caught in my present practice, and cast into prison, where I have
lain alone as long again to confirm the truth by way of suffering, as
I was before in testifying of it, according to the scriptures, in a
way of preaching."

Bunyan's preaching was no incoherent rant. Words of truth and
soberness formed the staple of each sermon; and his burning words and
startling images were only the electric scintillations along the
chain of his scriptural eloquence. Though the common people heard
him most gladly, he had occasional hearers of a higher class. Once
on a week-day he was expected to preach in a parish church near
Cambridge, and a concourse of people had already collected in the
churchyard. A gay student was riding past, when he noticed the
crowd, and asked what had brought them together. He was told that
the people had come out to hear one Bunyan, a tinker, preach. He
instantly dismounted, and gave a boy twopence to hold his horse, for
he declared he was determined to hear the tinker PRATE. So he went
into the church, and heard the tinker; but so deep was the impression
which that sermon made on the scholar, that he took every subsequent
opportunity to attend Bunyan's ministry, and himself became a
renowned preacher of the gospel in Cambridgeshire. Still he felt
that his errand was to the multitude, and his great anxiety was to
penetrate the darkest places of the land, and preach to the most
abandoned people. In these labours of unostentatious heroism, he
sometimes excited the jealousy of the regular parish ministers, and
even under the tolerant rule of the Protector, was in some danger of
imprisonment. However, it was not till the Restoration that he was
in serious jeopardy; but thereafter he was among the first victims of
the grand combination betwixt priests and rulers to exterminate the
gospel in England.