where Christiana\nand her family, seeming altogether to forget their pilgrimage, settled\ndown comfortably, enjoy the society of the good people of the place, and\nthe sons marry and have children.  These same children also cause the\nreader no little perplexity, when he finds them in the course of the\nsupposed journey transformed from sweet babes who are terrified with the\nMastiffs barking at the Wicket Gate, who catch at the boughs for the\nunripe plums and cry at having to climb the hill; whose faces are stroked\nby the Interpreter; who are catechised and called \"good boys\" by\nPrudence; who sup on bread crumbled into basins of milk, and are put to\nbed by Mercy--into strong young men, able to go out and fight with a\ngiant, and lend a hand to the pulling down of Doubting Castle, and\nbecoming husbands and fathers.  We cannot but feel the want of\n_vraisemblance_ which brings the whole company of pilgrims to the banks\nof the dark river at one time, and sends them over in succession,\nfollowing one another rapidly through the Golden Gate of the City.  The\nfour boys with their wives and children, it is true, stay behind awhile,\nbut there is an evident incongruity in their doing so when the allegory\nhas brought them all to what stands for the close of their earthly\npilgrimage.  Bunyan's mistake was in gratifying his inventive genius and\nmaking his band of pilgrims so large.  He could get them together and\nmake them travel in company without any sacrifice of dramatic truth,\nwhich, however, he was forced to disregard when the time came for their\ndismissal.  The exquisite pathos of the description of the passage of the\nriver by Christian and Hopeful blinds us to what may be almost termed the\nimpossibility of two persons passing through the final struggle together,\nand dying at the same moment, but this charm is wanting in the prosaic\npicture of the company of fellow-travellers coming down to the water's\nedge, and waiting till the postman blows his horn and bids them cross.\nMuch as the Second Part contains of what is admirable, and what no one\nbut Bunyan could have written, we feel after reading it that, in Mr.\nFroude's words, the rough simplicity is gone, and has been replaced by a\ntone of sentiment which is almost mawkish.  \"Giants, dragons, and angelic\nchampions carry us into a spurious fairyland where the knight-errant is a\npreacher in disguise.  Fair ladies and love-matches, however decorously\nchastened, suit ill with the sternness of the mortal conflict between the\nsoul and sin.\"  With the acknowledged shortcomings of the Second Part of\n\"The Pilgrim's Progress,\" we may be well content that Bunyan never\ncarried out the idea hinted at in the closing words of his allegory:\n\"Shall it be my lot to go that way again, I may give those that desire it\nan account of what I am here silent about; in the meantime I bid my\nreader--Adieu.\"\n\nBunyan's second great allegorical work, \"The Holy War,\" need not detain\nus long.  Being an attempt, and in the nature of things an unsuccessful\nattempt, to clothe what writers on divinity call \"the plan of salvation\"\nin a figurative dress, the narrative, with all its vividness of\ndescription in parts, its clearly drawn characters with their picturesque\nnomenclature, and the stirring vicissitudes of the drama, is necessarily\nwanting in the personal interest which attaches to an individual man,\nlike Christian, and those who are linked with or follow his career.  In\nfact, the tremendous realities of the spiritual history of the human race\nare entirely unfit for allegorical treatment as a whole.  Sin, its\norigin, its consequences, its remedy, and the apparent failure of that\nremedy though administered by Almighty hands, must remain a mystery for\nall time.  The attempts made by Bunyan, and by one of much higher\nintellectual power and greater poetic gifts than Bunyan--John Milton--to\nbring that mystery within the grasp of the finite intellect, only render\nit more perplexing.  The proverbial line tells us that--\n\n   \"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.\"\n\nBunyan and Milton were as far as possible from being \"fools\"; but when\nboth these great writers, on the one hand, carry us up into the Council\nChamber of Heaven and introduce us to the Persons of the ever-blessed\nTrinity, debating, consulting, planning, and resolving, like a sovereign\nand his ministers when a revolted province has to be brought back to its\nallegiance; and, on the other hand, take us down to the infernal regions,\nand makes us privy to the plots and counterplots of the rebel leaders and\nhearers of their speeches, we cannot but feel that, in spite of the\nmagnificent diction and poetic imagination of the one, and the homely\npicturesque genius of the other, the grand themes treated of are degraded\nif not vulgarized, without our being in any way helped to unravel their\nessential mysteries.  In point of individual personal interest, \"The Holy\nWar\" contrasts badly with \"The Pilgrim's Progress.\"  The narrative moves\nin a more shadowy region.  We may admire the workmanship; but the same\nundefined sense of unreality pursues us through Milton's noble epic, the\noutcome of a divinely-fired genius, and Bunyan's humble narrative,\ndrawing its scenes and circumstances, and to some extent its _dramatis\npersonae_, from the writer's own surroundings in the town and corporation\nof Bedford, and his brief but stirring experience as a soldier in the\ngreat Parliamentary War.  The catastrophe also is eminently\nunsatisfactory.  When Christian and Hopeful enter the Golden Gates we\nfeel that the story has come to its proper end, which we have been\nlooking for all along.  But the conclusion of \"The Holy War\" is too much\nlike the closing chapter of \"Rasselas\"--\"a conclusion in which nothing is\nconcluded.\"  After all the endless vicissitudes of the conflict, and the\nfinal and glorious victory of Emmanuel and his forces, and the execution\nof the ringleaders of the mutiny, the issue still remains doubtful.  The\ntown of Mansoul is left open to fresh attacks.  Diabolus is still at\nlarge.  Carnal Sense breaks prison and continues to lurk in the town.\nUnbelief, that \"nimble Jack,\" slips away, and can never be laid hold of.\nThese, therefore, and some few others of the more subtle of the\nDiabolonians, continue to make their home in Mansoul, and will do so\nuntil Mansoul ceases to dwell in the kingdom of Universe.  It is true\nthey turn chicken-hearted after the other leaders of their party have\nbeen taken and executed, and keep themselves quiet and close, lurking in\ndens and holes lest they should be snapped up by Emmanuel's men.  If\nUnbelief or any of his crew venture to show themselves in the streets,\nthe whole town is up in arms against them; the very children raise a hue\nand cry against them and seek to stone them.  But all in vain.  Mansoul,\nit is true, enjoys some good degree of peace and quiet.  Her Prince takes\nup his residence in her borders.  Her captains and soldiers do their\nduties.  She minds her trade with the heavenly land afar off; also she is\nbusy in her manufacture.  But with the remnants of the Diabolonians still\nwithin her walls, ready to show their heads on the least relaxation of\nstrict watchfulness, keeping up constant communication with Diabolus and\nthe other lords of the pit, and prepared to open the gates to them when\nopportunity offers, this peace can not be lasting.  The old battle will\nhave to be fought over again, only to end in the same undecisive result.\nAnd so it must be to the end.  If untrue to art, Bunyan is true to fact.\nWhether we regard Mansoul as the soul of a single individual or as the\nwhole human race, no final victory can be looked for so long as it abides\nin \"the country of Universe.\"  The flesh will lust against the spirit,\nthe regenerated man will be in danger of being brought into captivity to\nthe law of sin and death unless he keeps up his watchfulness and\nmaintains the struggle to the end.\n\nAnd it is here, that, for purposes of art, not for purposes of truth, the\nreal failing of \"The Holy War\" lies.  The drama of Mansoul is incomplete,\nand whether individually or collectively, must remain incomplete till man\nputs on a new nature, and the victory, once for all gained on Calvary, is\nconsummated, in the fulness of time, at the restitution of all things.\nThere is no uncertainty what the end will be.  Evil must be put down, and\ngood must triumph at last.  But the end is not yet, and it seems as far\noff as ever.  The army of Doubters, under their several captains,\nElection Doubters, Vocation Doubters, Salvation Doubters, Grace Doubters,\nwith their general the great Lord Incredulity at their head, reinforced\nby many fresh regiments under novel standards, unknown and unthought of\nin Bunyan's days, taking the place of those whose power is past, is ever\nmaking new attacks upon poor Mansoul, and terrifying feeble souls with\ntheir threatenings.  Whichever way we look there is much to puzzle, much\nto grieve over, much that to our present limited view is entirely\ninexplicable.  But the mind that accepts the loving will and wisdom of\nGod as the law of the Universe, can rest in the calm assurance that all,\nhowever mysteriously, is fulfilling His eternal designs, and that though\nHe seems to permit \"His work to be spoilt, His power defied, and even His\nvictories when won made useless,\" it is but seeming,--that the triumph of\nevil is but temporary, and that these apparent failures and\ncontradictions, are slowly but surely working out and helping forward\n\n   \"The one unseen divine event\n   To which the whole creation moves.\"\n\n\"The mysteries and contradictions which the Christian revelation leaves\nunsolved are made tolerable by Hope.\"  To adopt Bunyan's figurative\nlanguage in the closing paragraph of his allegory, the day is certainly\ncoming when the famous town of Mansoul shall be taken down and\ntransported \"every stick and stone\" to Emmanuel's land, and there set up\nfor the Father's habitation in such strength and glory as it never saw\nbefore.  No Diabolonian shall be able to creep into its streets, burrow\nin its walls, or be seen in its borders.  No evil tidings shall trouble\nits inhabitants, nor sound of Diabolian drum be heard there.  Sorrow and\ngrief shall be ended, and life, always sweet, always new, shall last\nlonger than they could even desire it, even all the days of eternity.\nMeanwhile let those who have such a glorious hope set before them keep\nclean and white the liveries their Lord has given them, and wash often in\nthe open fountain.  Let them believe in His love, live upon His word;\nwatch, fight, and pray, and hold fast till He come.\n\nOne more work of Bunyan's still remains to be briefly noticed, as bearing\nthe characteristic stamp of his genius, \"The Life and Death of Mr.\nBadman.\"  The original idea of this book was to furnish a contrast to\n\"The Pilgrim's Progress.\"  As in that work he had described the course of\na man setting out on his course heavenwards, struggling onwards through\ntemptation, trials, and difficulties, and entering at last through the\ngolden gates into the city of God, so in this later work his purpose was\nto depict the career of a man whose face from the first was turned in the\nopposite direction, going on from bad to worse, ever becoming more and\nmore irretrievably evil, fitter and fitter for the bottomless pit; his\nlife full of sin and his death without repentance; reaping the fruit of\nhis sins in hopeless sinfulness.  That this was the original purpose of\nthe work, Bunyan tells us in his preface.  It came into his mind, he\nsays, as in the former book he had written concerning the progress of the\nPilgrim from this world to glory, so in this second book to write of the\nlife and death of the ungodly, and of their travel from this world to\nhell.  The new work, however, as in almost every respect it differs from\nthe earlier one, so it is decidedly inferior to it.  It is totally unlike\n\"The Pilgrim's Progress\" both in form and execution.  The one is an\nallegory, the other a tale, describing without imagery or metaphor, in\nthe plainest language, the career of a \"vulgar, middle-class,\nunprincipled scoundrel.\"  While \"The Pilgrim's Progress\" pursues the\nnarrative form throughout, only interrupted by dialogues between the\nleading characters, \"Mr. Badman's career\" is presented to the world in a\ndialogue between a certain Mr. Wiseman and Mr. Attentive.  Mr. Wiseman\ntells the story, and Mr. Attentive supplies appropriate reflections on\nit.  The narrative is needlessly burdened with a succession of short\nsermons, in the form of didactic discourses on lying, stealing, impurity,\nand the other vices of which the hero of the story was guilty, and which\nbrought him to his miserable end.  The plainness of speech with which\nsome of these evil doings are enlarged upon, and Mr. Badman's indulgence\nin them described, makes portions of the book very disagreeable, and\nindeed hardly profitable reading.  With omissions, however, the book well\ndeserves perusal, as a picture such as only Bunyan or his rival in\nlifelike portraiture, Defoe, could have drawn of vulgar English life in\nthe latter part of the seventeenth century, in a commonplace country town\nsuch as Bedford.  It is not at all a pleasant picture.  The life\ndescribed, when not gross, is sordid and foul, is mean and commonplace.\nBut as a description of English middle-class life at the epoch of the\nRestoration and Revolution, it is invaluable for those who wish to put\nthemselves in touch with that period.  The anecdotes introduced to\nillustrate Bunyan's positions of God's judgment upon swearers and\nsinners, convicting him of a credulity and a harshness of feeling one is\nsorry to think him capable of, are very interesting for the side-lights\nthey throw upon the times and the people who lived in them.  It would\ntake too long to give a sketch of the story, even if a summary could give\nany real estimate of its picturesque and vivid power.  It is certainly a\nremarkable, if an offensive book.  As with \"Robinson Crusoe\" and Defoe's\nother tales, we can hardly believe that we have not a real history before\nus.  We feel that there is no reason why the events recorded should not\nhave happened.  There are no surprises; no unlooked-for catastrophes; no\nprovidential interpositions to punish the sinner or rescue the good man.\nBadman's pious wife is made to pay the penalty of allowing herself to be\ndeceived by a tall, good-looking, hypocritical scoundrel.  He himself\npursues his evil way to the end, and \"dies like a lamb, or as men call\nit, like a Chrisom child sweetly and without fear,\" but the selfsame Mr.\nBadman still, not only in name, but in condition; sinning onto the last,\nand dying with a heart that cannot repent.\n\nMr. Froude's summing up of this book is so masterly that we make no\napology for presenting it to our readers.  \"Bunyan conceals nothing,\nassumes nothing, and exaggerates nothing.  He makes his bad man sharp and\nshrewd.  He allows sharpness and shrewdness to bring him the reward which\nsuch qualities in fact command.  Badman is successful; is powerful; he\nenjoys all the pleasures which money can bring; his bad wife helps him to\nruin, but otherwise he is not unhappy, and he dies in peace.  Bunyan has\nmade him a brute, because such men do become brutes.  It is the real\npunishment of brutal and selfish habits.  There the figure stands--a\npicture of a man in the rank of English life with which Bunyan was most\nfamiliar; travelling along the primrose path to the everlasting bonfire,\nas the way to Emmanuel's Land was through the Slough of Despond and the\nValley of the Shadow of Death.  Pleasures are to be found among the\nprimroses, such pleasures as a brute can be gratified by.  Yet the reader\nfeels that even if there was no bonfire, he would still prefer to be with\nChristian.\"\n\n\n\n\nFOOTNOTES\n\n\n{1}  A small enclosure behind a cottage.","title":"The Life of John Bunyan","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":50265}