in sin, he was taken into this school, and underwent the strictest
religious education. It was here alone that his rare talent could
be cultivated, to enable him, in two immortal allegories, to narrate
the internal discipline he underwent. It was here he attained
that habitual access to the throne of grace, and that insight into
the inspired volume, which filled his writings with those solemn
realities of the world to come; while it enabled him to reveal
the mysteries of communion with the Father of spirits, as he so
wondrously does in his treatise on prayer. To use the language of
Milton--'These are works that could not be composed by the invocation
of Dame Memory and her Siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that
eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge,
and send out his seraphim, with the hallowed fire of his altar,
to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases, without reference
to station, birth, or education.' The tent-maker and tinker, the
fisherman and publican, and even a friar or monk,[123] became the
honoured instruments of his choice.

Throughout all Bunyan's writings, he never murmurs at his want
of education, although it is often a source of humble apology. He
honoured the learned godly as Christians, but preferred the Bible
before the library of the two universities.[124] He saw, what every
pious man must see and lament, that there is much idolatry in human
learning, and that it was frequently applied to confuse and impede
the gospel. Thus he addresses the reader of his treatise on The Law
and Grace--'If thou find this book empty of fantastical expressions,
and without light, vain, whimsical, scholar-like terms, it is because
I never went to school, to Aristotle or Plato, but was brought up
at my father's house, in a very mean condition, among a company of
poor countrymen. But if thou do find a parcel of plain, yet sound,