The Life of John Bunyan

The Life of John Bunyan

by Edmund Venables, M.A.

CHAPTER I.

John Bunyan, the author of the book which has probably passed

through more editions, had a greater number of readers, and been

translated into more languages than any other book in the English

tongue, was born in the parish of Elstow, in Bedfordshire, in the

latter part of the year 1628, and was baptized in the parish church

of the village on the last day of November of that year.

The year of John Bunyan's birth was a momentous one both for the

nation and for the Church of England. Charles I., by the extorted

assent to the Petition of Right, had begun reluctantly to strip

himself of the irresponsible authority he had claimed, and had

taken the first step in the struggle between King and Parliament

which ended in the House of Commons seating itself in the place of

the Sovereign. Wentworth (better known as Lord Strafford) had

finally left the Commons, baffled in his nobly-conceived but vain

hope of reconciling the monarch and his people, and having accepted

a peerage and the promise of the Presidency of the Council of the

North, was foreshadowing his policy of "Thorough," which was

destined to bring both his own head and that of his weak master to

the block. The Remonstrance of Parliament against the toleration

of Roman Catholics and the growth of Arminianism, had been

presented to the indignant king, who, wilfully blinded, had replied

to it by the promotion to high and lucrative posts in the Church of

the very men against whom it was chiefly directed. The most

outrageous upholders of the royal prerogative and the irresponsible

power of the sovereign, Montagu and Mainwaring, had been presented,

the one to the see of Chichester, the other - the impeached and

condemned of the Commons - to the rich living Montagu's

consecration had vacated. Montaigne, the licenser of Mainwaring's

incriminated sermon, was raised to the Archbishopric of York, while

Neile and Laud, who were openly named in the Remonstrance as the

"troublers of the English Israel," were rewarded respectively with

the rich see of Durham and the important and deeply-dyed Puritan

diocese of London. Charles was steadily sowing the wind, and

destined to reap the whirlwind which was to sweep him from his

throne, and involve the monarchy and the Church in the same

overthrow. Three months before Bunyan's birth Buckingham, on the

eve of his departure for the beleaguered and famine-stricken city

of Rochelle, sanguinely hoping to conclude a peace with the French

king beneath its walls, had been struck down by the knife of a

fanatic, to the undisguised joy of the majority of the nation,

bequeathing a legacy of failure and disgrace in the fall of the

Protestant stronghold on which the eyes of Europe had been so long

anxiously fixed.

The year was closing gloomily, with ominous forecasts of the coming

hurricane, when the babe who was destined to leave so imperishable

a name in English literature, first saw the light in an humble

cottage in an obscure Bedfordshire village. His father, Thomas

Bunyan, though styling himself in his will by the more dignified

title of "brazier," was more properly what is known as a "tinker";

"a mender of pots and kettles," according to Bunyan's contemporary

biographer, Charles Doe. He was not, however, a mere tramp or

vagrant, as travelling tinkers were and usually are still, much

less a disreputable sot, a counterpart of Shakespeare's Christopher

Sly, but a man with a recognized calling, having a settled home and

an acknowledged position in the village community of Elstow. The

family was of long standing there, but had for some generations

been going down in the world. Bunyan's grandfather, Thomas Bunyan,

as we learn from his still extant will, carried on the occupation

of a "petty chapman," or small retail dealer, in his own freehold

cottage, which he bequeathed, "with its appurtenances," to his

second wife, Ann, to descend, after her death, to her stepson, his

namesake, Thomas, and her own son Edward, in equal shares. This

cottage, which was probably John Bunyan's birthplace, persistent

tradition, confirmed by the testimony of local names, warrants us

in placing near the hamlet of Harrowden, a mile to the east of the

village of Elstow, at a place long called "Bunyan's End," where two

fields are still called by the name of "Bunyans" and "Further

Bunyans." This small freehold appears to have been all that

remained, at the death of John Bunyan's grandfather, of a property

once considerable enough to have given the name of its possessor to

the whole locality.

The family of Buingnon, Bunyun, Buniun, Boynon, Bonyon, or Binyan

(the name is found spelt in no fewer than thirty-four different

ways, of which the now-established form, Bunyan, is almost the

least frequent) is one that had established itself in Bedfordshire

from very early times. The first place in connection with which

the name appears is Pulloxhill, about nine miles from Elstow. In

1199, the year of King John's accession, the Bunyans had approached

still nearer to that parish. One William Bunion held land at

Wilstead, not more than a mile off. In 1327, the first year of

Edward III., one of the same name, probably his descendant, William

Boynon, is found actually living at Harrowden, close to the spot

which popular tradition names as John Bunyan's birthplace, and was

the owner of property there. We have no further notices of the

Bunyans of Elstow till the sixteenth century. We then find them

greatly fallen. Their ancestral property seems little by little to

have passed into other hands, until in 1542 nothing was left but "a

messuage and pightell (1) with the appurtenances, and nine acres of

land." This small residue other entries on the Court Rolls show to

have been still further diminished by sale. The field already

referred to, known as "Bonyon's End," was sold by "Thomas Bonyon,

of Elstow, labourer," son of William Bonyon, the said Thomas and

his wife being the keepers of a small road-side inn, at which their

overcharges for their home-baked bread and home-brewed beer were

continually bringing them into trouble with the petty local courts

of the day. Thomas Bunyan, John Bunyan's father, was born in the

last days of Elizabeth, and was baptized February 24, 1603, exactly

a month before the great queen passed away. The mother of the

immortal Dreamer was one Margaret Bentley, who, like her husband,

was a native of Elstow and only a few months his junior. The

details of her mother's will, which is still extant, drawn up by

the vicar of Elstow, prove that, like her husband, she did not, in

the words of Bunyan's latest and most complete biographer, the Rev.

Dr. Brown, "come of the very squalid poor, but of people who,

though humble in station, were yet decent and worthy in their

ways." John Bunyan's mother was his father's second wife. The

Bunyans were given to marrying early, and speedily consoled

themselves on the loss of one wife with the companionship of a

successor. Bunyan's grandmother cannot have died before February

24, 1603, the date of his father's baptism. But before the year

was out his grandfather had married again. His father, too, had

not completed his twentieth year when he married his first wife,

Anne Pinney, January 10, 1623. She died in 1627, apparently

without any surviving children, and before the year was half-way

through, on the 23rd of the following May, he was married a second

time to Margaret Bentley. At the end of seventeen years Thomas

Bunyan was again left a widower, and within two months, with

grossly indecent haste, he filled the vacant place with a third

wife. Bunyan himself cannot have been much more than twenty when

he married. We have no particulars of the death of his first wife.

But he had been married two years to his noble-minded second wife

at the time of the assizes in 1661, and the ages of his children by

his first wife would indicate that no long interval elapsed between

his being left a widower and his second marriage.

Elstow, which, as the birthplace of the author of "The Pilgrim's

Progress," has gained a world-wide celebrity, is a quiet little

village, which, though not much more than a mile from the populous

and busy town of Bedford, yet, lying aside from the main stream of

modern life, preserves its old-world look to an unusual degree.

Its name in its original form of "Helen-stow," or "Ellen-stow," the

STOW or stockaded place of St. Helena, is derived from a

Benedictine nunnery founded in 1078 by Judith, niece of William the

Conqueror, the traitorous wife of the judicially murdered Waltheof,

Earl of Huntingdon, in honour of the mother of the Emperor

Constantine. The parish church, so intimately connected with

Bunyan's personal history, is a fragment of the church of the

nunnery, with a detached campanile, or "steeple-house," built to

contain the bells after the destruction of the central tower and

choir of the conventual church. Few villages are so little

modernized as Elstow. The old half-timbered cottages with

overhanging storeys, peaked dormers, and gabled porches, tapestried

with roses and honeysuckles, must be much what they were in

Bunyan's days. A village street, with detached cottages standing

in gardens gay with the homely flowers John Bunyan knew and loved,

leads to the village green, fringed with churchyard elms, in the

middle of which is the pedestal or stump of the market-cross, and

at the upper end of the old "Moot Hall," a quaint brick and timber

building, with a projecting upper storey, a good example of the

domestic architecture of the fifteenth century, originally,

perhaps, the Guesten-Hall of the adjacent nunnery, and afterwards

the Court House of the manor when lay-lords had succeeded the

abbesses - "the scene," writes Dr. Brown "of village festivities,

statute hirings, and all the public occasions of village life."

The whole spot and its surroundings can be but little altered from

the time when our hero was the ringleader of the youth of the place

in the dances on the greensward, which he tells us he found it so

hard to give up, and in "tip-cat," and the other innocent games

which his diseased conscience afterwards regarded as "ungodly

practices." One may almost see the hole from which he was going to

strike his "cat" that memorable Sunday afternoon when he silenced

the inward voice which rebuked him for his sins, and "returned

desperately to his sport again." On the south side of the green,

as we have said, stands the church, a fine though somewhat rude

fragment of the chapel of the nunnery curtailed at both ends, of

Norman and Early English date, which, with its detached bell tower,

was the scene of some of the fierce spiritual conflicts so vividly

depicted by Bunyan in his "Grace Abounding." On entering every

object speaks of Bunyan. The pulpit - if it has survived the

recent restoration - is the same from which Christopher Hall, the

then "Parson" of Elstow, preached the sermon which first awoke his

sleeping conscience. The font is that in which he was baptized, as

were also his father and mother and remoter progenitors, as well as

his children, Mary, his dearly-loved blind child, on July 20, 1650,

and her younger sister, Elizabeth, on April 14, 1654. An old oaken

bench, polished by the hands of thousands of visitors attracted to

the village church by the fame of the tinker of Elstow, is

traditionally shown as the seat he used to occupy when he "went to

church twice a day, and that, too, with the foremost counting all

things holy that were therein contained." The five bells which

hang in the belfry are the same in which Bunyan so much delighted,

the fourth bell, tradition says, being that he was used to ring.

The rough flagged floor, "all worn and broken with the hobnailed

boots of generations of ringers," remains undisturbed. One cannot

see the door, set in its solid masonry, without recalling the

figure of Bunyan standing in it, after conscience, "beginning to be

tender," told him that "such practice was but vain," but yet unable

to deny himself the pleasure of seeing others ring, hoping that,

"if a bell should fall," he could "slip out" safely "behind the

thick walls," and so "be preserved notwithstanding." Behind the

church, on the south side, stand some picturesque ivy-clad remains

of the once stately mansion of the Hillersdons, erected on the site

of the nunnery buildings in the early part of the seventeenth

century, with a porch attributed to Inigo Jones, which may have

given Bunyan the first idea of "the very stately Palace, the name

of which was Beautiful."

The cottage where Bunyan was born, between the two brooks in the

fields at Harrowden, has been so long destroyed that even the

knowledge of its site has passed away. That in which he lived for

six years (1649-1655) after his first marriage, and where his

children were born, is still standing in the village street, but

modern reparations have robbed it of all interest.

From this description of the surroundings among which Bunyan passed

the earliest and most impressionable years of his life, we pass to

the subject of our biography himself. The notion that Bunyan was

of gipsy descent, which was not entirely rejected by Sir Walter

Scott, and which has more recently received elaborate support from

writers on the other side of the Atlantic, may be pronounced

absolutely baseless. Even if Bunyan's inquiry of his father

"whether the family was of Israelitish descent or no," which has

been so strangely pressed into the service of the theory, could be

supposed to have anything to do with the matter, the decided

negative with which his question was met - "he told me, 'No, we

were not'" - would, one would have thought, have settled the point.

But some fictions die hard. However low the family had sunk, so

that in his own words, "his father's house was of that rank that is

meanest and most despised of all the families in the land," "of a

low and inconsiderable generation," the name, as we have seen, was

one of long standing in Bunyan's native county, and had once taken

far higher rank in it. And his parents, though poor, were

evidently worthy people, of good repute among their village

neighbours. Bunyan seems to be describing his own father and his

wandering life when he speaks of "an honest poor labouring man,

who, like Adam unparadised, had all the world to get his bread in,

and was very careful to maintain his family." He and his wife were

also careful with a higher care that their children should be

properly educated. "Notwithstanding the meanness and

inconsiderableness of my parents," writes Bunyan, "it pleased God

to put it into their hearts to put me to school, to learn both to

read and write." If we accept the evidence of the "Scriptural

Poems," published for the first time twelve years after his death,

the genuineness of which, though questioned by Dr. Brown, there

seems no sufficient reason to doubt, the little education he had

was "gained in a grammar school." This would have been that

founded by Sir William Harpur in Queen Mary's reign in the

neighbouring town of Bedford. Thither we may picture the little

lad trudging day by day along the mile and a half of footpath and

road from his father's cottage by the brookside, often, no doubt,

wet and miry enough, not, as he says, to "go to school to Aristotle

or Plato," but to be taught "according to the rate of other poor

men's children." The Bedford school-master about this time,

William Barnes by name, was a negligent sot, charged with "night-

walking" and haunting "taverns and alehouses," and other evil

practices, as well as with treating the poor boys "when present"

with a cruelty which must have made them wish that his absences,

long as they were, had been more protracted. Whether this man was

his master or no, it was little that Bunyan learnt at school, and

that little he confesses with shame he soon lost "almost utterly."

He was before long called home to help his father at the Harrowden

forge, where he says he was "brought up in a very mean condition

among a company of poor countrymen." Here, with but little to

elevate or refine his character, the boy contracted many bad

habits, and grew up what Coleridge somewhat too strongly calls "a

bitter blackguard." According to his own remorseful confession, he

was "filled with all unrighteousness," having "from a child" in his

"tender years," "but few equals both for cursing, swearing, lying

and blaspheming the holy name of God." Sins of this kind he

declares became "a second nature to him;" he "delighted in all

transgression against the law of God," and as he advanced in his

teens he became a "notorious sinbreeder," the "very ringleader," he

says, of the village lads "in all manner of vice and ungodliness."

But the unsparing condemnation passed by Bunyan, after his

conversion, on his former self, must not mislead us into supposing

him ever, either as boy or man, to have lived a vicious life. "The

wickedness of the tinker," writes Southey, "has been greatly

overrated, and it is taking the language of self-accusation too

literally to pronounce of John Bunyan that he was at any time

depraved." The justice of this verdict of acquittal is fully

accepted by Coleridge. "Bunyan," he says, "was never in our

received sense of the word 'wicked.' He was chaste, sober, and

honest." He hints at youthful escapades, such, perhaps, as

orchard-robbing, or when a little older, poaching, and the like,

which might have brought him under "the stroke of the laws," and

put him to "open shame before the face of the world." But he

confesses to no crime or profligate habit. We have no reason to

suppose that he was ever drunk, and we have his own most solemn

declaration that he was never guilty of an act of unchastity. "In

our days," to quote Mr. Froude, "a rough tinker who could say as

much for himself after he had grown to manhood, would be regarded

as a model of self-restraint. If in Bedford and the neighbourhood

there was no young man more vicious than Bunyan, the moral standard

of an English town in the seventeenth century must have been higher

than believers in progress will be pleased to allow." How then, it

may be asked, are we to explain the passionate language in which he

expresses his self-abhorrence, which would hardly seem exaggerated

in the mouth of the most profligate and licentious? We are

confident that Bunyan meant what he said. So intensely honest a

nature could not allow his words to go beyond his convictions.

When he speaks of "letting loose the reins to his lusts," and

sinning "with the greatest delight and ease," we know that however

exaggerated they may appear to us, his expressions did not seem to

him overstrained. Dr. Johnson marvelled that St. Paul could call

himself "the chief of sinners," and expressed a doubt whether he

did so honestly. But a highly-strung spiritual nature like that of

the apostle, when suddenly called into exercise after a period of

carelessness, takes a very different estimate of sin from that of

the world, even the decent moral world, in general. It realizes

its own offences, venial as they appear to others, as sins against

infinite love - a love unto death - and in the light of the

sacrifice on Calvary, recognizes the heinousness of its guilt, and

while it doubts not, marvels that it can be pardoned. The

sinfulness of sin - more especially their own sin - is the

intensest of all possible realities to them. No language is too

strong to describe it. We may not unreasonably ask whether this

estimate, however exaggerated it may appear to those who are

strangers to these spiritual experiences, is altogether a mistaken

one?

The spiritual instinct was very early awakened in Bunyan. While

still a child "but nine or ten years old," he tells us he was

racked with convictions of sin, and haunted with religious fears.

He was scared with "fearful dreams," and "dreadful visions," and

haunted in his sleep with "apprehensions of devils and wicked

spirits" coming to carry him away, which made his bed a place of

terrors. The thought of the Day of Judgment and of the torments of

the lost, often came as a dark cloud over his mind in the midst of

his boyish sports, and made him tremble. But though these fevered

visions embittered his enjoyment while they lasted, they were but

transient, and after a while they entirely ceased "as if they had

never been," and he gave himself up without restraint to the

youthful pleasures in which his ardent nature made him ever the

ringleader. The "thoughts of religion" became very grievous to

him. He could not endure even to see others read pious books; "it

would be as a prison to me." The awful realities of eternity which

had once been so crushing to his spirit were "both out of sight and

mind." He said to God, "depart from me." According to the later

morbid estimate which stigmatized as sinful what were little more

than the wild acts of a roystering dare-devil young fellow, full of

animal spirits and with an unusually active imagination, he "could

sin with the greatest delight and ease, and take pleasure in the

vileness of his companions." But that the sense of religion was

not wholly dead in him even then, and that while discarding its

restraints he had an inward reverence for it, is shown by the

horror he experienced if those who had a reputation for godliness

dishonoured their profession. "Once," he says, "when I was at the

height of my vanity, hearing one to swear who was reckoned for a

religious man, it had so great a stroke upon my spirit that it made

my heart to ache."

This undercurrent of religious feeling was deepened by providential

escapes from accidents which threatened his life - "judgments mixed

with mercy" he terms them, - which made him feel that he was not

utterly forsaken of God. Twice he narrowly escaped drowning; once

in "Bedford river" - the Ouse; once in "a creek of the sea," his

tinkering rounds having, perhaps, carried him as far northward as

the tidal inlets of the Wash in the neighbourhood of Spalding or

Lynn, or to the estuaries of the Stour and Orwell to the east. At

another time, in his wild contempt of danger, he tore out, while

his companions looked on with admiration, what he mistakenly

supposed to be an adder's sting.

These providential deliverances bring us to that incident in his

brief career as a soldier which his anonymous biographer tells us

"made so deep an impression upon him that he would never mention

it, which he often did, without thanksgiving to God." But for this

occurrence, indeed, we should have probably never known that he had

ever served in the army at all. The story is best told in his own

provokingly brief words - "When I was a soldier I with others were

drawn out to go to such a place to besiege it. But when I was just

ready to go, one of the company desired to go in my room; to which

when I consented, he took my place, and coming to the siege, as he

stood sentinel, he was shot in the head with a musket bullet and

died." Here, as is so often the case in Bunyan's autobiography, we

have reason to lament the complete absence of details. This is

characteristic of the man. The religious import of the occurrences

he records constituted their only value in his eyes; their temporal

setting, which imparts their chief interest to us, was of no

account to him. He gives us not the slightest clue to the name of

the besieged place, or even to the side on which he was engaged.

The date of the event is left equally vague. The last point

however we are able to determine with something like accuracy.

November, 1644, was the earliest period at which Bunyan could have

entered the army, for it was not till then that he reached the

regulation age of sixteen. Domestic circumstances had then

recently occurred which may have tended to estrange him from his

home, and turn his thoughts to a military life. In the previous

June his mother had died, her death being followed within a month

by that of his sister Margaret. Before another month was out, his

father, as we have already said, had married again, and whether the

new wife had proved the proverbial INJUSTA NOVERCA or not, his home

must have been sufficiently altered by the double, if we may not

say triple, calamity, to account for his leaving the dull monotony

of his native village for the more stirring career of a soldier.

Which of the two causes then distracting the nation claimed his

adherence, Royalist or Parliamentarian, can never be determined.

As Mr. Froude writes, "He does not tell us himself. His friends in

after life did not care to ask him or he to inform them, or else

they thought the matter of too small importance to be worth

mentioning with exactness." The only evidence is internal, and the

deductions from it vary with the estimate of the counter-balancing

probabilities taken by Bunyan's various biographers. Lord

Macaulay, whose conclusion is ably, and, we think, convincingly

supported by Dr. Brown, decides in favour of the side of the

Parliament. Mr. Froude, on the other hand, together with the

painstaking Mr. Offor, holds that "probability is on the side of

his having been with the Royalists." Bedfordshire, however, was

one of the "Associated Counties" from which the Parliamentary army

drew its main strength, and it was shut in by a strong line of

defence from any combination with the Royalist army. In 1643 the

county had received an order requiring it to furnish "able and

armed men" to the garrison at Newport Pagnel, which was then the

base of operations against the King in that part of England. All

probability therefore points to John Bunyan, the lusty young tinker

of Elstow, the leader in all manly sports and adventurous

enterprises among his mates, and probably caring very little on

what side he fought, having been drafted to Newport to serve under

Sir Samuel Luke, of Cople, and other Parliamentary commanders. The

place of the siege he refers to is equally undeterminable. A

tradition current within a few years of Bunyan's death, which Lord

Macaulay rather rashly invests with the certainty of fact, names

Leicester. The only direct evidence for this is the statement of

an anonymous biographer, who professes to have been a personal

friend of Bunyan's, that he was present at the siege of Leicester,

in 1645, as a soldier in the Parliamentary army. This statement,

however, is in direct defiance of Bunyan's own words. For the one

thing certain in the matter is that wherever the siege may have

been, Bunyan was not at it. He tells us plainly that he was "drawn

to go," and that when he was just starting, he gave up his place to

a comrade who went in his room, and was shot through the head.

Bunyan's presence at the siege of Leicester, which has been so

often reported that it has almost been regarded as an historical

truth, must therefore take its place among the baseless creations

of a fertile fancy.

Bunyan's military career, wherever passed and under whatever

standard, was very short. The civil war was drawing near the end

of its first stage when he enlisted. He had only been a soldier a

few months when the battle of Naseby, fatal to the royal cause, was

fought, June 14, 1645. Bristol was surrendered by Prince Rupert,

Sept. 10th. Three days later Montrose was totally defeated at

Philiphaugh; and after a vain attempt to relieve Chester, Charles

shut himself up in Oxford. The royal garrisons yielded in quick

succession; in 1646 the armies on both sides were disbanded, and

the first act in the great national tragedy having come to a close,

Bunyan returned to Elstow, and resumed his tinker's work at the

paternal forge. His father, old Thomas Bunyan, it may here be

mentioned, lived all through his famous son's twelve years'

imprisonment, witnessed his growing celebrity as a preacher and a

writer, and died in the early part of 1676, just when John Bunyan

was passing through his last brief period of durance, which was to

give birth to the work which has made him immortal.

CHAPTER II.

It cannot have been more than two or three years after Bunyan's

return home from his short experience of a soldier's life, that he

took the step which, more than any other, influences a man's future

career for good or for evil. The young tinker married. With his

characteristic disregard of all facts or dates but such as concern

his spiritual history, Bunyan tells us nothing about the orphan

girl he made his wife. Where he found her, who her parents were,

where they were married, even her christian name, were all deemed

so many irrelevant details. Indeed the fact of his marriage would

probably have been passed over altogether but for the important

bearing it hid on his inner life. His "mercy," as he calls it,

"was to light upon a wife whose father was counted godly," and who,

though she brought him no marriage portion, so that they "came

together as poor as poor might be," as "poor as howlets," to adopt

his own simile, "without so much household stuff as a dish or a

spoon betwixt" them, yet brought with her to the Elstow cottage two

religious books, which had belonged to her father, and which he

"had left her when he died." These books were "The Plain Man's

Pathway to Heaven," the work of Arthur Dent, the puritan incumbent

of Shoebury, in Essex - "wearisomely heavy and theologically

narrow," writes Dr. Brown - and "The Practise of Piety," by Dr.

Lewis Bayley, Bishop of Bangor, and previously chaplain to Prince

Henry, which enjoyed a wide reputation with puritans as well as

with churchmen. Together with these books, the young wife brought

the still more powerful influence of a religious training, and the

memory of a holy example, often telling her young graceless husband

"what a godly man her father was, and how he would reprove and

correct vice both in his house and amongst his neighbours, and what

a strict and holy life he lived in his days both in word and deed."

Much as Bunyan tells us he had lost of the "little he had learnt"

at school, he had not lost it "utterly." He was still able to read

intelligently. His wife's gentle influence prevailed on him to

begin "sometimes to read" her father's legacy "with her." This

must have been entirely new reading for Bunyan, and certainly at

first not much to his taste. What his favourite reading had been

up to this time, his own nervous words tell us, "Give me a ballad,

a news-book, George on Horseback, or Bevis of Southampton; give me

some book that teaches curious arts, that tells of old fables."

But as he and his young wife read these books together at their

fireside, a higher taste was gradually awakened in Bunyan's mind;

"some things" in them he "found somewhat pleasing" to him, and they

"begot" within him "some desires to religion," producing a degree

of outward reformation. The spiritual instinct was aroused. He

would be a godly man like his wife's father. He began to "go to

church twice a day, and that too with the foremost." Nor was it a

mere formal attendance, for when there he tells us he took his part

with all outward devotion in the service, "both singing and saying

as others did; yet," as he penitently confesses, "retaining his

wicked life," the wickedness of which, however, did not amount to

more than a liking for the sports and games of the lads of the

village, bell-ringing, dancing, and the like. The prohibition of

all liturgical forms issued in 1645, the observance of which varied

with the strictness or laxity of the local authorities, would not

seem to have been put in force very rigidly at Elstow. The vicar,

Christopher Hall, was an Episcopalian, who, like Bishop Sanderson,

retained his benefice unchallenged all through the Protectorate,

and held it some years after the Restoration and the passing of the

Act of Uniformity. He seems, like Sanderson, to have kept himself

within the letter of the law by making trifling variations in the

Prayer Book formularies, consistent with a general conformity to

the old order of the Church, "without persisting to his own

destruction in the usage of the entire liturgy." The decent

dignity of the ceremonial of his parish church had a powerful

effect on Bunyan's freshly awakened religious susceptibility - a

"spirit of superstition" he called it afterwards - and helped to

its fuller development. "I adored," he says, "with great devotion,

even all things, both the High Place" - altars then had not been

entirely broken down and levelled in Bedfordshire - "Priest, Clerk,

Vestment, Service, and what else belonging to the church, counting

all things holy that were therein contained, and especially the

Priest and Clerk most happy, and without doubt greatly blessed

because they were the servants of God and were principal in the

Holy Temple, to do His work therein, . . . their name, their garb,

and work, did so intoxicate and bewitch me." If it is questionable

whether the Act forbidding the use of the Book of Common Prayer was

strictly observed at Elstow, it is certain that the prohibition of

Sunday sports was not. Bunyan's narrative shows that the aspect of

a village green in Bedfordshire during the Protectorate did not

differ much from what Baxter tells us it had been in Shropshire

before the civil troubles began, where, "after the Common Prayer

had been read briefly, the rest of the day even till dark night

almost, except eating time, was spent in dancing under a maypole

and a great tree, when all the town did meet together." These

Sunday sports proved the battle-ground of Bunyan's spiritual

experience, the scene of the fierce inward struggles which he has

described so vividly, through which he ultimately reached the firm

ground of solid peace and hope. As a high-spirited healthy

athletic young fellow, all kinds of manly sports were Bunyan's

delight. On week days his tinker's business, which he evidently

pursued industriously, left him small leisure for such amusements.

Sunday therefore was the day on which he "did especially solace

himself" with them. He had yet to learn the identification of

diversions with "all manner of vice." The teaching came in this

way. One Sunday, Vicar Hall preached a sermon on the sin of

Sabbath-breaking, and like many hearers before and since, he

imagined that it was aimed expressly at him. Sermon ended, he went

home "with a great burden upon his spirit," "sermon-stricken" and

"sermon sick" as he expresses it elsewhere. But his Sunday's

dinner speedily drove away his self-condemning thoughts. He "shook

the sermon out of his mind," and went out to his sports with the

Elstow lads on the village green, with as "great delight" as ever.

But in the midst of his game of tip-cat or "sly," just as he had

struck the "cat" from its hole, and was going to give it a second

blow - the minuteness of the detail shows the unforgetable reality

of the crisis - he seemed to hear a voice from heaven asking him

whether "he would leave his sins and go to heaven, or keep his sins

and go to hell." He thought also that he saw Jesus Christ looking

down on him with threatening countenance. But like his own Hopeful

he "shut his eyes against the light," and silenced the condemning

voice with the feeling that repentance was hopeless. "It was too

late for him to look after heaven; he was past pardon." If his

condemnation was already sealed and he was eternally lost, it would

not matter whether he was condemned for many sins or for few.

Heaven was gone already. The only happiness he could look for was

what he could get out of his sins - his morbidly sensitive

conscience perversely identifying sports with sin - so he returned

desperately to his games, resolved, he says, to "take my fill of

sin, still studying what sin was yet to be committed that I might

taste the sweetness of it."

This desperate recklessness lasted with him "about a month or

more," till "one day as he was standing at a neighbour's shop-

window, cursing and swearing and playing the madman after his

wonted manner, the woman of the house, though a very loose and

ungodly wretch," rebuked him so severely as "the ungodliest fellow

for swearing that ever she heard, able to spoil all the youth in a

whole town," that, self-convicted, he hung down his head in silent

shame, wishing himself a little child again that he might unlearn

the wicked habit of which he thought it impossible to break

himself. Hopeless as the effort seemed to him, it proved

effectual. He did "leave off his swearing" to his own "great

wonder," and found that he "could speak better and with more

pleasantness" than when he "put an oath before and another behind,

to give his words authority." Thus was one step in his reformation

taken, and never retraced; but, he adds sorrowfully, "all this

while I knew not Jesus Christ, neither did I leave my sports and

plays." We might be inclined to ask, why should he leave them?

But indifferent and innocent in themselves, an overstrained

spirituality had taught him to regard them as sinful. To indulge

in them wounded his morbidly sensitive conscience, and so they were

sin to him.

The next step onward in this religious progress was the study of

the Bible, to which he was led by the conversation of a poor godly

neighbour. Naturally he first betook himself to the historical

books, which, he tells us, he read "with great pleasure;" but, like

Baxter who, beginning his Bible reading in the same course, writes,

"I neither understood nor relished much the doctrinal part," he

frankly confesses, "Paul's Epistles and such like Scriptures I

could not away with." His Bible reading helped forward the outward

reformation he had begun. He set the keeping the Ten Commandments

before him as his "way to Heaven"; much comforted "sometimes" when,

as he thought, "he kept them pretty well," but humbled in

conscience when "now and then he broke one." "But then," he says,

"I should repent and say I was sorry for it, and promise God to do

better next time, and then get help again; for then I thought I

pleased God as well as any man in England." His progress was slow,

for each step involved a battle, but it was steadily onwards. He

had a very hard struggle in relinquishing his favourite amusements.

But though he had much yet to learn, his feet were set on the

upward way, and he had no mind to go back, great as the temptation

often was. He had once delighted in bell-ringing, but "his

conscience beginning to be tender" - morbid we should rather say -

"he thought such practise to be vain, and therefore forced himself

to leave it." But "hankering after it still," he continued to go

while his old companions rang, and look on at what he "durst not"

join in, until the fear that if he thus winked at what his

conscience condemned, a bell, or even the tower itself, might fall

and kill him, put a stop even to that compromise. Dancing, which

from his boyhood he had practised on the village green, or in the

old Moot Hall, was still harder to give up. "It was a full year

before I could quite leave that." But this too was at last

renounced, and finally. The power of Bunyan's indomitable will was

bracing itself for severe trials yet to come.

Meanwhile Bunyan's neighbours regarded with amazement the changed

life of the profane young tinker. "And truly," he honestly

confesses, "so they well might for this my conversion was as great

as for Tom of Bedlam to become a sober man." Bunyan's reformation

was soon the town's talk; he had "become godly," "become a right

honest man." These commendations flattered is vanity, and he laid

himself out for them. He was then but a "poor painted hypocrite,"

he says, "proud of his godliness, and doing all he did either to be

seen of, or well spoken of by man." This state of self-

satisfaction, he tells us, lasted "for about a twelvemonth or

more." During this deceitful calm he says, "I had great peace of

conscience, and should think with myself, 'God cannot choose but

now be pleased with me,' yea, to relate it in mine own way, I

thought no man in England could please God better than I." But no

outward reformation can bring lasting inward peace. When a man is

honest with himself, the more earnestly he struggles after complete

obedience, the more faulty does his obedience appear. The good

opinion of others will not silence his own inward condemnation. He

needs a higher righteousness than his own; a firmer standing-ground

than the shifting quicksand of his own good deeds. "All this

while," he writes, "poor wretch as I was, I was ignorant of Jesus

Christ, and going about to establish my own righteousness, and had

perished therein had not God in mercy showed me more of my state by

nature."

This revolution was nearer than he imagined. Bunyan's self-

satisfaction was rudely shaken, and his need of something deeper in

the way of religion than he had yet experienced was shown him by

the conversation of three or four poor women whom, one day, when

pursuing his tinker's calling at Bedford, he came upon "sitting at

a door in the sun, and talking of the things of God." These women

were members of the congregation of "the holy Mr. John Gifford,"

who, at that time of ecclesiastical confusion, subsequently became

rector of St. John's Church, in Bedford, and master of the hospital

attached to it. Gifford's career had been a strange one. We hear

of him first as a young major in the king's army at the outset of

the Civil War, notorious for his loose and debauched life, taken by

Fairfax at Maidstone in 1648, and condemned to the gallows. By his

sister's help he eluded his keepers' vigilance, escaped from

prison, and ultimately found his way to Bedford, where for a time

he practised as a physician, though without any change of his loose

habits. The loss of a large sum of money at gaming awoke a disgust

at his dissolute life. A few sentences of a pious book deepened

the impression. He became a converted man, and joined himself to a

handful of earnest Christians in Bedford, who becoming, in the

language of the day, "a church," he was appointed its first

minister. Gifford exercised a deep and vital though narrow

influence, leaving behind him at his death, in 1655, the character

of a "wise, tolerant, and truly Christian man." The conversation

of the poor women who were destined to exercise so momentous an

influence on Bunyan's spiritual life, evidenced how thoroughly they

had drunk in their pastor's teaching. Bunyan himself was at this

time a "brisk talker in the matters of religion," such as he drew

from the life in his own Talkative. But the words of these poor

women were entirely beyond him. They opened a new and blessed land

to which he was a complete stranger. "They spoke of their own

wretchedness of heart, of their unbelief, of their miserable state

by nature, of the new birth, and the work of God in their souls,

and how the Lord refreshed them, and supported them against the

temptations of the Devil by His words and promises." But what

seems to have struck Bunyan the most forcibly was the happiness

which their religion shed in the hearts of these poor women.

Religion up to this time had been to him a system of rules and

restrictions. Heaven was to be won by doing certain things and not

doing certain other things. Of religion as a Divine life kindled

in the soul, and flooding it with a joy which creates a heaven on

earth, he had no conception. Joy in believing was a new thing to

him. "They spake as if joy did make them speak; they spake with

such pleasantness of Scripture language, and with such appearance

of grace in all they said, that they were to me as if they had

found a new world," a veritable "El Dorado," stored with the true

riches. Bunyan, as he says, after he had listened awhile and

wondered at their words, left them and went about his work again.

But their words went with him. He could not get rid of them. He

saw that though he thought himself a godly man, and his neighbours

thought so too, he wanted the true tokens of godliness. He was

convinced that godliness was the only true happiness, and he could

not rest till he had attained it. So he made it his business to be

going again and again into the company of these good women. He

could not stay away, and the more he talked with them the more

uneasy he became - "the more I questioned my own condition." The

salvation of his soul became all in all to him. His mind "lay

fixed on eternity like a horse-leech at the vein." The Bible

became precious to him. He read it with new eyes, "as I never did

before." "I was indeed then never out of the Bible, either by

reading or meditation." The Epistles of St. Paul, which before he

"could not away with," were now "sweet and pleasant" to him. He

was still "crying out to God that he might know the truth and the

way to Heaven and glory." Having no one to guide him in his study

of the most difficult of all books, it is no wonder that he

misinterpreted and misapplied its words in a manner which went far

to unsettle his brain. He read that without faith he could not be

saved, and though he did not clearly know what faith was, it became

a question of supreme anxiety to him to determine whether he had it

or not. If not, he was a castaway indeed, doomed to perish for

ever. So he determined to put it to the test. The Bible told him

that faith, "even as a grain of mustard seed," would enable its

possessor to work miracles. So, as Mr. Froude says, "not

understanding Oriental metaphors," he thought he had here a simple

test which would at once solve the question. One day as he was

walking along the miry road between Elstow and Bedford, which he

had so often paced as a schoolboy, "the temptation came hot upon

him" to put the matter to the proof, by saying to the puddles that

were in the horse-pads "be dry," and to the dry places, "be ye

puddles." He was just about to utter the words when a sudden

thought stopped him. Would it not be better just to go under the

hedge and pray that God would enable him? This pause saved him

from a rash venture, which might have landed him in despair. For

he concluded that if he tried after praying and nothing came of it,

it would prove that he had no faith, but was a castaway. "Nay,

thought I, if it be so, I will never try yet, but will stay a

little longer." "Then," he continues, "I was so tossed betwixt the

Devil and my own ignorance, and so perplexed, especially at

sometimes, that I could not tell what to do." At another time his

mind, as the minds of thousands have been and will be to the end,

was greatly harassed by the insoluble problems of predestination

and election. The question was not now whether he had faith, but

"whether he was one of the elect or not, and if not, what then?"

"He might as well leave off and strive no further." And then the

strange fancy occurred to him, that the good people at Bedford

whose acquaintance he had recently made, were all that God meant to

save in that part of the country, and that the day of grace was

past and gone for him; that he had overstood the time of mercy.

"Oh that he had turned sooner!" was then his cry. "Oh that he had

turned seven years before! What a fool he had been to trifle away

his time till his soul and heaven were lost!" The text, "compel

them to come in, and yet there is room," came to his rescue when he

was so harassed and faint that he was "scarce able to take one step

more." He found them "sweet words," for they showed him that there

was "place enough in heaven for him," and he verily believed that

when Christ spoke them He was thinking of him, and had them

recorded to help him to overcome the vile fear that there was no

place left for him in His bosom. But soon another fear succeeded

the former. Was he truly called of Christ? "He called to them

when He would, and they came to Him." But they could not come

unless He called them. Had He called him? Would He call him? If

He did how gladly would he run after Him. But oh, he feared that

He had no liking to him; that He would not call him. True

conversion was what he longed for. "Could it have been gotten for

gold," he said, "what could I have given for it! Had I a whole

world, it had all gone ten thousand times over for this, that my

soul might have been in a converted state." All those whom he

thought to be truly converted were now lovely in his eyes. "They

shone, they walked like people that carried the broad seal of

heaven about them. Oh that he were like them, and shared in their

goodly heritage!"

About this time Bunyan was greatly troubled, though at the same

time encouraged in his endeavours after the blessedness he longed

for so earnestly but could not yet attain to, by "a dream or

vision" which presented itself to him, whether in his waking or

sleeping hours he does not tell us. He fancied he saw his four

Bedford friends refreshing themselves on the sunny side of a high

mountain while he was shivering with dark and cold on the other

side, parted from them by a high wall with only one small gap in

it, and that not found but after long searching, and so strait and

narrow withal that it needed long and desperate efforts to force

his way through. At last he succeeded. "Then," he says, "I was

exceeding glad, and went and sat down in the midst of them, and so

was comforted with the light and heat of their sun."

But this sunshine shone but in illusion, and soon gave place to the

old sad questioning, which filled his soul with darkness. Was he

already called, or should he be called some day? He would give

worlds to know. Who could assure him? At last some words of the

prophet Joel (chap. iii, 21) encouraged him to hope that if not

converted already, the time might come when he should be converted

to Christ. Despair began to give way to hopefulness.

At this crisis Bunyan took the step which he would have been wise

if he had taken long before. He sought the sympathy and counsel of

others. He began to speak his mind to the poor people in Bedford

whose words of religious experiences had first revealed to him his

true condition. By them he was introduced to their pastor, "the

godly Mr. Gifford," who invited him to his house and gave him

spiritual counsel. He began to attend the meetings of his

disciples.

The teaching he received here was but ill-suited for one of

Bunyan's morbid sensitiveness. For it was based upon a constant

introspection and a scrupulous weighing of each word and action,

with a torturing suspicion of its motive, which made a man's ever-

varying spiritual feelings the standard of his state before God,

instead of leading him off from self to the Saviour. It is not,

therefore, at all surprising that a considerable period intervened

before, in the language of his school, "he found peace." This

period, which seems to have embraced two or three years, was marked

by that tremendous inward struggle which he has described, "as with

a pen of fire," in that marvellous piece of religious

autobiography, without a counterpart except in "The Confessions of

St. Augustine," his "Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners."

Bunyan's first experiences after his introduction to Mr. Gifford

and the inner circle of his disciples were most discouraging. What

he heard of God's dealings with their souls showed him something of

"the vanity and inward wretchedness of his wicked heart," and at

the same time roused all its hostility to God's will. "It did work

at that rate for wickedness as it never did before." "The

Canaanites WOULD dwell in the land." "His heart hankered after

every foolish vanity, and hung back both to and in every duty, as a

clog on the leg of a bird to hinder her from flying." He thought

that he was growing "worse and worse," and was "further from

conversion than ever before." Though he longed to let Christ into

his heart, "his unbelief would, as it were, set its shoulder to the

door to keep Him out."

Yet all the while he was tormented with the most perverse

scrupulosity of conscience. "As to the act of sinning, I never was

more tender than now; I durst not take a pin or a stick, though but

so big as a straw, for my conscience now was sore, and would smart

at every twist. I could not now tell how to speak my words, for

fear I should misplace them. Oh! how gingerly did I then go in all

I did or said: I found myself in a miry bog, that shook if I did

but stir, and was as those left both of God, and Christ, and the

Spirit, and all good things." All the misdoings of his earlier

years rose up against him. There they were, and he could not rid

himself of them. He thought that no one could be so bad as he was;

"not even the Devil could be his equal: he was more loathsome in

his own eyes than a toad." What then must God think of him?

Despair seized fast hold of him. He thought he was "forsaken of

God and given up to the Devil, and to a reprobate mind." Nor was

this a transient fit of despondency. "Thus," he writes, "I

continued a long while, even for some years together."

This is not the place minutely to pursue Bunyan's religious history

through the sudden alternations of hopes and fears, the fierce

temptations, the torturing illusions, the strange perversions of

isolated scraps of Bible language - texts torn from their context -

the harassing doubts as to the truth of Christianity, the depths of

despair and the elevations of joy, which he has portrayed with his

own inimitable graphic power. It is a picture of fearful

fascination that he draws. "A great storm" at one time comes down

upon him, "piece by piece," which "handled him twenty times worse

than all he had met with before," while "floods of blasphemies were

poured upon his spirit," and would "bolt out of his heart." He

felt himself driven to commit the unpardonable sin and blaspheme

the Holy Ghost, "whether he would or no." "No sin would serve but

that." He was ready to "clap his hand under his chin," to keep his

mouth shut, or to leap head-foremost "into some muckhill-hole," to

prevent his uttering the fatal words. At last he persuaded himself

that he had committed the sin, and a good but not overwise man, "an

ancient Christian," whom he consulted on his sad case, told him he

thought so too, "which was but cold comfort." He thought himself

possessed by the devil, and compared himself to a child "carried

off under her apron by a gipsy." "Kick sometimes I did, and also

shriek and cry, but yet I was as bound in the wings of the

temptation, and the wind would carry me away." He wished himself

"a dog or a toad," for they "had no soul to be lost as his was like

to be;" and again a hopeless callousness seemed to settle upon him.

"If I would have given a thousand pounds for a tear I could not

shed one; no, nor sometimes scarce desire to shed one." And yet he

was all the while bewailing this hardness of heart, in which he

thought himself singular. "This much sunk me. I thought my

condition was alone; but how to get out of, or get rid of, these

things I could not." Again the very ground of his faith was

shaken. "Was the Bible true, or was it not rather a fable and

cunning story?" All thought "their own religion true. Might not

the Turks have as good Scriptures to prove their Mahomet Saviour as

Christians had for Christ? What if all we believed in should be

but 'a think-so' too?" So powerful and so real were his illusions

that he had hard work to keep himself from praying to things about

him, to "a bush, a bull, a besom, or the like," or even to Satan

himself. He heard voices behind him crying out that Satan desired

to have him, and that "so loud and plain that he would turn his

head to see who was calling him;" when on his knees in prayer he

fancied he felt the foul fiend pull his clothes from behind,

bidding him "break off, make haste; you have prayed enough."

This "horror of great darkness" was not always upon him. Bunyan

had his intervals of "sunshine-weather" when Giant Despair's fits

came on him, and the giant "lost the use of his hand." Texts of

Scripture would give him a "sweet glance," and flood his soul with

comfort. But these intervals of happiness were but short-lived.

They were but "hints, touches, and short visits," sweet when

present, but "like Peter's sheet, suddenly caught up again into

heaven." But, though transient, they helped the burdened Pilgrim

onward. So vivid was the impression sometimes made, that years

after he could specify the place where these beams of sunlight fell

on him - "sitting in a neighbour's house," - "travelling into the

country," - as he was "going home from sermon." And the joy was

real while it lasted. The words of the preacher's text, "Behold,

thou art fair, my love," kindling his spirit, he felt his "heart

filled with comfort and hope." "Now I could believe that my sins

would be forgiven." He was almost beside himself with ecstasy. "I

was now so taken with the love and mercy of God that I thought I

could have spoken of it even to the very crows that sat upon the

ploughed lands before me, had they been capable to have understood

me." "Surely," he cried with gladness, "I will not forget this

forty years hence." "But, alas! within less than forty days I

began to question all again." It was the Valley of the Shadow of

Death which Bunyan, like his own Pilgrim, was travelling through.

But, as in his allegory, "by and by the day broke," and "the Lord

did more fully and graciously discover Himself unto him." "One

day," he writes, "as I was musing on the wickedness and blasphemy

of my heart, that scripture came into my mind, 'He hath made peace

by the Blood of His Cross.' By which I was made to see, both again

and again and again that day, that God and my soul were friends by

this blood: Yea, I saw the justice of God and my sinful soul could

embrace and kiss each other. This was a good day to me. I hope I

shall not forget it." At another time the "glory and joy" of a

passage in the Hebrews (ii. 14-15) were "so weighty" that "I was

once or twice ready to swoon as I sat, not with grief and trouble,

but with solid joy and peace." "But, oh! now how was my soul led

on from truth to truth by God; now had I evidence of my salvation

from heaven, with many golden seals thereon all banging in my

sight, and I would long that the last day were come, or that I were

fourscore years old, that I might die quickly that my soul might be

at rest."

At this time he fell in with an old tattered copy of Luther's

"Commentary on the Galatians," "so old that it was ready to fall

piece from piece if I did but turn it over." As he read, to his

amazement and thankfulness, he found his own spiritual experience

described. "It was as if his book had been written out of my

heart." It greatly comforted him to find that his condition was

not, as he had thought, solitary, but that others had known the

same inward struggles. "Of all the books that ever he had seen,"

he deemed it "most fit for a wounded conscience." This book was

also the means of awakening an intense love for the Saviour. "Now

I found, as I thought, that I loved Christ dearly. Oh, methought

my soul cleaved unto Him, my affections cleaved unto Him; I felt

love to Him as hot as fire."

And very quickly, as he tells us, his "love was tried to some

purpose." He became the victim of an extraordinary temptation - "a

freak of fancy," Mr. Froude terms it - "fancy resenting the

minuteness with which he watched his own emotions." He had "found

Christ" and felt Him "most precious to his soul." He was now

tempted to give Him up, "to sell and part with this most blessed

Christ, to exchange Him for the things of this life; for anything."

Nor was this a mere passing, intermittent delusion. "It lay upon

me for the space of a year, and did follow me so continually that I

was not rid of it one day in a month, no, not sometimes one hour in

many days together, except when I was asleep." Wherever he was,

whatever he was doing day and night, in bed, at table, at work, a

voice kept sounding in his ears, bidding him "sell Christ" for this

or that. He could neither "eat his food, stoop for a pin, chop a

stick, or cast his eyes on anything" but the hateful words were

heard, "not once only, but a hundred times over, as fast as a man

could speak, 'sell Him, sell Him, sell Him,' and, like his own

Christian in the dark valley, he could not determine whether they

were suggestions of the Wicked One, or came from his own heart.

The agony was so intense, while, for hours together, he struggled

with the temptation, that his whole body was convulsed by it. It

was no metaphorical, but an actual, wrestling with a tangible

enemy. He "pushed and thrust with his hands and elbows," and kept

still answering, as fast as the destroyer said "sell Him," "No, I

will not, I will not, I will not! not for thousands, thousands,

thousands of worlds!" at least twenty times together. But the

fatal moment at last came, and the weakened will yielded, against

itself. One morning as he lay in his bed, the voice came again

with redoubled force, and would not be silenced. He fought against

it as long as he could, "even until I was almost out of breath,"

when "without any conscious action of his will" the suicidal words

shaped themselves in his heart, "Let Him go if He will."

Now all was over. He had spoken the words and they could not be

recalled. Satan had "won the battle," and "as a bird that is shot

from the top of a tree, down fell he into great guilt and fearful

despair." He left his bed, dressed, and went "moping into the

field," where for the next two hours he was "like a man bereft of

life, and as one past all recovery and bound to eternal

punishment." The most terrible examples in the Bible came trooping

before him. He had sold his birthright like Esau. He a betrayed

his Master like Judas - "I was ashamed that I should be like such

an ugly man as Judas." There was no longer any place for

repentance. He was past all recovery; shut up unto the judgment to

come. He dared hardly pray. When he tried to do so, he was "as

with a tempest driven away from God," while something within said,

"'Tis too late; I am lost; God hath let me fall." The texts which

once had comforted him gave him no comfort now; or, if they did, it

was but for a brief space. "About ten or eleven o'clock one day,

as I was walking under a hedge and bemoaning myself for this hard

hap that such a thought should arise within me, suddenly this

sentence bolted upon me, 'The blood of Christ cleanseth from all

sin,'" and gave me "good encouragement." But in two or three hours

all was gone. The terrible words concerning Esau's selling his

birthright took possession of his mind, and "held him down." This

"stuck with him." Though he "sought it carefully with tears,"

there was no restoration for him. His agony received a terrible

aggravation from a highly coloured narrative of the terrible death

of Francis Spira, an Italian lawyer of the middle of the sixteenth

century, who, having embraced the Protestant religion, was induced

by worldly motives to return to the Roman Catholic Church, and died

full of remorse and despair, from which Bunyan afterwards drew the

awful picture of "the man in the Iron Cage" at "the Interpreter's

house." The reading of this book was to his "troubled spirit" as

"salt when rubbed into a fresh wound," "as knives and daggers in

his soul." We cannot wonder that his health began to give way

under so protracted a struggle. His naturally sturdy frame was

"shaken by a continual trembling." He would "wind and twine and

shrink under his burden," the weight of which so crushed him that

he "could neither stand, nor go, nor lie, either at rest or quiet."

His digestion became disordered, and a pain, "as if his breastbone

would have split asunder," made him fear that as he had been guilty

of Judas' sin, so he was to perish by Judas' end, and "burst

asunder in the midst." In the trembling of his limbs he saw Cain's

mark set upon him; God had marked him out for his curse. No one

was ever so bad as he. No one had ever sinned so flagrantly. When

he compared his sins with those of David and Solomon and Manasseh

and others which had been pardoned, he found his sin so much

exceeded theirs that he could have no hope of pardon. Theirs, "it

was true, were great sins; sins of a bloody colour. But none of

them were of the nature of his. He had sold his Saviour. His sin

was point blank against Christ." "Oh, methought this sin was

bigger than the sins of a country, of a kingdom, or of the whole

world; not all of them together was able to equal mine; mine

outwent them every one."

It would be wearisome to follow Bunyan through all the mazes of his

self-torturing illusions. Fierce as the storm was, and long in its

duration - for it was more than two years before the storm became a

calm - the waves, though he knew it not, in their fierce tossings

which threatened to drive his soul like a broken vessel headlong on

the rocks of despair, were bearing him nearer and nearer to the

"haven where he would be." His vivid imagination, as we have seen,

surrounded him with audible voices. He had heard, as he thought,

the tempter bidding him "Sell Christ;" now he thought he heard God

"with a great voice, as it were, over his shoulder behind him,"

saying, "Return unto Me, for I have redeemed thee;" and though he

felt that the voice mocked him, for he could not return, there was

"no place of repentance" for him, and fled from it, it still

pursued him, "holloaing after him, 'Return, return!'" And return

he did, but not all at once, or without many a fresh struggle.

With his usual graphic power he describes the zigzag path by which

he made his way. His hot and cold fits alternated with fearful

suddenness. "As Esau beat him down, Christ raised him up." "His

life hung in doubt, not knowing which way he should tip." More

sensible evidence came. "One day," he tells us, "as I walked to

and fro in a good man's shop" - we can hardly be wrong in placing

it in Bedford - "bemoaning myself for this hard hap of mine, for

that I should commit so great a sin, greatly fearing that I should

not be pardoned, and ready to sink with fear, suddenly there was as

if there had rushed in at the window the noise of wind upon me, but

very pleasant, and I heard a voice speaking, 'Did'st ever refuse to

be justified by the Blood of Christ?'" Whether the voice were

supernatural or not, he was not, "in twenty years' time," able to

determine. At the time he thought it was. It was "as if an angel

had come upon me." "It commanded a great calm upon me. It

persuaded me there might be hope." But this persuasion soon

vanished. "In three or four days I began to despair again." He

found it harder than ever to pray. The devil urged that God was

weary of him; had been weary for years past; that he wanted to get

rid of him and his "bawlings in his ears," and therefore He had let

him commit this particular sin that he might be cut off altogether.

For such an one to pray was but to add sin to sin. There was no

hope for him. Christ might indeed pity him and wish to help him;

but He could not, for this sin was unpardonable. He had said "let

Him go if He will," and He had taken him at his word. "Then," he

says, "I was always sinking whatever I did think or do." Years

afterwards he remembered how, "in this time of hopelessness, having

walked one day, to a neighbouring town, wearied out with his

misery, he sat down on a settle in the street to ponder over his

fearful state. As he looked up, everything he saw seemed banded

together for the destruction of so vile a sinner. The "sun grudged

him its light, the very stones in the streets and the tiles on the

house-roofs seemed to bend themselves against him." He burst forth

with a grievous sigh, "How can God comfort such a wretch as I?"

Comfort was nearer than he imagined. "No sooner had I said it, but

this returned to me, as an echo doth answer a voice, 'This sin is

not unto death.'" This breathed fresh life into his soul. He was

"as if he had been raised out of a grave." "It was a release to me

from my former bonds, a shelter from my former storm." But though

the storm was allayed it was by no means over. He had to struggle

hard to maintain his ground. "Oh, how did Satan now lay about him

for to bring me down again. But he could by no means do it, for

this sentence stood like a millpost at my back." But after two

days the old despairing thoughts returned, "nor could his faith

retain the word." A few hours, however, saw the return of his

hopes. As he was on his knees before going to bed, "seeking the

Lord with strong cries," a voice echoed his prayer, "I have loved

Thee with an everlasting love." "Now I went to bed at quiet, and

when I awaked the next morning it was fresh upon my soul and I

believed it."

These voices from heaven - whether real or not he could not tell,

nor did he much care, for they were real to him - were continually

sounding in his ears to help him out of the fresh crises of his

spiritual disorder. At one time "O man, great is thy faith,"

"fastened on his heart as if one had clapped him on the back." At

another, "He is able," spoke suddenly and loudly within his heart;

at another, that "piece of a sentence," "My grace is sufficient,"

darted in upon him "three times together," and he was "as though he

had seen the Lord Jesus look down through the tiles upon him," and

was sent mourning but rejoicing home. But it was still with him

like an April sky. At one time bright sunshine, at another

lowering clouds. The terrible words about Esau "returned on him as

before," and plunged him in darkness, and then again some good

words, "as it seemed writ in great letters," brought back the light

of day. But the sunshine began to last longer than before, and the

clouds were less heavy. The "visage" of the threatening texts was

changed; "they looked not on him so grimly as before;" "that about

Esau's birthright began to wax weak and withdraw and vanish." "Now

remained only the hinder part of the tempest. The thunder was

gone; only a few drops fell on him now and then."

The long-expected deliverance was at hand. As he was walking in

the fields, still with some fears in his heart, the sentence fell

upon his soul, "Thy righteousness is in heaven." He looked up and

"saw with the eyes of his soul our Saviour at God's right hand."

"There, I say, was my righteousness; so that wherever I was, or

whatever I was a-doing, God could not say of me, 'He wants my

righteousness,' for that was just before Him. Now did the chains

fall off from my legs. I was loosed from my affliction and irons.

My temptations also fled away, so that from that time those

dreadful Scriptures left off to trouble me. Oh methought Christ,

Christ, there was nothing but Christ that was before mine eyes. I

could look from myself to Him, and should reckon that all those

graces of God that now were green upon me, were yet but like those

crack-groats, and fourpence-halfpennies that rich men carry in

their purses, while their gold is in their trunks at home. Oh, I

saw my gold was in my trunk at home. In Christ my Lord and

Saviour. Further the Lord did lead me into the mystery of union

with the Son of God. His righteousness was mine, His merits mine,

His victory also mine. Now I could see myself in heaven and earth

at once; in heaven by my Christ, by my Head, by my Righteousness

and Life, though on earth by my body or person. These blessed

considerations were made to spangle in mine eyes. Christ was my

all; all my Wisdom, all my Righteousness, all my Sanctification,

and all my Redemption."

CHAPTER III.

The Pilgrim, having now floundered through the Slough of Despond,

passed through the Wicket Gate, climbed the Hill Difficulty, and

got safe by the Lions, entered the Palace Beautiful, and was "had

in to the family." In plain words, Bunyan united himself to the

little Christian brotherhood at Bedford, of which the former loose-

living royalist major, Mr. Gifford, was the pastor, and was

formally admitted into their society. In Gifford we recognize the

prototype of the Evangelist of "The Pilgrim's Progress," while the

Prudence, Piety, and Charity of Bunyan's immortal narrative had

their human representatives in devout female members of the

congregation, known in their little Bedford world as Sister

Bosworth, Sister Munnes, and Sister Fenne, three of the poor women

whose pleasant words on the things of God, as they sat at a doorway

in the sun, "as if joy did make them speak," had first opened

Bunyan's eyes to his spiritual ignorance. He was received into the

church by baptism, which, according to his earliest biographer,

Charles Doe "the Struggler," was performed publicly by Mr. Gifford,

in the river Ouse, the "Bedford river" into which Bunyan tells us

he once fell out of a boat, and barely escaped drowning. This was

about the year 1653. The exact date is uncertain. Bunyan never

mentions his baptism himself, and the church books of Gifford's

congregation do not commence till May, 1656, the year after

Gifford's death. He was also admitted to the Holy Communion, which

for want, as he deemed, of due reverence in his first approach to

it, became the occasion of a temporary revival of his old

temptations. While actually at the Lord's Table he was "forced to

bend himself to pray" to be kept from uttering blasphemies against

the ordinance itself, and cursing his fellow communicants. For

three-quarters of a year he could "never have rest or ease" from

this shocking perversity. The constant strain of beating off this

persistent temptation seriously affected his health. "Captain

Consumption," who carried off his own "Mr. Badman," threatened his

life. But his naturally robust constitution "routed his forces,"

and brought him through what at one time he anticipated would prove

a fatal illness. Again and again, during his period of

indisposition, the Tempter took advantage of his bodily weakness to

ply him with his former despairing questionings as to his spiritual

state. That seemed as bad as bad could be. "Live he must not; die

he dare not." He was repeatedly near giving up all for lost. But

a few words of Scripture brought to his mind would revive his

drooping spirits, with a natural reaction on his physical health,

and he became "well both in body and mind at once." "My sickness

did presently vanish, and I walked comfortably in my work for God

again." At another time, after three or four days of deep

dejection, some words from the Epistle to the Hebrews "came bolting

in upon him," and sealed his sense of acceptance with an assurance

he never afterwards entirely lost. "Then with joy I told my wife,

'Now I know, I know.' That night was a good night to me; I never

had but few better. I could scarce lie in my bed for joy and peace

and triumph through Christ."

During this time Bunyan, though a member of the Bedford

congregation, continued to reside at Elstow, in the little thatched

wayside tenement, with its lean-to forge at one end, already

mentioned, which is still pointed out as "Bunyan's Cottage." There

his two children, Mary, his passionately loved blind daughter, and

Elizabeth were born; the one in 1650, and the other in 1654. It

was probably in the next year, 1655, that he finally quitted his

native village and took up his residence in Bedford, and became a

deacon of the congregation. About this time also he must have lost

the wife to whom he owed so much. Bunyan does not mention the

event, and our only knowledge of it is from the conversation of his

second wife, Elizabeth, with Sir Matthew Hale. He sustained also

an even greater loss in the death of his friend and comrade, Mr.

Gifford, who died in September, 1655. The latter was succeeded by

a young man named John Burton, of very delicate health, who was

taken by death from his congregation, by whom he was much beloved,

in September, 1660, four months after the restoration of the

Monarchy and the Church. Burton thoroughly appreciated Bunyan's

gifts, and stood sponsor for him on the publication of his first

printed work. This was a momentous year for Bunyan, for in it Dr.

Brown has shown, by a "comparison of dates," that we may probably

place the beginning of Bunyan's ministerial life. Bunyan was now

in his twenty-seventh year, in the prime of his manly vigour, with

a vivid imagination, ready speech, minute textual knowledge of the

Bible, and an experience of temptation and the wiles of the evil

one, such as few Christians of double his years have ever reached.

"His gifts could not long be hid." The beginnings of that which

was to prove the great work of his life were slender enough. As

Mr. Froude says, "he was modest, humble, shrinking." The members

of his congregation, recognizing that he had "the gift of

utterance" asked him to speak "a word of exhortation" to them. The

request scared him. The most truly gifted are usually the least

conscious of their gifts. At first it did much "dash and abash his

spirit." But after earnest entreaty he gave way, and made one or

two trials of his gift in private meetings, "though with much

weakness and infirmity." The result proved the correctness of his

brethren's estimate. The young tinker showed himself no common

preacher. His words came home with power to the souls of his

hearers, who "protested solemnly, as in the sight of God, that they

were both affected and comforted by them, and gave thanks to the

Father of mercies for the grace bestowed on him." After this, as

the brethren went out on their itinerating rounds to the villages

about, they began to ask Bunyan to accompany them, and though he

"durst not make use of his gift in an open way," he would

sometimes, "yet more privately still, speak a word of admonition,

with which his hearers professed their souls edified." That he had

a real Divine call to the ministry became increasingly evident,

both to himself and to others. His engagements of this kind

multiplied. An entry in the Church book records "that Brother

Bunyan being taken off by the preaching of the gospel" from his

duties as deacon, another member was appointed in his room. His

appointment to the ministry was not long delayed. After "some

solemn prayer with fasting," he was "called forth and appointed a

preacher of the word," not, however, so much for the Bedford

congregation as for the neighbouring villages. He did not however,

like some, neglect his business, or forget to "show piety at home."

He still continued his craft as a tinker, and that with industry

and success. "God," writes an early biographer, "had increased his

stores so that he lived in great credit among his neighbours." He

speedily became famous as a preacher. People "came in by hundreds

to hear the word, and that from all parts, though upon sundry and

divers accounts," - "some," as Southey writes, "to marvel, and some

perhaps to mock." Curiosity to hear the once profane tinker preach

was not one of the least prevalent motives. But his word proved a

word of power to many. Those "who came to scoff remained to pray."

"I had not preached long," he says, "before some began to be

touched and to be greatly afflicted in their minds." His success

humbled and amazed him, as it must every true man who compares the

work with the worker. "At first," he says, "I could not believe

that God should speak by me to the heart of any man, still counting

myself unworthy; and though I did put it from me that they should

be awakened by me, still they would confess it and affirm it before

the saints of God. They would also bless God for me - unworthy

wretch that I am - and count me God's instrument that showed to

them the way of salvation." He preached wherever he found

opportunity, in woods, in barns, on village greens, or even in

churches. But he liked best to preach "in the darkest places of

the country, where people were the furthest off from profession,"

where he could give the fullest scope to "the awakening and

converting power" he possessed. His success as a preacher might

have tempted him to vanity. But the conviction that he was but an

instrument in the hand of a higher power kept it down. He saw that

if he had gifts and wanted grace he was but as a "tinkling cymbal."

"What, thought I, shall I be proud because I am a sounding brass?

Is it so much to be a fiddle?" This thought was, "as it were, a

maul on the head of the pride and vainglory" which he found "easily

blown up at the applause and commendation of every unadvised

christian." His experiences, like those of every public speaker,

especially the most eloquent, were very varied, even in the course

of the same sermon. Sometimes, he tells us, he would begin "with

much clearness, evidence, and liberty of speech," but, before he

had done, he found himself "so straitened in his speech before the

people," that he "scarce knew or remembered what he had been

about," and felt "as if his head had been in a bag all the time of

the exercise." He feared that he would not be able to "speak sense

to the hearers," or he would be "seized with such faintness and

strengthlessness that his legs were hardly able to carry him to his

place of preaching." Old temptations too came back. Blasphemous

thoughts formed themselves into words, which he had hard work to

keep himself from uttering from the pulpit. Or the tempter tried

to silence him by telling him that what he was going to say would

condemn himself, and he would go "full of guilt and terror even to

the pulpit door." "'What,' the devil would say, 'will you preach

this? Of this your own soul is guilty. Preach not of it at all,

or if you do, yet so mince it as to make way for your own escape.'"

All, however, was in vain. Necessity was laid upon him. "Woe," he

cried, "is me, if I preach not the gospel." His heart was "so

wrapped up in the glory of this excellent work, that he counted

himself more blessed and honoured of God than if he had made him

emperor of the Christian world." Bunyan was no preacher of vague

generalities. He knew that sermons miss their mark if they hit no

one. Self-application is their object. "Wherefore," he says, "I

laboured so to speak the word, as that the sin and person guilty

might be particularized by it." And what he preached he knew and

felt to be true. It was not what he read in books, but what he had

himself experienced. Like Dante he had been in hell himself, and

could speak as one who knew its terrors, and could tell also of the

blessedness of deliverance by the person and work of Christ. And

this consciousness gave him confidence and courage in declaring his

message. It was "as if an angel of God had stood at my back." "Oh

it hath been with such power and heavenly evidence upon my own soul

while I have been labouring to fasten it upon the conscience of

others, that I could not be contented with saying, 'I believe and

am sure.' Methought I was more than sure, if it be lawful so to

express myself, that the things I asserted were true."

Bunyan, like all earnest workers for God, had his disappointments

which wrung his heart. He could be satisfied with nothing less

than the conversion and sanctification of his hearers. "If I were

fruitless, it mattered not who commanded me; but if I were

fruitful, I cared not who did condemn." And the result of a sermon

was often very different from what he anticipated: "When I thought

I had done no good, then I did the most; and when I thought I

should catch them, I fished for nothing." "A word cast in by-the-

bye sometimes did more execution than all the Sermon besides." The

tie between him and his spiritual children was very close. The

backsliding of any of his converts caused him the most extreme

grief; "it was more to me than if one of my own children were going

to the grave. Nothing hath gone so near me as that, unless it was

the fear of the loss of the salvation of my own soul."

A story, often repeated, but too characteristic to be omitted,

illustrates the power of his preaching even in the early days of

his ministry. "Being to preach in a church in a country village in

Cambridgeshire" - it was before the Restoration - "and the public

being gathered together in the churchyard, a Cambridge scholar, and

none of the soberest neither, inquired what the meaning of that

concourse of people was (it being a week-day); and being told that

one Bunyan, a tinker, was to preach there, he gave a lad twopence

to hold his horse, saying he was resolved to hear the tinker prate;

and so he went into the church to hear him. But God met him there

by His ministry, so that he came out much changed; and would by his

good will hear none but the tinker for a long time after, he

himself becoming a very eminent preacher in that country

afterwards." "This story," continues the anonymous biographer, "I

know to be true, having many times discoursed with the man." To

the same ante-Restoration period, Dr. Brown also assigns the

anecdote of Bunyan's encounter, on the road near Cambridge, with

the university man who asked him how he dared to preach not having

the original Scriptures. With ready wit, Bunyan turned the tables

on the scholar by asking whether he had the actual originals, the

copies written by the apostles and prophets. The scholar replied,

"No," but they had what they believed to be a true copy of the

original. "And I," said Bunyan, "believe the English Bible to be a

true copy, too." "Then away rid the scholar."

The fame of such a preacher, naturally, soon spread far and wide;

all the countryside flocked eagerly to hear him. In some places,

as at Meldreth in Cambridgeshire, and Yelden in his own county of

Bedfordshire, the pulpits of the parish churches were opened to

him. At Yelden, the Rector, Dr. William Dell, the Puritan Master

of Caius College, Cambridge, formerly Chaplain to the army under

Fairfax, roused the indignation of his orthodox parishioners by

allowing him - "one Bunyon of Bedford, a tinker," as he is

ignominiously styled in the petition sent up to the House of Lords

in 1660 - to preach in his parish church on Christmas Day. But,

generally, the parochial clergy were his bitterest enemies. "When

I first went to preach the word abroad," he writes, "the Doctors

and priests of the country did open wide against me." Many were

envious of his success where they had so signally failed. In the

words of Mr. Henry Deane, when defending Bunyan against the attacks

of Dr. T. Smith, Professor of Arabic and Keeper of the University

Library at Cambridge, who had come upon Bunyan preaching in a barn

at Toft, they were "angry with the tinker because he strove to mend

souls as well as kettles and pans," and proved himself more skilful

in his craft than those who had graduated at a university. Envy is

ever the mother of detraction. Slanders of the blackest dye

against his moral character were freely circulated, and as readily

believed. It was the common talk that he was a thorough reprobate.

Nothing was too bad for him. He was "a witch, a Jesuit, a

highwayman, and the like." It was reported that he had "his misses

and his bastards; that he had two wives at once," &c. Such charges

roused all the man in Bunyan. Few passages in his writings show

more passion than that in "Grace Abounding," in which he defends

himself from the "fools or knaves" who were their authors. He

"begs belief of no man, and if they believe him or disbelieve him

it is all one to him. But he would have them know how utterly

baseless their accusations are." "My foes," he writes, "have

missed their mark in their open shooting at me. I am not the man.

If all the fornicators and adulterers in England were hanged by the

neck till they be dead, John Bunyan would be still alive. I know

not whether there is such a thing as a woman breathing under the

copes of the whole heaven but by their apparel, their children, or

by common fame, except my wife." He calls not only men, but

angels, nay, even God Himself, to bear testimony to his innocence

in this respect. But though they were so absolutely baseless, nay,

the rather because they were so baseless, the grossness of these

charges evidently stung Bunyan very deeply.

So bitter was the feeling aroused against him by the marvellous

success of his irregular ministry, that his enemies, even before

the restoration of the Church and Crown, endeavoured to put the arm

of the law in motion to restrain him. We learn from the church

books that in March, 1658, the little Bedford church was in trouble

for "Brother Bunyan," against whom an indictment had been laid at

the Assizes for "preaching at Eaton Socon." Of this indictment we

hear no more; so it was probably dropped. But it is an instructive

fact that, even during the boasted religious liberty of the

Protectorate, irregular preaching, especially that of the much

dreaded Anabaptists, was an indictable offence. But, as Dr. Brown

observes, "religious liberty had not yet come to mean liberty all

round, but only liberty for a certain recognized section of

Christians." That there was no lack of persecution during the

Commonwealth is clear from the cruel treatment to which Quakers

were subjected, to say nothing of the intolerance shown to

Episcopalians and Roman Catholics. In Bunyan's own county of

Bedford, Quakeresses were sentenced to be whipped and sent to

Bridewell for reproving a parish priest, perhaps well deserving of

it, and exhorting the folks on a market day to repentance and

amendment of life. "The simple truth is," writes Robert Southey,

"all parties were agreed on the one catholic opinion that certain

doctrines were not to be tolerated:" the only points of difference

between them were "what those doctrines were," and how far

intolerance might be carried. The withering lines are familiar to

us, in which Milton denounces the "New Forcers of Conscience," who

by their intolerance and "super-metropolitan and

hyperarchiepiscopal tyranny," proved that in his proverbial words,

"New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large" -

"Because you have thrown off your prelate lord,

And with stiff vows renounce his liturgy

Dare ye for this adjure the civil sword

To force our consciences that Christ set free!"

How Bunyan came to escape we know not. But the danger he was in

was imminent enough for the church at Bedford to meet to pray "for

counsail what to doe" in respect of it.

It was in these closing years of the Protectorate that Bunyan made

his first essay at authorship. He was led to it by a long and

tiresome controversy with the Quakers, who had recently found their

way to Bedford. The foundations of the faith, he thought, were

being undermined. The Quakers' teaching as to the inward light

seemed to him a serious disparagement of the Holy Scriptures, while

their mystical view of the spiritual Christ revealed to the soul

and dwelling in the heart, came perilously near to a denial of the

historic reality of the personal Christ. He had had public

disputations with male and female Quakers from time to time, at the

Market Cross at Bedford, at "Paul's Steeple-house in Bedford town,"

and other places. One of them, Anne Blackley by name, openly bade

him throw away the Scriptures, to which Bunyan replied, "No; for

then the devil would be too hard for me." The same enthusiast

charged him with "preaching up an idol, and using conjuration and

witchcraft," because of his assertion of the bodily presence of

Christ in heaven.

The first work of one who was to prove himself so voluminous an

author, cannot but be viewed with much interest. It was a little

volume in duodecimo, of about two hundred pages, entitled "Some

Gospel Truths Opened, by that unworthy servant of Christ, John

Bunyan, of Bedford, by the Grace of God, preacher of the Gospel of

His dear Son," published in 1656. The little book, which, as Dr.

Brown says, was "evidently thrown off at a heat," was printed in

London and published at Newport Pagnel. Bunyan being entirely

unknown to the world, his first literary venture was introduced by

a commendatory "Epistle" written by Gifford's successor, John

Burton. In this Burton speaks of the young author - Bunyan was

only in his twenty-ninth year - as one who had "neither the

greatness nor the wisdom of the world to commend him," "not being

chosen out of an earthly but out of a heavenly university, the

Church of Christ," where "through grace he had taken three heavenly

degrees, to wit, union with Christ, the anointing of the Spirit,

and experience of the temptations of Satan," and as one of whose

"soundness in the faith, godly conversation, and his ability to

preach the Gospel, not by human aid, but by the Spirit of the

Lord," he "with many other saints had had experience." This book

must be pronounced a very remarkable production for a young

travelling tinker, under thirty, and without any literary or

theological training but such as he had gained for himself after

attaining to manhood. Its arrangement is excellent, the arguments

are ably marshalled, the style is clear, the language pure and well

chosen. It is, in the main, a well-reasoned defence of the

historical truth of the Articles of the Creed relating to the

Second Person of the Trinity, against the mystical teaching of the

followers of George Fox, who, by a false spiritualism, sublimated

the whole Gospel narrative into a vehicle for the representation of

truths relating to the inner life of the believer. No one ever had

a firmer grasp than Bunyan of the spiritual bearing of the facts of

the recorded life of Christ on the souls of men. But he would not

suffer their "subjectivity" - to adopt modern terms - to destroy

their "objectivity." If the Son of God was not actually born of

the Virgin Mary, if He did not live in a real human body, and in

that body die, lie in the grave, rise again, and ascend up into

heaven, whence He would return - and that Bunyan believed shortly -

in the same Body He took of His mortal mother, His preaching was

vain; their faith was vain; they were yet in their sins. Those who

"cried up a Christ within, IN OPPOSITION to a Christ without," who

asserted that Christ had no other Body but the Church, that the

only Crucifixion, rising again, and ascension of Christ was that

WITHIN the believer, and that every man had, as an inner light, a

measure of Christ's Spirit within him sufficient to guide him to

salvation, he asserted were "possessed with a spirit of delusion;"

deceived themselves, they were deceiving others to their eternal

ruin. To the refutation of such fundamental errors, substituting a

mystical for an historical faith, Bunyan's little treatise is

addressed; and it may be truly said the work is done effectually.

To adopt Coleridge's expression concerning Bunyan's greater and

world-famous work, it is an admirable "SUMMA THEOLOIAE

EVANGELICAE," which, notwithstanding its obsolete style and old-

fashioned arrangement, may be read even now with advantage.

Bunyan's denunciation of the tenets of the Quakers speedily

elicited a reply. This was written by a certain Edward Burrough, a

young man of three and twenty, fearless, devoted, and ardent in the

propagation of the tenets of his sect. Being subsequently thrown

into Newgate with hundreds of his co-religionists, at the same time

that his former antagonist was imprisoned in Bedford Gaol, Burrough

met the fate Bunyan's stronger constitution enabled him to escape;

and in the language of the times, "rotted in prison," a victim to

the loathsome foulness of his place of incarceration, in the year

of the "Bartholomew Act," 1662.

Burrough entitled his reply, "The Gospel of Peace, contended for in

the Spirit of Meekness and Love against the secret opposition of

John Bunyan, a professed minister in Bedfordshire." His opening

words, too characteristic of the entire treatise, display but

little of the meekness professed. "How long, ye crafty fowlers,

will ye prey upon the innocent? How long shall the righteous be a

prey to your teeth, ye subtle foxes! Your dens are in darkness,

and your mischief is hatched upon your beds of secret whoredoms?"

Of John Burton and the others who recommended Bunyan's treatise, he

says, "They have joined themselves with the broken army of Magog,

and have showed themselves in the defence of the dragon against the

Lamb in the day of war betwixt them." We may well echo Dr. Brown's

wish that "these two good men could have had a little free and

friendly talk face to face. There would probably have been better

understanding, and fewer hard words, for they were really not so

far apart as they thought. Bunyan believed in the inward light,

and Burrough surely accepted an objective Christ. But failing to

see each other's exact point of view, Burrough thunders at Bunyan,

and Bunyan swiftly returns the shot."

The rapidity of Bunyan's literary work is amazing, especially when

we take his antecedents into account. Within a few weeks he

published his rejoinder to Friend Burrough, under the title of "A

Vindication of Gospel Truths Opened." In this work, which appeared

in 1667, Bunyan repays Burrough in his own coin, styling him "a

proved enemy to the truth," a "grossly railing Rabshakeh, who

breaks out with a taunt and a jeer," is very "censorious and utters

many words without knowledge." In vigorous, nervous language,

which does not spare his opponent, he defends himself from

Burrough's charges, and proves that the Quakers are "deceivers."

"As for you thinking that to drink water, and wear no hatbands is

not walking after your own lusts, I say that whatsoever man do make

a religion out of, having no warrant for it in Scripture, is but

walking after their own lusts, and not after the Spirit of God."

Burrough had most unwarrantably stigmatized Bunyan as one of "the

false prophets, who love the wages of unrighteousness, and through

covetousness make merchandise of souls." Bunyan calmly replies,

"Friend, dost thou speak this as from thy own knowledge, or did any

other tell thee so? However that spirit that led thee out this way

is a lying spirit. For though I be poor and of no repute in the

world as to outward things, yet through grace I have learned by the

example of the Apostle to preach the truth, and also to work with

my hands both for mine own living, and for those that are with me,

when I have opportunity. And I trust that the Lord Jesus who bath

helped me to reject the wages of unrighteousness hitherto, will

also help me still so that I shall distribute that which God hath

given me freely, and not for filthy lucre's sake." The

fruitfulness of his ministry which Burrough had called in question,

charging him with having "run before he was sent," he refuses to

discuss. Bunyan says, "I shall leave it to be taken notice of by

the people of God and the country where I dwell, who will testify

the contrary for me, setting aside the carnal ministry with their

retinue who are so mad against me as thyself."

In his third book, published in 1658, at "the King's Head, in the

Old Bailey," a few days before Oliver Cromwell's death, Bunyan left

the thorny domain of polemics, for that of Christian exhortation,

in which his chief work was to be done. This work was an

exposition of the parable of "the Rich Man and Lazarus," bearing

the horror-striking title, "A Few Sighs from Hell, or the Groans of

a Damned Soul." In this work, as its title would suggest, Bunyan,

accepting the literal accuracy of the parable as a description of

the realities of the world beyond the grave, gives full scope to

his vivid imagination in portraying the condition of the lost. It

contains some touches of racy humour, especially in the similes,

and is written in the nervous homespun English of which he was

master. Its popularity is shown by its having gone through nine

editions in the author's lifetime. To take an example or two of

its style: dealing with the excuses people make for not hearing

the Gospel, "O, saith one, I dare not for my master, my brother, my

landlord; I shall lose his favour, his house of work, and so decay

my calling. O, saith another, I would willingly go in this way but

for my father; he chides me and tells me he will not stand my

friend when I come to want; I shall never enjoy a pennyworth of his

goods; he will disinherit me - And I dare not, saith another, for

my husband, for he will be a-railing, and tells me he will turn me

out of doors, he will beat me and cut off my legs;" and then

turning from the hindered to the hinderers: "Oh, what red lines

will there be against all those rich ungodly landlords that so keep

under their poor tenants that they dare not go out to hear the word

for fear that their rent should be raised or they turned out of

their houses. Think on this, you drunken proud rich, and scornful

landlords; think on this, you madbrained blasphemous husbands, that

are against the godly and chaste conversation of your wives; also

you that hold your servants so hard to it that you will not spare

them time to hear the Word, unless it will be where and when your

lusts will let you." He bids the ungodly consider that "the

profits, pleasures, and vanities of the world" will one day "give

thee the slip, and leave thee in the sands and the brambles of all

that thou hast done." The careless man lies "like the smith's dog

at the foot of the anvil, though the fire sparks flee in his face."

The rich man remembers how he once despised Lazarus, "scrubbed

beggarly Lazarus. What, shall I dishonour my fair sumptuous and

gay house with such a scabbed creephedge as he? The Lazaruses are

not allowed to warn them of the wrath to come, because they are not

gentlemen, because they cannot with Pontius Pilate speak Hebrew,

Greek, and Latin. Nay, they must not, shall not, speak to them,

and all because of this."

The fourth production of Bunyan's pen, his last book before his

twelve years of prison life began, is entitled, "The Doctrine of

Law and Grace Unfolded." With a somewhat overstrained humility

which is hardly worthy of him, he describes himself in the title-

page as "that poor contemptible creature John Bunyan, of Bedford."

It was given to the world in May, 1659, and issued from the same

press in the Old Bailey as his last work. It cannot be said that

this is one of Bunyan's most attractive writings. It is as he

describes it, "a parcel of plain yet sound, true, and home

sayings," in which with that clearness of thought and accuracy of

arrangement which belongs to him, and that marvellous acquaintance

with Scripture language which he had gained by his constant study

of the Bible, he sets forth the two covenants - the covenant of

works, and the covenant of Grace - "in their natures, ends, bounds,

together with the state and condition of them that are under the

one, and of them that are under the other." Dr. Brown describes

the book as "marked by a firm grasp of faith and a strong view of

the reality of Christ's person and work as the one Priest and

Mediator for a sinful world." To quote a passage, "Is there

righteousness in Christ? that is mine. Is there perfection in that

righteousness? that is mine. Did He bleed for sin? It was for

mine. Hath He overcome the law, the devil, and hell? The victory

is mine, and I am come forth conqueror, nay, more than a conqueror

through Him that hath loved me. . . Lord, show me continually in

the light of Thy Spirit, through Thy word, that Jesus that was born

in the days of Caesar Augustus, when Mary, a daughter of Judah,

went with Joseph to be taxed in Bethlehem, that He is the very

Christ. Let me not rest contented without such a faith that is so

wrought even by the discovery of His Birth, Crucifying Death,

Blood, Resurrection, Ascension, and Second - which is His Personal

• Coming again, that the very faith of it may fill my soul with

comfort and holiness." Up and down its pages we meet with vivid

reminiscences of his own career, of which he can only speak with

wonder and thankfulness. In the "Epistle to the Reader," which

introduces it, occurs the passage already referred to describing

his education. "I never went to school to Aristotle or Plato, but

was brought up at my father's house in a very mean condition, among

a company of poor countrymen." Of his own religious state before

his conversion he thus speaks: "When it pleased the Lord to begin

to instruct my soul, He found me one of the black sinners of the

world. He found me making a sport of oaths, and also of lies; and

many a soul-poisoning meal did I make out of divers lusts, such as

drinking, dancing, playing, pleasure with the wicked ones of the

world; and so wedded was I to my sins, that thought I to myself, 'I

will have them though I lose my soul.'" And then, after narrating

the struggles he had had with his conscience, the alternations of

hope and fear which he passed through, which are more fully

described in his "Grace Abounding," he thus vividly depicts the

full assurance of faith he had attained to: "I saw through grace

that it was the Blood shed on Mount Calvary that did save and

redeem sinners, as clearly and as really with the eyes of my soul

as ever, methought, I had seen a penny loaf bought with a penny. .

. O let the saints know that unless the devil can pluck Christ out

of heaven he cannot pull a true believer out of Christ." In a

striking passage he shows how, by turning Satan's temptations

against himself, Christians may "Get the art as to outrun him in

his own shoes, and make his own darts pierce himself." "What!

didst thou never learn to outshoot the devil in his own bow, and

cut off his head with his own sword as David served Goliath?" The

whole treatise is somewhat wearisome, but the pious reader will

find much in it for spiritual edification.

CHAPTER IV.

We cannot doubt that one in whom loyalty was so deep and fixed a

principle as Bunyan, would welcome with sincere thankfulness the

termination of the miserable interval of anarchy which followed the

death of the Protector and the abdication of his indolent and

feeble son, by the restoration of monarchy in the person of Charles

the Second. Even if some forebodings might have arisen that with

the restoration of the old monarchy the old persecuting laws might

be revived, which made it criminal for a man to think for himself

in the matters which most nearly concerned his eternal interests,

and to worship in the way which he found most helpful to his

spiritual life, they would have been silenced by the promise,

contained in Charles's "Declaration from Breda," of liberty to

tender consciences, and the assurance that no one should be

disquieted for differences of opinion in religion, so long as such

differences did not endanger the peace and well-being of the realm.

If this declaration meant anything, it meant a breadth of

toleration larger and more liberal than had been ever granted by

Cromwell. Any fears of the renewal of persecution must be

groundless.

But if such dreams of religious liberty were entertained they were

speedily and rudely dispelled, and Bunyan was one of the first to

feel the shock of the awakening. The promise was coupled with a

reference to the "mature deliberation of Parliament." With such a

promise Charles's easy conscience was relieved of all

responsibility. Whatever he might promise, the nation, and

Parliament which was its mouthpiece, might set his promise aside.

And if he knew anything of the temper of the people he was

returning to govern, he must have felt assured that any scheme of

comprehension was certain to be rejected by them. As Mr. Froude

has said, "before toleration is possible, men must have learnt to

tolerate toleration," and this was a lesson the English nation was

very far from having learnt; at no time, perhaps, were they further

from it. Puritanism had had its day, and had made itself generally

detested. Deeply enshrined as it was in many earnest and devout

hearts, such as Bunyan's, it was necessarily the religion not of

the many, but of the few; it was the religion not of the common

herd, but of a spiritual aristocracy. Its stern condemnation of

all mirth and pastime, as things in their nature sinful, of which

we have so many evidences in Bunyan's own writings; its repression

of all that makes life brighter and more joyous, and the sour

sanctimoniousness which frowned upon innocent relaxation, had

rendered its yoke unbearable to ordinary human nature, and men took

the earliest opportunity of throwing the yoke off and trampling it

under foot. They hailed with rude and boisterous rejoicings the

restoration of the Monarchy which they felt, with a true instinct,

involved the restoration of the old Church of England, the church

of their fathers and of the older among themselves, with its larger

indulgence for the instincts of humanity, its wider

comprehensiveness, and its more dignified and decorous ritual.

The reaction from Puritanism pervaded all ranks. In no class,

however, was its influence more powerful than among the country

gentry. Most of them had been severe sufferers both in purse and

person during the Protectorate. Fines and sequestrations had

fallen heavily upon them, and they were eager to retaliate on their

oppressors. Their turn had come; can we wonder that they were

eager to use it? As Mr. J. R. Green has said: "The Puritan, the

Presbyterian, the Commonwealthsman, all were at their feet. . .

Their whole policy appeared to be dictated by a passionate spirit

of reaction. . . The oppressors of the parson had been the

oppressors of the squire. The sequestrator who had driven the one

from his parsonage had driven the other from his manor-house. Both

had been branded with the same charge of malignity. Both had

suffered together, and the new Parliament was resolved that both

should triumph together."

The feeling thus eloquently expressed goes far to explain the

harshness which Bunyan experienced at the hands of the

administrators of justice at the crisis of his life at which we

have now arrived. Those before whom he was successively arraigned

belonged to this very class, which, having suffered most severely

during the Puritan usurpation, was least likely to show

consideration to a leading teacher of the Puritan body. Nor were

reasons wanting to justify their severity. The circumstances of

the times were critical. The public mind was still in an excitable

state, agitated by the wild schemes of political and religious

enthusiasts plotting to destroy the whole existing framework both

of Church and State, and set up their own chimerical fabric. We

cannot be surprised that, as Southey has said, after all the nation

had suffered from fanatical zeal, "The government, rendered

suspicious by the constant sense of danger, was led as much by fear

as by resentment to seventies which are explained by the

necessities of self-defence," and which the nervous apprehensions

of the nation not only condoned, but incited. Already Churchmen in

Wales had been taking the law into their own hands, and manifesting

their orthodoxy by harrying Quakers and Nonconformists. In the May

and June of this year, we hear of sectaries being taken from their

beds and haled to prison, and brought manacled to the Quarter

Sessions and committed to loathsome dungeons. Matters had advanced

since then. The Church had returned in its full power and

privileges together with the monarchy, and everything went back

into its old groove. Every Act passed for the disestablishment and

disendowment of the Church was declared a dead letter. Those of

the ejected incumbents who remained alive entered again into their

parsonages, and occupied their pulpits as of old; the surviving

bishops returned to their sees; and the whole existing statute law

regarding the Church revived from its suspended animation. No new

enactment was required to punish Nonconformists and to silence

their ministers; though, to the disgrace of the nation and its

parliament, many new ones were subsequently passed, with ever-

increasing disabilities. The various Acts of Elizabeth supplied

all that was needed. Under these Acts all who refused to attend

public worship in their parish churches were subject to fines;

while those who resorted to conventicles were to be imprisoned till

they made their submissions; if at the end of three months they

refused to submit they were to be banished the realm, and if they

returned from banishment, without permission of the Crown, they

were liable to execution as felons. This long-disused sword was

now drawn from its rusty sheath to strike terror into the hearts of

Nonconformists. It did not prove very effectual. All the true-

hearted men preferred to suffer rather than yield in so sacred a

cause. Bunyan was one of the earliest of these, as he proved one

of the staunchest.

Early in October, 1660, the country magistrates meeting in Bedford

issued an order for the public reading of the Liturgy of the Church

of England. Such an order Bunyan would not regard as concerning

him. Anyhow he would not give obeying it a thought. One of the

things we least like in Bunyan is the feeling he exhibits towards

the Book of Common Prayer. To him it was an accursed thing, the

badge and token of a persecuting party, a relic of popery which he

exhorted his adherents to "take heed that they touched not" if they

would be "steadfast in the faith of Jesus Christ." Nothing could

be further from his thoughts than to give any heed to the

magistrates' order to go to church and pray "after the form of

men's inventions."

The time for testing Bunyan's resolution was now near at hand.

Within six months of the king's landing, within little more than a

month of the issue of the magistrate's order for the use of the

Common Prayer Book, his sturdy determination to yield obedience to

no authority in spiritual matters but that of his own conscience

was put to the proof. Bunyan may safely be regarded as at that

time the most conspicuous of the Nonconformists of the

neighbourhood. He had now preached for five or six years with

ever-growing popularity. No name was so rife in men's mouths as

his. At him, therefore, as the representative of his brother

sectaries, the first blow was levelled. It is no cause of surprise

that in the measures taken against him he recognized the direct

agency of Satan to stop the course of the truth: "That old enemy

of man's salvation," he says, "took his opportunity to inflame the

hearts of his vassals against me, insomuch that at the last I was

laid out for the warrant of a justice." The circumstances were

these, on November 12, 1660, Bunyan had engaged to go to the little

hamlet of Lower Samsell near Harlington, to hold a religious

service. His purpose becoming known, a neighbouring magistrate,

Mr. Francis Wingate, of Harlington House, was instructed to issue a

warrant for his apprehension under the Act of Elizabeth. The

meeting being represented to him as one of seditious persons

bringing arms, with a view to the disturbance of the public peace,

he ordered that a strong watch should be kept about the house, "as

if," Bunyan says, "we did intend to do some fearful business to the

destruction of the country." The intention to arrest him oozed

out, and on Bunyan's arrival the whisperings of his friends warned

him of his danger. He might have easily escaped if he "had been

minded to play the coward." Some advised it, especially the

brother at whose house the meeting was to take place. He, "living

by them," knew "what spirit" the magistrates "were of," before whom

Bunyan would be taken if arrested, and the small hope there would

be of his avoiding being committed to gaol. The man himself, as a

"harbourer of a conventicle," would also run no small danger of the

same fate, but Bunyan generously acquits him of any selfish object

in his warning: "he was, I think, more afraid of (for) me, than of

(for) himself." The matter was clear enough to Bunyan. At the

same time it was not to be decided in a hurry. The time fixed for

the service not being yet come, Bunyan went into the meadow by the

house, and pacing up and down thought the question well out. "If

he who had up to this time showed himself hearty and courageous in

his preaching, and had made it his business to encourage others,

were now to run and make an escape, it would be of an ill savour in

the country. If he were now to flee because there was a warrant

out for him, would not the weak and newly-converted brethren be

afraid to stand when great words only were spoken to them. God

had, in His mercy, chosen him to go on the forlorn hope; to be the

first to be opposed for the gospel; what a discouragement it must

be to the whole body if he were to fly. No, he would never by any

cowardliness of his give occasion to the enemy to blaspheme the

gospel." So back to the house he came with his mind made up. He

had come to hold the meeting, and hold the meeting he would. He

was not conscious of saying or doing any evil. If he had to suffer

it was the Lord's will, and he was prepared for it. He had a full

hour before him to escape if he had been so minded, but he was

resolved "not to go away." He calmly waited for the time fixed for

the brethren to assemble, and then, without hurry or any show of

alarm, he opened the meeting in the usual manner, with prayer for

God's blessing. He had given out his text, the brethren had just

opened their Bibles and Bunyan was beginning to preach, when the

arrival of the constable with the warrant put an end to the

exercise. Bunyan requested to be allowed to say a few parting

words of encouragement to the terrified flock. This was granted,

and he comforted the little company with the reflection that it was

a mercy to suffer in so good a cause; and that it was better to be

the persecuted than the persecutors; better to suffer as Christians

than as thieves or murderers. The constable and the justice's

servant soon growing weary of listening to Bunyan's exhortations,

interrupted him and "would not be quiet till they had him away"

from the house.

The justice who had issued the warrant, Mr. Wingate, not being at

home that day, a friend of Bunyan's residing on the spot offered to

house him for the night, undertaking that he should be forthcoming

the next day. The following morning this friend took him to the

constable's house, and they then proceeded together to Mr.

Wingate's. A few inquiries showed the magistrate that he had

entirely mistaken the character of the Samsell meeting and its

object. Instead of a gathering of "Fifth Monarchy men," or other

turbulent fanatics as he had supposed, for the disturbance of the

public peace, he learnt from the constable that they were only a

few peaceable, harmless people, met together "to preach and hear

the word," without any political meaning. Wingate was now at a

nonplus, and "could not well tell what to say." For the credit of

his magisterial character, however, he must do something to show

that he had not made a mistake in issuing the warrant. So he asked

Bunyan what business he had there, and why it was not enough for

him to follow his own calling instead of breaking the law by

preaching. Bunyan replied that his only object in coming there was

to exhort his hearers for their souls' sake to forsake their sinful

courses and close in with Christ, and this he could do and follow

his calling as well. Wingate, now feeling himself in the wrong,

lost his temper, and declared angrily that he would "break the neck

of these unlawful meetings," and that Bunyan must find securities

for his good behaviour or go to gaol. There was no difficulty in

obtaining the security. Bail was at once forthcoming. The real

difficulty lay with Bunyan himself. No bond was strong enough to

keep him from preaching. If his friends gave them, their bonds

would be forfeited, for he "would not leave speaking the word of

God." Wingate told him that this being so, he must be sent to gaol

to be tried at the next Quarter Sessions, and left the room to make

out his mittimus. While the committal was preparing, one whom

Bunyan bitterly styles "an old enemy to the truth," Dr. Lindall,

Vicar of Harlington, Wingate's father-in-law, came in and began

"taunting at him with many reviling terms," demanding what right he

had to preach and meddle with that for which he had no warrant,

charging him with making long prayers to devour widows houses, and

likening him to "one Alexander the Coppersmith he had read of,"

"aiming, 'tis like," says Bunyan, "at me because I was a tinker."

The mittimus was now made out, and Bunyan in the constable's charge

was on his way to Bedford, when he was met by two of his friends,

who begged the constable to wait a little while that they might use

their interest with the magistrate to get Bunyan released. After a

somewhat lengthened interview with Wingate, they returned with the

message that if Bunyan would wait on the magistrate and "say

certain words" to him, he might go free. To satisfy his friends,

Bunyan returned with them, though not with any expectation that the

engagement proposed to him would be such as he could lawfully take.

"If the words were such as he could say with a good conscience he

would say them, or else he would not."

After all this coming and going, by the time Bunyan and his friends

got back to Harlington House, night had come on. As he entered the

hall, one, he tells us, came out of an inner room with a lighted

candle in his hand, whom Bunyan recognized as one William Foster, a

lawyer of Bedford, Wingate's brother-in-law, afterwards a fierce

persecutor of the Nonconformists of the district. With a simulated

affection, "as if he would have leapt on my neck and kissed me,"

which put Bunyan on his guard, as he had ever known him for "a

close opposer of the ways of God," he adopted the tone of one who

had Bunyan's interest at heart, and begged him as a friend to yield

a little from his stubbornness. His brother-in-law, he said, was

very loath to send him to gaol. All he had to do was only to

promise that he would not call people together, and he should be

set at liberty and might go back to his home. Such meetings were

plainly unlawful and must be stopped. Bunyan had better follow his

calling and leave off preaching, especially on week-days, which

made other people neglect their calling too. God commanded men to

work six days and serve Him on the seventh. It was vain for Bunyan

to reply that he never summoned people to hear him, but that if

they came he could not but use the best of his skill and wisdom to

counsel them for their soul's salvation; that he could preach and

the people could come to hear without neglecting their callings,

and that men were bound to look out for their souls' welfare on

week-days as well as Sundays. Neither could convince the other.

Bunyan's stubbornness was not a little provoking to Foster, and was

equally disappointing to Wingate. They both evidently wished to

dismiss the case, and intentionally provided a loophole for

Bunyan's escape. The promise put into his mouth - "that he would

not call the people together" - was purposely devised to meet his

scrupulous conscience. But even if he could keep the promise in

the letter, Bunyan knew that he was fully purposed to violate its

spirit. He was the last man to forfeit self-respect by playing

fast and loose with his conscience. All evasion was foreign to his

nature. The long interview came to an end at last. Once again

Wingate and Foster endeavoured to break down Bunyan's resolution;

but when they saw he was "at a point, and would not be moved or

persuaded," the mittimus was again put into the constable's hands,

and he and his prisoner were started on the walk to Bedford gaol.

It was dark, as we have seen, when this protracted interview began.

It must have now been deep in the night. Bunyan gives no hint

whether the walk was taken in the dark or in the daylight. There

was however no need for haste. Bedford was thirteen miles away,

and the constable would probably wait till the morning to set out

for the prison which was to be Bunyan's home for twelve long years,

to which he went carrying, he says, the "peace of God along with

me, and His comfort in my poor soul."

CHAPTER V.

A long-standing tradition has identified Bunyan's place of

imprisonment with a little corporation lock-up-house, some fourteen

feet square, picturesquely perched on one of the mid-piers of the

many-arched mediaeval bridge which, previously to 1765, spanned the

Ouse at Bedford, and as Mr. Froude has said, has "furnished a

subject for pictures," both of pen and pencil, "which if correct

would be extremely affecting." Unfortunately, however, for the

lovers of the sensational, these pictures are not "correct," but

are based on a false assumption which grew up out of a desire to

heap contumely on Bunyan's enemies by exaggerating the severity of

his protracted, but by no means harsh imprisonment. Being arrested

by the warrant of a county magistrate for a county offence,

Bunyan's place of incarceration was naturally the county gaol.

There he undoubtedly passed the twelve years of his captivity, and

there the royal warrant for his release found him "a prisoner in

the common gaol for our county of Bedford." But though far

different from the pictures which writers, desirous of exhibiting

the sufferings of the Puritan confessor in the most telling form,

have drawn - if not "a damp and dreary cell" into which "a narrow

chink admits a few scanty rays of light to render visible the

prisoner, pale and emaciated, seated on the humid earth, pursuing

his daily task to earn the morsel which prolongs his existence and

his confinement together," - "the common gaol" of Bedford must have

been a sufficiently strait and unwholesome abode, especially for

one, like the travelling tinker, accustomed to spend the greater

part of his days in the open-air in unrestricted freedom. Prisons

in those days, and indeed long afterwards, were, at their best,

foul, dark, miserable places. A century later Howard found Bedford

gaol, though better than some, in what would now be justly deemed a

disgraceful condition. One who visited Bunyan during his

confinement speaks of it as "an uncomfortable and close prison."

Bunyan however himself, in the narrative of his imprisonment, makes

no complaint of it, nor do we hear of his health having in any way

suffered from the conditions of his confinement, as was the case

with not a few of his fellow-sufferers for the sake of religion in

other English gaols, some of them even unto death. Bad as it must

have been to be a prisoner, as far as his own testimony goes, there

is no evidence that his imprisonment, though varying in its

strictness with his various gaolers, was aggravated by any special

severity; and, as Mr. Froude has said, "it is unlikely that at any

time he was made to suffer any greater hardships than were

absolutely inevitable."

The arrest of one whose work as a preacher had been a blessing to

so many, was not at once tamely acquiesced in by the religious body

to which he belonged. A few days after Bunyan's committal to gaol,

some of "the brethren" applied to Mr. Crompton, a young magistrate

at Elstow, to bail him out, offering the required security for his

appearance at the Quarter Sessions. The magistrate was at first

disposed to accept the bail; but being a young man, new in his

office, and thinking it possible that there might be more against

Bunyan than the "mittimus" expressed, he was afraid of compromising

himself by letting him go at large. His refusal, though it sent

him back to prison, was received by Bunyan with his usual calm

trust in God's overruling providence. "I was not at all daunted,

but rather glad, and saw evidently that the Lord had heard me."

Before he set out for the justice's house, he tells us he had

committed the whole event to God's ordering, with the prayer that

"if he might do more good by being at liberty than in prison," the

bail might be accepted, "but if not, that His will might be done."

In the failure of his friends' good offices he saw an answer to his

prayer, encouraging the hope that the untoward event, which

deprived them of his personal ministrations, "might be an awaking

to the saints in the country," and while "the slender answer of the

justice," which sent him back to his prison, stirred something akin

to contempt, his soul was full of gladness. "Verily I did meet my

God sweetly again, comforting of me, and satisfying of me, that it

was His will and mind that I should be there." The sense that he

was being conformed to the image of his great Master was a stay to

his soul. "This word," he continues, "did drop in upon my heart

with some life, for he knew that 'for envy they had delivered

him.'"

Seven weeds after his committal, early in January, 1661, the

Quarter Sessions came on, and "John Bunyan, of the town of Bedford,

labourer," was indicted in the customary form for having

"devilishly and perniciously abstained from coming to church to

hear Divine Service," and as "a common upholder of several unlawful

meetings and conventions, to the great disturbance and distraction

of the good subjects of the kingdom." The chairman of the bench

was the brutal and blustering Sir John Keeling, the prototype of

Bunyan's Lord Hategood in Faithful's trial at Vanity Fair, who

afterwards, by his base subserviency to an infamous government,

climbed to the Lord Chief Justice's seat, over the head of Sir

Matthew Hale. Keeling had suffered much from the Puritans during

the great Rebellion, when, according to Clarendon, he was "always

in gaol," and was by no means disposed to deal leniently with an

offender of that persuasion. His brethren of the bench were

country gentlemen hating Puritanism from their heart, and eager for

retaliation for the wrongs it had wrought them. From such a bench,

even if Bunyan had been less uncompromising, no leniency was to be

anticipated. But Bunyan's attitude forbade any leniency. As the

law stood he had indisputably broken it, and he expressed his

determination, respectfully but firmly, to take the first

opportunity of breaking it again. "I told them that if I was let

out of prison today I would preach the gospel again to-morrow by

the help of God." We may dislike the tone adopted by the

magistrates towards the prisoner; we may condemn it as overbearing

and contemptuous; we may smile at Keeling's expositions of

Scripture and his stock arguments against unauthorized prayer and

preaching, though we may charitably believe that Bunyan

misunderstood him when he makes him say that "the Book of Common

Prayer had been ever since the apostles' time"; we may think that

the prisoner, in his "canting pedlar's French," as Keeling called

it, had the better of his judges in knowledge of the Bible, in

Christian charity, as well as in dignity and in common sense, and

that they showed their wisdom in silencing him in court - "Let him

speak no further," said one of them, "he will do harm," - since

they could not answer him more convincingly: but his legal offence

was clear. He confessed to the indictment, if not in express

terms, yet virtually. He and his friends had held "many meetings

together, both to pray to God and to exhort one another. I

confessed myself guilty no otherwise." Such meetings were

forbidden by the law, which it was the duty of the justices to

administer, and they had no choice whether they would convict or

no. Perhaps they were not sorry they had no such choice. Bunyan

was a most "impracticable" prisoner, and as Mr. Froude says, the

"magistrates being but unregenerate mortals may be pardoned if they

found him provoking." The sentence necessarily followed. It was

pronounced, not, we are sure reluctantly, by Keeling, in the terms

of the Act. "He was to go back to prison for three months. If at

three months' end he still refused to go to church to hear Divine

service and leave his preaching, he was to be banished the realm,"

• in modern language "transported," and if "he came back again

without special royal license," he must "stretch by the neck for

it."

"This," said Keeling, "I tell you plainly." Bunyan's reply that

"as to that matter he was at a point with the judge," for "that he

would repeat the offence the first time he could," provoked a

rejoinder from one of the bench, and the unseemly wrangling might

have been still further prolonged, had it not been stopped by the

gaoler, who "pulling him away to be gone," had him back to prison,

where he says, and "blesses the Lord Jesus Christ for it," his

heart was as "sweetly refreshed" in returning to it as it had "been

during his examination. So that I find Christ's words more than

bare trifles, where He saith, He will give a mouth and wisdom, even

such as all the adversaries shall not gainsay or resist. And that

His peace no man can take from us."

The magistrates, however, though not unnaturally irritated by what

seemed to them Bunyan's unreasonable obstinacy, were not desirous

to push matters to extremity. The three months named in his

sentence, at the expiration of which he was either to conform or be

banished the realm, were fast drawing to an end, without any sign

of submission on his part. As a last resort Mr. Cobb, the Clerk of

the Peace, was sent to try what calm and friendly reasoning might

effect. Cobb, who evidently knew Bunyan personally, did his best,

as a kind-hearted, sensible man, to bring him to reason. Cobb did

not profess to be "a man that could dispute," and Bunyan had the

better of him in argument. His position, however, was

unassailable. The recent insurrection of Venner and his Fifth

Monarchy men, he said, had shown the danger to the public peace

there was in allowing fanatical gatherings to assemble unchecked.

Bunyan, whose loyalty was unquestioned, must acknowledge the

prudence of suppressing meetings which, however good their

ostensible aim, might issue in nothing less than the ruin of the

kingdom and commonwealth. Bunyan had confessed his readiness to

obey the apostolic precept by submitting himself to the king as

supreme. The king forbade the holding of private meetings, which,

under colour of religion, might be prejudicial to the State. Why

then did he not submit? This need not hinder him from doing good

in a neighbourly way. He might continue to use his gifts and

exhort his neighbours in private discourse, provided he did not

bring people together in public assemblies. The law did not

abridge him of this liberty. Why should he stand so strictly on

public meetings? Or why should he not come to church and hear?

Was his gift so far above that of others that he could learn of no

one? If he could not be persuaded, the judges were resolved to

prosecute the law against him. He would be sent away beyond the

seas to Spain or Constantinople - either Cobb's or Bunyan's

colonial geography was rather at fault here - or some other remote

part of the world, and what good could he do to his friends then?

"Neighbour Bunyan" had better consider these things seriously

before the Quarter Session, and be ruled by good advice. The

gaoler here put in his word in support of Cobb's arguments:

"Indeed, sir, I hope he will be ruled." But all Cobb's friendly

reasonings and expostulations were ineffectual to bend Bunyan's

sturdy will. He would yield to no-one in his loyalty to his

sovereign, and his readiness to obey the law. But, he said, with a

hairsplitting casuistry he would have indignantly condemned in

others, the law provided two ways of obeying, "one to obey

actively, and if his conscience forbad that, then to obey

passively; to lie down and suffer whatever they might do to him."

The Clerk of the Peace saw that it was no use to prolong the

argument any further. "At this," writes Bunyan, "he sat down, and

said no more; which, when he had done, I did thank him for his

civil and meek discoursing with me; and so we parted: O that we

might meet in heaven!"

The Coronation which took place very soon after this interview,

April 13, 1661, afforded a prospect of release without unworthy

submission. The customary proclamation, which allowed prisoners

under sentence for any offence short of felony to sue out a pardon

for twelve months from that date, suspended the execution of the

sentence of banishment and gave a hope that the prison doors might

be opened for him. The local authorities taking no steps to enable

him to profit by the royal clemency, by inserting his name in the

list of pardonable offenders, his second wife, Elizabeth, travelled

up to London, - no slight venture for a young woman not so long

raised from the sick bed on which the first news of her husband's

arrest had laid her, - and with dauntless courage made her way to

the House of Lords, where she presented her petition to one of the

peers, whom she calls Lord Barkwood, but whom unfortunately we

cannot now identify. He treated her kindly, and showed her

petition to other peers, who appear to have been acquainted with

the circumstances of Bunyan's case. They replied that the matter

was beyond their province, and that the question of her husband's

release was committed to the judges at the next assizes. These

assizes were held at Bedford in the following August. The judges

of the circuit were Twisden and Sir Matthew Hale. From the latter

• the friend of Richard Baxter, who, as Burnet records, took great

care to "cover the Nonconformists, whom he thought too hardly used,

all he could from the seventies some designed; and discouraged

those who were inclined to stretch the laws too much against them"

• Bunyan's case would be certain to meet with sympathetic

consideration. But being set to administer the law, not according

to his private wishes, but according to its letter and its spirit,

he was powerless to relieve him. Three several times did Bunyan's

noble-hearted wife present her husband's petition that he might be

heard, and his case taken impartially into consideration. But the

law forbad what Burnet calls Sir Matthew Hale's "tender and

compassionate nature" to have free exercise. He "received the

petition very mildly at her hand, telling her that he would do her

and her husband the best good he could; but he feared he could do

none." His brother judge's reception of her petition was very

different. Having thrown it into the coach, Twisden "snapt her

up," telling her, what after all was no more than the truth, that

her husband was a convicted person, and could not be released

unless he would promise to obey the law and abstain from preaching.

On this the High Sheriff, Edmund Wylde, of Houghton Conquest, spoke

kindly to the poor woman, and encouraged her to make a fresh

application to the judges before they left the town. So she made

her way, "with abashed face and trembling heart," to the large

chamber at the Old Swan Inn at the Bridge Foot, where the two

judges were receiving a large number of the justices of the peace

and other gentry of the county. Addressing Sir Matthew Hale she

said, "My lord, I make bold to come again to your lordship to know

what may be done with my husband." Hale received her with the same

gentleness as before, repeated what he had said previously, that as

her husband had been legally convicted, and his conviction was

recorded, unless there was something to undo that he could do her

no good. Twisden, on the other hand, got violently angry, charged

her brutally with making poverty her cloak, told her that her

husband was a breaker of the peace, whose doctrine was the doctrine

of the devil, and that he ran up and down and did harm, while he

was better maintained by his preaching than by following his

tinker's craft. At last he waxed so violent that "withal she

thought he would have struck her." In the midst of all his coarse

abuse, however, Twisden hit the mark when he asked: "What! you

think we can do what we list?" And when we find Hale, confessedly

the soundest lawyer of the time, whose sympathies were all with the

prisoner, after calling for the Statute Book, thus summing up the

matter: "I am sorry, woman, that I can do thee no good. Thou must

do one of these three things, viz., either apply thyself to the

king, or sue out his pardon, or get a writ of error," which last,

he told her, would be the cheapest course - we may feel sure that

Bunyan's Petition was not granted because it could not be granted

legally. The blame of his continued imprisonment lay, if anywhere,

with the law, not with its administrators. This is not always

borne in mind as it ought to be. As Mr. Froude remarks, "Persons

often choose to forget that judges are sworn to administer the law

which they find, and rail at them as if the sentences which they

are obliged by their oath to pass were their own personal acts."

It is not surprising that Elizabeth Bunyan was unable to draw this

distinction, and that she left the Swan chamber in tears, not,

however, so much at what she thought the judges' "hardheartedness

to her and her husband," as at the thought of "the sad account such

poor creatures would have to give" hereafter, for what she deemed

their "opposition to Christ and His gospel."

No steps seem to have been taken by Bunyan's wife, or any of his

influential friends, to carry out either of the expedients named by

Hale. It may have been that the money needed was not forthcoming,

or, what Southey remarks is "quite probable," - "because it is

certain that Bunyan, thinking himself in conscience bound to preach

in defiance of the law, would soon have made his case worse than it

then was."

At the next assizes, which were held in January, 1662, Bunyan again

made strenuous efforts to get his name put on the calendar of

felons, that he might have a regular trial before the king's judges

and be able to plead his cause in person. This, however, was

effectually thwarted by the unfriendly influence of the county

magistrates by whom he had been committed, and the Clerk of the

Peace, Mr. Cobb, who having failed in his kindly meant attempt to

induce "Neighbour Bunyan" to conform, had turned bitterly against

him and become one of his chief enemies. "Thus," writes Bunyan,

"was I hindered and prevented at that time also from appearing

before the judge, and left in prison." Of this prison, the county

gaol of Bedford, he remained an inmate, with one, short interval in

1666, for the next twelve years, till his release by order of the

Privy Council, May 17, 1672.

CHAPTER VI.

The exaggeration of the severity of Bunyan's imprisonment long

current, now that the facts are better known, has led, by a very

intelligible reaction, to an undue depreciation of it. Mr. Froude

thinks that his incarceration was "intended to be little more than

nominal," and was really meant in kindness by the authorities who

"respected his character," as the best means of preventing him from

getting himself into greater trouble by "repeating an offence that

would compel them to adopt harsh measures which they were earnestly

trying to avoid." If convicted again he must be transported, and

"they were unwilling to drive him out of the country." It is,

however, to be feared that it was no such kind consideration for

the tinker-preacher which kept the prison doors closed on Bunyan.

To the justices he was simply an obstinate law-breaker, who must be

kept in prison as long as he refused compliance with the Act. If

he rotted in gaol, as so many of his fellow sufferers for

conscience' sake did in those unhappy times, it was no concern of

theirs. He and his stubbornness would be alone to blame.

It is certainly true that during a portion of his captivity,

Bunyan, in Dr. Brown's words, "had an amount of liberty which in

the case of a prisoner nowadays would be simply impossible." But

the mistake has been made of extending to the whole period an

indulgence which belonged only to a part, and that a very limited

part of it. When we are told that Bunyan was treated as a prisoner

at large, and like one "on parole," free to come and go as he

pleased, even as far as London, we must remember that Bunyan's own

words expressly restrict this indulgence to the six months between

the Autumn Assizes of 1661 and the Spring Assizes of 1662.

"Between these two assizes," he says, "I had by my jailer some

liberty granted me more than at the first." This liberty was

certainly of the largest kind consistent with his character of a

prisoner. The church books show that he was occasionally present

at their meetings, and was employed on the business of the

congregation. Nay, even his preaching, which was the cause of his

imprisonment, was not forbidden. "I followed," he says, writing of

this period, "my wonted course of preaching, taking all occasions

that were put into my hand to visit the people of God." But this

indulgence was very brief and was brought sharply to an end. It

was plainly irregular, and depended on the connivance of his

jailer. We cannot be surprised that when it came to the

magistrates' ears - "my enemies," Bunyan rather unworthily calls

them - they were seriously displeased. Confounding Bunyan with the

Fifth Monarchy men and other turbulent sectaries, they imagined

that his visits to London had a political object, "to plot, and

raise division, and make insurrections," which, he honestly adds,

"God knows was a slander." The jailer was all but "cast out of his

place," and threatened with an indictment for breach of trust,

while his own liberty was so seriously "straitened" that he was

prohibited even "to look out at the door." The last time Bunyan's

name appears as present at a church meeting is October 28, 1661,

nor do we see it again till October 9, 1668, only four years before

his twelve years term of imprisonment expired.

But though his imprisonment was not so severe, nor his prison quite

so narrow and wretched as some word-painters have described them,

during the greater part of the time his condition was a dreary and

painful one, especially when spent, as it sometimes was, "under

cruel and oppressive jailers." The enforced separation from his

wife and children, especially his tenderly loved blind daughter,

Mary, was a continually renewed anguish to his loving heart. "The

parting with them," he writes, "hath often been to me as pulling

the flesh from the bones; and that not only because I am somewhat

too fond of these great mercies, but also because I should often

have brought to my mind the many hardships, miseries, and wants my

poor family was like to meet with, should I be taken from them;

especially my poor blind child, who lay nearer to my heart than all

beside. Poor child, thought I, thou must be beaten, thou must beg,

thou must suffer hunger, cold, nakedness, and a thousand

calamities, though I cannot now endure the wind should blow on

thee. O, the thoughts of the hardships my blind one might go under

would break my heart to pieces." He seemed to himself like a man

pulling down his house on his wife and children's head, and yet he

felt, "I must do it; O, I must do it." He was also, he tells us,

at one time, being but "a young prisoner," greatly troubled by the

thoughts that "for aught he could tell," his "imprisonment might

end at the gallows," not so much that he dreaded death as that he

was apprehensive that when it came to the point, even if he made "a

scrabbling shift to clamber up the ladder," he might play the

coward and so do discredit to the cause of religion. "I was

ashamed to die with a pale face and tottering knees for such a

cause as this." The belief that his imprisonment might be

terminated by death on the scaffold, however groundless, evidently

weighed long on his mind. The closing sentences of his third

prison book, "Christian Behaviour," published in 1663, the second

year of his durance, clearly point to such an expectation. "Thus

have I in few words written to you before I die, . . . not knowing

the shortness of my life, nor the hindrances that hereafter I may

have of serving my God and you." The ladder of his apprehensions

was, as Mr. Froude has said, "an imaginary ladder," but it was very

real to Bunyan. "Oft I was as if I was on the ladder with a rope

about my neck." The thought of it, as his autobiography shows,

caused him some of his deepest searchings of heart, and noblest

ventures of faith. He was content to suffer by the hangman's hand

if thus he might have an opportunity of addressing the crowd that

he thought would come to see him die. "And if it must be so, if

God will but convert one soul by my very last words, I shall not

count my life thrown away or lost." And even when hours of

darkness came over his soul, and he was tempted to question the

reality of his Christian profession, and to doubt whether God would

give him comfort at the hour of death, he stayed himself up with

such bold words as these. "I was bound, but He was free. Yea,

'twas my duty to stand to His word whether He would ever look on me

or no, or save me at the last. If God doth not come in, thought I,

I will leap off the ladder even blindfold into Eternity, sink or

swim, come heaven, come hell. Lord Jesus, if Thou wilt catch me,

do. If not, I will venture for Thy name."

Bunyan being precluded by his imprisonment from carrying on his

brazier's craft for the support of his wife and family, and his

active spirit craving occupation, he got himself taught how to make

"long tagged laces," "many hundred gross" of which, we are told by

one who first formed his acquaintance in prison, he made during his

captivity, for "his own and his family's necessities." "While his

hands were thus busied," writes Lord Macaulay, "he had often

employment for his mind and for his lips." "Though a prisoner he

was a preacher still." As with St. Paul in his Roman chains, "the

word of God was not bound." The prisoners for conscience' sake,

who like him, from time to time, were cooped up in Bedford gaol,

including several of his brother ministers and some of his old

friends among the leading members of his own little church,

furnished a numerous and sympathetic congregation. At one time a

body of some sixty, who had met for worship at night in a

neighbouring wood, were marched off to gaol, with their minister at

their head. But while all about him was in confusion, his spirit

maintained its even calm, and he could at once speak the words of

strength and comfort that were needed. In the midst of the hurry

which so many "newcomers occasioned," writes the friend to whom we

are indebted for the details of his prison life, "I have heard Mr.

Bunyan both preach and pray with that mighty spirit of faith and

plerophory of Divine assistance that has made me stand and wonder."

These sermons addressed to his fellow prisoners supplied, in many

cases, the first outlines of the books which, in rapid succession,

flowed from his pen during the earlier years of his imprisonment,

relieving the otherwise insupportable tedium of his close

confinement. Bunyan himself tells us that this was the case with

regard to his "Holy City," the first idea of which was borne in

upon his mind when addressing "his brethren in the prison chamber,"

nor can we doubt that the case was the same with other works of

his. To these we shall hereafter return. Nor was it his fellow

prisoners only who profited by his counsels. In his "Life and

Death of Mr. Badman," he gives us a story of a woman who came to

him when he was in prison, to confess how she had robbed her

master, and to ask his help. Hers was probably a representative

case. The time spared from his handicraft, and not employed in

religious counsel and exhortation, was given to study and

composition. For this his confinement secured him the leisure

which otherwise he would have looked for in vain. The few books he

possessed he studied indefatigably. His library was, at least at

one period, a very limited one, - "the least and the best library,"

writes a friend who visited him in prison, "that I ever saw,

consisting only of two books - the Bible, and Foxe's 'Book of

Martyrs.'" "But with these two books," writes Mr. Froude, "he had

no cause to complain of intellectual destitution." Bunyan's mode

of composition, though certainly exceedingly rapid, - thoughts

succeeding one another with a quickness akin to inspiration, - was

anything but careless. The "limae labor" with him was unsparing.

It was, he tells us, "first with doing, and then with undoing, and

after that with doing again," that his books were brought to

completion, and became what they are, a mine of Evangelical

Calvinism of the richest ore, entirely free from the narrow

dogmatism and harsh predestinarianism of the great Genevan divine;

books which for clearness of thought, lucidity of arrangement,

felicity of language, rich even if sometimes homely force of

illustration, and earnestness of piety have never been surpassed.

Bunyan's prison life when the first bitterness of it was past, and

habit had done away with its strangeness, was a quiet and it would

seem, not an unhappy one. A manly self-respect bore him up and

forbade his dwelling on the darker features of his position, or

thinking or speaking harshly of the authors of his durance. "He

was," writes one who saw him at this time, "mild and affable in

conversation; not given to loquacity or to much discourse unless

some urgent occasion required. It was observed he never spoke of

himself or his parents, but seemed low in his own eyes. He was

never heard to reproach or revile, whatever injury he received, but

rather rebuked those who did so. He managed all things with such

exactness as if he had made it his study not to give offence."

According to his earliest biographer, Charles Doe, in 1666, the

year of the Fire of London, after Bunyan had lain six years in

Bedford gaol, "by the intercession of some interest or power that

took pity on his sufferings," he enjoyed a short interval of

liberty. Who these friends and sympathisers were is not mentioned,

and it would be vain to conjecture. This period of freedom,

however, was very short. He at once resumed his old work of

preaching, against which the laws had become even more stringent

during his imprisonment, and was apprehended at a meeting just as

he was about to preach a sermon. He had given out his text, "Dost

thou believe on the Son of God?" (John ix. 35), and was standing

with his open Bible in his hand, when the constable came in to take

him. Bunyan fixed his eyes on the man, who turned pale, let go his

hold, and drew back, while Bunyan exclaimed, "See how this man

trembles at the word of God!" This is all we know of his second

arrest, and even this little is somewhat doubtful. The time, the

place, the circumstances, are as provokingly vague as much else of

Bunyan's life. The fact, however, is certain. Bunyan returned to

Bedford gaol, where he spent another six years, until the issuing

of the "Declaration of Indulgence" early in 1672 opened the long-

closed doors, and he walked out a free man, and with what he valued

far more than personal liberty, freedom to deliver Christ's message

as he understood it himself, none making him afraid, and to declare

to his brother sinners what their Saviour had done for them, and

what he expected them to do that they might obtain the salvation He

died to win.

From some unknown cause, perhaps the depressing effect of

protracted confinement, during this second six years Bunyan's pen

was far less prolific than during the former period. Only two of

his books are dated in these years. The last of these, "A Defence

of the Doctrine of Justification by Faith," a reply to a work of

Edward Fowler, afterwards Bishop of Gloucester, the rector of

Northill, was written in hot haste immediately before his release,

and issued from the press contemporaneously with it, the prospect

of liberty apparently breathing new life into his wearied soul.

When once Bunyan became a free man again, his pen recovered its

former copiousness of production, and the works by which he has

been immortalized, "The Pilgrim's Progress" - which has been

erroneously ascribed to Bunyan's twelve years' imprisonment - and

its sequel, "The Holy War," and the "Life and Death of Mr. Badman,"

and a host of more strictly theological works, followed one another

in rapid succession.

Bunyan's second term of imprisonment was certainly less severe than

that which preceded it. At its commencement we learn that, like

Joseph in Egypt, he found favour in his jailer's eyes, who "took

such pity of his rigorous suffering, that he put all care and trust

into his hands." Towards the close of his imprisonment its rigour

was still further relaxed. The Bedford church book begins its

record again in 1688, after an interval of ominous silence of five

years, when the persecution was at the hottest. In its earliest

entries we find Bunyan's name, which occurs repeatedly up to the

date of his final release in 1672. Not one of these notices gives

the slightest allusion of his being a prisoner. He is deputed with

others to visit and remonstrate with backsliding brethren, and

fulfil other commissions on behalf of the congregation, as if he

were in the full enjoyment of his liberty. This was in the two

years' interval between the expiration of the Conventicle Act,

March 2, 1667-8, and the passing of the new Act, styled by Marvell,

"the quintessence of arbitrary malice," April 11, 1670. After a

few months of hot persecution, when a disgraceful system of

espionage was set on foot and the vilest wretches drove a lucrative

trade as spies on "meetingers," the severity greatly lessened.

Charles II. was already meditating the issuing of a Declaration of

Indulgence, and signified his disapprobation of the "forceable

courses" in which, "the sad experience of twelve years" showed,

there was "very little fruit." One of the first and most notable

consequences of this change of policy was Bunyan's release.

Mr. Offor's patient researches in the State Paper Office have

proved that the Quakers, than whom no class of sectaries had

suffered more severely from the persecuting edicts of the Crown,

were mainly instrumental in throwing open the prison doors to those

who, like Bunyan, were in bonds for the sake of their religion.

Gratitude to John Groves, the Quaker mate of Tattersall's fishing

boat, in which Charles had escaped to France after the battle of

Worcester, had something, and the untiring advocacy of George

Whitehead, the Quaker, had still more, to do with this act of royal

clemency. We can readily believe that the good-natured Charles was

not sorry to have an opportunity of evidencing his sense of former

services rendered at a time of his greatest extremity. But the

main cause lay much deeper, and is connected with what Lord

Macaulay justly styles "one of the worst acts of one of the worst

governments that England has ever seen" - that of the Cabal. Our

national honour was at its lowest ebb. Charles had just concluded

the profligate Treaty of Dover, by which, in return for the

"protection" he sought from the French king, he declared himself a

Roman Catholic at heart, and bound himself to take the first

opportunity of "changing the present state of religion in England

for a better," and restoring the authority of the Pope. The

announcement of his conversion Charles found it convenient to

postpone. Nor could the other part of his engagement be safely

carried into effect at once. It called for secret and cautious

preparation. But to pave the way for it, by an unconstitutional

exercise of his prerogative he issued a Declaration of Indulgence

which suspended all penal laws against "whatever sort of

Nonconformists or Recusants." The latter were evidently the real

object of the indulgence; the former class were only introduced the

better to cloke his infamous design. Toleration, however, was thus

at last secured, and the long-oppressed Nonconformists hastened to

profit by it. "Ministers returned," writes Mr. J. R. Green, "after

years of banishment, to their homes and their flocks. Chapels were

re-opened. The gaols were emptied. Men were set free to worship

God after their own fashion. John Bunyan left the prison which had

for twelve years been his home." More than three thousand licenses

to preach were at once issued. One of the earliest of these, dated

May 9, 1672, four months before his formal pardon under the Great

Seal, was granted to Bunyan, who in the preceding January had been

chosen their minister by the little congregation at Bedford, and

"giving himself up to serve Christ and His Church in that charge,

had received of the elders the right hand of fellowship." The

place licensed for the exercise of Bunyan's ministry was a barn

standing in an orchard, once forming part of the Castle Moat, which

one of the congregation, Josias Roughead, acting for the members of

his church, had purchased. The license bears date May 9, 1672.

This primitive place of worship, in which Bunyan preached regularly

till his death, was pulled down in 1707, when a "three-ridged

meeting-house" was erected in its place. This in its turn gave

way, in 1849, to the existing more seemly chapel, to which the

present Duke of Bedford, in 1876, presented a pair of noble bronze

doors bearing scenes, in high relief, from "The Pilgrim's

Progress," the work of Mr. Frederick Thrupp. In the vestry are

preserved Bunyan's chair, and other relics of the man who has made

the name of Bedford famous to the whole civilized world.

CHAPTER VII.

Mr. Green has observed that Bunyan "found compensation for the

narrow bounds of his prison in the wonderful activity of his pen.

Tracts, controversial treatises, poems, meditations, his 'Grace

Abounding,' and his 'Holy War,' followed each other in quick

succession." Bunyan's literary fertility in the earlier half of

his imprisonment was indeed amazing. Even if, as seems almost

certain, we have been hitherto in error in assigning the First Part

of "The Pilgrim's Progress" to this period, while the "Holy War"

certainly belongs to a later, the works which had their birth in

Bedford Gaol during the first six years of his confinement, are of

themselves sufficient to make the reputation of any ordinary

writer. As has been already remarked, for some unexplained cause,

Bunyan's gifts as an author were much more sparingly called into

exercise during the second half of his captivity. Only two works

appear to have been written between 1666 and his release in 1672.

Mr. Green has spoken of "poems" as among the products of Bunyan's

pen during this period. The compositions in verse belonging to

this epoch, of which there are several, hardly deserve to be

dignified with so high a title. At no part of his life had Bunyan

much title to be called a poet. He did not aspire beyond the rank

of a versifier, who clothed his thoughts in rhyme or metre instead

of the more congenial prose, partly for the pleasure of the

exercise, partly because he knew by experience that the lessons he

wished to inculcate were more likely to be remembered in that form.

Mr. Froude, who takes a higher estimate of Bunyan's verse than is

commonly held, remarks that though it is the fashion to apply the

epithet of "doggerel" to it, the "sincere and rational meaning"

which pervades his compositions renders such an epithet improper.

"His ear for rhythm," he continues, "though less true than in his

prose, is seldom wholly at fault, and whether in prose or verse, he

had the superlative merit that he could never write nonsense."

Bunyan's earliest prison work, entitled "Profitable Meditations,"

was in verse, and neither this nor his later metrical ventures

before his release - his "Four Last Things," his "Ebal and

Gerizim," and his "Prison Meditations" - can be said to show much

poetical power. At best he is a mere rhymester, to whom rhyme and

metre, even when self-chosen, were as uncongenial accoutrements "as

Saul's armour was to David." The first-named book, which is

entitled a "Conference between Christ and a Sinner," in the form of

a poetical dialogue, according to Dr. Brown has "small literary

merit of any sort." The others do not deserve much higher

commendation. There is an individuality about the "Prison

Meditations" which imparts to it a personal interest, which is

entirely wanting in the other two works, which may be characterized

as metrical sermons, couched in verse of the Sternhold and Hopkins

type. A specimen or two will suffice. The "Four Last Things" thus

opens:-

"These lines I at this time present

To all that will them heed,

Wherein I show to what intent

God saith, 'Convert with speed.'

For these four things come on apace,

Which we should know full well,

Both death and judgment, and, in place

Next to them, heaven and hell."

The following lines are from "Ebal and Gerizim":-

"Thou art like one that hangeth by a thread

Over the mouth of hell, as one half dead;

And oh, how soon this thread may broken be,

Or cut by death, is yet unknown to thee.

But sure it is if all the weight of sin,

And all that Satan too hath doing been

Or yet can do, can break this crazy thread,

'Twill not be long before among the dead

Thou tumble do, as linked fast in chains,

With them to wait in fear for future pains."

The poetical effusion entitled "Prison Meditations" does not in any

way rise above the prosaic level of its predecessors. But it can

be read with less weariness from the picture it presents of

Bunyan's prison life, and of the courageous faith which sustained

him. Some unnamed friend, it would appear, fearing he might

flinch, had written him a letter counselling him to keep "his head

above the flood." Bunyan replied in seventy stanzas in ballad

measure, thanking his correspondent for his good advice, of which

he confesses he stood in need, and which he takes it kindly of him

to send, even though his feet stand upon Mount Zion, and the gaol

is to him like a hill from which he could see beyond this world,

and take his fill of the blessedness of that which remains for the

Christian. Though in bonds his mind is free, and can wander where

it will.

"For though men keep my outward man

Within their locks and bars,

Yet by the faith of Christ, I can

Mount higher than the stars."

Meanwhile his captivity is sweetened by the thought of what it was

that brought him there:-

"I here am very much refreshed

To think, when I was out,

I preached life, and peace, and rest,

To sinners round about.

My business then was souls to save

By preaching grace and faith,

Of which the comfort now I have

And have it shall till death.

That was the work I was about

When hands on me they laid.

'Twas this for which they plucked me out

And vilely to me said,

'You heretic, deceiver, come,

To prison you must go,

You preach abroad, and keep not home,

You are the Church's foe.'

Wherefore to prison they me sent,

Where to this day I lie,

And can with very much content

For my profession die.

The prison very sweet to me

Hath been since I came here,

And so would also hanging be

If God would there appear.

To them that here for evil lie

The place is comfortless;

But not to me, because that I

Lie here for righteousness.

The truth and I were both here cast

Together, and we do

Lie arm in arm, and so hold fast

Each other, this is true.

Who now dare say we throw away

Our goods or liberty,

When God's most holy Word doth say

We gain thus much thereby?"

It will be seen that though Bunyan's verses are certainly not high-

class poetry, they are very far removed from doggerel. Nothing

indeed that Bunyan ever wrote, however rugged the rhymes and

limping the metre, can be so stigmatized. The rude scribblings on

the margins of the copy of the "Book of Martyrs," which bears

Bunyan's signature on the title-pages, though regarded by Southey

as "undoubtedly" his, certainly came from a later and must less

instructed pen. And as he advanced in his literary career, his

claim to the title of a poet, though never of the highest, was much

strengthened. The verses which diversify the narrative in the

Second Part of "The Pilgrim's Progress" are decidedly superior to

those in the First Part, and some are of high excellence. Who is

ignorant of the charming little song of the Shepherd Boy in the

Valley of Humiliation, "in very mean clothes, but with a very fresh

and well-favoured countenance, and wearing more of the herb called

Heartsease in his bosom than he that is clad in silk and velvet?" -

"He that is down need fear no fall;

He that is low, no pride;

He that is humble, ever shall

Have God to be his guide.

I am content with what I have,

Little be it or much,

And, Lord, contentment still I crave,

Because Thou savest such.

Fulness to such a burden is

That go on Pilgrimage,

Here little, and hereafter Bliss

Is best from age to age."

Bunyan reaches a still higher flight in Valiant-for-Truth's song,

later on, the Shakesperian ring of which recalls Amiens' in "As You

Like It,"

"Under the greenwood tree,

Who loves to lie with me. . .

Come hither, come hither,"

and has led some to question whether it can be Bunyan's own. The

resemblance, as Mr. Froude remarks, is "too near to be accidental."

"Perhaps he may have heard the lines, and the rhymes may have clung

to him without his knowing whence they came."

"Who would true Valour see,

Let him come hither,

One here will constant be,

Come wind, come weather.

There's no discouragement

Shall make him once relent

His first avowed intent

To be a Pilgrim.

Who so beset him round

With dismal stories,

Do but themselves confound

His strength the more is.

No lion can him fright,

He'll with a giant fight,

But he will have a right

To be a Pilgrim.

Hobgoblin nor foul fiend

Can daunt his spirit,

He knows he at the end

Shall life inherit.

Then fancies fly away

He'll fear not what men say,

He'll labour night and day

To be a Pilgrim."

All readers of "The Pilgrim's Progress" and "The Holy War" are

familiar with the long metrical compositions giving the history of

these works by which they are prefaced and the latter work is

closed. No more characteristic examples of Bunyan's muse can be

found. They show his excellent command of his native tongue in

racy vernacular, homely but never vulgar, and his power of

expressing his meaning "with sharp defined outlines and without the

waste of a word."

Take this account of his perplexity, when the First Part of his

"Pilgrim's Progress" was finished, whether it should be given to

the world or no, and the characteristic decision with which he

settled the question for himself:-

"Well, when I had then put mine ends together,

I show'd them others that I might see whether

They would condemn them, or them justify;

And some said Let them live; some, Let them die.

Some said, John, print it; others said, Not so;

Some said it might do good; others said No.

Now was I in a strait, and did not see

Which was the best thing to be done by me;

At last I thought since you are thus divided

I print it will; and so the case decided;"

or the lines in which he introduces the Second Part of the Pilgrim

to the readers of the former part:-

"Go now, my little Book, to every place

Where my first Pilgrim hath but shown his face:

Call at their door: If any say, 'Who's there?'

Then answer that Christiana is here.

If they bid thee come in, then enter thou

With all thy boys. And then, as thou knowest how,

Tell who they are, also from whence they came;

Perhaps they'll know them by their looks or name.

But if they should not, ask them yet again

If formerly they did not entertain

One Christian, a pilgrim. If they say

They did, and were delighted in his way:

Then let them know that these related are

Unto him, yea, his wife and children are.

Tell them that they have left their house and home,

Are turned Pilgrims, seek a world to come;

That they have met with hardships on the way,

That they do meet with troubles night and day."

How racy, even if the lines are a little halting, is the defence of

the genuineness of his Pilgrim in "The Advertisement to the Reader"

at the end of "The Holy War."

"Some say the Pilgrim's Progress is not mine,

Insinuating as if I would shine

In name or fame by the worth of another,

Like some made rich by robbing of their brother;

Or that so fond I am of being sire

I'll father bastards; or if need require,

I'll tell a lie or print to get applause.

I scorn it. John such dirt-heap never was

Since God converted him. . .

Witness my name, if anagram'd to thee

The letters make NU HONY IN A B.

IOHN BUNYAN."

How full of life and vigour his sketch of the beleaguerment and

deliverance of "Mansoul," as a picture of his own spiritual

experience, in the introductory verses to "The Holy War"! -

"For my part I, myself, was in the town,

Both when 'twas set up, and when pulling down;

I saw Diabolus in possession,

And Mansoul also under his oppression.

Yes, I was there when she crowned him for lord,

And to him did submit with one accord.

When Mansoul trampled upon things divine,

And wallowed in filth as doth a swine,

When she betook herself unto her arms,

Fought her Emmanuel, despised his charms:

Then I was there, and did rejoice to see

Diabolus and Mansoul so agree.

I saw the prince's armed men come down

By troops, by thousands, to besiege the town,

I saw the captains, heard the trumpets sound,

And how his forces covered all the ground,

Yea, how they set themselves in battle array,

I shall remember to my dying day."

Bunyan's other essays in the domain of poetry need not detain us

long. The most considerable of these - at least in bulk - if it be

really his, is a version of some portions of the Old and New

Testaments: the life of Joseph, the Book of Ruth, the history of

Samson, the Book of Jonah, the Sermon on the Mount, and the General

Epistle of St. James. The attempt to do the English Bible into

verse has been often made and never successfully: in the nature of

things success in such a task is impossible, nor can this attempt

be regarded as happier than that of others. Mr. Froude indeed, who

undoubtingly accepts their genuineness, is of a different opinion.

He styles the "Book of Ruth" and the "History of Joseph" "beautiful

idylls," of such high excellence that, "if we found them in the

collected works of a poet laureate, we should consider that a

difficult task had been accomplished successfully." It would seem

almost doubtful whether Mr. Froude can have read the compositions

that he commends so largely, and so much beyond their merit. The

following specimen, taken haphazard, will show how thoroughly

Bunyan or the rhymester, whoever he may be, has overcome what Mr.

Froude regards as an almost insuperable difficulty, and has managed

to "spoil completely the faultless prose of the English

translation":-

"Ruth replied,

Intreat me not to leave thee or return;

For where thou goest I'll go, where thou sojourn

I'll sojourn also - and what people's thine,

And who thy God, the same shall both be mine.

Where thou shalt die, there will I die likewise,

And I'll be buried where thy body lies.

The Lord do so to me and more if I

Do leave thee or forsake thee till I die."

The more we read of these poems, not given to the world till twelve

years after Bunyan's death, and that by a publisher who was "a

repeated offender against the laws of honest dealing," the more we

are inclined to agree with Dr. Brown, that the internal evidence of

their style renders their genuineness at the least questionable.

In the dull prosaic level of these compositions there is certainly

no trace of the "force and power" always present in Bunyan's rudest

rhymes, still less of the "dash of genius" and the "sparkle of

soul" which occasionally discover the hand of a master.

Of the authenticity of Bunyan's "Divine Emblems," originally

published three years after his death under the title of "Country

Rhymes for Children," there is no question. The internal evidence

confirms the external. The book is thoroughly in Bunyan's vein,

and in its homely naturalness of imagery recalls the similitudes of

the "Interpreter's House," especially those expounded to Christiana

and her boys. As in that "house of imagery" things of the most

common sort, the sweeping of a room, the burning of a fire, the

drinking of a chicken, a robin with a spider in his mouth, are made

the vehicle of religious teaching; so in this "Book for Boys and

Girls," a mole burrowing in the ground, a swallow soaring in the

air, the cuckoo which can do nothing but utter two notes, a flaming

and a blinking candle, or a pound of candles falling to the ground,

a boy chasing a butterfly, the cackling of a hen when she has laid

her egg, all, to his imaginative mind, set forth some spiritual

truth or enforce some wholesome moral lesson. How racy, though

homely, are these lines on a Frog! -

"The Frog by nature is but damp and cold,

Her mouth is large, her belly much will hold,

She sits somewhat ascending, loves to be

Croaking in gardens, though unpleasantly.

The hypocrite is like unto this Frog,

As like as is the puppy to the dog.

He is of nature cold, his mouth is wide

To prate, and at true goodness to deride.

And though this world is that which he doth love,

He mounts his head as if he lived above.

And though he seeks in churches for to croak,

He neither seeketh Jesus nor His yoke."

There is some real poetry in those on the Cuckoo, though we may be

inclined to resent his harsh treatment of our universal favourite:-

"Thou booby says't thou nothing but Cuckoo?

The robin and the wren can that outdo.

They to us play thorough their little throats

Not one, but sundry pretty tuneful notes.

But thou hast fellows, some like thee can do

Little but suck our eggs, and sing Cuckoo.

Thy notes do not first welcome in our spring,

Nor dost thou its first tokens to us bring.

Birds less than thee by far like prophets do

Tell us 'tis coming, though not by Cuckoo,

Nor dost thou summer bear away with thee

Though thou a yawling bawling Cuckoo be.

When thou dost cease among us to appear,

Then doth our harvest bravely crown our year.

But thou hast fellows, some like thee can do

Little but suck our eggs, and sing Cuckoo.

Since Cuckoos forward not our early spring

Nor help with notes to bring our harvest in,

And since while here, she only makes a noise

So pleasing unto none as girls and boys,

The Formalist we may compare her to,

For he doth suck our eggs and sing Cuckoo."

A perusal of this little volume with its roughness and quaintness,

sometimes grating on the ear but full of strong thought and

picturesque images, cannot fail to raise Bunyan's pretensions as a

poet. His muse, it is true, as Alexander Smith has said, is a

homely one. She is "clad in russet, wears shoes and stockings, has

a country accent, and walks along the level Bedfordshire roads."

But if the lines are unpolished, "they have pith and sinew, like

the talk of a shrewd peasant," with the "strong thought and the

knack of the skilled workman who can drive by a single blow the

nail home to the head."

During his imprisonment Bunyan's pen was much more fertile in prose

than in poetry. Besides his world-famous "Grace Abounding," he

produced during the first six years of his gaol life a treatise on

prayer, entitled "Praying in the Spirit;" a book on "Christian

Behaviour," setting forth with uncompromising plainness the

relative duties of husbands and wives, parents and children,

masters and servants, by which those who profess a true faith are

bound to show forth its reality and power; the "Holy City," an

exposition of the vision in the closing chapters of the Book of

Revelation, brilliant with picturesque description and rich in

suggestive thought, which, he tells us, had its origin in a sermon

preached by him to his brethren in bonds in their prison chamber;

and a work on the "Resurrection of the Dead and Eternal Judgment."

On these works we may not linger. There is not one of them which

is not marked by vigour of thought, clearness of language, accuracy

of arrangement, and deep spiritual experience. Nor is there one

which does not here and there exhibit specimens of Bunyan's

picturesque imaginative power, and his command of forcible and racy

language. Each will reward perusal. His work on "Prayer" is

couched in the most exalted strain, and is evidently the production

of one who by long and agonizing experience had learnt the true

nature of prayer, as a pouring out of the soul to God, and a

wrestling with Him until the blessing, delayed not denied, is

granted. It is, however, unhappily deformed by much ignorant

reviling of the Book of Common Prayer. He denounces it as "taken

out of the papistical mass-book, the scraps and fragments of some

popes, some friars, and I know not what;" and ridicules the order

of service it propounds to the worshippers. "They have the matter

and the manner of their prayer at their fingers' ends; they set

such a prayer for such a day, and that twenty years before it

comes: one for Christmas, another for Easter, and six days after

that. They have also bounded how many syllables must be said in

every one of them at their public exercises. For each saint's day

also they have them ready for the generations yet unborn to say.

They can tell you also when you shall kneel, when you shall stand,

when you should abide in your seats, when you should go up into the

chancel, and what you should do when you come there. All which the

apostles came short of, as not being able to compose so profound a

manner." This bitter satirical vein in treating of sacred things

is unworthy of its author, and degrading to his sense of reverence.

It has its excuse in the hard measure he had received from those

who were so unwisely endeavouring to force the Prayer Book on a

generation which had largely forgotten it. In his mind, the men

and the book were identified, and the unchristian behaviour of its

advocates blinded his eyes to its merits as a guide to devotion.

Bunyan, when denouncing forms in worship, forgot that the same

apostle who directs that in our public assemblies everything should

be done "to edification," directs also that everything should be

done "decently and in order."

By far the most important of these prison works - "The Pilgrim's

Progress," belonging, as will be seen, to a later period - is the

"Grace Abounding," in which with inimitable earnestness and

simplicity Bunyan gives the story of his early life and his

religious history. This book, if he had written no other, would

stamp Bunyan as one of the greatest masters of the English language

of his own or any other age. In graphic delineation of the

struggles of a conscience convicted of sin towards a hardly won

freedom and peace, the alternations of light and darkness, of hope

and despair, which chequered its course, its morbid self-torturing

questionings of motive and action, this work of the travelling

tinker, as a spiritual history, has never been surpassed. Its

equal can hardly be found, save perhaps in the "Confessions of St.

Augustine." These, however, though describing a like spiritual

conflict, are couched in a more cultured style, and rise to a

higher metaphysical region than Bunyan was capable of attaining to.

His level is a lower one, but on that level Bunyan is without a

rival. Never has the history of a soul convinced of the reality of

eternal perdition in its most terrible form as the most certain of

all possible facts, and of its own imminent danger of hopeless,

irreversible doom - seeing itself, to employ his own image,

hanging, as it were, over the pit of hell by a thin line, which

might snap any moment - been portrayed in more nervous and awe-

inspiring language. And its awfulness is enhanced by its self-

evident truth. Bunyan was drawing no imaginary picture of what

others might feel, but simply telling in plain unadorned language

what he had felt. The experience was a very tremendous reality to

him. Like Dante, if he had not actually been in hell, he had been

on the very threshold of it; he had in very deed traversed "the

Valley of the Shadow of Death," had heard its "hideous noises," and

seen "the Hobgoblins of the Pit." He "spake what he knew and

testified what he had seen." Every sentence breathes the most

tremendous earnestness. His words are the plainest, drawn from his

own homely vernacular. He says in his preface, which will amply

repay reading, as one of the most characteristic specimens of his

style, that he could have stepped into a higher style, and adorned

his narrative more plentifully. But he dared not. "God did not

play in convincing him. The devil did not play in tempting him.

He himself did not play when he sunk as into a bottomless pit, and

the pangs of hell caught hold on him. Nor could he play in

relating them. He must be plain and simple and lay down the thing

as it was. He that liked it might receive it. He that did not

might produce a better." The remembrance of "his great sins, his

great temptations, his great fears of perishing for ever, recalled

the remembrance of his great help, his great support from heaven,

the great grace God extended to such a wretch as he was." Having

thus enlarged on his own experience, he calls on his spiritual

children, for whose use the work was originally composed and to

whom it is dedicated, - "those whom God had counted him worthy to

beget to Faith by his ministry in the Word" - to survey their own

religious history, to "work diligently and leave no corner

unsearched." He would have them "remember their tears and prayers

to God; how they sighed under every hedge for mercy. Had they

never a hill Mizar (Psa. xlii. 6) to remember? Had they forgotten

the close, the milkhouse, the stable, the barn, where God visited

their souls? Let them remember the Word on which the Lord had

caused them to hope. If they had sinned against light, if they

were tempted to blaspheme, if they were down in despair, let them

remember that it had been so with him, their spiritual father, and

that out of them all the Lord had delivered him." This dedication

ends thus: "My dear children, the milk and honey is beyond this

wilderness. God be merciful to you, and grant you be not slothful

to go in to possess the land."

This remarkable book, as we learn from the title-page, was "written

by his own hand in prison." It was first published by George

Larkin in London, in 1666, the sixth year of his imprisonment, the

year of the Fire of London, about the time that he experienced his

first brief release. As with "The Pilgrim's Progress," the work

grew in picturesque detail and graphic power in the author's hand

after its first appearance. The later editions supply some of the

most interesting personal facts contained in the narrative, which

were wanting when it first issued from the press. His two escapes

from drowning, and from the supposed sting of an adder; his being

drawn as a soldier, and his providential deliverance from death;

the graphic account of his difficulty in giving up bell-ringing at

Elstow Church, and dancing on Sundays on Elstow Green - these and

other minor touches which give a life and colour to the story,

which we should be very sorry to lose, are later additions. It is

impossible to over-estimate the value of the "Grace Abounding,"

both for the facts of Bunyan's earlier life and for the spiritual

experience of which these facts were, in his eyes only the outward

framework. Beginning with his parentage and boyhood, it carries us

down to his marriage and life in the wayside-cottage at Elstow, his

introduction to Mr. Gifford's congregation at Bedford, his joining

that holy brotherhood, and his subsequent call to the work of the

ministry among them, and winds up with an account of his

apprehension, examinations, and imprisonment in Bedford gaol. The

work concludes with a report of the conversation between his noble-

hearted wife and Sir Matthew Hale and the other judges at the

Midsummer assizes, narrated in a former chapter, "taken down," he

says, "from her own mouth." The whole story is of such sustained

interest that our chief regret on finishing it is that it stops

where it does, and does not go on much further. Its importance for

our knowledge of Bunyan as a man, as distinguished from an author,

and of the circumstances of his life, is seen by a comparison of

our acquaintance with his earlier and with his later years. When

he laid down his pen no one took it up, and beyond two or three

facts, and a few hazy anecdotes we know little or nothing of all

that happened between his final release and his death.

The value of the "Grace Abounding," however, as a work of

experimental religion may be easily over-estimated. It is not many

who can study Bunyan's minute history of the various stages of his

spiritual life with real profit. To some temperaments, especially

among the young, the book is more likely to prove injurious than

beneficial; it is calculated rather to nourish morbid imaginations,

and a dangerous habit of introspection, than to foster the quiet

growth of the inner life. Bunyan's unhappy mode of dealing with

the Bible as a collection of texts, each of Divine authority and

declaring a definite meaning entirely irrespective of its context,

by which the words hide the Word, is also utterly destructive of

the true purpose of the Holy Scriptures as a revelation of God's

loving and holy mind and will. Few things are more touching than

the eagerness with which, in his intense self-torture, Bunyan tried

to evade the force of those "fearful and terrible Scriptures" which

appeared to seal his condemnation, and to lay hold of the promises

to the penitent sinner. His tempest-tossed spirit could only find

rest by doing violence to the dogma, then universally accepted and

not quite extinct even in our own days, that the authority of the

Bible - that "Divine Library" - collectively taken, belongs to each

and every sentence of the Bible taken for and by itself, and that,

in Coleridge's words, "detached sentences from books composed at

the distance of centuries, nay, sometimes at a millenium from each

other, under different dispensations and for different objects,"

are to be brought together "into logical dependency." But "where

the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty." The divinely given

life in the soul of man snaps the bonds of humanly-constructed

logical systems. Only those, however, who have known by experience

the force of Bunyan's spiritual combat, can fully appreciate and

profit by Bunyan's narrative. He tells us on the title-page that

it was written "for the support of the weak and tempted people of

God." For such the "Grace Abounding to the chief of sinners" will

ever prove most valuable. Those for whom it was intended will find

in it a message - of comfort and strength.

As has been said, Bunyan's pen was almost idle during the last six

years of his imprisonment. Only two of his works were produced in

this period: his "Confession of Faith," and his "Defence of the

Doctrine of Justification by Faith." Both were written very near

the end of his prison life, and published in the same year, 1672,

only a week or two before his release. The object of the former

work was, as Dr. Brown tells us, "to vindicate his teaching, and if

possible, to secure his liberty." Writing as one "in bonds for the

Gospel," his professed principles, he asserts, are "faith, and

holiness springing therefrom, with an endeavour so far as in him

lies to be at peace with all men." He is ready to hold communion

with all whose principles are the same; with all whom he can reckon

as children of God. With these he will not quarrel about "things

that are circumstantial," such as water baptism, which he regards

as something quite indifferent, men being "neither the better for

having it, nor the worse for having it not." "He will receive them

in the Lord as becometh saints. If they will not have communion

with him, the neglect is theirs not his. But with the openly

profane and ungodly, though, poor people! they have been christened

and take the communion, he will have no communion. It would be a

strange community, he says, that consisted of men and beasts. Men

do not receive their horse or their dog to their table; they put

them in a room by themselves." As regards forms and ceremonies, he

"cannot allow his soul to be governed in its approach to God by the

superstitious inventions of this world. He is content to stay in

prison even till the moss grows on his eyelids rather than thus

make of his conscience a continual butchery and slaughter-shop by

putting out his eyes and committing himself to the blind to lead

him. Eleven years' imprisonment was a weighty argument to pause

and pause again over the foundation of the principles for which he

had thus suffered. Those principles he had asserted at his trial,

and in the tedious tract of time since then he had in cold blood

examined them by the Word of God and found them good; nor could he

dare to revolt from or deny them on pain of eternal damnation."

The second-named work, the "Defence of the Doctrine of

Justification by Faith," is entirely controversial. The Rev.

Edward Fowler, afterwards Bishop of Gloucester, then Rector of

Northill, had published in the early part of 1671, a book entitled

"The Design of Christianity." A copy having found its way into

Bunyan's hands, he was so deeply stirred by what he deemed its

subversion of the true foundation of Evangelical religion that he

took up his pen and in the space of six weeks composed a long and

elaborate examination of the book, chapter by chapter, and a

confutation of its teaching. Fowler's doctrines as Bunyan

understood them - or rather misunderstood them - awoke the worst

side of his impetuous nature. His vituperation of the author and

his book is coarse and unmeasured. He roundly charges Fowler with

having "closely, privily, and devilishly turned the grace of God

into a licentious doctrine, bespattering it with giving liberty to

lasciviousness;" and he calls him "a pretended minister of the

Word," who, in "his cursed blasphemous book vilely exposes to

public view the rottenness of his heart, in principle diametrically

opposite to the simplicity of the Gospel of Christ, a glorious

latitudinarian that can, as to religion, turn and twist like an eel

on the angle, or rather like the weathercock that stands on the

steeple;" and describes him as "contradicting the wholesome

doctrine of the Church of England." He "knows him not by face much

less his personal practise." He may have "kept himself clear of

the ignorant Sir Johns who had for a long time, as a judgment of

God, been made the mouth to the people - men of debauched lives who

for the love of filthy lucre and the pampering of their idle

carcases had made shipwreck of their former faith;" but he does

know that having been ejected as a Nonconformist in 1662, he had

afterwards gone over to the winning side, and he fears that "such

an unstable weathercock spirit as he had manifested would stumble

the work and give advantage to the adversary to speak vilifyingly

of religion." No excuse can be offered for the coarse violence of

Bunyan's language in this book; but it was too much the habit of

the time to load a theological opponent with vituperation, to push

his assertions to the furthest extreme, and make the most

unwarrantable deductions from them. It must be acknowledged that

Bunyan does not treat Fowler and his doctrines with fairness, and

that, if the latter may be thought to depreciate unduly the

sacrifice of the Death of Christ as an expiation for man's guilt,

and to lay too great a stress on the moral faculties remaining in

the soul after the Fall, Bunyan errs still more widely on the other

side in asserting the absolute, irredeemable corruption of human

nature, leaving nothing for grace to work upon, but demanding an

absolutely fresh creation, not a revivification of the Divine

nature grievously marred but not annihilated by Adam's sin.

A reply to Bunyan's severe strictures was not slow to appear. The

book bears the title, characteristic of the tone and language of

its contents, of "DIRT WIP'T OFF; or, a manifest discovery of the

Gross Ignorance, Erroneousness, and most Unchristian and Wicked

Spirit of one John Bunyan, Lay-preacher in Bedford." It professes

to be written by a friend of Fowler's, but Fowler was generally

accredited with it. Its violent tirades against one who, he says,

had been "near these twenty years or longer very infamous in the

Town and County of Bedford as a very Pestilent Schismatick," and

whom he suggests the authorities have done wrong in letting out of

prison, and had better clap in gaol again as "an impudent and

malicious Firebrand," have long since been consigned to a merciful

oblivion, where we may safely leave them.

CHAPTER VIII.

Bunyan's protracted imprisonment came to an end in 1672. The exact

date of his actual liberation is uncertain. His pardon under the

Great Seal bears date September 13th. But we find from the church

books that he had been appointed pastor of the congregation to

which he belonged as early as the 21st of January of that year, and

on the 9th of May his ministerial position was duly recognized by

the Government, and a license was granted to him to act "as

preacher in the house of Josias Roughead," for those "of the

Persuasion commonly called Congregational." His release would

therefore seem to have anticipated the formal issue of his pardon

by four months. Bunyan was now half way through his forty-fourth

year. Sixteen years still remained to him before his career of

indefatigable service in the Master's work was brought to a close.

Of these sixteen years, as has already been remarked, we have only

a very general knowledge. Details are entirely wanting; nor is

there any known source from which they can be recovered. If he

kept any diary it has not been preserved. If he wrote letters -

and one who was looked up to by so large a circle of disciples as a

spiritual father and guide, and whose pen was so ready of exercise,

cannot fail to have written many - not one has come down to us.

The pages of the church books during his pastorate are also

provokingly barren of record, and little that they contain is in

Bunyan's handwriting. As Dr. Brown has said, "he seems to have

been too busy to keep any records of his busy life." Nor can we

fill up the blank from external authorities. The references to

Bunyan in contemporary biographies are far fewer than we might have

expected; certainly far fewer than we could have desired. But the

little that is recorded is eminently characteristic. We see him

constantly engaged in the great work to which he felt God had

called him, and for which, "with much content through grace," he

had suffered twelve years' incarceration. In addition to the

regular discharge of his pastoral duties to his own congregation,

he took a general oversight of the villages far and near which had

been the scene of his earlier ministry, preaching whenever

opportunity offered, and, ever unsparing of his own personal

labour, making long journeys into distant parts of the country for

the furtherance of the gospel. We find him preaching at Leicester

in the year of his release. Reading also is mentioned as receiving

occasional visits from him, and that not without peril after the

revival of persecution; while the congregations in London had the

benefit of his exhortations at stated intervals. Almost the first

thing Bunyan did, after his liberation from gaol, was to make

others sharers in his hardly won "liberty of prophesying," by

applying to the Government for licenses for preachers and preaching

places in Bedfordshire and the neighbouring counties, under the

Declaration of Indulgence. The still existing list sent in to the

authorities by him, in his own handwriting, contains the names of

twenty-five preachers and thirty buildings, besides "Josias

Roughead's House in his orchard at Bedford." Nineteen of these

were in his own native county, three in Northamptonshire, three in

Buckinghamshire, two in Cambridgeshire, two in Huntingdonshire, and

one in Hertfordshire. The places sought to be licensed were very

various, barns, malthouses, halls belonging to public companies,

&c., but more usually private houses. Over these religious

communities, bound together by a common faith and common suffering,

Bunyan exercised a quasi-episcopal superintendence, which gained

for him the playful title of "Bishop Bunyan." In his regular

circuits, - "visitations" we may not improperly term them, - we are

told that he exerted himself to relieve the temporal wants of the

sufferers under the penal laws, - so soon and so cruelly revived, -

ministered diligently to the sick and afflicted, and used his

influence in reconciling differences between "professors of the

gospel," and thus prevented the scandal of litigation among

Christians. The closing period of Bunyan's life was laborious but

happy, spent "honourably and innocently" in writing, preaching,

visiting his congregations, and planting daughter churches.

"Happy," writes Mr. Froude, "in his work; happy in the sense that

his influence was daily extending - spreading over his own country

and to the far-off settlements of America, - he spent his last

years in his own land of Beulah, Doubting Castle out of sight, and

the towers and minarets of Immanuel's Land growing nearer and

clearer as the days went on."

With his time so largely occupied in his spiritual functions, he

could have had but small leisure to devote to his worldly calling.

This, however, one of so honest and independent a spirit is sure

not to have neglected, it was indeed necessary that to a certain

extent he should work for his living. He had a family to maintain.

His congregation were mostly of the poorer sort, unable to

contribute much to their pastor's support. Had it been otherwise,

Bunyan was the last man in the world to make a trade of the gospel,

and though never hesitating to avail himself of the apostolic

privilege to "live of the gospel," he, like the apostle of the

Gentiles, would never be ashamed to "work with his own hands," that

he might "minister to his own necessities," and those of his

family. But from the time of his release he regarded his

ministerial work as the chief work of his life. "When he came

abroad," says one who knew him, "he found his temporal affairs were

gone to wreck, and he had as to them to begin again as if he had

newly come into the world. But yet he was not destitute of

friends, who had all along supported him with necessaries and had

been very good to his family, so that by their assistance getting

things a little about him again, he resolved as much as possible to

decline worldly business, and give himself wholly up to the service

of God." The anonymous writer to whom we are indebted for

information concerning his imprisonment and his subsequent life,

says that Bunyan, "contenting himself with that little God had

bestowed upon him, sequestered himself from all secular employments

to follow that of his call to the ministry." The fact, however,

that in the "deed of gift" of all his property to his wife in 1685,

he still describes himself as a "brazier," puts it beyond all doubt

that though his ministerial duties were his chief concern, he

prudently kept fast hold of his handicraft as a certain means of

support for himself and those dependent on him. On the whole,

Bunyan's outward circumstances were probably easy. His wants were

few and easily supplied. "Having food and raiment" for himself,

his wife, and his children, he was "therewith content." The house

in the parish of St. Cuthbert's which was his home from his release

to his death (unhappily demolished fifty years back), shows the

humble character of his daily life. It was a small cottage, such

as labourers now occupy, with three small rooms on the ground

floor, and a garret with a diminutive dormer window under the high-

pitched tiled roof. Behind stood an outbuilding which served as

his workshop. We have a passing glimpse of this cottage home in

the diary of Thomas Hearne, the Oxford antiquary. One Mr. Bagford,

otherwise unknown to us, had once "walked into the country" on

purpose to see "the study of John Bunyan," and the student who made

it famous. On his arrival the interviewer - as we should now call

him - met with a civil and courteous reception from Bunyan; but he

found the contents of his study hardly larger than those of his

prison cell. They were limited to a Bible, and copies of "The

Pilgrim's Progress," and a few other books, chiefly his own works,

"all lying on a shelf or shelves." Slight as this sketch is, it

puts us more in touch with the immortal dreamer than many longer

and more elaborate paragraphs.

Bunyan's celebrity as a preacher, great before he was shut up in

gaol, was naturally enhanced by the circumstance of his

imprisonment. The barn in Josias Roughead's orchard, where he was

licensed as a preacher, was "so thronged the first time he appeared

there to edify, that many were constrained to stay without; every

one that was of his persuasion striving to partake of his

instructions." Wherever he ministered, sometimes, when troublous

days returned, in woods, and in dells, and other hiding-places, the

announcement that John Bunyan was to preach gathered a large and

attentive auditory, hanging on his lips and drinking from them the

word of life. His fame grew the more he was known and reached its

climax when his work was nearest its end. His biographer Charles

Doe tells us that just before his death, "when Mr. Bunyan preached

in London, if there were but one day's notice given, there would be

more people come together than the meeting-house could hold. I

have seen, by my computation, about twelve hundred at a morning

lecture by seven o'clock on a working day, in the dark winter time.

I also computed about three thousand that came to hear him one

Lord's Day in London, at a town's-end meeting-house, so that half

were fain to go back again for want of room, and then himself was

fain at a back door to be pulled almost over people to get upstairs

to his pulpit." This "town's-end meeting house" has been

identified by some with a quaint straggling long building which

once stood in Queen Street, Southwark, of which there is an

engraving in Wilkinson's "Londina Illustrata." Doe's account,

however, probably points to another building, as the Zoar Street

meeting-house was not opened for worship till about six months

before Bunyan's death, and then for Presbyterian service. Other

places in London connected with his preaching are Pinners' Hall in

Old Broad Street, where, on one of his occasional visits, he

delivered his striking sermon on "The Greatness of the Soul and the

Unspeakableness of the Loss thereof," first published in 1683; and

Dr. Owen's meeting-house in White's Alley, Moorfields, which was

the gathering-place for titled folk, city merchants, and other

Nonconformists of position and degree. At earlier times, when the

penal laws against Nonconformists were in vigorous exercise, Bunyan

had to hold his meetings by stealth in private houses and other

places where he might hope to escape the lynx-eyed informer. It

was at one of these furtive meetings that his earliest biographer,

the honest combmaker at the foot of London Bridge, Charles Doe,

first heard him preach. His choice of an Old Testament text at

first offended Doe, who had lately come into New Testament light

and had had enough of the "historical and doing-for-favour of the

Old Testament." But as he went on he preached "so New Testament

like" that his hearer's prejudices vanished, and he could only

"admire, weep for joy, and give the preacher his affections."

Bunyan was more than once urged to leave Bedford and settle in the

metropolis. But to all these solicitations he turned a deaf ear.

Bedford was the home of his deepest affections. It was there the

holy words of the poor women "sitting in the sun," speaking "as if

joy did make them speak," had first "made his heart shake," and

shown him that he was still a stranger to vital godliness. It was

there he had been brought out of darkness into light himself, and

there too he had been the means of imparting the same blessing to

others. The very fact of his long imprisonment had identified him

with the town and its inhabitants. There he had a large and loving

congregation, to whom he was bound by the ties of a common faith

and common sufferings. Many of these recognized in Bunyan their

spiritual father; all, save a few "of the baser sort," reverenced

him as their teacher and guide. No prospect of a wider field of

usefulness, still less of a larger income, could tempt him to

desert his "few sheep in the wilderness." Some of them, it is

true, were wayward sheep, who wounded the heart of their pastor by

breaking from the fold, and displaying very un-lamb-like behaviour.

He had sometimes to realize painfully that no pale is so close but

that the enemy will creep in somewhere and seduce the flock; and

that no rules of communion, however strict, can effectually exclude

unworthy members. Brother John Stanton had to be admonished "for

abusing his wife and beating her often for very light matters" (if

the matters had been less light, would the beating in these days

have been thought justifiable?); and Sister Mary Foskett, for

"privately whispering of a horrid scandal, 'without culler of

truth,' against Brother Honeylove." Evil-speaking and backbiting

set brother against brother. Dissensions and heartburnings grieved

Bunyan's spirit. He himself was not always spared. A letter had

to be written to Sister Hawthorn "by way of reproof for her

unseemly language against Brother Scot and the whole Church." John

Wildman was had up before the Church and convicted of being "an

abominable liar and slanderer," "extraordinary guilty" against "our

beloved Brother Bunyan himself." And though Sister Hawthorn

satisfied the Church by "humble acknowledgment of her miscariag,"

the bolder misdoer only made matters worse by "a frothy letter,"

which left no alternative but a sentence of expulsion. But though

Bunyan's flock contained some whose fleeces were not as white as he

desired, these were the exception. The congregation meeting in

Josias Roughead's barn must have been, take them as a whole, a

quiet, God-fearing, spiritually-minded folk, of whom their pastor

could think with thankfulness and satisfaction as "his hope and joy

and crown of rejoicing." From such he could not be severed

lightly. Inducements which would have been powerful to a meaner

nature fell dead on his independent spirit. He was not "a man that

preached by way of bargain for money," and, writes Doe, "more than

once he refused a more plentiful income to keep his station." As

Dr. Brown says: "He was too deeply rooted on the scene of his

lifelong labours and sufferings to think of striking his tent till

the command came from the Master to come up to the higher service

for which he had been ripening so long." At Bedford, therefore, he

remained; quietly staying on in his cottage in St. Cuthbert's, and

ministering to his humble flock, loving and beloved, as Mr. Froude

writes, "through changes of ministry, Popish plots, and Monmouth

rebellions, while the terror of a restoration of Popery was

bringing on the Revolution; careless of kings and cabinets, and

confident that Giant Pope had lost his power for harm, and

thenceforward could only bite his nails at the passing pilgrims."

Bunyan's peace was not, however, altogether undisturbed. Once it

received a shock in a renewal of his imprisonment, though only for

a brief period, in 1675, to which we owe the world-famous

"Pilgrim's Progress"; and it was again threatened, though not

actually disturbed ten years later, when the renewal of the

persecution of the Nonconformists induced him to make over all his

property - little enough in good sooth - to his wife by deed of

gift.

The former of these events demands our attention, not so much for

itself as for its connection with Bishop Barlow's interference in

Bunyan's behalf, and, still more, for its results in the production

of "The Pilgrim's Progress." Until very recently the bare fact of

this later imprisonment, briefly mentioned by Charles Doe and

another of his early biographers, was all that was known to us.

They even leave the date to be gathered, though both agree in

limiting its duration to six months or thereabouts. The recent

discovery, among the Chauncey papers, by Mr. W. G. Thorpe, of the

original warrant under which Bunyan was at this time sent to gaol,

supplies the missing information. It has been already noticed that

the Declaration of Indulgence, under which Bunyan was liberated in

1672, was very short-lived. Indeed it barely lasted in force a

twelvemonth. Granted on the 15th of March of that year, it was

withdrawn on the 9th of March of the following year, at the

instance of the House of Commons, who had taken alarm at a

suspension of the laws of the realm by the "inherent power" of the

sovereign, without the advice or sanction of Parliament. The

Declaration was cancelled by Charles II., the monarch, it is said,

tearing off the Great Seal with his own hands, a subsidy being

promised to the royal spendthrift as a reward for his complaisance.

The same year the Test Act became law. Bunyan therefore and his

fellow Nonconformists were in a position of greater peril, as far

as the letter of the law was concerned, than they had ever been.

But, as Dr. Stoughton has remarked, "the letter of the law is not

to be taken as an accurate index of the Nonconformists' condition.

The pressure of a bad law depends very much upon the hands employed

in its administration." Unhappily for Bunyan, the parties in whose

hands the execution of the penal statutes against Nonconformists

rested in Bedfordshire were his bitter personal enemies, who were

not likely to let them lie inactive. The prime mover in the matter

was doubtless Dr. William Foster, that "right Judas" whom we shall

remember holding the candle in Bunyan's face in the hall of

Harlington House at his first apprehension, and showing such

feigned affection "as if he would have leaped on his neck and

kissed him." He had some time before this become Chancellor of the

Bishop of Lincoln, and Commissary of the Court of the Archdeacon of

Bedford, offices which put in his hands extensive powers which he

had used with the most relentless severity. He has damned himself

to eternal infamy by the bitter zeal he showed in hunting down

Dissenters, inflicting exorbitant fines, and breaking into their

houses and distraining their goods for a full discharge,

maltreating their wives and daughters, and haling the offenders to

prison. Having been chiefly instrumental in Bunyan's first

committal to gaol, he doubtless viewed his release with indignation

as the leader of the Bedfordshire sectaries who was doing more

mischief to the cause of conformity, which it was his province at

all hazards to maintain, than any other twenty men. The church

would never be safe till he was clapped in prison again. The power

to do this was given by the new proclamation. By this act the

licenses to preach previously granted to Nonconformists were

recalled. Henceforward no conventicle had "any authority,

allowance, or encouragement from his Majesty." We can easily

imagine the delight with which Foster would hail the issue of this

proclamation. How he would read and read again with ever fresh

satisfaction its stringent clauses. That pestilent fellow, Bunyan,

was now once more in his clutches. This time there was no chance

of his escape. All licences were recalled, and he was absolutely

defenceless. It should not be Foster's fault if he failed to end

his days in the prison from which he ought never to have been

released. The proclamation is dated the 4th of March, 1674-5, and

was published in the GAZETTE on the 9th. It would reach Bedford on

the 11th. It placed Bunyan at the mercy of "his enemies, who

struck at him forthwith." A warrant was issued for his

apprehension, undoubtedly written by our old friend, Paul Cobb, the

clerk of the peace, who, it will be remembered, had acted in the

same capacity on Bunyan's first committal. It is dated the 4th of

March, and bears the signature of no fewer than thirteen

magistrates, ten of them affixing their seals.

That so unusually large a number took part in the execution of this

warrant, is sufficient indication of the importance attached to

Bunyan's imprisonment by the gentry of the county. The following

is the document:-

"To the Constables of Bedford and to every of them

Whereas information and complaint is made unto us that

(notwithstanding the Kings Majties late Act of most gracious

generall and free pardon to all his subjects for past misdemeanours

that by his said clemencie and indulgent grace and favor they might

bee mooved and induced for the time to come more carefully to

observe his Highenes lawes and Statutes and to continue in theire

loyall and due obedience to his Majtie) Yett one John Bunnyon of

youre said Towne Tynker hath divers times within one month last

past in contempt of his Majtie's good Lawes preached or teached at

a Conventicle Meeting or Assembly under color or ptence of exercise

of Religion in other manner than according to the Liturgie or

practiss of the Church of England These are therefore in his

Majties name to comand you forthwith to apprehend and bring the

Body of the said John Bunnion before us or any of us or other his

Majties Justice of Peace within the said County to answer the

premisses and further to doo and receave as to Lawe and Justice

shall appertaine and hereof you are not to faile. Given under our

handes and seales this ffourth day of March in the seven and

twentieth yeare of the Raigne of our most gracious Soveraigne Lord

King Charles the Second A que Dni., juxta &c 1674

J Napier W Beecher G Blundell Hum: Monoux

Will ffranklin John Ventris

Will Spencer

Will Gery St Jo Chernocke Wm Daniels

T Browne W ffoster

Gaius Squire"

There would be little delay in the execution of the warrant.

John Bunyan was a marked man and an old offender, who, on his

arrest, would be immediately committed for trial. Once more, then,

Bunyan became a prisoner, and that, there can be little doubt, in

his old quarters in the Bedford gaol. Errors die hard, and those

by whom they have been once accepted find it difficult to give them

up. The long-standing tradition of Bunyan's twelve years'

imprisonment in the little lock-up-house on the Ouse bridge, having

been scattered to the winds by the logic of fact and common sense,

those to whom the story is dear, including the latest and ablest of

his biographers, Dr. Brown, see in this second brief imprisonment a

way to rehabilitate it. Probability pointing to this imprisonment

as the time of the composition of "The Pilgrim's Progress," they

hold that on this occasion Bunyan was committed to the bridge-gaol,

and that he there wrote his immortal work, though they fail to

bring forward any satisfactory reasons for the change of the place

of his confinement. The circumstances, however, being the same,

there can be no reasonable ground for questioning that, as before,

Bunyan was imprisoned in the county gaol.

This last imprisonment of Bunyan's lasted only half as many months

as his former imprisonment had lasted years. At the end of six

months he was again a free man. His release was due to the good

officers of Owen, Cromwell's celebrated chaplain, with Barlow,

Bishop of Lincoln. The suspicion which hung over this intervention

from its being erroneously attributed to his release in 1672, three

years before Barlow became a bishop, has been dispelled by the

recently discovered warrant. The dates and circumstances are now

found to tally. The warrant for Bunyan's apprehension bears date

March 4, 1675. On the 14th of the following May the supple and

time-serving Barlow, after long and eager waiting for a mitre, was

elected to the see of Lincoln vacated by the death of Bishop

Fuller, and consecrated on the 27th of June. Barlow, a man of very

dubious churchmanship, who had succeeded in keeping his university

appointments undisturbed all through the Commonwealth, and who was

yet among the first with effusive loyalty to welcome the

restoration of monarchy, had been Owen's tutor at Oxford, and

continued to maintain friendly relations with him. As bishop of

the diocese to which Bedfordshire then, and long after, belonged,

Barlow had the power, by the then existing law, of releasing a

prisoner for nonconformity on a bond given by two persons that he

would conform within half a year. A friend of Bunyan's, probably

Ichabod Chauncey, obtained a letter from Owen to the bishop

requesting him to employ this prerogative in Bunyan's behalf.

Barlow with hollow complaisance expressed his particular kindness

for Dr. Owen, and his desire to deny him nothing he could legally

grant. He would even strain a point to serve him. But he had only

just been made a bishop, and what was asked was a new thing to him.

He desired a little time to consider of it. If he could do it,

Owen might be assured of his readiness to oblige him. A second

application at the end of a fortnight found this readiness much

cooled. It was true that on inquiry he found he might do it; but

the times were critical, and he had many enemies. It would be

safer for him not to take the initiative. Let them apply to the

Lord Chancellor, and get him to issue an order for him to release

Bunyan on the customary bond. Then he would do what Owen asked.

It was vain to tell Barlow that the way he suggested was

chargeable, and Bunyan poor. Vain also to remind him that there

was no point to be strained. He had satisfied himself that he

might do the thing legally. It was hoped he would remember his

promise. But the bishop would not budge from the position he had

taken up. They had his ultimatum; with that they must be content.

If Bunyan was to be liberated, his friends must accept Barlow's

terms. "This at last was done, and the poor man was released. But

little thanks to the bishop."

This short six months' imprisonment assumes additional importance

from the probability, first suggested by Dr. Brown, which the

recovery of its date renders almost a certainty, that it was during

this period that Bunyan began, if he did not complete, the first

part of "The Pilgrim's Progress." We know from Bunyan's own words

that the book was begun in gaol, and its composition has been

hitherto unhesitatingly assigned to his twelve years' confinement.

Dr. Brown was, we believe, the first to call this in question.

Bunyan's imprisonment, we know, ended in 1672. The first edition

of "The Pilgrim's Progress" did not appear till 1678. If written

during his earlier imprisonment, six years must have elapsed

between its writing and its publication. But it was not Bunyan's

way to keep his works in manuscript so long after their completion.

His books were commonly put in the printers' hands as soon as they

were finished. There are no sufficient reasons - though some have

been suggested - for his making an exception to this general habit

in the case of "The Pilgrim's Progress." Besides we should

certainly conclude, from the poetical introduction, that there was

little delay between the finishing of the book and its being given

to the world. After having written the book, he tells us, simply

to gratify himself, spending only "vacant seasons" in his

"scribble," to "divert" himself "from worser thoughts," he showed

it to his friends to get their opinion whether it should be

published or not. But as they were not all of one mind, but some

counselled one thing and some another, after some perplexity, he

took the matter into his own hands.

"Now was I in a strait, and did not see

Which was the best thing to be done by me;

At last I thought, Since you are so divided,

I print it will, and so the case decided."

We must agree with Dr. Brown that "there is a briskness about this

which, to say the least, is not suggestive of a six years' interval

before publication." The break which occurs in the narrative after

the visit of the Pilgrims to the Delectable Mountains, which so

unnecessarily interrupts the course of the story - "So I awoke from

my dream; and I slept and dreamed again" - has been not

unreasonably thought by Dr. Brown to indicate the point Bunyan had

reached when his six months' imprisonment ended, and from which he

continued the book after his release.

The First Part of "The Pilgrim's Progress" issued from the press in

1678. A second edition followed in the same year, and a third with

large and important additions in 1679. The Second Part, after an

interval of seven years, followed early in 1685. Between the two

parts appeared two of his most celebrated works - the "Life and

Death of Mr. Badman," published in 1680, originally intended to

supply a contrast and a foil to "The Pilgrim's Progress," by

depicting a life which was scandalously bad; and, in 1682, that

which Macaulay, with perhaps exaggerated eulogy, has said, "would

have been our greatest allegory if the earlier allegory had never

been written," the "Holy War made by Shaddai upon Diabolus."

Superior to "The Pilgrim's Progress" as a literary composition,

this last work must be pronounced decidedly inferior to it in

attractive power. For one who reads the "Holy War," five hundred

read the "Pilgrim." And those who read it once return to it again

and again, with ever fresh delight. It is a book that never tires.

One or two perusals of the "Holy War" satisfy: and even these are

not without weariness. As Mr. Froude has said, "The 'Holy War'

would have entitled Bunyan to a place among the masters of English

literature. It would never have made his name a household word in

every English-speaking family on the globe."

Leaving the further notice of these and his other chief literary

productions to another chapter, there is little more to record in

Bunyan's life. Though never again seriously troubled for his

nonconformity, his preaching journeys were not always without risk.

There is a tradition that when he visited Reading to preach, he

disguised himself as a waggoner carrying a long whip in his hand to

escape detection. The name of "Bunyan's Dell," in a wood not very

far from Hitchin, tells of the time when he and his hearers had to

conceal their meetings from their enemies' quest, with scouts

planted on every side to warn them of the approach of the spies and

informers, who for reward were actively plying their odious trade.

Reference has already been made to Bunyan's "deed of gift" of all

that he possessed in the world - his "goods, chattels, debts, ready

money, plate, rings, household stuff, apparel, utensils, brass,

pewter, bedding, and all other his substance whatsoever - to his

well-beloved wife Elizabeth Bunyan." Towards the close of the

first year of James the Second, 1685, the apprehensions under which

Bunyan executed this document were far from groundless. At no time

did the persecution of Nonconformists rage with greater fierceness.

Never, not even under the tyranny of Laud, as Lord Macaulay records

had the condition of the Puritans been so deplorable. Never had

spies been so actively employed in detecting congregations. Never

had magistrates, grand-jurors, rectors, and churchwardens been so

much on the alert. Many Nonconformists were cited before the

ecclesiastical courts. Others found it necessary to purchase the

connivance of the agents of the Government by bribes. It was

impossible for the sectaries to pray together without precautions

such as are employed by coiners and receivers of stolen goods.

Dissenting ministers, however blameless in life, however eminent in

learning, could not venture to walk the streets for fear of

outrages which were not only not repressed, but encouraged by those

whose duty it was to preserve the peace. Richard Baxter was in

prison. Howe was afraid to show himself in London for fear of

insult, and had been driven to Utrecht. Not a few who up to that

time had borne up boldly lost heart and fled the kingdom. Other

weaker spirits were terrified into a show of conformity. Through

many subsequent years the autumn of 1685 was remembered as a time

of misery and terror. There is, however, no indication of Bunyan

having been molested. The "deed of gift" by which he sought to

avoid the confiscation of his goods was never called into exercise.

Indeed its very existence was forgotten by his wife in whose behalf

it had been executed. Hidden away in a recess in his house in St.

Cuthbert's, this interesting document was accidentally discovered

at the beginning of the present century, and is preserved among the

most valued treasures of the congregation which bears his name.

Quieter times for Nonconformists were however at hand. Active

persecution was soon to cease for them, and happily never to be

renewed in England. The autumn of 1685 showed the first

indications of a great turn of fortune, and before eighteen months

had elapsed, the intolerant king and the intolerant Church were

eagerly bidding against each other for the support of the party

which both had so deeply injured. A new form of trial now awaited

the Nonconformists. Peril to their personal liberty was succeeded

by a still greater peril to their honesty and consistency of

spirit. James the Second, despairing of employing the Tories and

the Churchmen as his tools, turned, as his brother had turned

before him, to the Dissenters. The snare was craftily baited with

a Declaration of Indulgence, by which the king, by his sole

authority, annulled a long series of statutes and suspended all

penal laws against Nonconformists of every sort. These lately

political Pariahs now held the balance of power. The future

fortunes of England depended mainly on the course they would adopt.

James was resolved to convert the House of Commons from a free

deliberative assembly into a body subservient to his wishes, and

ready to give parliamentary sanction to any edict he might issue.

To obtain this end the electors must be manipulated. Leaving the

county constituencies to be dealt with by the lords-lieutenants,

half of whom preferred dismissal to carrying out the odious service

peremptorily demanded of them, James's next concern was to

"regulate" the Corporations. In those days of narrowly restricted

franchise, the municipalities virtually returned the town members.

To obtain an obedient parliament, he must secure a roll of electors

pledged to return the royal nominees. A committee of seven privy

councillors, all Roman Catholics but the infamous Jeffreys,

presided over the business, with local sub-committees scattered

over the country to carry out the details. Bedford was dealt with

in its turn. Under James's policy of courting the Puritans, the

leading Dissenters were the first persons to be approached. Two

are specially named, a Mr. Margetts, formerly Judge-Advocate-

General of the Army under General Monk, and John Bunyan. It is no

matter of surprise that Bunyan, who had been so severe a sufferer

under the old penal statutes, should desire their abrogation, and

express his readiness to "steer his friends and followers" to

support candidates who would pledge themselves to vote for their

repeal. But no further would he go. The Bedford Corporation was

"regulated," which means that nearly the whole of its members were

removed and others substituted by royal order. Of these new

members some six or seven were leading persons of Bunyan's

congregation. But, with all his ardent desire for religious

liberty, Bunyan was too keen-witted not to see through James's

policy, and too honest to give it any direct insidious support.

"In vain is the net spread in the sight of any bird." He clearly

saw that it was not for any love of the Dissenters that they were

so suddenly delivered from their persecutions, and placed on a kind

of equality with the Church. The king's object was the

establishment of Popery. To this the Church was the chief

obstacle. That must be undermined and subverted first. That done,

all other religious denominations would follow. All that the

Nonconformists would gain by yielding, was the favour Polyphemus

promised Ulysses, to be devoured last. Zealous as he was for the

"liberty of prophesying," even that might be purchased at too high

a price. The boon offered by the king was "good in itself," but

not "so intended." So, as his biographer describes, when the

regulators came, "he expressed his zeal with some weariness as

perceiving the bad consequences that would ensue, and laboured with

his congregation" to prevent their being imposed on by the fair

promises of those who were at heart the bitterest enemies of the

cause they professed to advocate. The newly-modelled corporation

of Bedford seems like the other corporations through the country,

to have proved as unmanageable as the old. As Macaulay says, "The

sectaries who had declared in favour of the Indulgence had become

generally ashamed of their error, and were desirous to make

atonement." Not knowing the man they had to deal with, the

"regulators" are said to have endeavoured to buy Bunyan's support

by the offer of some place under government. The bribe was

indignantly rejected. Bunyan even refused to see the government

agent who offered it, - "he would, by no means come to him, but

sent his excuse." Behind the treacherous sunshine he saw a black

cloud, ready to break. The Ninevites' remedy he felt was now

called for. So he gathered his congregation together and appointed

a day of fasting and prayer to avert the danger that, under a

specious pretext, again menaced their civil and religious

liberties. A true, sturdy Englishman, Bunyan, with Baxter and

Howe, "refused an indulgence which could only be purchased by the

violent overthrow of the law."

Bunyan did not live to see the Revolution. Four months after he

had witnessed the delirious joy which hailed the acquittal of the

seven bishops, the Pilgrim's earthly Progress ended, and he was

bidden to cross the dark river which has no bridge. The summons

came to him in the very midst of his religious activity, both as a

preacher and as a writer. His pen had never been more busy than

when he was bidden to lay it down finally. Early in 1688, after a

two years' silence, attributable perhaps to the political troubles

of the times, his "Jerusalem Sinner Saved, or a Help to Despairing

Souls," one of the best known and most powerfully characteristic of

his works, had issued from the press, and had been followed by four

others between March and August, the month of his death. These

books were, "The Work of Jesus Christ as an Advocate;" a poetical

composition entitled "The Building, Nature, and Excellency of the

House of God," a discourse on the constitution and government of

the Christian Church; the "Water of Life," and "Solomon's Temple

Spiritualized." At the time of his death he was occupied in seeing

through the press a sixth book, "The Acceptable Sacrifice," which

was published after his funeral. In addition to these, Bunyan left

behind him no fewer than fourteen works in manuscript, written at

this time, as the fruit of his fertile imagination and untiring

pen. Ten of these were given to the world soon after Bunyan's

death, by one of Bunyan's most devoted followers, Charles Doe, the

combmaker of London Bridge (who naively tells us how one day

between the stairhead and the middle of the stairs, he resolved

that the best work he could do for God was to get Bunyan's books

printed and sell them - adding, "I have sold about 3,000"), and

others, a few years later, including one of the raciest of his

compositions, "The Heavenly Footman," bought by Doe of Bunyan's

eldest son, and, he says, "put into the World in Print Word for

Word as it came from him to Me."

At the time that death surprised him, Bunyan had gained no small

celebrity in London as a popular preacher, and approached the

nearest to a position of worldly honour. Though we must probably

reject the idea that he ever filled the office of Chaplain to the

Lord Mayor of London, Sir John Shorter, the fact that he is styled

"his Lordship's teacher" proves that there was some relation more

than that of simple friendship between the chief magistrate and the

Bedford minister. But the society of the great was never congenial

to him. If they were godly as well as great, he would not shrink

from intercourse, with those of a rank above his own, but his heart

was with his own humble folk at Bedford. Worldly advancement he

rejected for his family as well as for himself. A London merchant,

it is said, offered to take his son Joseph into his house of

business without the customary premium. But the offer was declined

with what we may consider an overstrained independence. "God," he

said, "did not send me to advance my family but to preach the

gospel." "An instance of other-worldliness," writes Dr. Brown,

"perhaps more consistent with the honour of the father than with

the prosperity of the son."

Bunyan's end was in keeping with his life. He had ever sought to

be a peacemaker and to reconcile differences, and thus had

"hindered many mishaps and saved many families from ruin." His

last effort of the kind caused his death. The father of a young

man in whom he took an interest, had resolved, on some offence,

real or supposed, to disinherit his son. The young man sought

Bunyan's mediation. Anxious to heal the breach, Bunyan mounted his

horse and took the long journey to the father's house at Reading -

the scene, as we have noticed, of his occasional ministrations -

where he pleaded the offender's cause so effectually as to obtain a

promise of forgiveness. Bunyan returned homewards through London,

where he was appointed to preach at Mr. Gamman's meeting-house near

Whitechapel. His forty miles' ride to London was through heavy

driving rain. He was weary and drenched to the skin when he

reached the house of his "very loving friend," John Strudwick,

grocer and chandler, at the sign of the Star, Holborn Bridge, at

the foot of Snow Hill, and deacon of the Nonconformist meeting in

Red Cross Street. A few months before Bunyan had suffered from the

sweating sickness. The exposure caused a return of the malady, and

though well enough to fulfil his pulpit engagement on Sunday, the

19th of August, on the following Tuesday dangerous symptoms

declared themselves, and in ten days the disease proved fatal. He

died within two months of completing his sixtieth year, on the 31st

of August, 1688, just a month before the publication of the

Declaration of the Prince of Orange opened a new era of civil and

religious liberty, and between two and three months before the

Prince's landing in Torbay. He was buried in Mr. Strudwick's

newly-purchased vault, in what Southey has termed the Campo Santo

of Nonconformists, the burial-ground in Finsbury, taking its name

of Bunhill or Bonehill Field, from a vast mass of human remains

removed to it from the charnel house of St. Paul's Cathedral in

1549. At a later period it served as a place of interment for

those who died in the Great Plague of 1665. The day after Bunyan's

funeral, his powerful friend, Sir John Shorter, the Lord Mayor, had

a fatal fall from his horse in Smithfield, and "followed him across

the river."

By his first wife, whose Christian name is nowhere recorded, Bunyan

had four children - two sons and two daughters; and by his second

wife, the heroic Elizabeth, one son and one daughter. All of these

survived him except his eldest daughter Mary, his tenderly-loved

blind child, who died before him. His wife only survived him for a

brief period, "following her faithful pilgrim from this world to

the other whither he was gone before her" either in 1691 or 1692.

Forgetful of the "deed of gift," or ignorant of its bearing,

Bunyan's widow took out letters of administration of her late

husband's estate, which appears from the Register Book to have

amounted to no more than, 42 pounds 19s. On this, and the proceeds

of his books, she supported herself till she rejoined him.

Bunyan's character and person are thus described by Charles Doe:

"He appeared in countenance to be of a stern and rough temper. But

in his conversation he was mild and affable, not given to loquacity

or much discourse in company, unless some urgent occasion required

it. Observing never to boast of himself or his parts, but rather

to seem low in his own eyes and submit himself to the judgment of

others. Abhorring lying and swearing, being just, in all that lay

in his power, to his word. Not seeming to revenge injuries; loving

to reconcile differences and make friendship with all. He had a

sharp, quick eye, with an excellent discerning of persons, being of

good judgment and quick wit. He was tall of stature, strong-boned,

though not corpulent; somewhat of a ruddy face, with sparkling

eyes, wearing his hair on his upper lip after the old British

fashion. His hair reddish, but in his later days time had

sprinkled it with grey. His nose well set, but not declining or

bending. His mouth moderately large, his forehead something high,

and his habit always plain and modest. Not puffed up in

prosperity, nor shaken in adversity, always holding the golden

mean."

We may add the portrait drawn by one who had been his companion and

fellow-sufferer for many years, John Nelson: "His countenance was

grave and sedate, and did so to the life discover the inward frame

of his heart, that it was convincing to the beholders and did

strike something of awe into them that had nothing of the fear of

God."

The same friend speaks thus of Bunyan's preaching: "As a minister

of Christ he was laborious in his work of preaching, diligent in

his preparation for it, and faithful in dispensing the Word, not

sparing reproof whether in the pulpit or no, yet ready to succour

the tempted; a son of consolation to the broken-hearted, yet a son

of thunder to secure and dead sinners. His memory was tenacious,

it being customary with him to commit his sermons to writing after

he had preached them. A rich anointing of the Spirit was upon him,

yet this great saint was always in his own eyes the chiefest of

sinners and the least of saints."

An anecdote is told which, Southey says, "authenticates itself,"

that one day when he had preached "with peculiar warmth and

enlargement," one of his hearers remarked "what a sweet sermon he

had delivered." "Ay," was Bunyan's reply, "you have no need to

tell me that, for the devil whispered it to me before I was well

out of the pulpit." As an evidence of the estimation in which

Bunyan was held by the highly-educated, it is recorded that Charles

the Second expressed his surprise to Dr. Owen that "a learned man

such as he could sit and listen to an illiterate tinker." "May it

please your Majesty," Owen replied. "I would gladly give up all my

learning if I could preach like that tinker."

Although much of Bunyan's literary activity was devoted to

controversy, he had none of the narrowness or bitter spirit of a

controversialist. It is true that his zeal for what he deemed to

be truth led him into vehemence of language in dealing with those

whom he regarded as its perverters. But this intensity of speech

was coupled with the utmost charity of spirit towards those who

differed from him. Few ever had less of the sectarian temper which

lays greater stress on the infinitely small points on which all

true Christians differ than on the infinitely great truths on which

they are agreed. Bunyan inherited from his spiritual father, John

Gifford, a truly catholic spirit. External differences he regarded

as insignificant where he found real Christian faith and love. "I

would be," he writes, "as I hope I am, a Christian. But for those

factious titles of Anabaptist, Independent, Presbyterian, and the

like, I conclude that they come neither from Jerusalem nor from

Antioch, but from Hell or from Babylon." "He was," writes one of

his early biographers, "a true lover of all that love our Lord

Jesus, and did often bewail the different and distinguishing

appellations that are among the godly, saying he did believe a time

would come when they should be all buried." The only persons he

scrupled to hold communion with were those whose lives were openly

immoral. "Divisions about non-essentials," he said, "were to

churches what wars were to countries. Those who talked most about

religion cared least for it; and controversies about doubtful

things and things of little moment, ate up all zeal for things

which were practical and indisputable." His last sermon breathed

the same catholic spirit, free from the trammels of narrow

sectarianism. "If you are the children of God live together

lovingly. If the world quarrel with you it is no matter; but it is

sad if you quarrel together. If this be among you it is a sign of

ill-breeding. Dost thou see a soul that has the image of God in

him? Love him, love him. Say, 'This man and I must go to heaven

one day.' Serve one another. Do good for one another. If any

wrong you pray to God to right you, and love the brotherhood." The

closing words of this his final testimony are such as deserve to be

written in letters of gold as the sum of all true Christian

teaching: "Be ye holy in all manner of conversation: Consider

that the holy God is your Father, and let this oblige you to live

like the children of God, that you may look your Father in the face

with comfort another day." "There is," writes Dean Stanley, "no

compromise in his words, no faltering in his convictions; but his

love and admiration are reserved on the whole for that which all

good men love, and his detestation on the whole is reserved for

that which all good men detest." By the catholic spirit which

breathes through his writings, especially through "The Pilgrim's

Progress," the tinker of Elstow "has become the teacher not of any

particular sect, but of the Universal Church."

CHAPTER IX.

We have, in this concluding chapter, to take a review of Bunyan's

merits as a writer, with especial reference to the works on which

his fame mainly rests, and, above all, to that which has given him

his chief title to be included in a series of Great Writers, "The

Pilgrim's Progress." Bunyan, as we have seen, was a very copious

author. His works, as collected by the late industrious Mr. Offor,

fill three bulky quarto volumes, each of nearly eight hundred

double-columned pages in small type. And this copiousness of

production is combined with a general excellence in the matter

produced. While few of his books approach the high standard of

"The Pilgrim's Progress" or "Holy War," none, it may be truly said,

sink very far below that standard. It may indeed be affirmed that

it was impossible for Bunyan to write badly. His genius was a

native genius. As soon as he began to write at all, he wrote well.

Without any training, is he says, in the school of Aristotle or

Plato, or any study of the great masters of literature, at one

bound he leapt to a high level of thought and composition. His

earliest book, "Some Gospel Truths Opened," "thrown off," writes

Dr. Brown, "at a heat," displays the same ease of style and

directness of speech and absence of stilted phraseology which he

maintained to the end. The great charm which pervades all Bunyan's

writings is their naturalness. You never feel that he is writing

for effect, still less to perform an uncongenial piece of task-

work. He writes because he had something to say which was worth

saying, a message to deliver on which the highest interests of

others were at stake, which demanded nothing more than a

straightforward earnestness and plainness of speech, such as coming

from the heart might best reach the hearts of others. He wrote as

he spoke, because a necessity was laid upon him which he dared not

evade. As he says in a passage quoted in a former chapter, he

might have stepped into a much higher style, and have employed more

literary ornament. But to attempt this would be, to one of his

intense earnestness, to degrade his calling. He dared not do it.

Like the great Apostle, "his speech and preaching was not with

enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit

and in power." God had not played with him, and he dared not play

with others. His errand was much too serious, and their need and

danger too urgent to waste time in tricking out his words with

human skill. And it is just this which, with all their rudeness,

their occasional bad grammar, and homely colloquialisms, gives to

Bunyan's writings a power of riveting the attention and stirring

the affections which few writers have attained to. The pent-up

fire glows in every line, and kindles the hearts of his readers.

"Beautiful images, vivid expressions, forcible arguments all aglow

with passion, tender pleadings, solemn warnings, make those who

read him all eye, all ear, all soul." This native vigour is

attributable, in no small degree, to the manner in which for the

most part Bunyan's works came into being. He did not set himself

to compose theological treatises upon stated subjects, but after he

had preached with satisfaction to himself and acceptance with his

audience, he usually wrote out the substance of his discourse from

memory, with the enlargements and additions it might seem to

require. And thus his religious works have all the glow and

fervour of the unwritten utterances of a practised orator, united

with the orderliness and precision of a theologian, and are no less

admirable for the excellence of their arrangement than for their

evangelical spirit and scriptural doctrine. Originally meant to be

heard, they lose somewhat by being read. But few can read them

without being delighted with the opulence of his imagination and

impressed with the solemn earnestness of his convictions. Like the

subject of the portrait described by him in the House of the

Interpreter, he stands "like one who pleads with men, the law of

truth written upon his lips, the world behind his back, and a crown

of gold above his head."

These characteristics, which distinguish Bunyan as a writer from

most of his Puritan contemporaries, are most conspicuous in the

works by which he is chiefly known, "The Pilgrim's Progress," the

"Holy War," the "Grace Abounding," and we may add, though from the

repulsiveness of the subject the book is now scarcely read at all,

the "Life and Death of Mr. Badman."

One great charm of these works, especially of "The Pilgrim's

Progress," lies in the pure Saxon English in which they are

written, which render them models of the English speech, plain but

never vulgar, homely but never coarse, and still less unclean, full

of imagery but never obscure, always intelligible, always forcible,

going straight to the point in the fewest and simplest words;

"powerful and picturesque," writes Hallam, "from concise

simplicity." Bunyan's style is recommended by Lord Macaulay as an

invaluable study to every person who wishes to gain a wide command

over his mother tongue. Its vocabulary is the vocabulary of the

common people. "There is not," he truly says, "in 'The Pilgrim's

Progress' a single expression, if we except a few technical terms

of theology, that would puzzle the rudest peasant." We may, look

through whole pages, and not find a word of more than two

syllables. Nor is the source of this pellucid clearness and

imaginative power far to seek. Bunyan was essentially a man of one

book, and that book the very best, not only for its spiritual

teaching but for the purity of its style, the English Bible. "In

no book," writes Mr. J. R. Green, "do we see more clearly than in

'The Pilgrim's Progress' the new imaginative force which had been

given to the common life of Englishmen by their study of the Bible.

Bunyan's English is the simplest and homeliest English that has

ever been used by any great English writer, but it is the English

of the Bible. His images are the images of prophet and evangelist.

So completely had the Bible become Bunyan's life that one feels its

phrases as the natural expression of his thoughts. He had lived in

the Bible till its words became his own."

All who have undertaken to take an estimate of Bunyan's literary

genius call special attention to the richness of his imaginative

power. Few writers indeed have possessed this power in so high a

degree. In nothing, perhaps, is its vividness more displayed than

in the reality of its impersonations. The DRAMATIS PERSONS are not

shadowy abstractions, moving far above us in a mystical world, or

lay figures ticketed with certain names, but solid men and women of

our own flesh and blood, living in our own everyday world, and of

like passions with ourselves. Many of them we know familiarly;

there is hardly one we should be surprised to meet any day. This

life-like power of characterization belongs in the highest degree

to "The Pilgrim's Progress." It is hardly inferior in "The Holy

War," though with some exceptions the people of "Mansoul" have

failed to engrave themselves on the popular memory as the

characters of the earlier allegory have done. The secret of this

graphic power, which gives "The Pilgrim's Progress" its universal

popularity, is that Bunyan describes men and women of his own day,

such as he had known and seen them. They are not fancy pictures,

but literal portraits. Though the features may be exaggerated, and

the colours laid on with an unsparing brush, the outlines of his

bold personifications are truthfully drawn from his own experience.

He had had to do with every one of them. He could have given a

personal name to most of them, and we could do the same to many.

We are not unacquainted with Mr Byends of the town of Fair Speech,

who "always has the luck to jump in his judgment with the way of

the times, and to get thereby," who is zealous for Religion "when

he goes in his silver slippers," and "loves to walk with him in the

streets when the sun shines and the people applaud him." All his

kindred and surroundings are only too familiar to us - his wife,

that very virtuous woman my Lady Feigning's daughter, my Lord Fair-

speech, my Lord Time-server, Mr. Facingbothways, Mr. Anything, and

the Parson of the Parish, his mother's own brother by the father's

side, Mr. Twotongues. Nor is his schoolmaster, one Mr. Gripeman,

of the market town of Lovegain, in the county of Coveting, a

stranger to us. Obstinate, with his dogged determination and

stubborn common-sense, and Pliable with his shallow

impressionableness, are among our acquaintances. We have, before

now, come across "the brisk lad Ignorance from the town of

Conceit," and have made acquaintance with Mercy's would-be suitor,

Mr. Brisk, "a man of some breeding and that pretended to religion,

but who stuck very close to the world." The man Temporary who

lived in a town two miles off from Honesty, and next door to Mr.

Turnback; Formalist and Hypocrisy, who were "from the land of

Vainglory, and were going for praise to Mount Sion"; Simple, Sloth,

and Presumption, "fast asleep by the roadside with fetters on their

heels," and their companions, Shortwind, Noheart, Lingerafterlust,

and Sleepyhead, we know them all. "The young woman whose name was

Dull" taxes our patience every day. Where is the town which does

not contain Mrs. Timorous and her coterie of gossips, Mrs. Bats-

eyes, Mrs. Inconsiderate, Mrs. Lightmind, and Mrs. Knownothing,

"all as merry as the maids," with that pretty fellow Mr. Lechery at

the house of Madam Wanton, that "admirably well-bred gentlewoman"?

Where shall we find more lifelike portraits than those of Madam

Bubble, a "tall, comely dame, somewhat of a swarthy complexion,

speaking very smoothly with a smile at the end of each sentence,

wearing a great purse by her side, with her hand often in it,

fingering her money as if that was her chief delight;" of poor

Feeblemind of the town of Uncertain, with his "whitely look, the

cast in his eye, and his trembling speech;" of Littlefaith, as

"white as a clout," neither able to fight nor fly when the thieves

from Dead Man's Lane were on him; of Ready-to-halt, at first coming

along on his crutches, and then when Giant Despair had been slain

and Doubting Castle demolished, taking Despondency's daughter

Muchafraid by the hand and dancing with her in the road? "True, he

could not dance without one crutch in his hand, but I promise you

he footed it well. Also the girl was to be commanded, for she

answered the musick handsomely." In Bunyan's pictures there is

never a superfluous detail. Every stroke tells, and helps to the

completeness of the portraiture.

The same reality characterizes the descriptive part of "The

Pilgrim's Progress." As his characters are such as he must meet

with every day in his native town, so also the scenery and

surroundings of his allegory are part of his own every-day life,

and reproduce what he had been brought up amidst in his native

county, or had noticed in his tinker's wanderings. "Born and

bred," writes Kingsley, "in the monotonous Midland, he had no

natural images beyond the pastures and brooks, the town and country

houses, he saw about him." The Slough of Despond, with its

treacherous quagmire in the midst of the plain, into which a

wayfarer might heedlessly fall, with its stepping-stones half

drowned in mire; Byepathmeadow, promising so fair, with its stile

and footpath on the other side of the fence; the pleasant river

fringed with meadows, green all the year long and overshadowed with

trees; the thicket all overgrown with briars and thorns, where one

tumbled over a bush, another stuck fast in the dirt, some lost

their shoes in the mire, and others were fastened from behind with

the brambles; the high wall by the roadside over which the fruit

trees shot their boughs and tempted the boys with their unripe

plums; the arbour with its settle tempting the footsore traveller

to drowsiness; the refreshing spring at the bottom of Hill

Difficulty; all are evidently drawn from his own experience.

Bunyan, in his long tramps, had seen them all. He had known what

it was to be in danger of falling into a pit and being dashed to

pieces with Vain Confidence, of being drowned in the flooded

meadows with Christian and Hopeful; of sinking in deep water when

swimming over a river, going down and rising up half dead, and

needing all his companion's strength and skill to keep his head

above the stream. Vanity Fair is evidently drawn from the life.

The great yearly fair of Stourbridge, close to Cambridge, which

Bunyan had probably often visited in his tinker days, with its

streets of booths filled with "wares of all kinds from all

countries," its "shows, jugglings, cheats games, plays, fools,

apes, knaves, and rogues, and that of every kind," its "great one

of the fair," its court of justice and power of judgment, furnished

him with the materials for his picture. Scenes like these he draws

with sharp defined outlines. When he had to describe what he only

knew by hearsay, his pictures are shadowy and cold. Never having

been very far from home, he had had no experience of the higher

types of beauty and grandeur in nature, and his pen moves in

fetters when he attempts to describe them. When his pilgrims come

to the Hill Difficulty and the Delectable Mountains, the difference

is at once seen. All his nobler imagery is drawn from Scripture.

As Hallam has remarked, "There is scarcely a circumstance or

metaphor in the Old Testament which does not find a place bodily

and literally in 'The Pilgrim's Progress,' and this has made his

imagination appear more creative than it really is."

It would but weary the reader to follow the details of a narrative

which is so universally known. Who needs to be told that in the

pilgrimage here described is represented in allegorical dress the

course of a human soul convinced of sin, struggling onwards to

salvation through the trials and temptations that beset its path to

its eternal home? The book is so completely wrought into the mind

and memory, that most of us can at once recall the incidents which

chequer the pilgrim's way, and realize their meaning; the Slough of

Despond, in which the man convinced of his guilt and fleeing from

the wrath to come, in his agonizing self-consciousness is in danger

of being swallowed up in despair; the Wicket Gate, by which he

enters on the strait and narrow way of holiness; the Interpreter's

House, with his visions and acted parables; the Wayside Cross, at

the sight of which the burden of guilt falls from the pilgrim's

back, and he is clothed with change of raiment; the Hill

Difficulty, which stands right in his way, and which he must

surmount, not circumvent; the lions which he has to pass, not

knowing that they are chained; the Palace Beautiful, where he is

admitted to the communion of the faithful, and sits down to meat

with them; the Valley of Humiliation, the scene of his desperate

but victorious encounter with Apollyon; the Valley of the Shadow of

Death, with its evil sights and doleful sounds, where one of the

wicked ones whispers into his ear thoughts of blasphemy which he

cannot distinguish from the suggestions of his own mind; the cave

at the valley's mouth, in which, Giant Pagan having been dead this

many a day, his brother, Giant Pope, now sits alone, grinning at

pilgrims as they pass by, and biting his nails because he cannot

get at them; Vanity Fair, the picture of the world, as St. John

describes it, hating the light that puts to shame its own self-

chosen darkness, and putting it out if it can, where the Pilgrim's

fellow, Faithful, seals his testimony with his death, and the

Pilgrim himself barely escapes; the "delicate plain" called Ease,

and the little hill, Lucre, where Demas stood "gentlemanlike," to

invite the passersby to come and dig in his silver mine; Byepath

Meadow, into which the Pilgrim and his newly-found companion stray,

and are made prisoners by Giant Despair and shut up in the dungeons

of Doubting Castle, and break out of prison by the help of the Key

of Promise; the Delectable Mountains in Immanuel's Land, with their

friendly shepherds and the cheering prospect of the far-off

heavenly city; the Enchanted Land, with its temptations to

spiritual drowsiness at the very end of the journey; the Land of

Beulah, the ante-chamber of the city to which they were bound; and,

last stage of all, the deep dark river, without a bridge, which had

to be crossed before the city was entered; the entrance into its

heavenly gates, the pilgrim's joyous reception with all the bells

in the city ringing again for joy; the Dreamer's glimpse of its

glories through the opened portals - is not every stage of the

journey, every scene of the pilgrimage, indelibly printed on our

memories, for our warning, our instruction, our encouragement in

the race we, as much as they, have each one to run? Have we not

all, again and again, shared the Dreamer's feelings - "After that

they shut up the Gates; which, when I had seen, I wished myself

among them," and prayed, God helping us, that our "dangerous

journey" - ever the most dangerous when we see its dangers the

least - might end in our "safe arrival at the desired country"?

"The Pilgrim's Progress" exhibits Bunyan in the character by which

he would have most desired to be remembered, as one of the most

influential of Christian preachers. Hallam, however, claims for

him another distinction which would have greatly startled and

probably shocked him, as the father of our English novelists. As

an allegorist Bunyan had many predecessors, not a few of whom,

dating from early times, had taken the natural allegory of the

pilgrimage of human life as the basis of their works. But as a

novelist he had no one to show him the way. Bunyan was the first

to break ground in a field which has since then been so

overabundantly worked that the soil has almost lost its

productiveness; while few novels written purely with the object of

entertainment have ever proved so universally entertaining.

Intensely religious as it is in purpose, "The Pilgrim's Progress"

may be safely styled the first English novel. "The claim to be the

father of English romance," writes Dr. Allon, "which has been

sometimes preferred for Defoe, really pertains to Bunyan. Defoe

may claim the parentage of a species, but Bunyan is the creator of

the genus." As the parent of fictitious biography it is that

Bunyan has charmed the world. On its vivid interest as a story,

its universal interest and lasting vitality rest. "Other

allegorises," writes Lord Macaulay, "have shown great ingenuity,

but no other allegorist has ever been able to touch the heart, and

to make its abstractions objects of terror, of pity, and of love."

Whatever its deficiencies, literary and religious, may be; if we

find incongruities in the narrative, and are not insensible to some

grave theological deficiencies; if we are unable without

qualification to accept Coleridge's dictum that it is "incomparably

the best 'Summa Theologiae Evangelicae' ever produced by a writer

not miraculously inspired;" even if, with Hallam, we consider its

"excellencies great indeed, but not of the highest order," and deem

it "a little over-praised," the fact of its universal popularity

with readers of all classes and of all orders of intellect remains,

and gives this book a unique distinction. "I have," says Dr.

Arnold, when reading it after a long interval, "always been struck

by its piety. I am now struck equally or even more by its profound

wisdom. It seems to be a complete reflexion of Scripture." And to

turn to a critic of very different character, Dean Swift: "I have

been better entertained and more improved," writes that cynical

pessimist, "by a few pages of this book than by a long discourse on

the will and intellect." The favourite of our childhood, as "the

most perfect and complex of fairy tales, so human and

intelligible," read, as Hallam says, "at an age when the spiritual

meaning is either little perceived or little regarded," the

"Pilgrim's Progress" becomes the chosen companion of our later

years, perused with ever fresh appreciation of its teaching, and

enjoyment of its native genius; "the interpreter of life to all who

are perplexed with its problems, and the practical guide and solace

of all who need counsel and sympathy."

The secret of this universal acceptableness of "The Pilgrim's

Progress" lies in the breadth of its religious sympathies. Rigid

Puritan as Bunyan was, no book is more completely free from

sectarian narrowness. Its reach is as wide as Christianity itself,

and it takes hold of every human heart because it is so intensely

human. No apology is needed for presenting Mr. Froude's eloquent

panegyric: "The Pilgrim, though in Puritan dress, is a genuine

man. His experience is so truly human experience that Christians

of every persuasion can identify themselves with him; and even

those who regard Christianity itself as but a natural outgrowth of

the conscience and intellect, and yet desire to live nobly and make

the best of themselves, can recognize familiar footprints in every

step of Christian's journey. Thus 'The Pilgrim's Progress' is a

book which when once read can never be forgotten. We too, every

one of us, are pilgrims on the same road; and images and

illustrations come back to us from so faithful an itinerary, as we

encounter similar trials, and learn for ourselves the accuracy with

which Bunyan has described them. Time cannot impair its interest,

or intellectual progress make it cease to be true to experience."

Dr. Brown's appreciative words may be added: "With deepest pathos

it enters into the stern battle so real to all of us, into those

heart-experiences which make up, for all, the discipline of life.

It is this especially which has given to it the mighty hold which

it has always had upon the toiling poor, and made it the one book

above all books well-thumbed and torn to tatters among them. And

it is this which makes it one of the first books translated by the

missionary who seeks to give true thoughts of God and life to

heathen men."

The Second Part of "The Pilgrim's Progress" partakes of the

character of almost all continuations. It is, in Mr. Froude's

words, "only a feeble reverberation of the first part, which has

given it a popularity it would have hardly attained by its own

merits. Christiana and her children are tolerated for the

pilgrim's sake to whom they belong." Bunyan seems not to have been

insensible of this himself, when in his metrical preface he thus

introduces his new work:

"Go now my little book to every place

Where my first Pilgrim has but shown his face.

Call at their door; if any say 'Who's there?'

Then answer thus, 'Christiana is here.'

If they bid thee come in, then enter thou

With all thy boys. And then, as thou know'st how,

Tell who they are, also from whence they came;

Perhaps they'll know them by their looks or name."

But although the Second Part must be pronounced inferior, on the

whole, to the first, it is a work of striking individuality and

graphic power, such as Bunyan alone could have written. Everywhere

we find strokes of his peculiar genius, and though in a smaller

measure than the first, it has added not a few portraits to

Bunyan's spiritual picture gallery we should be sorry to miss, and

supplied us with racy sayings which stick to the memory. The sweet

maid Mercy affords a lovely picture of gentle feminine piety, well

contrasted with the more vigorous but still thoroughly womanly

character of Christiana. Great-Heart is too much of an

abstraction: a preacher in the uncongenial disguise of a knightly

champion of distressed females and the slayer of giants. But the

other new characters have generally a vivid personality. Who can

forget Old Honesty, the dull good man with no mental gifts but of

dogged sincerity, who though coming from the Town of Stupidity,

four degrees beyond the City of Destruction, was "known for a cock

of the right kind," because he said the truth and stuck to it; or

his companion, Mr. Fearing, that most troublesome of pilgrims,

stumbling at every straw, lying roaring at the Slough of Despond

above a month together, standing shaking and shrinking at the

Wicket Gate, but making no stick at the Lions, and at last getting

over the river not much above wetshod; or Mr. Valiant for Truth,

the native of Darkland, standing with his sword drawn and his face

all bloody from his three hours' fight with Wildhead,

Inconsiderate, and Pragmatick; Mr. Standfast, blushing to be found

on his knees in the Enchanted Ground, one who loved to hear his

Lord spoken of, and coveted to set his foot wherever he saw the

print of his shoe; Mr. Feeblemind, the sickly, melancholy pilgrim,

at whose door death did usually knock once a day, betaking himself

to a pilgrim's life because he was never well at home, resolved to

run when he could, and go when he could not run, and creep when he

could not go, an enemy to laughter and to gay attire, bringing up

the rear of the company with Mr. Readytohalt hobbling along on his

crutches; Giant Despair's prisoners, Mr. Despondency, whom he had

all but starved to death - and Mistress Much-afraid his daughter,

who went through the river singing, though none could understand

what she said? Each of these characters has a distinct

individuality which lifts them from shadowy abstractions into

living men and women. But with all its excellencies, and they are

many, the general inferiority of the history of Christiana and her

children's pilgrimage to that of her husband's must be

acknowledged. The story is less skilfully constructed; the

interest is sometimes allowed to flag; the dialogues that interrupt

the narrative are in places dry and wearisome - too much of sermons

in disguise. There is also a want of keeping between the two parts

of the allegory. The Wicket Gate of the First Part has become a

considerable building with a summer parlour in the Second; the

shepherds' tents on the Delectable Mountains have risen into a

palace, with a dining-room, and a looking-glass, and a store of

jewels; while Vanity Fair has lost its former bad character, and

has become a respectable country town, where Christiana and her

family, seeming altogether to forget their pilgrimage, settled down

comfortably, enjoy the society of the good people of the place, and

the sons marry and have children. These same children also cause

the reader no little perplexity, when he finds them in the course

of the supposed journey transformed from sweet babes who are

terrified with the Mastiffs barking at the Wicket Gate, who catch

at the boughs for the unripe plums and cry at having to climb the

hill; whose faces are stroked by the Interpreter; who are

catechised and called "good boys" by Prudence; who sup on bread

crumbled into basins of milk, and are put to bed by Mercy - into

strong young men, able to go out and fight with a giant, and lend a

hand to the pulling down of Doubting Castle, and becoming husbands

and fathers. We cannot but feel the want of VRAISEMBLANCE which

brings the whole company of pilgrims to the banks of the dark river

at one time, and sends them over in succession, following one

another rapidly through the Golden Gate of the City. The four boys

with their wives and children, it is true, stay behind awhile, but

there is an evident incongruity in their doing so when the allegory

has brought them all to what stands for the close of their earthly

pilgrimage. Bunyan's mistake was in gratifying his inventive

genius and making his band of pilgrims so large. He could get them

together and make them travel in company without any sacrifice of

dramatic truth, which, however, he was forced to disregard when the

time came for their dismissal. The exquisite pathos of the

description of the passage of the river by Christian and Hopeful

blinds us to what may be almost termed the impossibility of two

persons passing through the final struggle together, and dying at

the same moment, but this charm is wanting in the prosaic picture

of the company of fellow-travellers coming down to the water's

edge, and waiting till the postman blows his horn and bids them

cross. Much as the Second Part contains of what is admirable, and

what no one but Bunyan could have written, we feel after reading it

that, in Mr. Froude's words, the rough simplicity is gone, and has

been replaced by a tone of sentiment which is almost mawkish.

"Giants, dragons, and angelic champions carry us into a spurious

fairyland where the knight-errant is a preacher in disguise. Fair

ladies and love-matches, however decorously chastened, suit ill

with the sternness of the mortal conflict between the soul and

sin." With the acknowledged shortcomings of the Second Part of

"The Pilgrim's Progress," we may be well content that Bunyan never

carried out the idea hinted at in the closing words of his

allegory: "Shall it be my lot to go that way again, I may give

those that desire it an account of what I am here silent about; in

the meantime I bid my reader - Adieu."

Bunyan's second great allegorical work, "The Holy War," need not

detain us long. Being an attempt, and in the nature of things an

unsuccessful attempt, to clothe what writers on divinity call "the

plan of salvation" in a figurative dress, the narrative, with all

its vividness of description in parts, its clearly drawn characters

with their picturesque nomenclature, and the stirring vicissitudes

of the drama, is necessarily wanting in the personal interest which

attaches to an individual man, like Christian, and those who are

linked with or follow his career. In fact, the tremendous

realities of the spiritual history of the human race are entirely

unfit for allegorical treatment as a whole. Sin, its origin, its

consequences, its remedy, and the apparent failure of that remedy

though administered by Almighty hands, must remain a mystery for

all time. The attempts made by Bunyan, and by one of much higher

intellectual power and greater poetic gifts than Bunyan - John

Milton - to bring that mystery within the grasp of the finite

intellect, only render it more perplexing. The proverbial line

tells us that -

"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."

Bunyan and Milton were as far as possible from being "fools"; but

when both these great writers, on the one hand, carry us up into

the Council Chamber of Heaven and introduce us to the Persons of

the ever-blessed Trinity, debating, consulting, planning, and

resolving, like a sovereign and his ministers when a revolted

province has to be brought back to its allegiance; and, on the

other hand, take us down to the infernal regions, and makes us

privy to the plots and counterplots of the rebel leaders and

hearers of their speeches, we cannot but feel that, in spite of the

magnificent diction and poetic imagination of the one, and the

homely picturesque genius of the other, the grand themes treated of

are degraded if not vulgarized, without our being in any way helped

to unravel their essential mysteries. In point of individual

personal interest, "The Holy War" contrasts badly with "The

Pilgrim's Progress." The narrative moves in a more shadowy region.

We may admire the workmanship; but the same undefined sense of

unreality pursues us through Milton's noble epic, the outcome of a

divinely-fired genius, and Bunyan's humble narrative, drawing its

scenes and circumstances, and to some extent its DRAMATIS PERSONAE,

from the writer's own surroundings in the town and corporation of

Bedford, and his brief but stirring experience as a soldier in the

great Parliamentary War. The catastrophe also is eminently

unsatisfactory. When Christian and Hopeful enter the Golden Gates

we feel that the story has come to its proper end, which we have

been looking for all along. But the conclusion of "The Holy War"

is too much like the closing chapter of "Rasselas" - "a conclusion

in which nothing is concluded." After all the endless vicissitudes

of the conflict, and the final and glorious victory of Emmanuel and

his forces, and the execution of the ringleaders of the mutiny, the

issue still remains doubtful. The town of Mansoul is left open to

fresh attacks. Diabolus is still at large. Carnal Sense breaks

prison and continues to lurk in the town. Unbelief, that "nimble

Jack," slips away, and can never be laid hold of. These,

therefore, and some few others of the more subtle of the

Diabolonians, continue to make their home in Mansoul, and will do

so until Mansoul ceases to dwell in the kingdom of Universe. It is

true they turn chicken-hearted after the other leaders of their

party have been taken and executed, and keep themselves quiet and

close, lurking in dens and holes lest they should be snapped up by

Emmanuel's men. If Unbelief or any of his crew venture to show

themselves in the streets, the whole town is up in arms against

them; the very children raise a hue and cry against them and seek

to stone them. But all in vain. Mansoul, it is true, enjoys some

good degree of peace and quiet. Her Prince takes up his residence

in her borders. Her captains and soldiers do their duties. She

minds her trade with the heavenly land afar off; also she is busy

in her manufacture. But with the remnants of the Diabolonians

still within her walls, ready to show their heads on the least

relaxation of strict watchfulness, keeping up constant

communication with Diabolus and the other lords of the pit, and

prepared to open the gates to them when opportunity offers, this

peace can not be lasting. The old battle will have to be fought

over again, only to end in the same undecisive result. And so it

must be to the end. If untrue to art, Bunyan is true to fact.

Whether we regard Mansoul as the soul of a single individual or as

the whole human race, no final victory can be looked for so long as

it abides in "the country of Universe." The flesh will lust

against the spirit, the regenerated man will be in danger of being

brought into captivity to the law of sin and death unless he keeps

up his watchfulness and maintains the struggle to the end.

And it is here, that, for purposes of art, not for purposes of

truth, the real failing of "The Holy War" lies. The drama of

Mansoul is incomplete, and whether individually or collectively,

must remain incomplete till man puts on a new nature, and the

victory, once for all gained on Calvary, is consummated, in the

fulness of time, at the restitution of all things. There is no

uncertainty what the end will be. Evil must be put down, and good

must triumph at last. But the end is not yet, and it seems as far

off as ever. The army of Doubters, under their several captains,

Election Doubters, Vocation Doubters, Salvation Doubters, Grace

Doubters, with their general the great Lord Incredulity at their

head, reinforced by many fresh regiments under novel standards,

unknown and unthought of in Bunyan's days, taking the place of

those whose power is past, is ever making new attacks upon poor

Mansoul, and terrifying feeble souls with their threatenings.

Whichever way we look there is much to puzzle, much to grieve over,

much that to our present limited view is entirely inexplicable.

But the mind that accepts the loving will and wisdom of God as the

law of the Universe, can rest in the calm assurance that all,

however mysteriously, is fulfilling His eternal designs, and that

though He seems to permit "His work to be spoilt, His power defied,

and even His victories when won made useless," it is but seeming, -

that the triumph of evil is but temporary, and that these apparent

failures and contradictions, are slowly but surely working out and

helping forward

"The one unseen divine event

To which the whole creation moves."

"The mysteries and contradictions which the Christian revelation

leaves unsolved are made tolerable by Hope." To adopt Bunyan's

figurative language in the closing paragraph of his allegory, the

day is certainly coming when the famous town of Mansoul shall be

taken down and transported "every stick and stone" to Emmanuel's

land, and there set up for the Father's habitation in such strength

and glory as it never saw before. No Diabolonian shall be able to

creep into its streets, burrow in its walls, or be seen in its

borders. No evil tidings shall trouble its inhabitants, nor sound

of Diabolian drum be heard there. Sorrow and grief shall be ended,

and life, always sweet, always new, shall last longer than they

could even desire it, even all the days of eternity. Meanwhile let

those who have such a glorious hope set before them keep clean and

white the liveries their Lord has given them, and wash often in the

open fountain. Let them believe in His love, live upon His word;

watch, fight, and pray, and hold fast till He come.

One more work of Bunyan's still remains to be briefly noticed, as

bearing the characteristic stamp of his genius, "The Life and Death

of Mr. Badman." The original idea of this book was to furnish a

contrast to "The Pilgrim's Progress." As in that work he had

described the course of a man setting out on his course

heavenwards, struggling onwards through temptation, trials, and

difficulties, and entering at last through the golden gates into

the city of God, so in this later work his purpose was to depict

the career of a man whose face from the first was turned in the

opposite direction, going on from bad to worse, ever becoming more

and more irretrievably evil, fitter and fitter for the bottomless

pit; his life full of sin and his death without repentance; reaping

the fruit of his sins in hopeless sinfulness. That this was the

original purpose of the work, Bunyan tells us in his preface. It

came into his mind, he says, as in the former book he had written

concerning the progress of the Pilgrim from this world to glory, so

in this second book to write of the life and death of the ungodly,

and of their travel from this world to hell. The new work,

however, as in almost every respect it differs from the earlier

one, so it is decidedly inferior to it. It is totally unlike "The

Pilgrim's Progress" both in form and execution. The one is an

allegory, the other a tale, describing without imagery or metaphor,

in the plainest language, the career of a "vulgar, middle-class,

unprincipled scoundrel." While "The Pilgrim's Progress" pursues

the narrative form throughout, only interrupted by dialogues

between the leading characters, "Mr. Badman's career" is presented

to the world in a dialogue between a certain Mr. Wiseman and Mr.

Attentive. Mr. Wiseman tells the story, and Mr. Attentive supplies

appropriate reflections on it. The narrative is needlessly

burdened with a succession of short sermons, in the form of

didactic discourses on lying, stealing, impurity, and the other

vices of which the hero of the story was guilty, and which brought

him to his miserable end. The plainness of speech with which some

of these evil doings are enlarged upon, and Mr. Badman's indulgence

in them described, makes portions of the book very disagreeable,

and indeed hardly profitable reading. With omissions, however, the

book well deserves perusal, as a picture such as only Bunyan or his

rival in lifelike portraiture, Defoe, could have drawn of vulgar

English life in the latter part of the seventeenth century, in a

commonplace country town such as Bedford. It is not at all a

pleasant picture. The life described, when not gross, is sordid

and foul, is mean and commonplace. But as a description of English

middle-class life at the epoch of the Restoration and Revolution,

it is invaluable for those who wish to put themselves in touch with

that period. The anecdotes introduced to illustrate Bunyan's

positions of God's judgment upon swearers and sinners, convicting

him of a credulity and a harshness of feeling one is sorry to think

him capable of, are very interesting for the side-lights they throw

upon the times and the people who lived in them. It would take too

long to give a sketch of the story, even if a summary could give

any real estimate of its picturesque and vivid power. It is

certainly a remarkable, if an offensive book. As with "Robinson

Crusoe" and Defoe's other tales, we can hardly believe that we have

not a real history before us. We feel that there is no reason why

the events recorded should not have happened. There are no

surprises; no unlooked-for catastrophes; no providential

interpositions to punish the sinner or rescue the good man.

Badman's pious wife is made to pay the penalty of allowing herself

to be deceived by a tall, good-looking, hypocritical scoundrel. He

himself pursues his evil way to the end, and "dies like a lamb, or

as men call it, like a Chrisom child sweetly and without fear," but

the selfsame Mr. Badman still, not only in name, but in condition;

sinning onto the last, and dying with a heart that cannot repent.

Mr. Froude's summing up of this book is so masterly that we make no

apology for presenting it to our readers. "Bunyan conceals

nothing, assumes nothing, and exaggerates nothing. He makes his

bad man sharp and shrewd. He allows sharpness and shrewdness to

bring him the reward which such qualities in fact command. Badman

is successful; is powerful; he enjoys all the pleasures which money

can bring; his bad wife helps him to ruin, but otherwise he is not

unhappy, and he dies in peace. Bunyan has made him a brute,

because such men do become brutes. It is the real punishment of

brutal and selfish habits. There the figure stands - a picture of

a man in the rank of English life with which Bunyan was most

familiar; travelling along the primrose path to the everlasting

bonfire, as the way to Emmanuel's Land was through the Slough of

Despond and the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Pleasures are to be

found among the primroses, such pleasures as a brute can be

gratified by. Yet the reader feels that even if there was no

bonfire, he would still prefer to be with Christian."

Footnotes

(1) A small enclosure behind a cottage.

End