Bedford. The foundations of the faith, he thought, were being
undermined. The Quakers' teaching as to the inward light seemed to him a
serious disparagement of the Holy Scriptures, while their mystical view
of the spiritual Christ revealed to the soul and dwelling in the heart,
came perilously near to a denial of the historic reality of the personal
Christ. He had had public disputations with male and female Quakers from
time to time, at the Market Cross at Bedford, at "Paul's Steeple-house in
Bedford town," and other places. One of them, Anne Blackley by name,
openly bade him throw away the Scriptures, to which Bunyan replied, "No;
for then the devil would be too hard for me." The same enthusiast
charged him with "preaching up an idol, and using conjuration and
witchcraft," because of his assertion of the bodily presence of Christ in
heaven.

The first work of one who was to prove himself so voluminous an author,
cannot but be viewed with much interest. It was a little volume in
duodecimo, of about two hundred pages, entitled "Some Gospel Truths
Opened, by that unworthy servant of Christ, John Bunyan, of Bedford, by
the Grace of God, preacher of the Gospel of His dear Son," published in
1656. The little book, which, as Dr. Brown says, was "evidently thrown
off at a heat," was printed in London and published at Newport Pagnel.
Bunyan being entirely unknown to the world, his first literary venture
was introduced by a commendatory "Epistle" written by Gifford's
successor, John Burton. In this Burton speaks of the young author--Bunyan
was only in his twenty-ninth year--as one who had "neither the greatness
nor the wisdom of the world to commend him," "not being chosen out of an
earthly but out of a heavenly university, the Church of Christ," where
"through grace he had taken three heavenly degrees, to wit, union with
Christ, the anointing of the Spirit, and experience of the temptations of
Satan," and as one of whose "soundness in the faith, godly conversation,