alternations of hope and fear which he passed through, which are more fully described in his “Grace Abounding,” he thus vividly depicts the full assurance of faith he had attained to:  “I saw through grace that it was the Blood shed on Mount Calvary that did save and redeem sinners, as clearly and as really with the eyes of my soul as ever, methought, I had seen a penny loaf bought with a penny. . .  O let the saints know that unless the devil can pluck Christ out of heaven he cannot pull a true believer out of Christ.”  In a striking passage he shows how, by turning Satan’s temptations against himself, Christians may “Get the art as to outrun him in his own shoes, and make his own darts pierce himself.”  “What! didst thou never learn to outshoot the devil in his own bow, and cut off his head with his own sword as David served Goliath?” The whole treatise is somewhat wearisome, but the pious reader will find much in it for spiritual edification.

CHAPTER IV.

We cannot doubt that one in whom loyalty was so deep and fixed a principle as Bunyan, would welcome with sincere thankfulness the termination of the miserable interval of anarchy which followed the death of the Protector and the abdication of his indolent and feeble son, by the restoration of monarchy in the person of Charles the Second.  Even if some forebodings might have arisen that with the restoration of the old monarchy the old persecuting laws might be revived, which made it criminal for a man to think for himself in the matters which most nearly concerned his eternal interests, and to worship in the way which he found most helpful to his spiritual life, they would have been silenced by the promise, contained in Charles’s “Declaration from Breda,” of liberty to tender consciences, and the assurance that no one should be disquieted for differences of opinion in religion, so long as such differences did not endanger the peace and well-being of the realm.  If this declaration meant anything, it meant a breadth of toleration larger and more liberal than had been ever granted by Cromwell.  Any fears of the renewal of persecution must be groundless.

But if such dreams of religious liberty were entertained they were speedily and rudely dispelled, and Bunyan was one of the first to feel the shock of the awakening.  The promise was coupled with a reference to the “mature deliberation of Parliament.”  With such a promise Charles’s easy conscience was relieved of all responsibility.  Whatever he might promise, the nation, and Parliament which was its mouthpiece, might set his promise aside.  And if he knew anything of the temper of the people he was returning to govern, he must have felt assured that any scheme of comprehension was certain to be rejected by them.  As Mr. Froude has said, “before toleration is possible, men must have learnt to tolerate toleration,” and this was a lesson the English nation was very far