or by
common fame, except my wife." He calls not only men, but angels, nay,
even God Himself, to bear testimony to his innocence in this respect. But
though they were so absolutely baseless, nay, the rather because they
were so baseless, the grossness of these charges evidently stung Bunyan
very deeply.

So bitter was the feeling aroused against him by the marvellous success
of his irregular ministry, that his enemies, even before the restoration
of the Church and Crown, endeavoured to put the arm of the law in motion
to restrain him. We learn from the church books that in March, 1658, the
little Bedford church was in trouble for "Brother Bunyan," against whom
an indictment had been laid at the Assizes for "preaching at Eaton
Socon." Of this indictment we hear no more; so it was probably dropped.
But it is an instructive fact that, even during the boasted religious
liberty of the Protectorate, irregular preaching, especially that of the
much dreaded Anabaptists, was an indictable offence. But, as Dr. Brown
observes, "religious liberty had not yet come to mean liberty all round,
but only liberty for a certain recognized section of Christians." That
there was no lack of persecution during the Commonwealth is clear from
the cruel treatment to which Quakers were subjected, to say nothing of
the intolerance shown to Episcopalians and Roman Catholics. In Bunyan's
own county of Bedford, Quakeresses were sentenced to be whipped and sent
to Bridewell for reproving a parish priest, perhaps well deserving of it,
and exhorting the folks on a market day to repentance and amendment of
life. "The simple truth is," writes Robert Southey, "all parties were
agreed on the one catholic opinion that certain doctrines were not to be
tolerated:" the only points of difference between them were "what those
doctrines were," and how far intolerance might be carried. The withering
lines are familiar to us, in which Milton denounces the "New Forcers of
Conscience," who by their intolerance and "super-metropolitan and
hyperarchiepiscopal tyranny," proved that in his proverbial words, "New
Presbyter is but old Priest writ large"--

"Because you have thrown off your prelate lord,
And with stiff vows renounce his liturgy
Dare ye for this adjure the civil sword
To force our consciences that Christ set free!"

How Bunyan came to escape we know not. But the danger he was in was
imminent enough for the church at Bedford to meet to