old enemy of the truth, Dr. Lindale, and also with a persecuting
justice, Mr. Foster, who, soon after, sorely vexed the people
of God at Bedford. They tried their utmost endeavours to persuade
him to promise not to preach; a word from him might have saved his
liberty; but it was a word which would have sacrificed his religious
convictions, and these were dearer to him than life itself. This
was a trying moment, but he had been forewarned of his danger by
the extraordinary temptation to sell Christ narrated in his Grace
Abounding. His feelings, while they were conducting him to the
prison, were so cheering as to enable him to forget his sorrows;
he thus describes them--'Verily, as I was going forth of the doors
I had much ado to forbear saying to them, that I carried the peace
of God along with me; and, blessed be the Lord, I went away to
prison with God's comfort in my poor soul.'[218]

Tradition points out the place in which this eminently pious man
was confined, as an ancient prison, built with the bridge over the
river Ouse, supported on one of the piers near the middle of the
river.[219] As the bridge was only four yards and a half wide,
the prison must have been very small. Howard, the philanthropist,
visited the Bedford prison, that which was dignified as the county
jail about 1788, and thus describes it:--'The men and women felons
associate together; their night-rooms are two dungeons. Only one
court for debtors and felons; and no apartment for the jailer.'[220]
Imagination can hardly realize the miseries of fifty or sixty pious
men and women, taken from a place of public worship and incarcerated
in such dens or dungeons with felons, as was the case while Bunyan
was a prisoner. Twelve feet square was about the extent of the
walls; for it occupies but one pier between the center arches of
the bridge. How properly does the poor pilgrim call it a certain