clares became "a second nature to him;" he
"delighted in all transgression against the law of God," and as he
advanced in his teens he became a "notorious sinbreeder," the "very
ringleader," he says, of the village lads "in all manner of vice and
ungodliness." But the unsparing condemnation passed by Bunyan, after his
conversion, on his former self, must not mislead us into supposing him
ever, either as boy or man, to have lived a vicious life. "The
wickedness of the tinker," writes Southey, "has been greatly overrated,
and it is taking the language of self-accusation too literally to
pronounce of John Bunyan that he was at any time depraved." The justice
of this verdict of acquittal is fully accepted by Coleridge. "Bunyan,"
he says, "was never in our received sense of the word 'wicked.' He was
chaste, sober, and honest." He hints at youthful escapades, such,
perhaps, as orchard-robbing, or when a little older, poaching, and the
like, which might have brought him under "the stroke of the laws," and
put him to "open shame before the face of the world." But he confesses
to no crime or profligate habit. We have no reason to suppose that he
was ever drunk, and we have his own most solemn declaration that he was
never guilty of an act of unchastity. "In our days," to quote Mr.
Froude, "a rough tinker who could say as much for himself after he had
grown to manhood, would be regarded as a model of self-restraint. If in
Bedford and the neighbourhood there was no young man more vicious than
Bunyan, the moral standard of an English town in the seventeenth century
must have been higher than believers in progress will be pleased to
allow." How then, it may be asked, are we to explain the passionate
language in which he expresses his self-abhorrence, which would hardly
seem exaggerated in the mouth of the most profligate and licentious? We
are confident that Bunyan meant what he said. So intensely honest a
nature could not allow his words to go beyond his convictions. When he
speaks of "letting loose the reins to his lusts," and sinning "with the
greatest delight and ease," we know that however exaggerated they may
appear to us, his expressions did not seem to him overstrained. Dr.
Johnson marvelled that St. Paul could call himself "the chief of
sinners," and expressed a doubt whether he did so honestly. But a highly-
strung spiritual nature like that of the apostle, when suddenly called
into exercise after a period of