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 pray "for counsail
what to doe" in respect of it.

It was in these closing years of the Protectorate that Bunyan made his
first essay at authorship. He was led to it by a long and tiresome
controversy with the Quakers, who had recently found their way to