icked up money if he found it
lying about. Especially, Mr. Wiseman notes that he hated Sundays.
'Reading Scriptures, godly conferences, repeating of sermons and
prayers, were things that he could not away with.' 'He was an enemy to
that day, because more restraint was laid upon him from his own ways
than was possible on any other.' Mr. Wiseman never doubts that the
Puritan Sunday ought to have been appreciated by little boys. If a
child disliked it, the cause could only be his own wickedness. Young
Badman 'was greatly given also to swearing and cursing.' 'He made no
more of it' than Mr. Wiseman made 'of telling his fingers.' 'He
counted it a glory to swear and curse, and it was as natural to him as
to eat, drink, or sleep.' Bunyan, in this description, is supposed to
have taken the picture from himself. But too much may be made of this.
He was thinking, perhaps, of what he might have been if God's grace
had not preserved him. He himself was saved. Badman is represented as
given over from the first. Anecdotes, however, are told of
contemporary providential judgments upon swearers, which had much
impressed Bunyan. One was of a certain Dorothy Mately, a woman whose
business was to wash rubbish at the Derby lead mines. Dorothy (it was
in the year when Bunyan was first imprisoned), had stolen twopence
from the coat of a boy who was working near her. When the boy taxed
her with having robbed him, she wished the ground might swallow her up
if she had ever touched his money. Presently after, some children who
were watching her, saw a movement in the bank on which she was
standing. They called to her to take care, but it was too late. The
bank fell in, and she was carried down along with it. A man ran to
help her, but the sides of the pit were crumbling round her: a large
stone fell on her head; the rubbish followed, and she was overwhelmed.
When she was dug out afterwards, the pence were found in her pocket.
Bunyan was perfectly satisfied that her death was supernatural. To
discover miracles is not peculiar to Catholics. They will be found
wherever there is an active belief in immediate providential
government.

Those more cautious in forming their conclusions will think, perhaps,
that the woman was working above some shaft in the mine, that the
crust had suddenly broken, and that it would equally have fallen in
when gravitation required it to fall, if Dorothy Mately had been a
saint. They will remember the words about the Tow