fore toleration is possible, men must have learnt to tolerate
toleration," and this was a lesson the English nation was very far from
having learnt; at no time, perhaps, were they further from it. Puritanism
had had its day, and had made itself generally detested. Deeply
enshrined as it was in many earnest and devout hearts, such as Bunyan's,
it was necessarily the religion not of the many, but of the few; it was
the religion not of the common herd, but of a spiritual aristocracy. Its
stern condemnation of all mirth and pastime, as things in their nature
sinful, of which we have so many evidences in Bunyan's own writings; its
repression of all that makes life brighter and more joyous, and the sour
sanctimoniousness which frowned upon innocent relaxation, had rendered
its yoke unbearable to ordinary human nature, and men took the earliest
opportunity of throwing the yoke off and trampling it under foot. They
hailed with rude and boisterous rejoicings the restoration of the
Monarchy which they felt, with a true instinct, involved the restoration
of the old Church of England, the church of their fathers and of the
older among themselves, with its larger indulgence for the instincts of
humanity, its wider comprehensiveness, and its more dignified and
decorous ritual.

The reaction from Puritanism pervaded all ranks. In no class, however,
was its influence more powerful than among the country gentry. Most of
them had been severe sufferers both in purse and person during the
Protectorate. Fines and sequestrations had fallen heavily upon them, and
they were eager to retaliate on their oppressors. Their turn had come;
can we wonder that they were eager to use it? As Mr. J. R. Green has
said: "The Puritan, the Presbyterian, the Commonwealthsman, all were at
their feet. . . Their whole policy appeared to be dictated by a
passionate spirit of reaction. . . The oppressors of the parson had been
the oppressors of the squire. The sequestrator who had driven the one
from his parsonage had driven the other from his manor-house. Both had
been branded with the same charge of malignity. Both had suffered
together, and the new Parliament was resolved that both should triumph
together."

The feeling thus eloquently expressed goes far to explain the harshness
which Bunyan experienced at the hands of the administrators of justice at
the crisis of his life at which we have now arrived. Those before whom
he was successively arraig