The soldiers were overcome with weariness and sleep after the engagement, and Gifford’s sister so managed it that her brother got past the sentries and escaped out of the town.  He lay hid for some days in the ditches and thickets around the town till he was able to escape to London, and thence to the shelter of some friends of his at Bedford.  Gifford had studied medicine before he entered the army, and as soon as he thought it safe he began to practise his old art in the town of Bedford.  Gifford had been a dissolute man as a soldier, and he became, if possible, a still more scandalously dissolute man as a civilian.  Gifford’s life in Bedford was a public disgrace, and his hatred and persecution of the Puritans in that town made his very name an infamy and a fear.  He reduced himself to beggary with gambling and drink, but, when near suicide, he came under the power of the truth, till we see him clothed with rags and with a great burden on his back, crying out, ‘What must I do to be saved?’ ’But at last’—­I quote from the session records of his future church at Bedford—­’God did so plentifully discover to him the forgiveness of sins for the sake of Christ, that all his life after he lost not the light of God’s countenance, no, not for an hour, save only about two days before he died.’  Gifford’s conversion had been so conspicuous and notorious that both town and country soon heard of it:  and instead of being ashamed of it, and seeking to hide it, Gifford at once, and openly, threw in his lot with the extremest Puritans in the Puritan town of Bedford.  Nor could Gifford’s talents be hid; till from one thing to another, we find the former Royalist and dissolute Cavalier actually the parish minister of Bedford in Cromwell’s so evangelical but otherwise so elastic establishment.

At this point we open John Bunyan’s Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, and we read this classical passage:—­’Upon a day the good providence of God did cast me to Bedford to work in my calling:  and in one of the streets of that town I came where there were three or four poor women sitting at the door in the sun and talking about the things of God.  But I may say I heard, but I understood not, for they were far above and out of my reach . . .  About this time I began to break my mind to those poor people in Bedford, and to tell them of my condition, which, when they had heard, they told Mr. Gifford of me, who himself also took occasion to talk with me, and was willing to be well persuaded of me though I think on too little grounds.  But he invited me to his house, where I should hear him confer with others about the dealings of God with their souls, from all which I still received more conviction, and from that time began to see something of the vanity and inner wretchedness of my own heart, for as yet I knew no great matter therein . . .  At that time also I sat under the ministry of holy Mr. Gifford, whose doctrine, by the grace of God, was much for my stability.’  And so on in that inimitable narrative.