Early in October, 1660, the country magistrates meeting in Bedford issued an order for the public reading of the Liturgy of the Church of England. Such an order Bunyan would not regard as concerning him. Anyhow he would not give obeying it a thought. One of the things we least like in Bunyan is the feeling he exhibits towards the Book of Common Prayer. To him it was an accursed thing, the badge and token of a persecuting party, a relic of popery which he exhorted his adherents to "take heed that they touched not" if they would be "steadfast in the faith of Jesus Christ." Nothing could be further from his thoughts than to give any heed to the magistrates' order to go to church and pray "after the form of men's inventions." The time for testing Bunyan's resolution was now near at hand. Within six months of the king's landing, within little more than a month of the issue of the magistrate's order for the use of the Common Prayer Book, his sturdy determination to yield obedience to no authority in spiritual matters but that of his own conscience was put to the proof. Bunyan may safely be regarded as at that time the most conspicuous of the Nonconformists of the neighbourhood. He had now preached for five or six years with ever-growing popularity. No name was so rife in men's mouths as his. At him, therefore, as the representative of his brother sectaries, the first blow was levelled. It is no cause of surprise that in the measures taken against him he recognized the direct agency of Satan to stop the course of the truth: "That old enemy of man's salvation," he says, "took his opportunity to inflame the hearts of his vassals against me, insomuch that at the last I was laid out for the warrant of a justice." The circumstances were these, on November 12, 1660, Bunyan had engaged to go to the little hamlet of Lower Samsell near Harlington, to hold a religious service. His purpose becoming known, a neighbouring magistrate, Mr. Francis Wingate, of Harlington House, was instructed to issue a warrant for his apprehension under the Act of Elizabeth. The meeting being represented to him as one of seditious persons bringing arms, with a view to the disturbance of the public peace, he ordered that a strong watch should be kept about the house, "as if," Bunyan says, "we did intend to do some fearful business to the destruction of the country." The intention to arrest him oozed out, and on Bunyan's arrival the whisperings of his friends warned him of his danger. He might have easily escaped if he "had been minded to play the coward." Some advised it, especially the brother at whose house the meeting was to take place. He, "living by them," knew "what spirit" the magistrates "were of," before whom Bunyan would be taken if arrested, and the small hope there would be of his avoiding being committed to gaol. The man himself, as a "harbourer of a conventicle," would also run no small danger of the same fate, but Bunyan generously acquits him of any