The worst that can be laid to the charge of this poor youth, whom
it has been the fashion to represent as the most desperate of
reprobates, as a village Rochester, is that he had a great liking for
some diversions, quite harmless in themselves, but condemned by the
rigid precisians among whom he lived, and for whose opinion he had a
great respect. The four chief sins of which he was guilty were dancing,
ringing the bells of the parish church, playing at tip-cat, and reading
the "History of Sir Bevis of Southampton." A rector of the school of
Laud would have held such a young man up to the whole parish as a model.
But Bunyan's notions of good and evil had been learned in a very
different school; and he was made miserable by the conflict between his
tastes and his scruples.
When he was about seventeen, the ordinary course of his life was
interrupted by an event which gave a lasting color to his thoughts. He
enlisted in the Parliamentary army, and served during the decisive
campaign of 1645. All that we know of his military career is that, at
the siege of Leicester, one of his comrades, who had taken his post, was
killed by a shot from the town. Bunyan ever after considered himself as
having been saved from death by the special interference of Providence.
It may be observed that his imagination was strongly impressed by the
glimpse which he had caught of the pomp of war. To the last he loved to
draw his illustrations of sacred things from camps and fortresses, from
guns, drums, trumpets, flags of truce, and regiments arrayed, each under
its own banner.
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