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The Life of John Bunyan by Edmund Venables
page 110 of 149 (73%)
Church and convicted of being "an abominable liar and slanderer,"
"extraordinary guilty" against "our beloved Brother Bunyan himself." And
though Sister Hawthorn satisfied the Church by "humble acknowledgment of
her miscariag," the bolder misdoer only made matters worse by "a frothy
letter," which left no alternative but a sentence of expulsion. But
though Bunyan's flock contained some whose fleeces were not as white as
he desired, these were the exception. The congregation meeting in Josias
Roughead's barn must have been, take them as a whole, a quiet,
God-fearing, spiritually-minded folk, of whom their pastor could think
with thankfulness and satisfaction as "his hope and joy and crown of
rejoicing." From such he could not be severed lightly. Inducements
which would have been powerful to a meaner nature fell dead on his
independent spirit. He was not "a man that preached by way of bargain
for money," and, writes Doe, "more than once he refused a more plentiful
income to keep his station." As Dr. Brown says: "He was too deeply
rooted on the scene of his lifelong labours and sufferings to think of
striking his tent till the command came from the Master to come up to the
higher service for which he had been ripening so long." At Bedford,
therefore, he remained; quietly staying on in his cottage in St.
Cuthbert's, and ministering to his humble flock, loving and beloved, as
Mr. Froude writes, "through changes of ministry, Popish plots, and
Monmouth rebellions, while the terror of a restoration of Popery was
bringing on the Revolution; careless of kings and cabinets, and confident
that Giant Pope had lost his power for harm, and thenceforward could only
bite his nails at the passing pilgrims."

Bunyan's peace was not, however, altogether undisturbed. Once it
received a shock in a renewal of his imprisonment, though only for a
brief period, in 1675, to which we owe the world-famous "Pilgrim's
Progress"; and it was again threatened, though not actually disturbed ten
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