him that this being so, he
must be sent to gaol to be tried at the next Quarter Sessions, and left
the room to make out his mittimus. While the committal was preparing,
one whom Bunyan bitterly styles "an old enemy to the truth," Dr. Lindall,
Vicar of Harlington, Wingate's father-in-law, came in and began "taunting
at him with many reviling terms," demanding what right he had to preach
and meddle with that for which he had no warrant, charging him with
making long prayers to devour widows houses, and likening him to "one
Alexander the Coppersmith he had read of," "aiming, 'tis like," says
Bunyan, "at me because I was a tinker." The mittimus was now made out,
and Bunyan in the constable's charge was on his way to Bedford, when he
was met by two of his friends, who begged the constable to wait a little
while that they might use their interest with the magistrate to get
Bunyan released. After a somewhat lengthened interview with Wingate,
they returned with the message that if Bunyan would wait on the
magistrate and "say certain words" to him, he might go free. To satisfy
his friends, Bunyan returned with them, though not with any expectation
that the engagement proposed to him would be such as he could lawfully
take. "If the words were such as he could say with a good conscience he
would say them, or else he would not."

After all this coming and going, by the time Bunyan and his friends got
back to Harlington House, night had come on. As he entered the hall,
one, he tells us, came out of an inner room with a lighted candle in his
hand, whom Bunyan recognized as one William Foster, a lawyer of Bedford,
Wingate's brother-in-law, afterwards a fierce persecutor of the
Nonconformists of the district. With a simulated affection, "as if he
would have leapt on my neck and kissed me," which put Bunyan on his
guard, as he had ever known him for "a close opposer of the ways of God,"
he adopted the tone of one who had Bunyan's interest at heart, and begged
him as a friend to yield a little from his stubbornness. His brother-in-
law, he said, was very loath to send him to gaol. All he had to do was
only to promise that he would not call people together, and he should be
set at liberty and might go back to his home. Such meetings were plainly
unlawful and must be stopped. Bunyan had better follow his calling and
leave off preaching, especially on week-days, which made other people
neglect their calling too. God commanded men