At length he began to write, and though it was some time before he discovered where his strength lay, his writings were not unsuccessful.  They were coarse, indeed, but they showed a keen mother-wit, 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 by the humbler class of Dissenters.

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.  It is, however, a remarkable fact that he adopted one of their peculiar fashions; his practice was to write, not November or December, but eleventh month and twelfth month.

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 jail; and those who have most zeal for the form of prayer are all to be found at the ale-house.  The doctrinal articles, on the other hand, he warmly praised, and defended against some Arminian clergymen who had signed them.  The most acrimonious of all his works is his answer to Edward Fowler, afterward 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 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.  In our own time the cause which Bunyan had defended with rude logic and rhetoric against Kiffin and Danvers was 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 persecutors.  Like his own Christian in the cage, he found protectors even among the crowd of 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 jail, on condition, as it should seem, that he remained within the town of Bedford.