education he had received, and lost again by dissipated habits. He
must have made every effort, by his diligent study of the Bible,
to gain that spiritual knowledge which alone could enable him
to proclaim the unsearchable riches of Christ, and that profound
internal converse with the throne of God which appears in all his
writings. In addition to all this, he was engaged in continual
controversy with a variety of sects, which, in his sober judgment,
opposed the simplicity of the gospel. Among these the Ranters, or
Sweet Singers, were very conspicuous. It is difficult to discover
what were their opinions, but they appear to have been nearly
like the Dutch Adamites; they were severely persecuted, by public
authority, under the Commonwealth, for blasphemy. George Fox
found some of them in prison at Coventry in 1649, and held a short
disputation with them. They claimed each one to be GOD, founding
their notion on such passages as 1 Corinthians 14:25, 'God is in
you of a truth.' Fox quaintly asked them whether it would rain the
next day; and upon their answering that they could not tell, 'Then
said I unto them, God can tell.'[179] Strange as it may appear,
the Ranters had many followers, while numerous pious people were
troubled by their impudence and perversion of Scripture, but more
especially by their being a persecuted people. Taking advantage of
the inquiries that were excited by these strange doctrines, Bunyan
determined to become an author, that he might set forth more
extensively than he could do by preaching, the truths of the gospel
in their native purity, simplicity, and beauty, as an antidote to
fanaticism. The learned and eloquent looked with contempt upon the
follies of the Ranters, Familists, and some loose Quakers, 'and
only deigned to abuse them with raillery, while the poor unlettered
tinker wrote against them.' To indite a work would be to him a
pleasant recreation, but writing a book must have been extremely