of teeth, for the liar's portion is the Lake.--I reprove thee by the Spirit of the Lord, and so leave thee to receive thy reward from the just God of righteous judgment, who upon thy head will render vengeance in flames of fire, in his dreadful day.—A liar and slanderer thou art, a perverter and wrester of the right way of God and of the Scriptures, a hypocrite and dissembler, a holder forth of damnable doctrines, an envious man and false accuser, and all thy lies, slanders, deceits, confusions, hypocrisies, contradictions, and damnable doctrines of devils, with impudency held forth by thee, shall be consumed in the pit of vengeance.-Alas, alas, for thee, John Bunyan! thy several months' travail in grief and pain was a fruitless birth, and perishes as an untimely fig; and its praise is blotted out among men, and it's past away as smoke. Truth is a-top of thee, and outreaches thee, and it shall stand for ever to confound thee and all its enemies; and though thou wilt not subject thy mind to serve it willingly, yet a slave to it must thou be; and what thou dost in thy wickedness against it, the end thereof brings forth the glory of it, and thy own confounding and shame. And now be wise and learned, and put off thy armour: for thou mayest understand the more thou strivest the more thou art entangled; and the higher thou arises in envy, the deeper is thy fall into confusion; and the more thy arguments are, the more increased is thy folly. Let experience teach thee, and thy own wickedness correct thee; and thus I leave thee. And if thou wilt not own the Light of Christ in thy own conscience, nor to reform thee and convince thee, yet in the Day of Judgment thou shalt own it; and it shall witness the justness of the judgment of the Lord, when for thy iniquities he pleads with thee. And behold, as a thief in the night, when thou art not aware, He will come; and then woe unto thee that art polluted !"

Bunyan made no further reply, either to the reasoning or Rabshaking of his opponent; for although, as he says, it pleased him much "to contend with great earnestness for the word of faith, and the remission of sins by the death and sufferings of our Saviour,” he had no liking for controversy, and moreover saw that "his work before him ran in another channel." His great desire was to get into what he calls "the darkest places of the country," and awaken the religious feelings of that class of per

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*

sons who then, as now, in the midst of a Christian nation,. were like the beasts that perish. While he was thus usefully employed, "the Doctors and Priests of the country," he says, began to open wide against him, "and in the year 1657 an indictment was preferred against him at the assizes for preaching at Eaton; for though this was in the golden days of Oliver Cromwell, the same writer who tells us that "in those days there was no persecution," observes,† that the Presbyterian ministers, who were then in possession of the livings, could not bear with the preaching of an illiterate tinker and an unordained minister." But the Presbyterians were not the only clergy who had intruded into the benefices of their loyal brethren, or retained those which were lawfully their own by conforming to the times, and deserting the Church in whose service they were ordained. There was a full proportion of Independents among these incumbents, and some Baptists also. And that there was much more persecution during the Protectorate than Cromwell would have allowed if he could have prevented it, may be seen by the history of the Quakers,—to say nothing of the Papists, against whom the penal laws remained in full force,-nor of the Church of England. The simple truth is, all parties were agreed in the one Catholic opinion, that certain doctrines are not to be tolerated: they differed as to what those doctrines were; and they differed also as to the degree in which they held the principle of intolerance, and the extent to which they practised it. The Papists, true to their creed, proclaimed it without reserve or limit, and burnt all heretics wherever they had power to do so. The Protestants therefore tolerated no Papists where they were strong enough to maintain the ascendency which they had won. The Church of England would have silenced all sectaries; it failed in the attempt, being betrayed by many of its own members; and then the sectaries overthrew the Church, put the Primate to death, ejected all the clergy who adhered to their principles, imprisoned some, deported others, and prohibited even the private and domestic use of the Liturgy. The very Baptists of Bunyan's congregation, and at a time too when Bunyan was their pastor, interdicted a "dearly beloved sister" from communicating with a church of which her son-in-law was * Ivimey's History of the Baptists, vol. ii. p. 27.

‡ Ib. p. 37.

† Ib. p. 34.

minister, because he was not a Baptist; and they excluded* a brother, “because in a great assembly of the Church of England he was profanely bishopt, after the antichristian order of that generation, to the great profanation of God's order, and heartbreaking of his Christian brethren." The Independents flogged and hanged the Quakers; and the Quakers prophesied in the gall of bitterness against all other communities, and condemned them to the bottomless pit, in hearty belief and jubilant expectation that the sentence would be carried into full effect by the devil and his angels.

It is not known in what manner the attempt at silencing Bunyan was defeated. He tells us that the ignorant and malicious were then stirred up to load him with slanders; and that whatever the devil could devise, and his instruments invent, was "whirled up and down the country" against him, thinking that by that means they should make his ministry to be abandoned. It was rumoured that he was a witch, a Jesuit, a highwayman : and now it was that the aspersions cast upon his moral character called forth that characteristic vindication of himself which has already been noticed. Equally characteristic is the appeal which he made to his own manners and deportment. "And in this," says he, “I admire the wisdom of God, that he made me shy of women from my first conversion until now. These know, and can also bear me witness, with whom I have been most intimately concerned, that it is a rare thing to see me carry it pleasant towards a woman. The common salutation of women I abhor; 't is odious to me in whomsoever I see it. Their company alone I cannot away with! I seldom so much as touch a woman's hand; for I think these things are not so becoming me. When I have seen good men salute those women that they have visited, or that have visited them, I have at times made my objection against it; and when they have answered that it was but a piece of civility, I have told them it is not a comely sight. Some indeed have urged the holy kiss; but then I have asked why they made baulks? why they did salute the most handsome, and let the ill-favoured go? Thus how laudable soever such things have been in the eyes of others, they have been unseemly in my sight.”—Dr. Doddridge could not have thus defended himself. * Ivimey's History of the Baptists, vol. ii. p. 40.

But though this passage might have been written by a saint of the monastic calendar, Bunyan was no woman-hater. He had at this time married a second wife; and that he "carried it pleasant" towards her, appears by her behaviour towards him in his troubles.

These troubles came on a few months only after the Restoration, Bunyan being one of the first persons after that event who was punished for nonconformity. The nation was in a most unquiet state. There was a restless, rancorous, implacable party who would have renewed the civil war, for the sake of again trying the experiment of a Commonwealth, which had so completely and miserably failed when the power was in their hands. They looked to Ludlow as their General; and Algernon Sidney* took the first opportunity of soliciting for them men from Holland and money from France. The political enthusiasts who were engaged in such schemes, counted upon the sectaries for support. Even among the sober sects there were men who at the cost of a rebellion would gladly have again thrown down the Church Establishment, for the hope of setting up their own system during the anarchy that must ensue. Among the wilder, some were eager to proclaim King Jesus, and take possession of the earth as being the Saints to whom it was promised; and some (a few years later), less in hope of effecting their republican projects than in despair and vengeance, conspired to burn London: they were discovered, tried, convicted, and executed; they confessed their intention; they named the day which had been appointed for carrying it into effect, because an astrological scheme had shown it to be a lucky one for this design; and on that very day the fire of London broke out. In such times the Government was rendered suspicious by the constant sense of danger, and was led, as much by fear as by resentment, to severities which are explained by the necessity of self-defence,-not justified by it, when they fall upon the innocent, or even upon the less guilty.†

A warrant was issued against Bunyan as if he had been a dan* Euvres de Louis XIV., t. ii. p. 204. Ludlow's Memoirs (Edinburgh, 1751), vol. iii., 151, 156. Ludlow's passport from the Comte d'Estrades, sent him that he might go from Switzerland to Paris, there to confer with Sidney upon this project, is printed in the same volume, p. 157.

[+ 12th November, 1660.]

an ill

gerous person, because he went about preaching: this office was deemed (and well it might be) incompatible with his calling ; he was known to be hostile to the restored Church, and probably it might be remembered that he had served in the Parliament's army. Accordingly, he was arrested at a place called Samsell, in Bedfordshire, at a meeting in a private house. He was aware of this intention, but neither chose to put off the meeting, nor to escape, lest such conduct on his part should make " savour in the country;" and because he was resolved "to see the utmost of what they could say or do to him:" so he was taken before the Justice, Wingate by name, who had issued the warrant. Wingate asked him why he did not content himself with following his calling, instead of breaking the law; and Bunyan replied, that he could both follow his calling, and preach the word too. He was then required to find sureties: they were ready, and being called in, were told they were bound to keep him from preaching, otherwise their bonds would be forfeited. Upon this Bunyan declared that he would not desist from speaking the word of God. While his mittimus was making in consequence of this determination, one whom he calls an old enemy to the truth,* entered into discourse with him, and said he had read of one Alexander the coppersmith who troubled the Apostles, aiming 't is like at me," says Bunyan, "because I was a tinker; to which I answered, that I also had read of Priests and Pharisees that had their hands in the blood of our Lord." Aye, was the rejoinder, and you are one of those Pharisees, for you "I answered," make long prayers to devour widows' houses. says Bunyan, that if he had got no more by preaching and praying than I had done, he would not be so rich as now he was." This ended in his committal to Bedford jail, there to remain till the quarter sessions. He was offered his liberty if he would promise not to call the people together, but no such promise would he make; and when he was told that none but poor, simple, ignorant people came to hear him, he replied, that such had most need of teaching, and therefore it was his duty to go on in that work. It appears, however, that after a few days he

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[* Dr. Lindale. See A Relation of the Imprisonment of Mr. John Bunyan, Minister of the Gospel at Bedford. Written by himself, and never before published. London, 1765,' 12mo.]