t. He was not asked to give up
preaching. He was asked only to give up public preaching. It was well
known that he had no disposition to rebellion. Even the going to
church was not insisted on. The clerk of the peace told him that he
might 'exhort his neighbours in private discourse,' if only he would
not bring the people together in numbers, which the magistrates would
be bound to notice. In this way he might continue his usefulness, and
would not be interfered with.

Bunyan knew his own freedom from seditious intentions. He would not
see that the magistrates could not suspend the law and make an
exception in his favour. They were going already to the utmost limit
of indulgence. But the more he disapproved of rebellion, the more
punctilious he was in carrying out resistance of another kind which he
held to be legitimate. He was a representative person, and he thought
that in yielding he would hurt the cause of religious liberty. 'The
law,' he said, 'had provided two ways of obeying--one to obey
actively, and if he could not in conscience obey actively, then to
suffer whatever penalty was inflicted on him.'

The clerk of the peace could produce no effect. Bunyan rather looked
on him as a false friend trying to entangle him. The three months
elapsed, and the magistrates had to determine what was to be done. If
Bunyan was brought before them, they must exile him. His case was
passed over and he was left in prison, where his wife and children
were allowed to visit him daily. He did not understand the law or
appreciate their forbearance. He exaggerated his danger. At the worst
he could only have been sent to America, where he might have remained
as long as he pleased. He feared that he might perhaps be hanged.

'I saw what was coming,' he said, 'and had two considerations
especially on my heart, how to be able to endure, should my
imprisonment be long and tedious, and how to be able to encounter
death should that be my portion. I was made to see that if I would
suffer rightly, I must pass sentence of death upon everything that can
properly be called a thing of this life, even to reckon myself, my
wife, my children, my health, my enjoyments all as dead to me, and
myself as dead to them. Yet I was a man compassed with infirmities.
The parting with my wife and poor children hath often been to me in
this place (the prison in which he was writing) as the pulling of my
flesh from my bones; and that not only because I am too, t