prisoner, as far as his own testimony goes, there is no evidence that his
imprisonment, though varying in its strictness with his various gaolers,
was aggravated by any special severity; and, as Mr. Froude has said, "it
is unlikely that at any time he was made to suffer any greater hardships
than were absolutely inevitable."

The arrest of one whose work as a preacher had been a blessing to so
many, was not at once tamely acquiesced in by the religious body to which
he belonged. A few days after Bunyan's committal to gaol, some of "the
brethren" applied to Mr. Crompton, a young magistrate at Elstow, to bail
him out, offering the required security for his appearance at the Quarter
Sessions. The magistrate was at first disposed to accept the bail; but
being a young man, new in his office, and thinking it possible that there
might be more against Bunyan than the "mittimus" expressed, he was afraid
of compromising himself by letting him go at large. His refusal, though
it sent him back to prison, was received by Bunyan with his usual calm
trust in God's overruling providence. "I was not at all daunted, but
rather glad, and saw evidently that the Lord had heard me." Before he
set out for the justice's house, he tells us he had committed the whole
event to God's ordering, with the prayer that "if he might do more good
by being at liberty than in prison," the bail might be accepted, "but if
not, that His will might be done." In the failure of his friends' good
offices he saw an answer to his prayer, encouraging the hope that the
untoward event, which deprived them of his personal ministrations, "might
be an awaking to the saints in the country," and while "the slender
answer of the justice," which sent him back to his prison, stirred
something akin to contempt, his soul was full of gladness. "Verily I did
meet my God sweetly again, comforting of me, and satisfying of me, that
it was His will and mind that I should be there." The sense that he was
being conformed to the image of his great Master was a stay to his soul.