iking for the sports and games of the lads of the village, bell-ringing,
dancing, and the like. The prohibition of all liturgical forms issued in
1645, the observance of which varied with the strictness or laxity of the
local authorities, would not seem to have been put in force very rigidly
at Elstow. The vicar, Christopher Hall, was an Episcopalian, who, like
Bishop Sanderson, retained his benefice unchallenged all through the
Protectorate, and held it some years after the Restoration and the
passing of the Act of Uniformity. He seems, like Sanderson, to have kept
himself within the letter of the law by making trifling variations in the
Prayer Book formularies, consistent with a general conformity to the old
order of the Church, "without persisting to his own destruction in the
usage of the entire liturgy." The decent dignity of the ceremonial of
his parish church had a powerful effect on Bunyan's freshly awakened
religious susceptibility--a "spirit of superstition" he called it
afterwards--and helped to its fuller development. "I adored," he says,
"with great devotion, even all things, both the High Place"--altars then
had not been entirely broken down and levelled in Bedfordshire--"Priest,
Clerk, Vestment, Service, and what else belonging to the church, counting
all things holy that were therein contained, and especially the Priest
and Clerk most happy, and without doubt greatly blessed because they were
the servants of God and were principal in the Holy Temple, to do His work
therein, . . . their name, their garb, and work, did so intoxicate and
bewitch me." If it is questionable whether the Act forbidding the use of
the Book of Common Prayer was strictly observed at Elstow, it is certain
that the prohibition of Sunday sports was not. Bunyan's narrative shows
that the aspect of a village green in Bedfordshire during the
Protectorate did not differ much from what Baxter tells us it had been in
Shropshire before the civil troubles began, where, "after the Common
Prayer had been read briefly, the rest of the day even till dark night
almost, except eating time, was spent in dancing under a maypole and a
great tree, when all the town did meet together." These Sunday sports
proved the battle-ground of Bunyan's spiritual experience, the scene of
the fierce inward struggles which he has described so vividly, through
which he ultimately reached the firm ground of solid peace and hope. As
a high-spirited healthy athlet