years, until the issuing of the "Declaration of Indulgence" early in 1672
opened the long-closed doors, and he walked out a free man, and with what
he valued far more than personal liberty, freedom to deliver Christ's
message as he understood it himself, none making him afraid, and to
declare to his brother sinners what their Saviour had done for them, and
what he expected them to do that they might obtain the salvation He died
to win.

From some unknown cause, perhaps the depressing effect of protracted
confinement, during this second six years Bunyan's pen was far less
prolific than during the former period. Only two of his books are dated
in these years. The last of these, "A Defence of the Doctrine of
Justification by Faith," a reply to a work of Edward Fowler, afterwards
Bishop of Gloucester, the rector of Northill, was written in hot haste
immediately before his release, and issued from the press
contemporaneously with it, the prospect of liberty apparently breathing
new life into his wearied soul. When once Bunyan became a free man
again, his pen recovered its former copiousness of production, and the
works by which he has been immortalized, "The Pilgrim's Progress"--which
has been erroneously ascribed to Bunyan's twelve years' imprisonment--and
its sequel, "The Holy War," and the "Life and Death of Mr. Badman," and a
host of more strictly theological works, followed one another in rapid
succession.

Bunyan's second term of imprisonment was certainly less severe than that
which preceded it. At its commencement we learn that, like Joseph in
Egypt, he found favour in his jailer's eyes, who "took such pity of his
rigorous suffering, that he put all care and trust into his hands."
Towards the close of his imprisonment its rigour was still further
relaxed. The Bedford church book begins its record again in 1688, after