without investigation. Among other infatuations of Charles I, had
been his hatred of any sect that professed the right and duty of
man to think for himself in choosing his way to heaven. In 1639
he published his 'Declaration concerning the tumults in Scotland,'
when violence was resorted to against the introduction of the Common
Prayer in which he denounced voluntary obedience because it was not
of constraint, and called it 'damnable'; he calls the principles
of the Anabaptists, in not submitting their consciences to human
laws, 'furious frenzies,' and 'madness'; all Protestants are 'to
detest and persecute them'; 'these Anabaptists raged most in their
madness'; 'the scandal of their frenzies'; 'we are amazed at, and
aggrieved at their horrible impudence'; 'we do abhor and detest
them all as rebellious and treasonable.'[135] This whole volume
is amusingly assuming. The king claims his subjects as personal
chattels, with whose bodies and minds he had a right to do as he
pleased. Bunyan owed no spiritual submission to man, 'whose breath
is in his nostrils'; and risking all hazards, he became one of the
denounced and despised sect of Baptists. To use the language of his
pilgrim, he passed the lions, braving all the dangers of an open
profession of faith in Christ, and entered the house called Beautiful,
which 'was built by the Lord of the hill, on purpose to entertain
such pilgrims in.'[136] He first gains permission of the watchman,
or minister, and then of the inmates, or church members. This
interesting event is said to have taken place about the year
1653.[137] Mr. Doe, in The Struggler, thus refers to it, Bunyan
'took all advantages to ripen his understanding in religion, and
so he lit on the dissenting congregation of Christians at Bedford,
and was, upon confession of faith, baptized about the year 1653,'[138]
when he was in the twenty-fifth year of his age. No minutes of the
proceedings of this church, prior to the death of Mr. Gifford in