He never saw combat, from which he seems to have thought himself providentially spared, since he reports that a soldier was killed who was sent in his place to a siege. Nothing more is known about Bunyan's military service, but he was unquestionably impressed by a church that was military as well as militant, and his exposure to Puritan ideas and preaching presumably dates from this time. The central event in Bunyan's life, as he describes it in
Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, was his religious conversion. This was both preceded and followed by extreme psychic torment. Under the influence of his first wife (whose name is not known) Bunyan began to read works of popular piety and to attend services regularly in Elstow Church. At this point he was still a member of the Church of England, in which he had been baptized. One Sunday, however, while playing a game called "cat" on the village green, he was suddenly arrested by an interior voice that demanded, "Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to heaven, or have thy sins and go to hell"" Since Puritans were bitterly opposed to indulgence in Sunday sports, the occasion of this intervention was no accident, and Bunyan's conduct thereafter was "Puritan" in two essential respects.
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