ELIZABETH BUNYAN, the cause in which he was suffering enabled him to bear up against his unmerited persecution. His chief source of consolation was his Bible and Fox's Martyrology ; and though his body was confined, his mind was free. He says " For though men keep my outward form Within their locks and bars, Yet, by the faith of Christ I can Mount higher than the stars." Elizabeth was not prohibited from seeing him ; and she was with him as much as possible. At home in her humble cottage, her life was un- marked by any great incident ; and after a time she probably grew accustomed to the continued absence of her husband from his " ain fireside." She had no child of her own, but she took the fondest care of those of Bunyan's first helpmate. One child had been born to her eight days after the arrest of John, but it never drew breath. Year after year rolled by, and the suffering Non- conformist still lay in prison ; he dared not " look over the threshold," but he was treated generally with much kindness by the jailors who were placed there at different periods. Imprisonment and fetters usually, in his time, accompanied each other ; prisoners going to be tried were brought to the bar in manacles, and were sometimes so roughly handled by the jailor, and so loaded with irons, that they died in the prison, while prisoners for conscience sake were, in many cases, treated with extreme 32
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