body to licentiousness--'As for my own natural life, for the time
that I was without God in the world, it was indeed according to
the course of this world, and the spirit that now worketh in the
children of disobedience. It was my delight to be taken captive by
the devil at his will: being filled with all unrighteousness; that
from a child I had but few equals, both for cursing, swearing,
lying, and blaspheming the holy name of God.'[14]

It has been supposed, that in delineating the early career of
Badman, 'Bunyan drew the picture of his own boyhood.'[15] But the
difference is broadly given. Badman is the child of pious parents,
who gave him a 'good education' in every sense, both moral and
secular;[16] the very reverse of Bunyan's training. His associates
would enable him to draw the awful character and conduct of Badman,
as a terrible example to deter others from the downward road to
misery and perdition.

Bunyan's parents do not appear to have checked, or attempted to
counteract, his unbridled career of wickedness. He gives no hint
of the kind; but when he notices his wife's father, he adds that he
'was counted godly'; and in his beautiful nonsectarian catechism,
there is a very touching conclusion to his instructions to children
on their behaviour to their parents:--'The Lord, if it be his will,
convert our poor parents, that they, with us, may be the children
of God.'[17] These fervent expressions may refer to his own parents;
and, connecting them with other evidence, it appears that he was
not blessed with pious example. Upon one occasion, when severely
reproved for swearing, he says--'I wished, with all my heart, that
I might be a little child again, that my father might learn me to
speak without this wicked way of swearing.'[18] In his numerous