a prey to your teeth, ye subtle foxes!  Your dens are in darkness, and your mischief is hatched upon your beds of secret whoredoms?” Of John Burton and the others who recommended Bunyan’s treatise, he says, “They have joined themselves with the broken army of Magog, and have showed themselves in the defence of the dragon against the Lamb in the day of war betwixt them.”  We may well echo Dr. Brown’s wish that “these two good men could have had a little free and friendly talk face to face.  There would probably have been better understanding, and fewer hard words, for they were really not so far apart as they thought.  Bunyan believed in the inward light, and Burrough surely accepted an objective Christ.  But failing to see each other’s exact point of view, Burrough thunders at Bunyan, and Bunyan swiftly returns the shot.”

The rapidity of Bunyan’s literary work is amazing, especially when we take his antecedents into account.  Within a few weeks he published his rejoinder to Friend Burrough, under the title of “A Vindication of Gospel Truths Opened.”  In this work, which appeared in 1667, Bunyan repays Burrough in his own coin, styling him “a proved enemy to the truth,” a “grossly railing Rabshakeh, who breaks out with a taunt and a jeer,” is very “censorious and utters many words without knowledge.”  In vigorous, nervous language, which does not spare his opponent, he defends himself from Burrough’s charges, and proves that the Quakers are “deceivers.”  “As for you thinking that to drink water, and wear no hatbands is not walking after your own lusts, I say that whatsoever man do make a religion out of, having no warrant for it in Scripture, is but walking after their own lusts, and not after the Spirit of God.”  Burrough had most unwarrantably stigmatized Bunyan as one of “the false prophets, who love the wages of unrighteousness, and through covetousness make merchandise of souls.”  Bunyan calmly replies, “Friend, dost thou speak this as from thy own knowledge, or did any other tell thee so?  However that spirit that led thee out this way is a lying spirit.  For though I be poor and of no repute in the world as to outward things, yet through grace I have learned by the example of the Apostle to preach the truth, and also to work with my hands both for mine own living, and for those that are with me, when I have opportunity.  And I trust that the Lord Jesus who hath helped me to reject the wages of unrighteousness hitherto, will also help me still so that I shall distribute that which God hath given me freely, and not for filthy lucre’s sake.”  The fruitfulness of his ministry which Burrough had called in question, charging him with having “run before he was sent,” he refuses to discuss.  Bunyan says, “I shall leave it to be taken notice of by the people of God and the country where I dwell, who will testify the contrary for me, setting aside the carnal ministry with their retinue who are so mad against me as thyself.”