at him secretly? How long shall the Righteous be a prey to your teeth, ye subtle Foxes, who seek to devour? The just One against whom your bow is bent, cries for vengeance against you in the ears of the Lord. Yet you strengthen your hands in iniquity, and gird yourselves with the zeal of madness and fury: you think to swallow up the harmless, and to blot out the name of the righteous, that his generation may not be found on earth. You shoot your arrows of cruelty, even bitter words, and make the innocent your mark to prey upon. You despise the way of uprightness and simplicity, and the path of craft and subtlety you tread: your dens are in darkness, and your mischief is hatched upon your beds of secret whoredom.-Yet-you are found out with the searching eye of the Lord,—and as with a whirlwind will he scatter you, and your name shall rot, and your memorial shall not be found; and the deeper you have digged the pit for another, the greater will be your own fall.—And John Bunyan and his fellow, who have joined themselves to the broken army of Magog, now in the heat of the day of great striving, are not the least of all guilty among their brethren, of secret smiting the innocent, with secret lies and slanders, who have shewed themselves in defence of the Dragon against the Lamb, in this day of war betwixt them." In this strain the Son of Thunder roars and blazes away, like a Zevs vßpeμerns in prose. “Your spirit is tried, and your generation is read at large; and your stature and countenance is clearly described to me, to be of the stock of Ishmael, and of the seed of Cain, whose line reacheth unto the murdering Priests, Scribes, and Pharisees.-O thou blind Priest, whom God hath confounded in thy language,-the design of the Devil in deceiving souls is thy own, and I turn it back to thee.-Thou directest altogether to a thing without, despising the Light within, and worshipping the name Mary in thy imagination, and knowest not Him who was before the world was, in whom alone is salvation, and in no other.-If we should diligently search, we should find thee, through feigned words, through covetousness, making merchandise of souls, loving the wages of unrighteousness: and such were the scoffers whom Peter speaks of, among whom thou art found in thy practice, among them who are preaching for hire, and love the error of

Balaam, who took gifts and rewards.-The Lord rebuke thee, thou unclean spirit, who hast falsely accused the innocent to clear thyself from guilt; but at thy door guilt lodges, and I leave it with thee; clear thyself if thou art able, And thy wicked reproaches we patiently bear, till the Lord appear for us: and we are not greater than our Lord, who was said to have a Devil by thy generation; and their measure of wickedness thou fulfils, and art one of the Dragon's army against the Lamb and his followers; and thy weapons are slanders; and thy refuge is lies; and thy work is confused, and hath hardly gained a name in Babylon's record; and by us (so much of it at least as is against us) is cast by as our spoiled prey, and trampled upon in all thy reproachful speeches, who art unclean."

Mixed with these railings were affirmations as honestly made, that the Quakers owned all the scriptures which Bunyan had alleged against them, concerning the life, and death, and resurrection of our Lord, yet withal bearing witness, "that without the revelation of Christ within, there is no salvation." There were many and wide differences between Bunyan and the Quakers, but none upon these points when they understood each other, and when the Quakers understood themselves. He replied in a vindication of his treatise, complaining that his opponent had uttered a very great number of heresies, and falsely reported many things; and wishing him to be sober if he could, and to keep under his unruly spirit, and not to appear so much, at least not so grossly, a railing Rabshakeh. He maintained, which was in fact the point at issue, that the opinions held at that day by the Quakers, were the same that the Ranters had held long ago, "only the Ranters had made them threadbare at an alehouse, and the Quakers had set a new gloss upon them again by an outward legal holiness or righteousness." He dwelt upon the error of the Quakers in confounding conscience with the Spirit of Christ, thereby "idolizing and making a God" of what "is but a creature, and a faculty of the soul of man, which God hath made,”—which "is that in which is the law of Nature, which is able to teach the Gentiles, that sin against the law is sin against God, and which is called by the Apostle * but even * 1 Cor. xi. 14.

Nature itself."—" O wonderful, that men should make a God and a Christ of their consciences because they can convince of sin!" To the reproach of making merchandise of souls, and loving the wages of unrighteousness, he answered thus. "Friend, dost thou speak this as from thy own knowledge, or did any other tell thee so? However, that spirit that led thee out of this way is a lying spirit. For though I be poor and of no repute in the world, as to outward things, yet this 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 hath 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. Other things I might speak in vindication of my practice in this thing. But ask of others, and they will tell thee that the things I say are truth and hereafter have a care of receiving any thing by hearsay only, lest you be found a publisher of those lies which are brought to you by others, and so render yourself the less credible."

This reproof was so far lost upon his antagonist, that he returned thus to the charge. "Thou seemest to be grieved, and calls this a false accusation. But let's try; the cause admits dispute. Art not thou in their steps, and among them that do these things? Ask John Burton, with whom thou art joined close to vindicate him and call him brother. Hath he not so much yearly, £150, or more, (except thou hast some of it,) which is unrighteous wages, and hire, and gifts, and rewards? What sayest thou? Art thou not in his steps, and among and with him and them that do these things? If he be thy brother, and thou so own him, what is evil in him whom thou vindicates, I lay upon thee. Though thou bid me have a care of receiving by hearsay, what I have said and received in this is truth, though thou evade it never so much." Burroughs must have examined very little into the truth or probability of what he heard, when he could believe and repeat that a poor Baptist-Meeting at Bedford raised £150 a year for its minister!" Your words," says he, "describe your nature; for by your voice I know you to be none of Christ's sheep; and accordingly, I judge in just judg

ment, and in true knowledge.-Envy is of Cain's nature and seed, and in that you are; and liars are of Ishmael's stock, and you are guilty of that; and you are among the murdering Priests' party, and close joined to them, in doctrine and practice, especially in writing against us.-Thy portion shall be howling and gnashing 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 is 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 mayst 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 persons, 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 ascendancy 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 mem* Ivimey's History of the Baptists, vol. ii. p. 27. † Ib. p. 34.

d