s, at the same time that his former antagonist was
imprisoned in Bedford Gaol, Burrough met the fate Bunyan's stronger
constitution enabled him to escape; and in the language of the times,
"rotted in prison," a victim to the loathsome foulness of his place of
incarceration, in the year of the "Bartholomew Act," 1662.

Burrough entitled his reply, "The Gospel of Peace, contended for in the
Spirit of Meekness and Love against the secret opposition of John Bunyan,
a professed minister in Bedfordshire." His opening words, too
characteristic of the entire treatise, display but little of the meekness
professed. "How long, ye crafty fowlers, will ye prey upon the innocent?
How long shall the righteous be a prey to your teeth, ye subtle foxes!
Your dens are in darkness, and your mischief is hatched upon your beds of
secret whoredoms?" Of John Burton and the others who recommended
Bunyan's treatise, he says, "They have joined themselves with the broken
army of Magog, and have showed themselves in the defence of the dragon
against the Lamb in the day of war betwixt them." We may well echo Dr.
Brown's wish that "these two good men could have had a little free and
friendly talk face to face. There would probably have been better
understanding, and fewer hard words, for they were really not so far
apart as they thought. Bunyan believed in the inward light, and Burrough
surely accepted an objective Christ. But failing to see each other's
exact point of view, Burrough thunders at Bunyan, and Bunyan swiftly
returns the shot."

The rapidity of Bunyan's literary work is amazing, especially when we
take his antecedents into account. Within a few weeks he published his
rejoinder to Friend Burrough, under the title of "A Vindication of Gospel
Truths Opened." In this work, which appeared in 1667, Bunyan repays
Burrough in his own coin, styling him "a proved enemy to the truth," a
"grossly railing Rabshakeh, who breaks out with a taunt and a jeer," is
very "censorious and utters many words without knowledge." In vigorous,
nervous language, which does not spare his opponent, he defends himself
from Burrough's charges, and proves that the Quakers are "deceivers." "As
for you thinking that to drink water, and wear no hatbands is not walking
after your own lusts, I say that whatsoever man do make a religion out
of, having no warrant for it in Scripture, is but walking after their own
lusts, and not after the Spirit of God." Burrough h