unted godly. We
came together as poor as poor might be, not having so much household
stuff as a dish or a spoon between us. But she had for her portion two
books, "The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven," and "The Practice of
Piety," which her father had left her when he died. In these two books
I sometimes read with her. I found some things pleasing to me, but all
this while I met with no conviction. She often told me what a godly
man her father was, how he would reprove and correct vice both in his
house and among his neighbours, what a strict and holy life he lived
in his day both in word and deed. These books, though they did not
reach my heart, did light in me some desire to religion.'

There was still an Established Church in England, and the constitution
of it had not yet been altered. The Presbyterian platform threatened
to take the place of Episcopacy, and soon did take it; but the
clergyman was still a priest and was still regarded with pious
veneration in the country districts as a semi-supernatural being. The
altar yet stood in its place, the minister still appeared in his
surplice, and the Prayers of the Liturgy continued to be read or
intoned. The old familiar bells, Catholic as they were in all the
emotions which they suggested, called the congregation together with
their musical peal, though in the midst of triumphant Puritanism. The
'Book of Sports,' which, under an order from Charles I., had been read
regularly in Church, had in 1644 been laid under a ban; but the gloom
of a Presbyterian Sunday was, is, and for ever will be detestable to
the natural man; and the Elstow population gathered persistently after
service on the village green for their dancing, and their leaping,
and their archery. Long habit cannot be transformed in a day by an
Edict of Council, and amidst army manifestoes and battles of Marston
Moor, and a king dethroned and imprisoned, old English life in
Bedfordshire preserved its familiar features. These Sunday sports had
been a special delight to Bunyan, and it is to them which he refers in
the following passage, when speaking of his persistent wickedness. On
his marriage he became regular and respectable in his habits. He says,
'I fell in with the religion of the times to go to church twice a day,
very devoutly to say and sing as the others did, yet retaining my
wicked life. Withal I was so overrun with the spirit of superstition
that I adored with great devotion even all things, both the h