sung, and the minister dismissed the congregation with a solemn
blessing.[53] Some of the clergy continued the use of prayers,
contained in the liturgy, reciting, instead of reading them--a
course that was not objected to. This was the form of service which
struck Bunyan with such awe and reverence, leaving a very solemn
impression upon his mind, which the old form of common prayer had
never produced.

Bunyan was fond of athletic sports, bell-ringing, and dancing; and
in these he had indulged, so far as his worldly calling allowed.
Charles I, whether to promote Popery--to divert his subjects from
political grievances--or to punish the Puritans, had endeavoured
to drown their serious thoughts in a vortex of dissipation,
by re-publishing the Book of Sports, to be used on Sundays. That
'after Divine service our good people be not disturbed, letted, or
discouraged from dancing, either men or women; archery, leaping,
vaulting, or any other such harmless recreations; May games,
Whitsun-ales, Morris dances, May poles, and other sports.' But this
was not all, for every 'Puritan and Precisian was to be constrained
to conformity with these sports, or to leave their country.' The
same severe penalty was enforced upon every clergyman who refused to
read from his pulpit the Book of Sports, and to persuade the people
thus to desecrate the Lord's-day. 'Many hundred godly ministers
were suspended from their ministry, sequestered, driven from their
livings, excommunicated, prosecuted in the high commission court,
and forced to leave the kingdom for not publishing this declaration.'[54]
A little gleam of heavenly light falls upon those dark and gloomy
times, from the melancholy fact that nearly eight hundred conscientious
clergymen were thus wickedly persecuted. This was one of the works
of Laud, who out-bonnered Bonner himself in his dreadful career