o
lie in a corner of the earth, should alone be blessed therewith. Every
one doth think his own religion the rightest, both Jews, Moors, and
Pagans; and how if all our faith, and Christ, and Scripture should be
but "a think so" too.' St. Paul spoke positively. Bunyan saw shrewdly
that on St. Paul the weight of the whole Christian theory really
rested. But 'how could he tell but that St. Paul, being a subtle and
cunning man, might give himself up to deceive with strong delusions?'
'He was carried away by such thoughts as by a whirlwind.'

His belief in the active agency of the Devil in human affairs, of
which he supposed that he had witnessed instances, was no doubt a
great help to him. If he could have imagined that his doubts or
misgivings had been suggested by a desire for truth, they would have
been harder to bear. More than ever he was convinced that he was
possessed by the devil. He 'compared himself to a child carried off by
a gipsy.' 'Kick sometimes I did,' he says, 'and scream, and cry, but
yet I was as bound in the wings of temptation, and the wind would bear
me away.' 'I blessed the dog and toad, and counted the condition of
everything that God had made far better than this dreadful state of
mine. The dog or horse had no soul to perish under the everlasting
weight of hell for sin, as mine was like to do.'

Doubts about revelation and the truth of Scripture were more easy to
encounter then than they are at present. Bunyan was protected by want
of learning, and by a powerful predisposition to find the objections
against the credibility of the Gospel history to be groundless.
Critical investigation had not as yet analysed the historical
construction of the sacred books, and scepticism, as he saw it in
people round him, did actually come from the devil, that is from a
desire to escape the moral restraints of religion. The wisest,
noblest, best instructed men in England, at that time regarded the
Bible as an authentic communication from God, and as the only
foundation for law and civil society. The masculine sense and strong
modest intellect of Bunyan ensured his acquiescence in an opinion so
powerfully supported. Fits of uncertainty recurred even to the end of
his life; it must be so with men who are honestly in earnest; but his
doubts were of course only intermittent, and his judgment was in the
main satisfied that the Bible was, as he had been taught, the Word of
God. This, however, helped him little; for in t