Scripture language, and with such appearance of grace in all they
said, that they were to me as if they had found a new world, as
if they were people that dwelt alone, and were not to be reckoned
among their neighbors' (Num 23:9).

O! how little did they imagine that their pious converse was to
be the means employed by the Holy Spirit in the conversion of that
poor tinker, and that, by their agency, he was to be transformed
into one of the brightest luminaries of heaven; who, when he had
entered into rest would leave his works to follow him as spiritual
thunder to pierce the hearts of the impenitent, and as heavenly
consolation to bind up the broken-hearted; liberating the prisoners
of Giant Despair, and directing the pilgrims to the Celestial City.
Thus were blessings in rich abundance showered down upon the church
by the instrumentality, in the first instance, of a woman that was
a sinner, but most eminently by the Christian converse of a few
poor but pious women.

This poverty-stricken, ragged tinker was the son of a working
mechanic at Elstow, near Bedford. So obscure was his origin that
even the Christian name of his father is yet unknown:[2] he was
born in 1628, a year memorable as that in which the Bill of Rights
was passed. Then began the struggle against arbitrary power, which
was overthrown in 1688, the year of Bunyan's death, by the accession
of William III. Of Bunyan's parents, his infancy, and childhood,
little is recorded. All that we know is from his own account, and
that principally contained in his doctrine of the Law and Grace,
and in his extraordinary development of his spiritual life, under
the title of Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. His birth would
have shed a luster on the wealthiest mansion, and have imparted