penal statutes, should desire their abrogation, and express his readiness
to "steer his friends and followers" to support candidates who would
pledge themselves to vote for their repeal. But no further would he go.
The Bedford Corporation was "regulated," which means that nearly the
whole of its members were removed and others substituted by royal order.
Of these new members some six or seven were leading persons of Bunyan's
congregation. But, with all his ardent desire for religious liberty,
Bunyan was too keen-witted not to see through James's policy, and too
honest to give it any direct insidious support. "In vain is the net
spread in the sight of any bird." He clearly saw that it was not for any
love of the Dissenters that they were so suddenly delivered from their
persecutions, and placed on a kind of equality with the Church. The
king's object was the establishment of Popery. To this the Church was
the chief obstacle. That must be undermined and subverted first. That
done, all other religious denominations would follow. All that the
Nonconformists would gain by yielding, was the favour Polyphemus promised
Ulysses, to be devoured last. Zealous as he was for the "liberty of
prophesying," even that might be purchased at too high a price. The boon
offered by the king was "good in itself," but not "so intended." So, as
his biographer describes, when the regulators came, "he expressed his
zeal with some weariness as perceiving the bad consequences that would
ensue, and laboured with his congregation" to prevent their being imposed
on by the fair promises of those who were at heart the bitterest enemies
of the cause they professed to advocate. The newly-modelled corporation
of Bedford seems like the other corporations through the country, to have
proved as unmanageable as the old. As Macaulay says, "The sectaries who
had declared in favour of the Indulgence had become generally ashamed of
their error, and were desirous to make atonement." Not knowing the man
they had to deal with, the "regulators" are said to have endeavoured to
buy Bunyan's support by the offer of some place under government. The