emonstrances and entreaties were equally useless, and, with extreme
unwillingness, they committed him to Bedford Gaol to wait for the
sessions.

It is not for us to say that Bunyan was too precise. He was himself
the best judge of what his conscience and his situation required. To
himself, at any rate, his trial was at the moment most severe. He had
been left a widower a year or two before, with four young children,
one of them blind. He had lately married a second time. His wife was
pregnant. The agitation at her husband's arrest brought on premature
labour, and she was lying in his house in great danger. He was an
affectionate man, and the separation at such a time was peculiarly
distressing. After some weeks the quarter sessions came on. Bunyan was
indicted under the usual form, that he 'being a person of such and
such condition had since such a time devilishly and perniciously
abstained from coming to church to hear Divine service, and was a
common upholder of unlawful meetings and conventicles, to the great
disturbance and distraction of the good subjects of this kingdom,
contrary to the laws of our Sovereign Lord the King.'

There seems to have been a wish to avoid giving him a formal trial. He
was not required to plead, and it may have been thought that he had
been punished sufficiently. He was asked why he did not go to church?
He said that the Prayer-book was made by man; he was ordered in the
Bible to pray with the spirit and the understanding, not with the
spirit and the Prayer-book. The magistrates, referring to another Act
of Parliament, cautioned Bunyan against finding fault with the
Prayer-book, or he would bring himself into further trouble. Justice
Keelin who presided said (so Bunyan declares, and it has been the
standing jest of his biographers ever since) that the Prayer-book had
been in use ever since the Apostles' time. Perhaps the words were that
parts of it had been then in use (the Apostles' Creed, for instance),
and thus they would have been strictly true. However this might be,
they told him kindly, as Mr. Wingate had done, that it would be better
for him if he would keep to his proper work. The law had prohibited
conventicles. He might teach, if he pleased, in his own family and
among his friends. He must not call large numbers of people together.
He was as impracticable as before, and the magistrates, being but
unregenerate mortals, may be pardoned if they found him provoking. If,
he said,