s, and
particularly those of a ship.

[v.04 p.0803] BUNYAN, JOHN (1628-1688), English religious writer, was born
at Elstow, about a mile from Bedford, in November 1628. His father, Thomas
Bunyan,[1] was a tinker, or, as he described himself, a "brasier." The
tinkers then formed a hereditary caste, which was held in no high
estimation. Bunyan's father had a fixed residence, and was able to send his
son to a village school where reading and writing were taught.

The years of John's boyhood were those during which the Puritan spirit was
in the highest vigour all over England; and nowhere had that spirit more
influence than in Bedfordshire. It is not wonderful, therefore, that a lad
to whom nature had given a powerful imagination and sensibility which
amounted to a disease, should have been early haunted by religious terrors.
Before he was ten his sports were interrupted by fits of remorse and
despair; and his sleep was disturbed by dreams of fiends trying to fly away
with him. As he grew older his mental conflicts became still more violent.
The strong language in which he described them strangely misled all his
earlier biographers except Southey. It was long an ordinary practice with
pious writers to cite Bunyan as an instance of the supernatural power of
divine grace to rescue the human soul from the lowest depths of wickedness.
He is called in one book the most notorious of profligates; in another, the
brand plucked from the burning. Many excellent persons, whose moral
character from boyhood to old age has been free from any stain discernible
to their fellow-creatures, have, in their autobiographies and diaries,
applied to themselves, and doubtless with sincerity, epithets as severe as
could be applied to Titus Oates or Mrs Brownrigg. It is quite certain that
Bunyan was, at eighteen, what, in any but the most austerely puritanical
circles, would have been considered as a young man of singular gravity and
innocence. Indeed, it may be remarked that he, like many other penitents
who, in general terms, acknowledge themselves to have been the worst of
mankind, fired up, and stood vigorously on his defence, whenever any
particular charge was brought against him by others. He declares, it is
true, that he had let loose the reins on the neck of his lusts, that he had
delighted in all transgressions against the divine law, and that he had
been the ringleader of the youth of Elstow in all manner of vice. But when
those who wished