sly healed spirit often has, in
looking back upon the past from that theological standpoint whence all
want of conformity to the perfect law of God seems heinous and
dreadful.

"A sinner may be comparatively a little sinner, and sensibly a
great one. There are two sorts of greatness in sin: greatness by
reason of number; greatness by reason of the horrible nature of
sin. In the last sense, he that has but one sin, if such an one
could be found, may in his own eyes find himself the biggest
sinner in the world."

"Visions of God break the heart, because, by the sight the soul
then has of His perfections, it sees its own infinite and
unspeakable disproportion."

"The best saints are most sensible of their sins, and most apt
to make mountains of their molehills."

Such sentences from Bunyan's own writings--and many like them might be
quoted--shed more light upon the much-debated question of his
"wickedness" than all that his biographers have written.

In John Gifford, pastor of a little Free Church in Bedford, Bunyan found
a wise friend, and in 1653 he joined that church. He soon discovered his
gifts among the brethren, and in due time was appointed to the office of
a gospel minister, in which he labored with indefatigable industry and
zeal, and with ever-increasing fame and success, until his death. His
hard personal fortunes between the Restoration of 1660 and the
Declaration of Indulgence of 1672, including his imprisonment for twelve
years in Bedford Gaol; his subsequent imprisonment in 1675-6, when the
first part of the 'Pilgrim's Progress' was probably written; and the
arduous engagements of his later and comparatively peaceful years,--must
be sought in biographies, the latest and perhaps the best of which is
that by Rev. John Brown, minister of the Bunyan Church at Bedford. The
statute under which Bunyan suffered is the 35th Eliz., Cap. 1,
re-enacted with rigor in the 16th Charles II., Cap. 4, 1662; and the
spirit of it appears in the indictment preferred against him:--"that he
hath devilishly and perniciously abstained from coming to Church to hear
Divine service, and is a common upholder of several unlawful meetings
and conventicles, to the great disturbance and distraction of the good
subjects of this Kingdom," etc., etc.

The story of Bunyan's life up to the time of his imprisonment, and
particularly that of his arrests and examinations before the justices,
and