The Life of John Bunyan [39]
though certainly exceedingly rapid, - thoughts
succeeding one another with a quickness akin to inspiration, - was
anything but careless. The "limae labor" with him was unsparing.
It was, he tells us, "first with doing, and then with undoing, and
after that with doing again," that his books were brought to
completion, and became what they are, a mine of Evangelical
Calvinism of the richest ore, entirely free from the narrow
dogmatism and harsh predestinarianism of the great Genevan divine;
books which for clearness of thought, lucidity of arrangement,
felicity of language, rich even if sometimes homely force of
illustration, and earnestness of piety have never been surpassed.
Bunyan's prison life when the first bitterness of it was past, and
habit had done away with its strangeness, was a quiet and it would
seem, not an unhappy one. A manly self-respect bore him up and
forbade his dwelling on the darker features of his position, or
thinking or speaking harshly of the authors of his durance. "He
was," writes one who saw him at this time, "mild and affable in
conversation; not given to loquacity or to much discourse unless
some urgent occasion required. It was observed he never spoke of
himself or his parents, but seemed low in his own eyes. He was
never heard to reproach or revile, whatever injury he received, but
rather rebuked those who did so. He managed all things with such
exactness as if he had made it his study not to give offence."
According to his earliest biographer, Charles Doe, in 1666, the
year of the Fire of London, after Bunyan had lain six years in
Bedford gaol, "by the intercession of some interest or power that
took pity on his sufferings," he enjoyed a short interval of
liberty. Who these friends and sympathisers were is not mentioned,
and it would be vain to conjecture. This period of freedom,
however, was very short. He at once resumed his old work of
preaching, against which the laws had become even more stringent
during his imprisonment, and was apprehended at a meeting just as
he was about to preach a sermon. He had given out his text, "Dost
thou believe on the Son of God?" (John ix. 35), and was standing
with his open Bible in his hand, when the constable came in to take
him. Bunyan fixed his eyes on the man, who turned pale, let go his
hold, and drew back, while Bunyan exclaimed, "See how this man
trembles at the word of God!" This is all we know of his second
arrest, and even this little is somewhat doubtful. The time, the
place, the circumstances, are as provokingly vague as much else of
Bunyan's life. The fact, however, is certain. Bunyan returned to
Bedford gaol, where he spent another six years, until the issuing
of the "Declaration of Indulgence" early in 1672 opened the long-
closed doors, and he walked out a free man, and with what he valued
far more than personal liberty, freedom to deliver Christ's message
as he understood it himself, none making him afraid, and to declare
to his brother sinners what their Saviour had done for them, and
what he expected them to do that they might obtain the salvation He
died to win.
From some unknown cause, perhaps the depressing effect of
protracted confinement, during this second six years Bunyan's pen
was far less prolific than during the former period. Only two of
his books are dated in these years. The last of these, "A Defence
of the Doctrine of Justification by Faith," a reply to a work of
Edward Fowler, afterwards Bishop of Gloucester, the rector of
Northill, was written in hot haste immediately before his release,
and issued from the press contemporaneously with it, the prospect
of liberty apparently breathing new life into his wearied soul.
When once Bunyan became a free man again, his pen recovered its
former copiousness of production, and the works by which he has
been immortalized, "The Pilgrim's Progress" - which has been
erroneously
succeeding one another with a quickness akin to inspiration, - was
anything but careless. The "limae labor" with him was unsparing.
It was, he tells us, "first with doing, and then with undoing, and
after that with doing again," that his books were brought to
completion, and became what they are, a mine of Evangelical
Calvinism of the richest ore, entirely free from the narrow
dogmatism and harsh predestinarianism of the great Genevan divine;
books which for clearness of thought, lucidity of arrangement,
felicity of language, rich even if sometimes homely force of
illustration, and earnestness of piety have never been surpassed.
Bunyan's prison life when the first bitterness of it was past, and
habit had done away with its strangeness, was a quiet and it would
seem, not an unhappy one. A manly self-respect bore him up and
forbade his dwelling on the darker features of his position, or
thinking or speaking harshly of the authors of his durance. "He
was," writes one who saw him at this time, "mild and affable in
conversation; not given to loquacity or to much discourse unless
some urgent occasion required. It was observed he never spoke of
himself or his parents, but seemed low in his own eyes. He was
never heard to reproach or revile, whatever injury he received, but
rather rebuked those who did so. He managed all things with such
exactness as if he had made it his study not to give offence."
According to his earliest biographer, Charles Doe, in 1666, the
year of the Fire of London, after Bunyan had lain six years in
Bedford gaol, "by the intercession of some interest or power that
took pity on his sufferings," he enjoyed a short interval of
liberty. Who these friends and sympathisers were is not mentioned,
and it would be vain to conjecture. This period of freedom,
however, was very short. He at once resumed his old work of
preaching, against which the laws had become even more stringent
during his imprisonment, and was apprehended at a meeting just as
he was about to preach a sermon. He had given out his text, "Dost
thou believe on the Son of God?" (John ix. 35), and was standing
with his open Bible in his hand, when the constable came in to take
him. Bunyan fixed his eyes on the man, who turned pale, let go his
hold, and drew back, while Bunyan exclaimed, "See how this man
trembles at the word of God!" This is all we know of his second
arrest, and even this little is somewhat doubtful. The time, the
place, the circumstances, are as provokingly vague as much else of
Bunyan's life. The fact, however, is certain. Bunyan returned to
Bedford gaol, where he spent another six years, until the issuing
of the "Declaration of Indulgence" early in 1672 opened the long-
closed doors, and he walked out a free man, and with what he valued
far more than personal liberty, freedom to deliver Christ's message
as he understood it himself, none making him afraid, and to declare
to his brother sinners what their Saviour had done for them, and
what he expected them to do that they might obtain the salvation He
died to win.
From some unknown cause, perhaps the depressing effect of
protracted confinement, during this second six years Bunyan's pen
was far less prolific than during the former period. Only two of
his books are dated in these years. The last of these, "A Defence
of the Doctrine of Justification by Faith," a reply to a work of
Edward Fowler, afterwards Bishop of Gloucester, the rector of
Northill, was written in hot haste immediately before his release,
and issued from the press contemporaneously with it, the prospect
of liberty apparently breathing new life into his wearied soul.
When once Bunyan became a free man again, his pen recovered its
former copiousness of production, and the works by which he has
been immortalized, "The Pilgrim's Progress" - which has been
erroneously