Though not acting from enlightened _motives_, Bunyan was now under the guidance of new _influences_. For just as the Spirit of God puts forth a restraining influence on many during the days of their carnality, which makes the change at their conversion less conspicuous than if they had been lifted from the depths of a flagitious reprobacy; so others he long subjects to a preparatory process, during which some of the old and most offensive things of their ungodliness pass away; and when the revolution, effected by the entrance of the evangelic motive, at last takes place, it is rather to personal consciousness than to outward observation that the change is perceptible. The real and final transformation is rather within the man than upon him. So was it with John Bunyan. One by one he abandoned his besetting sins, and made many concessions to conscience, while as yet he had not yielded his heart to the Saviour. It was slowly and regretfully, however, that he severed the “right hand.” One of his principal amusements was one which he could not comfortably continue. It was _bell-ringing_; by which he probably means the merry peals with which they used to desecrate their Sabbath evenings. It was only by degrees that he was able to abandon this favourite diversion. “What if one of the bells should fall?” To provide against this contingency, he took his stand under a beam fastened across the tower. “But what if the falling bell should rebound from one of the side walls, and hit me after all?” This thought sent him down stairs, and made him take his station, rope in hand, at the steeple door. “But what if the steeple itself should come down?” This thought banished him altogether, and he bade adieu to bell-ringing. And by a similar series of concessions, eventually, but with longer delay, he gave up another practice, for which his conscience checked him—dancing. All these improvements in his conduct were a source of much complacency to himself, though all this while he wanted the soul-emancipating and sin-subduing knowledge of Jesus Christ. The Son had not made him free.