while others have attributed the disturbed state of his mind to
disease; my humble belief is that the whole is a plain unvarnished
account of facts; that those facts occurred while he was in full
possession of all the faculties of his mind. To ascribe such powers
to the invisible world by which we are constantly surrounded, does
not agree with the doctrines of modern philosophers. Those holy
or unholy suggestions suddenly injected, would by the world be set
down as the hallucinations of a distempered imagination. Carnal
relations attributed Christian's alarm to 'some frenzy distemper
got into his head,' and Southey, following their example, ascribes
Bunyan's hallowed feelings to his want of 'sober judgment,' 'his
brutality and extreme ignorance,' a 'stage of burning enthusiasm,'
and to 'an age in which hypocrisy was regnant, and fanaticism rampant
throughout the land.'[167] What a display of reigning hypocrisy
and rampant fanaticism was it to see the game at cat openly played
by men on Sunday, the church bells calling them to their sport!!!
Had Southey been poet-laureate to Charles II, he might with equal
truth have concealed the sensuality, open profaneness, and debauchery
of that profligate monarch and his court of concubines, and have
praised him as 'the Lord's anointed.' Bunyan was an eye-witness of
the state of the times in which he lived, and he associated with
numbers of the poor in Bedfordshire and the adjoining counties. So
truthful a man's testimony is of great value, and he proves that
no miraculous reformation of manners had taken place; no regnant
hypocrisy nor rampant fanaticism. In 1655, that being the brightest
period of the Commonwealth, he thus 'sighs' over the state of his
country:--'There are but a few places in the Bible but there are
threatenings against one sinner or another; against drunkards,
swearers, liars, proud persons, strumpets, whoremongers, covetous,
railers, extortioners, thieves, lazy persons. In a word, all manner