trying to fly away with him. As he grew older, his mental
conflicts became still more violent. The strong language in
which he described them has strangely misled all his biographers
except Mr Southey. It has long been an ordinary practice with
pious writers to cite Bunyan as an instance of the supernatural
power of divine grace to rescue the human soul from the lowest
depths of wickedness. He is called in one book the most
notorious of profligates; in another, the brand plucked from the
burning. He is designated in Mr Ivimey's History of the Baptists
as the depraved Bunyan, the wicked tinker of Elstow. Mr Ryland,
a man once of great note among the Dissenters, breaks out into
the following rhapsody:--"No man of common sense and common
integrity can deny that Bunyan was a practical atheist, a
worthless contemptible infidel, a vile rebel to God and goodness,
a common profligate, a soul-despising, a soul-murdering, a soul-
damning, thoughtless wretch as could exist on the face of the
earth. Now be astonished, O heavens, to eternity! and wonder, O
earth and hell! while time endures. Behold this very man become
a miracle of mercy, a mirror of wisdom, goodness, holiness,
truth, and love." But whoever takes the trouble to examine the
evidence will find that the good men who wrote this had been
deceived by a phraseology which, as they had been hearing it and
using it all their lives, they ought to have understood better.
There cannot be a greater mistake than to infer, from the strong
expressions in which a devout man bemoans his exceeding
sinfulness, that he has led a worse life than his neighbours.
Many excellent persons, whose moral character from boyhood to old
age has been free from any stain discernible to their fellow-
creatures, have, in their autobiographies and diaries, applied to
themselves, and doubtless with sincerity, epithets as severe as