wife to have written harsh things against the judge! She could not
have conceived that, under the stately robes of Hale, there was
a heart affected by Divine love. And when the nobleman afterwards
met the despised tinker and his wife, on terms of perfect equality,
clothed in more glorious robes in the mansions of the blessed, how
inconceivable their surprise! It must have been equally so with
the learned judge, when, in the pure atmosphere of heaven, he found
that the illiterate tinker, harassed by poverty and imprisonment,
produced books, the admiration of the world. As Dr. Cheever eloquently
writes--'How little could he dream, that from that narrow cell in
Bedford jail a glory would shine out, illustrating the grace of
God, and doing more good to man, than all the prelates and judges
of the kingdom would accomplish.'[244]

Bunyan was thus left in a dreary and hopeless state of imprisonment,
in which he continued for somewhat more than twelve years, and it
becomes an interesting inquiry how he spent his time and managed to
employ his great talent in his Master's service. The first object
of his solicitude would be to provide for his family, according to
1 Timothy 5:8. How to supply his house with bare necessaries to
meet the expenses of a wife and four children, must have filled him
with anxiety. The illness, death, and burial of his first beloved
wife, had swept away any little reserve which otherwise might have
accumulated, so that, soon after his imprisonment commenced, before
he could resume any kind of labour, his wife thus pleaded with the
judge for his liberty, 'My lord, I have four small children that
cannot help themselves, of which one is blind, and have nothing
to live upon but the charity of good people.' How inscrutable are
the ways of Providence; the rich reveling in luxury while using
their wealth to corrupt mankind, while this eminent saint, with his