BUNYAN SUFFERS PERSECUTION, AND A LONG
AND DANGEROUS IMPRISONMENT, FOR REFUSING TO ATTEND THE COMMON PRAYER SERVICE,
AND FOR PREACHING.
Tradition points out where this eminently pious man was confined, as an ancient prison, built with the bridge over the river Ouse, supported on one of the piers near the middle of the river. As the bridge was only four yards and a half wide, the prison must have been very small. Howard, the philanthropist, visited the Bedford prison, which was dignified as the county jail about 1788, and thus describes it:—' The men and women felons associate together; their night-rooms are two dungeons. Only one court for debtors and felons; and no apartment for the jailer.' Imagination can hardly realize the miseries of fifty or sixty pious men and women, taken from a place of public worship and incarcerated in such dens or dungeons with felons, as was the case while Bunyan was a prisoner. Twelve feet square was about the extent of the walls; for it occupies but one pier between the center arches of the bridge. How properly does the poor pilgrim call it a certain DEN!
What an abode for men and women
who had been made by God kings and priests—the heirs of heaven! The eyes of
Howard, a Dissenter, penetrated these dens, these hidden things of darkness,
these abodes of cruelty. He revealed what lay and clerical magistrates ought to
have published centuries before, that they were not fit places in which to
imprison any, even the worst of criminals. He denounced them, humanity
shuddered at the discovery, and they were razed to their foundations. In this
den God permitted his honored servant, John Bunyan, to be incarcerated for
more than twelve years of the prime of his life. A man, whose holy zeal for the
salvation of sinners, whose disinterested labors, whose sufferings for Christ
prove his apostolical descent much better than those who claim descent from
popes, and Wolsey or Bonner—those fiends in human shape.
Bedford bridge was
pulled down in 1811 when the present handsome bridge was built. One
of the workmen employed upon the ruins found, among the rubbish, where the
prison had stood, a ring made of fine gold, bearing an inscription which
affords strong presumptive evidence that it belonged to our great allegorist.
Dr. Abbot, a neighboring clergyman, who had daily watched the labors of the
workmen, luckily saw it and saved it from destruction. He constantly wore it,
until, drawing near the end of his pilgrimage, in 1817, he took it off his own
finger and placed it upon that of his friend Dr. Bower, then curate of
Elstow, and at present the dean of Manchester, charging him to keep it for
his sake. This ring must have been a present from some person of property, as a
token of great respect for Bunyan's pious character, and probably from an
indignant sense of his unjust and cruel imprisonment. By the kind permission of
the dean, we are enabled to give a correct representation of this curious relic.
Bunyan was thirty-two
years of age when taken to prison. He had suffered the loss of his pious wife,
whose conversation and portion had been so blessed to him. It is not improbable
that her peaceful departure is pictured in Christiana's crossing the river
which has no bridge. She left him with four young children, one of whom very
naturally and most strongly excited his paternal feelings, from the
circumstance of her having been afflicted with blindness. He had married a
second time, a woman of exemplary piety and retiring modesty; but whose spirit,
when roused to seek the release of her beloved husband, enabled her to stand
unabashed, and full of energy and presence of mind, before judges in their
courts, and lords in their mansions. When her partner was sent to jail, she was
in that peculiar state that called for all his sympathy and his tenderest care.
The shock was too severe for her delicate situation; she became dangerously
ill, and, although her life was spared, all hopes had fled of her maternal
feelings being called into exercise. Thus did one calamity follows another;
still he preserved his integrity.
Bunyan was treated with all the kindness that many of his jailers dared to show him. In his times, imprisonment and fetters were generally companions. Thus he says—'When a felon is going to be tried, his fetters are still making a noise on his heels.' So the prisoners in the Holy War are represented as being 'brought in chains to the bar' for trial. 'The prisoners were handled by the jailer so severely, and loaded so with irons, that they died in the prison.' In many cases, prisoners for conscience's sake were treated with such brutality, before the form of trial, as to cause their death. By Divine mercy, Bunyan was saved from these dreadful punishments, which have ceased as civilization has progressed, and now cloud the narratives of a darker age.
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