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Bunyan was surrounded by all these parties; for although the rights of conscience were not recognized the Papists and Episcopalians, the Baptists and Unitarians, with the Jews, being proscribed yet the hand of persecution was comparatively light.

What revealed him to himself was an incident which he tells in language recalling at once Augustine and one of the subtlest sketches of George Eliot, in which the latter uses her half-knowledge of evangelical faith to stab the very truth that delivered Paul and Augustine, Bunyan and Carey, from the antinomianism of the Pharisee:

BUNYAN. I said, This I confess: we have had many meetings together both to pray to God and to exhort one another, and we have had the sweet comforting presence of the Lord among us for encouragement; blessed be his name therefor. I confessed myself guilty no otherwise. KEELING. Then said he, Hear your judgment.

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."

Then we might close the service by solemnly objuring every system which gave power to tyrannise over the rights of conscience. Here, as in other places where Bunyan founded churches, the cause of Christ hath spread. At Hitchin, in 1681, about thirty-five Christians united in the following covenant:

O beware of that ruinous idolatry, covetousness. Ed. Query, is this that part of a Christian's experience referred to in the Pilgrim's Progress, the second part of the Valley of the Shadow of Death? Ed. No man could speak more experimentally on the pain inflicted by slander, although utterly unfounded, than John Bunyan. So eminent a man became a mark for Satan and his emissaries to shoot at.

Bunyan fixed his eyes steadfastly upon him; having his Bible open in his hand, the man let go, looked pale, and retired; upon which he said to the congregation, 'See how this man trembles at the Word of God. Truly did one of his friends say, 'he had a sharp, quick eye. But being commanded in the king's name, he went with the officer, accompanied by some of his friends, to the magistrate's residence.

They are the sons of one Beastly, whose mother bore them in Flesh Square: they live at the house of one Shameless, at the sign of the Reprobate, next door to the Descent into the Pit, whose retainers are Mr. Flatter, Mr. Impiety, Mr. False-Peace, Mr. Covetousness, who are housed by one Mr. Simple, in Folly's Yard. Bunyan had a perfect wealth of sectarian scurrility at his command.

If he values any one of his illusions above the rest, for they all seem equally pleasant to him, it is his persuasion that John Bunyan was a Gypsy. "He was a tinker," says our editor. "And who were the tinkers?" "Why, Gypsies, without a doubt," answers the reader, and makes no struggle to escape the conclusion thus skilfully sprung upon him.

Bunyan, 'have you the very self-same original copies that were written by the penmen of the Scriptures, prophets and apostles? 'No, said the scholar, 'but we have the true copies of these originals. 'How do you know that? said Mr. Bunyan. 'How? said the scholar. 'Why, we believe what we have is a true copy of the original. 'Then, said Mr.