In prison Bunyan's pen was a source of great joy to himself, and a blessing to all the world. His earliest prison work was "Profitable Meditations" in verse. He put portions of the Old and New Testament into poetry. Froude calls the "Book of Ruth" and the "History of Joseph" "beautiful idylls." He wrote in prose a treatise on prayer, entitled, "Praying in the Spirit;" a book on "Christian Behavior;" the "Holy City," an exposition of the closing chapters of Revelation; a work on the "Resurrection of the Dead and Eternal Judgment;" and "Grace Abounding," the story of his own conversion. The latter book, "if he had written no other," says Canon Venables, "would stamp Bunyan as one of the greatest masters of the English language of his own or any other age." This book was published by George Larkin, in London, in 1666, in the sixth year of Bunyan's imprisonment. Besides these, he wrote his "Confession of Faith," and his "Defence of the Doctrine of Justification by Faith." Bunyan's imprisonment came to an end May 8, 1672. Through the Declaration of Indulgence, granted by Charles II., Nonconformists were once more allowed to worship God as they chose. It seems probable, from Bunyan's later biographers, that "Pilgrim's Progress" was written during a subsequent imprisonment of six months in 1675, when the Nonconformists were again suffering the rigors of law. The first edition appeared in 1678, when Bunyan was fifty years old. A second edition was issued the same year, and a third, with additions, the year following, 1679. After it was written in prison, Bunyan, always distrusting his own abilities, consulted with his friends about the wisdom of publishing it, as will be seen from the metrical preface:-- "When at first I took my pen in hand, Thus for to write, I did not understand That I at all should make a little book In such a mode; nay, I had undertook To make another; which, when almost done, Before I was aware I this begun. * * * * * * Well, when I had thus put my ends together, I showed them others, that I might see whether They would condemn them, or them justify: And some said, 'Let them live;' some, 'Let them die.' Some said, 'John, print it;' others said, 'Not so;' Some said, 'It might do good;' others said, 'No.' Now was I in a strait, and did not see Which was the best thing to be done of me; At last I thought, since you are thus divided, I print it will, and so the case decided."