It is no matter of surprise that Bunyan, who had been so severe a sufferer under the old penal statutes, should desire their abrogation, and express his readiness to “steer his friends and followers” to support candidates who would pledge themselves to vote for their repeal.  But no further would he go.  The Bedford Corporation was “regulated,” which means that nearly the whole of its members were removed and others substituted by royal order.  Of these new members some six or seven were leading persons of Bunyan’s congregation.  But, with all his ardent desire for religious liberty, Bunyan was too keen-witted not to see through James’s policy, and too honest to give it any direct insidious support.  “In vain is the net spread in the sight of any bird.”  He clearly saw that it was not for any love of the Dissenters that they were so suddenly delivered from their persecutions, and placed on a kind of equality with the Church.  The king’s object was the establishment of Popery.  To this the Church was the chief obstacle.  That must be undermined and subverted first.  That done, all other religious denominations would follow.  All that the Nonconformists would gain by yielding, was the favour Polyphemus promised Ulysses, to be devoured last.  Zealous as he was for the “liberty of prophesying,” even that might be purchased at too high a price.  The boon offered by the king was “good in itself,” but not “so intended.”  So, as his biographer describes, when the regulators came, “he expressed his zeal with some weariness as perceiving the bad consequences that would ensue, and laboured with his congregation” to prevent their being imposed on by the fair promises of those who were at heart the bitterest enemies of the cause they professed to advocate.  The newly-modelled corporation of Bedford seems like the other corporations through the country, to have proved as unmanageable as the old.  As Macaulay says, “The sectaries who had declared in favour of the Indulgence had become generally ashamed of their error, and were desirous to make atonement.”  Not knowing the man they had to deal with, the “regulators” are said to have endeavoured to buy Bunyan’s support by the offer of some place under government.  The bribe was indignantly rejected.  Bunyan even refused to see the government agent who offered it,—­“he would, by no means come to him, but sent his excuse.”  Behind the treacherous sunshine he saw a black cloud, ready to break.  The Ninevites’ remedy he felt was now called for.  So he gathered his congregation together and appointed a day of fasting and prayer to avert the danger that, under a specious pretext, again menaced their civil and religious liberties.  A true, sturdy Englishman, Bunyan, with Baxter and Howe, “refused an indulgence which could only be purchased by the violent overthrow of the law.”