X.

A.D. 1661.

CHAPTER bitterness is explained. For he had a ready tongue and a biting sarcasm, and to both he gave full play. CHASHI He hated the prayer book, which at this time he could scarcely read, and in all probability had never attempted to read, with a perfect hatred. "I never cared," he somewhere says, "to meddle with things that were controverted and in dispute among the saints." But the prayer book was not among these things indifferent. Being indicted before the quarter sessions, he was charged, in the first place, with absenting himself from church. "So far from that," said Bunyan, "I am a common frequenter of the church of God, and also by grace a member with the people over whom Christ is the head." "But," said justice Keeling, "you do not come to the parish church." "No," said Bunyan, "I cannot find it commanded in the word of God." Keeling reminded him that we were commanded to pray. "Yes," answered Bunyan, "but not by the common prayer book the apostle said, I will pray with the spirit and the understanding." The judge reminded him that he might pray with the spirit and the understanding, and yet with the prayer book also; "to which," writes Bunyan, "I made answer thus. I said that the prayers in the common prayer book were made by men and not by the motion of the Holy Ghost within our hearts; and the apostle says he will pray with the spirit and the understanding, not with the spirit and the common prayer book." A long discussion followed; for the magistrates heard him on the whole with patience; but at length he was committed to prison. Three months afterwards his wife applied to the judges at the next

Hale sat CHAPTER

assize to claim her husband's release.
upon the bench. "My lord," said she, "my hus-
band is kept unlawfully in prison. They clapped
him up before there were any proclamations against
the meetings: the indictment also is false; besides
they never asked him whether he was guilty or not;
nor did he confess to the indictment." Baxter's
friend was disposed to treat the woman kindly, but
there were two other judges on the bench, Chester
and Twisdon. "My lord," said Chester, addressing
Hale, "he is a pestilent fellow; there is not such
another fellow in the country." "Will your husband
leave preaching ?" said Twisdon. "My lord," said
Bunyan's wife," he dare not leave preaching as long
as he can speak." Hale asked her many questions
as to her means of livelihood and the number of
her children, and exclaimed when he had heard her
story, "Alas poor woman!" But judge Twisdon told
her that she made poverty a cloak. "What is his
calling ?" enquired Hale; then said some of the com-
pany that stood by, "a tinker, my lord." "Yes," said
Bunyan's wife, "and because he is a tinker and a
poor man, therefore he is despised and cannot have
justice." "I am sorry I can do thee no good," said
Hale; and we have no doubt of his sincerity: his
soul must have sunk within him when he added
this mockery of help,-" Thou must do one of these
three things, namely, either apply thyself to the
king personally, or sue for his pardon, or get a writ
of error; but a writ of error will be cheapest.'
was clear that no redress was to be had. Bunyan's
wife left the court despairing of the help which
cometh from man; and her husband lay, with one

It

X.

CHAS. II.

A.D. 1661.

CHAPTER short interval, twelve years in the gaol at Bed

X.

CHAS. II.
A.D. 1661.

ford.

Here it was that, as he tells us, he slept and dreamed. Visions of God seemed to descend upon his soul while he drew the mystic allegory of a christian pilgrim on his way from the city of destruction to the new Jerusalem. He had always been a dreamer; and he relates how, more than once, his course in life, and his spiritual concerns, had been determined for him in revelations on his bed. A mind of vast power and a brilliant fancy strove together in the dark. His want of education did not permit him to analyze the operations of the intellect; so truth and imagination, the real and the fabulous, with him were one. To this happy ignorance we owe the Pilgrim's Progress and Bunyan's fame. Critics have been ashamed to recognize, and even poets to applaud, a work which despises the craft of letters, and triumphs unconscious of its daring. Of accomplished writers, Southey was the first to allow his claim to a place amongst the gifted few whose works shall never die. Bunyan's admirers and biographers have lamented that his want of education should have dimmed the lustre of his genius. To this want his renown is owing. With no books but the bible and Foxe's Martyrs in his cell, he had, as it were, the principles of the gospel and the patience of the saints alone to work upon. So he took counsel with himself, and gave us the deep workings of his soul, and left a treatise which myriads of readers in half the languages of Europe as well as many a barbarous dialect beyond, are reading with delight. It contains passages of extreme beauty on almost every page. The man of despair in the iron

X.

CHAS. II.

A.D. 1661.

cage, is one of those creations of genius which may CHAPTER bear comparison with the most admired examples. The effect is produced by few and careless strokes ; and the sorrows he describes are those with which the readers of romance have little sympathy; but still it is a finished description of the deepest of all horrors-the anguish of despair. There are other scenes, such as the passage through the valley of the shadow of death, and the crossing of the river (the reality of death itself) which place the unlettered Bunyan high amongst imaginative writers of the highest class. That his admirers are found amongst the multitude is a sufficient proof how true he is to nature; that so few of the leaders of taste have applauded their decision is an evidence perhaps of nothing more than of their ignorance of the doctrines, or their aversion to the principles, which, in Bunyan's eyes, gave to the book its chief if not its only charm. Encouraged by the success of his work, the author, as he tells us, dreamed again, and gave the life of his pilgrim's widow; and he even designed a third allegory which was to have related the fortunes of their children. But the spell had vanished; the second part is quite unequal to the first; and it is well for Bunyan's fame that with this he paused. When released from prison, he became a laborious preacher; and the largest conventicle in London would not contain half the crowd which pressed to hear the man whose pilgrim had already heralded his fame in every household of the puritans.

In October, the regicides were brought to trial, and the old leaders of the puritans, Denzil Hollis, Annesley, and the earl of Manchester, appeared

X.

A.D.1661.

CHAPTER as witnesses against their former associates with evident satisfaction; for these were the days of CHAS. II. vengeance and all sense of shame was lost. That justice should overtake the murderers of a king was right; it was in accordance with the soundest dictates of reason and of the law of God. Yet our sympathies go entirely with the sufferers; for they were treated with gross injustice; interrupted by the court, browbeaten and reviled; while the degraded audience, after the custom of the age, hummed applause. They still maintained their principles. Charles, they said, had been a great delinquent; he had oppressed the saints; he had fawned on popery; he had betrayed the liberties of England which he had sworn to cherish; he had deluged the land with blood; the more exalted his station the greater was his guilt, and the more righteous his destruction. The utmost concession that could be extorted from them was, that it was possible they might have been mistaken. Against the king himself, they one and all declared, they had never entertained a feeling of revenge. They had discharged an awful duty, and they had done it openly and before the world. Hugh Peters, though he had not sat in judgment on the king, was arraigned as an accomplice. In answer to the usual question, guilty or not guilty? he exclaimed, “I would not for ten thousand worlds say that I am guilty. I am not guilty." How will you be tried?

66

By the word of God," said Peters, and the people laughed. But the conviction that God's word absolved them was deep in their souls; it sustained them against the jeers of the court and the more