His Greatheart, his Captain Boanerges, and his Captain
Credence are evidently portraits, of which the originals were among
those martial saints who fought and expounded in Fairfax's army.
In a few months Bunyan returned home and married. His wife had some
pious relations, and brought him as her only portion some pious books.
And now his mind, excitable by nature, very imperfectly disciplined by
education, and exposed, without any protection, to the infectious
virulence of the enthusiasm which was then epidemic in England, began to
be fearfully disordered. In outward things he soon became a strict
Pharisee. He was constant in attendance at prayers and sermons. His
favorite amusements were, one after another, relinquished, though not
without many painful struggles. In the middle of a game at tip-cat he
paused, and stood staring wildly upward with his stick in his hand. He
had heard a voice asking him whether he would leave his sins and go to
heaven, or keep his sins and go to hell; and he had seen an awful
countenance frowning on him from the sky. The odious vice of
bell-ringing he renounced; but he still for a time ventured to go to the
church-tower and look on while others pulled the ropes. But soon the
thought struck him that, if he persisted in such wickedness, the steeple
would fall on his head; and he fled in terror from the accursed place.
To give up dancing on the village green was still harder; and some
months elapsed before he had the fortitude to part with this darling
sin.
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