ld age has been free from any stain discernible to their
fellow-creatures, have, in their autobiographies and diaries, applied to
themselves, and doubtless with sincerity, epithets as severe as could be
applied to Titus Oates or Mrs Brownrigg. It is quite certain that
Bunyan was, at eighteen, what, in any but the most austerely puritanical
circles, would have been considered as a young man of singular gravity
and innocence. Indeed, it may be remarked that he, like many other
penitents who, in general terms, acknowledged themselves to have been
the worst of mankind, fired up and stood vigorously on his defence,
whenever any particular charge was brought against him by others. He
declares, it is true, that he had let loose the reins on the neck of his
lusts, that he had delighted in all transgressions against the divine
law, and that he had been the ringleader of the youth of Elstow in
all manner of vice. But, when those who wished him ill accused him of
licentious amours, he called on God and the angels to attest his purity.
No woman, he said, in heaven, earth, or hell, could charge him with
having ever made any improper advances to her. Not only had he been
strictly faithful to his wife; but he had even before his marriage, been
perfectly spotless. It does not appear from his own confessions, or from
the railings of his enemies, that he ever was drunk in his life. One
bad habit he contracted, that of using profane language; but he tells
us that a single reproof cured him so effectually that he never offended
again. The worst that can be laid to the charge of this poor youth,
whom it has been the fashion to represent as the most desperate of
reprobates, as a village Rochester, is that he had a great liking for
some diversions, quite harmless in themselves, but condemned by the
rigid precisians among whom he lived, and for whose opinion he had a
great respect. The four chief sins of which he was guilty were dancing,
ringing the bells of the parish church, playing at tipcat, and reading
the history of Sir Bevis of Southampton. A rector of the school of Laud
would have held such a young man up to the whole parish as a model. But
Bunyan's notions of good and evil had been learned in a very different
school; and he was made miserable by the conflict between his tastes and
his scruples.

When he was about seventeen, the ordinary course of his life was
interrupted by an event which gave a lasting colour to his thoughts.
He enli