night as he
was riding home drunk, his horse fell and he broke his leg. 'You would
not think,' says Mr. Wiseman, 'how he swore at first. Then coming to
himself, and finding he was badly hurt, he cried out, after the manner
of such, Lord help me; Lord have mercy on me; good God deliver me, and
the like. He was picked up and taken home, where he lay some time. In
his pain he called on God, but whether it was that his sin might be
pardoned and his soul saved, or whether to be rid of his pain,' Mr.
Wiseman 'could not determine.' This leads to several stories of
drunkards which Bunyan clearly believed to be literally true. Such
facts or legends were the food on which his mind had been nourished.
They were in the air which contemporary England breathed.

'I have read in Mr. Clarke's Looking-glass for Sinners,' Mr. Wiseman
said, 'that upon a time a certain drunken fellow boasted in his cups
that there was neither heaven nor hell. Also he said he believed that
man had no soul, and that for his own part he would sell his soul to
any that would buy it. Then did one of his companions buy it of him
for a cup of wine, and presently the devil, in man's shape, bought it
of that man again at the same price; and so in the presence of them
all laid hold of the soul-seller, and carried him away through the air
so that he was no more heard of.'

Again:

'There was one at Salisbury drinking and carousing at a tavern, and he
drank a health to the devil, saying that if the devil would not come
and pledge him, he could not believe that there was either God or
devil. Whereupon his companions, stricken with fear, hastened out of
the room, and presently after, hearing a hideous noise and smelling a
stinking savour, the vintner ran into the chamber, and coming in he
missed his guest, and found the window broken, the iron bars in it
bowed and all bloody, but the man was never heard of afterwards.'

These visitations were answers to a direct challenge of the evil
spirit's existence, and were thus easy to be accounted for. But no
devil came for Mr. Badman. He clung to his unfortunate neglected wife.
'She became his dear wife, his godly wife, his honest wife, his duck,
his dear and all.' He thought he was dying, and hell and all its
horrors rose up before him. 'Fear was in his face, and in his tossings
to and fro he would often say I am undone, I am undone, my vile life
hath undone me.' Atheism did not help him. It never helped anyone in
such ex