t, a great command of the homely
mother tongue, an intimate knowledge of the English Bible, and a vast and
dearly bought spiritual experience. They therefore, when the corrector of
the press had improved the syntax and the spelling, were well received.

Much of Bunyan's time was spent in controversy. He wrote sharply against
the Quakers, whom he seems always to have held in utter abhorrence. He
wrote against the liturgy of the Church of England. No two things,
according to him, had less affinity than the form of prayer and the spirit
of prayer. Those, he said with much point, who have most of the spirit of
prayer are all to be found in gaol; and those who have most zeal for the
form of prayer are all to be found at the alehouse. The doctrinal Articles,
on the other hand, he warmly praised and defended. The most acrimonious of
all his works is his _Defence of Justification by Faith_, an answer to what
Bunyan calls "the brutish and beastly latitudinarianism" of Edward Fowler,
afterwards bishop of Gloucester, an excellent man, but not free from the
taint of Pelagianism.

Bunyan had also a dispute with some of the chiefs of the sect to which he
belonged. He doubtless held with perfect sincerity [v.04 p.0805] the
distinguishing tenet of that sect, but he did not consider that tenet as
one of high importance, and willingly joined in communion with pious
Presbyterians and Independents. The sterner Baptists, therefore, loudly
pronounced him a false brother. A controversy arose which long survived the
original combatants. The cause which Bunyan had defended with rude logic
and rhetoric against Kiffin and Danvers has since been pleaded by Robert
Hall with an ingenuity and eloquence such as no polemical writer has ever
surpassed.

During the years which immediately followed the Restoration, Bunyan's
confinement seems to have been strict. But as the passions of 1660 cooled,
as the hatred with which the Puritans had been regarded while their reign
was recent gave place to pity, he was less and less harshly treated. The
distress of his family, and his own patience, courage and piety, softened
the hearts of his judges. Like his own Christian in the cage, he found
protectors even among the crowd at Vanity Fair. The bishop of the diocese,
Dr Barlow, is said to have interceded for him. At length the prisoner was
suffered to pass most of his time beyond the walls of the gaol, on
condition, as it should seem, that he remained within the t