sted in the parliamentary army, and served during the decisive
campaign of 1645. All that we know of his military career is that, at
the siege of Leicester, one of his comrades, who had taken his post, was
killed by a shot from the town. Bunyan ever after considered himself as
having been saved from death by the special interference of Providence.
It may be observed that his imagination was strongly impressed by the
glimpse which he had caught of the pomp of war. To the last he loved to
draw his illustrations of sacred things from camps and fortresses, from
guns, drums, trumpets, flags of truce, and regiments arrayed, each under
its own banner. His Greatheart, his Captain Boanerges, and his Captain
Credence, are evidently portraits, of which the originals were among
those martial saints who fought and expounded in Fairfax's army.

In a few months Bunyan returned home and married. His wife had some
pious relations, and brought him as her only portion some pious books.
And now his mind, excitable by nature, very imperfectly disciplined
by education, and exposed, without any protection, to the infectious
virulence of the enthusiasm which was then epidemic in England, began
to be fearfully disordered. In outward things he soon became a strict
Pharisee. He was constant in attendance at prayers and sermons. His
favourite amusements were one after another relinquished, though not
without many painful struggles. In the middle of a game at tipcat he
paused, and stood staring wildly upwards with his stick in his hand. He
had heard a voice asking him whether he would leave his sins and go
to heaven, or keep his sins and go to hell; and he had seen an awful
countenance frowning on him from the sky. The odious vice of bellringing
he renounced; but he still for a time ventured to go to the church tower
and look on while others pulled the ropes. But soon the thought struck
him that, if he persisted in such wickedness, the steeple would fall
on his head; and he fled in terror from the accursed place. To give up
dancing on the village green was still harder; and some months elapsed
before he had the fortitude to part with this darling sin. When this
last sacrifice had been made, he was, even when tried by the maxims of
that austere time, faultless. All Elstow talked of him as an eminently
pious youth. But his own mind was more unquiet than ever. Having nothing
more to do in the way of visible reformation, yet finding in religion
no pleas