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walk through the city of London on the evening of the Lord's day, without seeing an idle person, or hearing any thing but the voice of prayer or praise from churches and private houses."* People would rise before daybreak, and walk a great distance to be able to hear the word of God. "There were no gaming-houses, or houses of pleasure; no profane swearing, drunkenness, or any kind of debauchery." The Parliamentary soldiers came in great numbers to listen to sermons, spoke of religion, prayed and sang psalms together, when on duty. In 1644 Parliament forbade the sale of commodities on Sunday, and ordained "that no person shall travel, or carry a burden, or do any worldly labor, upon penalty of IOS. for the traveller, and 5s. for every burden. That no person shall on the Lord's day use, or be present at, any wrestling, shooting, fowling, ringing of bells for pleasure, markets, wakes, church-ales, dancing, games or sports whatsoever, upon penalty of 5s. to every one above fourteen years of age. And if children are found offending in the premises, their parents or guardians to forfeit 12d. for every offence. If the several fines above mentioned cannot be levied, the offending party shall be set in the stocks for the space of three hours." When the Independents were in power, severity became still greater. | The officers in the army, having convicted one of their quartermasters of blasphemy, condemned him to have his tongue bored with a red-hot iron, his sword broken over his head, and himself to be dismissed from the army. During Cromwell's expedition in Ireland, we read that no blasphemy was heard in the camp; the soldiers spent their leisure hours in reading the Bible, singing psalms, and holding religious Controversies. In 1650 the punishments inflicted on Sabbath-breakers were doubled. Stern laws were passed against betting, gallantry was reckoned a crime; the theatres were destroyed, the spectators fined, the actors whipt

*Neal, ii. 553. Compare with the French Revolution. When the Bastille was demolished, they wrote on the ruins these words: "Ici l'on danse." From this contrast we see the difference between the two systems and the wo nations.

t Neal, Hist. of the Puritans ii. 555.

at the cart's tail; adultery punished with death: in order to reach crime more surely, they persecuted pleasure. But if they were austere against others, they were so against themselves, and practised the virtues they exacted. After the Restoration, two thousand ministers, rather than conform to the new liturgy, resigned their cures, though they and their families had to die of hunger. Many of them, says Baxter thinking that they were not justified z quitting their ministry after being sel apart for it by ordination, preached to such as would hear them in the fields and in certain houses, until they were seized and thrown into prisons, where a great number of them perished. Cromwell's fifty thousand veterans, suddenly disbanded and without resources, did not bring a single recruit to the vagabonds and bandits. "The Royalists themselves confessed that, in every department of honest industry, the discarded warriors prospered beyond other men, that none was charged with any theft or robbery, that none was heard to ask an alms, and that, if a baker, a mason, or a wagoner, attracted notice by his diligence and sobriety, he was in all probability one of Oliver's old soldiers."* Purified by persecution and ennobled by patience, they ended by winning the tolerance of the law and the respect of the public, and raised national morality, as they had saved national liberty. But others, exiles in America, pushed to the extreme this great religious and stoical spirit, with its weaknesses and its power, with its vices and its virtues. Their determination, intensified by a fervent faith, employed in political and practical pursuits, invented the science of emigration, made exile tolerable, drove back the Indians, fertilized the desert, raised a rigid morality into a civil law, founded and armed a church, and on the Bible as a basis built up a new state.j

Macaulay, Hist. of England, ea. Lady Trevelyan, i. 121.

for having sung a profane song. Mathias, a little girl, having given some roasted chestnuts to Jeremiah Boosy, and told him ironically that he might give them back to her in Para dise, was ordered to ask pardon three times ir church, and to be three days on tread and water in prison. 1660-1670; records of Massa chusetts.

A certain John Denis was publicly whipt

66

That was not a conception of life generation been found more mutilated from which a genuine literature might in all the faculties which produce con be expected to issue. The idea of the templation and ornament, more reduced beautiful s wanting, and what is a lit- to the faculties which nourish discuserature without that? The natural ex- sion and morality. Like a beautiful pression of the heart's emotions is pro- insect which has become transformed scribed, and what is a literature without and has lost its wings, so we see the that? They abolished as impious the poetic generation of Elizabeth disap free stage and the rich poesy which the pear, leaving in its place but a sluggish Renaissance had brought them. They caterpillar, a stubborn and useful spr rejected as profane the ornate style and ner, armed with industrious feet and copious eloquence which had been es- formidable jaws, spending its existence tablished around them by the imitation in eating into old leaves and devouring of antiquity and of Italy. They mis- its enemies. They are without style; trusted reason, and were incapable of they speak like business men; at most, philosophy. They ignored the divine here and there, a pamphlet of Prynne languor of the Imitatio Christi and the possesses a little vigor. Their histories, touching tenderness of the Gospel. like May's for instance, are flat and Their character exhibits only manliness, heavy. Their memoirs, even those of their conduct austerity, their mind pre- Ludlow and Mrs. Hutchinson, are long, ciseness. We find amongst them only wearisome, mere statements, destitute excited theologians, minute controver- of personal feelings, void of enthusiasm sialists, energetic men of action, narrow or entertaining matter; they seem to and patient minds, engrossed in posi- ignore themselves, and are engrossed tive proofs and practical labors, void of by the general prospects of their general ideas and refined tastes, dulled cause."* Good works of piety, solid by texts, dry and obstinate reasoners, and convincing sermons; sincere, ediwho twisted the Scripture in order to fying, exact, methodical books, like extract from it a form of government those of Baxter, Barclay, Calamy, John or a table of dogma. What could be Owen; personal narratives, like that of narrower or more repulsive than these Baxter, like Fox's journal, Bunyan's pursuits and wrangles? A pamphlet life, a large collection of documents and of the time petitions for liberty of con- arguments, conscientiously arranged,— science, and draws its arguments (1) this is all they offer; the Puritan defrom the parable of the wheat and the stroys the artist, stiffens the man, fetters tares which grow together till the har- the writer; and leaves of artist, man, vest; (2) from this maxim of the Apos- writer, only a sort of abstract being, tles, Let every man be thoroughly per- the slave of a watchword. If a Milton suaded in his own mind; (3) from this springs up amongst them, it is because text, Whatsoever is not of faith is sin; by his great curiosity, his travels, his (4) from this divine rule of our Saviour, comprehensive education, above all by Do to others what you would they his youth saturated in the grand poetry should do unto you. Later, when the of the preceding age, and by his inde angry Commons desired to pass judg-pendence of spirit, haughtily defended ment on James Nayler, the trial became entangled in an endless juridical and theological discussion, some declaring that the crime committed was idolatry, others seduction, all emptying out before the house their armory of commentaries and texts. * Seldom has a

"Upon the common sense of Scripture," said Major-general Disbrowe, "there are few but do commit blasphemy, as our Saviour puts t in Marksins, blasphemies; if so, then one without blasphemy. It was charged upon David, and Eli's son, thou hast blasphemed, O caused others to blaspheme.""-Burton's Diary, i. 54

even against the sectarians, Milton passes beyond sectarianism. Strictly speaking, the Puritans could but have one poet, an involuntary poet, & adman, a martyr, a hero, and a victim of grace; a genuine preacher, who attairs the beautiful by chance, whilst pursuing the useful on principle; a poor tinker, who, employing inges so as to be understood by mechanics, sailors, servantgirls, attained, without pretending to it, eloquence and high art.

* Guizot, Portraits Politiques, 5th ed., 186

VI.

Next to the Bible, the book most widely read in England is the Pilgrim's Progress, by John Bunyan. The reason s, that the basis of Protestantism is the doctrine of salvation by grace, and that no writer has equalled Bunyan in making this doctrine understood.

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was extreme in his emotions, and pene
trated to the heart by the sight of phys
ical objects, " adoring " priest, service,
altar, vestment.
"This conceit grew
so strong upon my spirit, that had 1
but seen a priest (though never
sordid and debauched in his life), I
should find my spirit fall under him,
reverence him, and knit unto him; yea
I thought, for the love I did bear unto
them (supposing they were the minis
ters of God), I could have laid down at
their feet, and have been trampled upon
by them; their name, their garb, and
work did so intoxicate and bewitch
me." Already his ideas clung to him
with that irresistible hold which consti
tutes monomania; no matter how ab
surd they were, they ruled him, not by
their truth, but by their presence. The
thought of an impossible danger terri
fied him just as much as the sight of an

To treat well of supernatural impressions, a man must have been subject to them. Bunyan had that kind of imagination which produces them. Powerful as that of an artist, but more vehement, this imagination worked in the man without his co-operation, and besieged him with visions which he had neither willed nor foreseen. From that moment there was in him as it were a second self, ruling the first, grand and terrible, whose apparitions were sudden, its motions unknown, which redoubled or crushed his faculties, pros-imminent peril. As a man hung over trated or transported him, bathed him in the sweat of agony, ravished him with trances of joy, and which by its force, strangeness, independence, impressed upon him the presence and the action of a foreign and superior master. Bunyan, like Saint Theresa, was from infancy greatly troubled with the thoughts of the fearful torments of hell-fire," sad in the midst of pleasures, believing himself damned, and so despairing, that he wished he was a devil, supposing they were only tormentors; that if it must needs be that I went hither, I might be rather a tormentor, than be tormented myself." There already was the assault of exact and bodily images. Under their influence reflection ceased, and the man was suddenly spurred into action. The first movement carried him with closed eyes, as down a steep slope, into mad resolutions. One day, "being in the field, with my companions, it chanced that an adde passed over the highway; so I, bg a stick, struck her over the balk; and having stunned her, I forced open her mouth with my stick, and plucked her sting out with my fingers, by which act, had not God been merciful to me, I might, by my desperateness, have brought myself to my end." In his first approaches to conversion he * Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, ↑ Ibid. § 12.

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an abyss by a sound rope, he forgot
that the rope was sound, and he became
giddy. After the fashion of English
villagers, he loved bell-ringing; when
he became a Puritan, he considered the
amusement profane, and gave it up;
yet, impelled by his desire, he would go
into the belfry and watch the ringers.
"But quickly after, I began to think,
How if one of the bells should fall?
Then I chose to stand under a main
beam, that lay overthwart the steeple,
from side to side, thinking here I might
stand sure; but then I thought again,
should the bell fall with a swing, it
might first hit the wall, and then re-
bounding upon me, might kill me for
all this beam. This made me stand in
the steeple-door; and now, thought I,
I am safe enough, for if a bell should
then fall, I can slip out behind these
thick walls, and so be preserved not.
withstanding. So after this I would
yet go to see them ring, but would not
go any farther than the steeple-door;
but then it came into my head, 'How if
the steeple itself should fall?' And
this thought (it may, for aught I know,
when I stood and looked on) did con-
tinually so shake my mind, that I durst
not stand at the steeple-door any longer,
but was forced to flee, for fear the stee
ple should fall upon my head."† Fre
quently the mere conception of a six
Ibid. § 17.
+ Ibid. §§ 33, 34-

became for him a temptation so invol untary and so strong, that he felt upon him the sharp claw of the devil. The fixed idea swelled in his head like a painful abscess, full of all sensitiveness and of all his life's blood. "Now no sin would serve but that; if it were to be committed by speaking of such a word, then I have been as if my mouth would have spoken that word whether I would or no; and in so strong a measure was the temptation upon me, that often I have been ready to clap my hands under my chin, to hold my mouth from opening; at other times, to leap with my head downward into some muckhill hole, to keep my mouth from speaking." Later, in the middle of a sermon which he was preaching, he was assailed by blasphemous thoughts; the word came to his lips, and all his power of resistance was barely able to restrain the muscle excited by the tyrannous brain.

Once the minister of the parish was preaching against the sin of dancing, oaths, and games, when he was struck with the idea that the sermon was for him, and returned home full of trouble. But he ate; his stomach being charged, discharged his brain,and his remorse was dispersed. Like a true child, entirely absorbed by the emotion of the moment, he was transported, jumped out, and ran to the sports. He had thrown his ball, and was about to begin again, when a voice from heaven suddenly pierced his soul. "Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to heaven, or have thy sins and go to hell?' At this I was put to an exceeding maze; wherefore, leaving my cap upon the ground, I looked up to heaven, and was as if I had with the eyes of my understanding, seen the Lord Jesus look down upon me, as being very hotly displeased with me, and as if He did severely threaten me with some grievous punishment for these and other ungodly practices." † Suddenly reflecting that his sins were very great, and that he would certainly be damned whatever he did, he resolved to enjoy himself in the mean time, and to sin as much as he could in this life. He took up his ball again, recommenced the game with ardor, and swore louder and oftener than ever. A

* Grace Abounding, § 103. + Ibid. § sa.

month afterwards, being reproved by a woman, "I was silenced, and put to secret shame, and that too, as I thought, before the God of heaven: wherefore, while I stood there, hanging down my head, I wished that I might be a little child again, and that my father might learr me to speak without this wicked way of swearing; for, thought I, I am so accustomed to it, that it is in vain to think of a reformation, for that could never be. But how it came to pass I know not, I did from this time forward so leave my swearing, that it was a great wonder to myself to observe it; and whereas before I knew not how to speak unless I put an oath before, and another behind, to make my words have authority, now I could without it speak better, and with more pleasantness, than ever I could before."* These sudden alternations, these vehement resolutions, this unlooked-for renewal of heart, are the products of an invol untary and impassioned imagination, which by its hallucinations, its mastery, its fixed ideas, its mad ideas, prepares the way for a poet, and announces an inspired man.

In him circumstances develop character; his kind of life develops his kind of mind. He was born in the lowest and most despised rank, a tinker's son, himself a wandering tinker, with a wife as poor as himself, so that they had not a spoon or a dish between them. He had been taught in childhood to read and write, but he had since "almost wholly lost what he had learned." Education diverts and dis ciplines a man; fills him with varied and rational ideas; prevents him from sinking into monomania or being ex cited by transport; gives him determinate thoughts instead of eccentric fancies, pliable opinions for fixed convictions; replaces impetuous images by calm reasonings, sudden resolves by carefully weighed decisions; furnishes us with the wisdom and ideas of others; gives us conscience and self command. Suppress this reason and this discipline, and consider the poor ignorant working man at his toil; his head works while his hands work, not ably, with methods acquired from an logic he might have mustered, but with * Ibid. §§ 27 and 28.

alone, thrown back upon himself by the monotony of his dungeon, besieged by the terrors of the old Testament, by the vengeful out-pourings of the prophets, by the thunder-striking words of Paul, by the spectacle of trances anc of martyrs, face to face with God, now in despair, now consoled, troubled with involuntary images and unlookedfor emotions, seeing alternately devil and angels, the actor and the witness of an internal drama whose vicissi tudes he is able to relate. He writes them: it is his book. You see now the condition of this inflamed brain. Poor in ideas, full of images, given up to a fixed and single thought, plunged. into this thought by his mechanical pursuit, by his prison and his readings, by his knowledge and his ignorance, círcumstances, like nature, make him a visionary and an artist, furnish him with supernatural impressions and visible images, teaching him the history of grace and the means of expressing

dark emotions, beneath a disorderly | ble, in one of those pestifercus pris flow of confused images. Morning ons where the Puritans rotted under and evening, the hammer which he the Restoration. There he is, stil uses in his trade, drives in with its deafening sounds the same thought perpetually returning and self-communing. A troubled, obstinate vision floats before him in the brightness of the hammered and quivering metal. In the red furnace where the iron is glowing, in the clang of the hammered brass, in the black corners where the damp shadow creeps, he sees the flame and darkness of hell, and the rattling of eternal chains. Next day he sees the same image, the day after, the whole week, month, year. His brow wrinkles, his eyes grow sad, and his wife hears him groan in the night-time. She remembers that she has two volumes in an old bag, The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven and The Practice of Piety; he spells them out to console himself; and the printed thoughts, already sublime in themselves, made more so by the slowness with which they are read, sink like an oracle into his subdued faith. The braziers of the devils-the golden harps of heaven-it. the bleeding Christ on the cross,each of these deep-rooted ideas sprouts poisonously or wholesomely in his diseased brain, spreads, pushes out and springs higher with a ramification of fresh visions, so crowded, that in his encumbered mind he has no further place nor air for more conceptions. Will he rest when he sets forth in the winter on his tramp? During his long solitary wanderings, over wild heaths, in cursed and haunted bogs, always abandoned to his own thoughts, the inevitable idea pursues him. These neglected roads where he sticks in the mad, these sluggish dirty rivers which he crosses on the cranky ferry-boat, these menacing whispers of the woods at night, when in perilous places the livid moon shadows out ambushed forms, all that he sees and hears falls into an involuntary poem around the one absorbing idea; thus it changes nto a vast body of visible legends, and multiplies its power as it multiplies its details. Having become a dissenter, Bunyan is shut up for twelve years, having no other amusement but the Book of Martyrs and the Bi

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The Pilgrim's Progress is a manual of devotion for the use of simple folk, whilst it is an allegorical poem of grace. In it we hear a man of the people speaking to the people, who would render intelligible to all the terrible doctrine of damnation and salvation.* According to Bunyan, we are "children of

This is an abstract of the events:-From

highest heaven a voice has proclaimed vengeance against the City of Destruction, where lives a sinner of the name of Christian. Terrified, he rises up amid the jeers of his neighbours, and departs, for fear of being devoured by the fire which is to consume the criminals. Á helpful man, Evangelist, shows him the right road. A treacherous man, Worldlywise, tries to turn him aside. His companion, Pliable, who had followed him at first, gets stuck in the Slougn of Despond, and leaves him. He advances bravely across the dirty water and the slippery mud, and reaches the Strait Gate, where a and points out the way to the Heavenly City. wise Interpreter instructs him by visible shows, He passes before a cross, and the heavy burden of sins, which he carried on his back, is posenhill of Ifficulty, and reaches a great castle, ed and falls off. He painfully climbs the steep where Watchful, the guardian, gives him in charge to his good daughters Piety and Pra dence, who warn him and arm him against the monsters of hell. He finds his road barred by one of these demons, Apollyon, who bids him abjure obedience to the heavenly King. After

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