the bench were country gentlemen hating
Puritanism from their heart, and eager for retaliation for the wrongs it
had wrought them. From such a bench, even if Bunyan had been less
uncompromising, no leniency was to be anticipated. But Bunyan's attitude
forbade any leniency. As the law stood he had indisputably broken it,
and he expressed his determination, respectfully but firmly, to take the
first opportunity of breaking it again. "I told them that if I was let
out of prison today I would preach the gospel again to-morrow by the help
of God." We may dislike the tone adopted by the magistrates towards the
prisoner; we may condemn it as overbearing and contemptuous; we may smile
at Keeling's expositions of Scripture and his stock arguments against
unauthorized prayer and preaching, though we may charitably believe that
Bunyan misunderstood him when he makes him say that "the Book of Common
Prayer had been ever since the apostles' time"; we may think that the
prisoner, in his "canting pedlar's French," as Keeling called it, had the
better of his judges in knowledge of the Bible, in Christian charity, as
well as in dignity and in common sense, and that they showed their wisdom
in silencing him in court--"Let him speak no further," said one of them,
"he will do harm,"--since they could not answer him more convincingly:
but his legal offence was clear. He confessed to the indictment, if not
in express terms, yet virtually. He and his friends had held "many
meetings together, both to pray to God and to exhort one another. I
confessed myself guilty no otherwise." Such meetings were forbidden by
the law, which it was the duty of the justices to administer, and they
had no choice whether they would convict or no. Perhaps they were not
sorry they had no such choice. Bunyan was a most "impracticable"
prisoner, and as Mr. Froude says, the "magistrates being but unregenerate
mortals may be pardoned if they found him provoking." The sentence
necessarily followed. It was pronounced, not, we are sure reluctantly,
by Keeling, in the terms of the Act. "He was to go back to prison for
three months. If at three months' end he still refused to go to church
to hear Divine service and leave his preaching, he was to be banished the
realm,"--in modern language "transported," and if "he came back again
without special royal license," he must "stretch by the neck for it."

"This," said Keeling, "I tell you plainly." Bunyan's reply t