afterwards." "This story," continues the anonymous biographer, "I know
to be true, having many times discoursed with the man." To the same ante-
Restoration period, Dr. Brown also assigns the anecdote of Bunyan's
encounter, on the road near Cambridge, with the university man who asked
him how he dared to preach not having the original Scriptures. With
ready wit, Bunyan turned the tables on the scholar by asking whether he
had the actual originals, the copies written by the apostles and
prophets. The scholar replied, "No," but they had what they believed to
be a true copy of the original. "And I," said Bunyan, "believe the
English Bible to be a true copy, too." "Then away rid the scholar."

The fame of such a preacher, naturally, soon spread far and wide; all the
countryside flocked eagerly to hear him. In some places, as at Meldreth
in Cambridgeshire, and Yelden in his own county of Bedfordshire, the
pulpits of the parish churches were opened to him. At Yelden, the
Rector, Dr. William Dell, the Puritan Master of Caius College, Cambridge,
formerly Chaplain to the army under Fairfax, roused the indignation of
his orthodox parishioners by allowing him--"one Bunyon of Bedford, a
tinker," as he is ignominiously styled in the petition sent up to the
House of Lords in 1660--to preach in his parish church on Christmas Day.
But, generally, the parochial clergy were his bitterest enemies. "When I
first went to preach the word abroad," he writes, "the Doctors and
priests of the country did open wide against me." Many were envious of
his success where they had so signally failed. In the words of Mr. Henry
Deane, when defending Bunyan against the attacks of Dr. T. Smith,
Professor of Arabic and Keeper of the University Library at Cambridge,
who had come upon Bunyan preaching in a barn at Toft, they were "angry
with the tinker because he strove to mend souls as well as kettles and
pans," and proved himself more skilful in his craft than those who had
graduated at a university. Envy is ever the mother of detraction.