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."