Excerpt from The Entire Works of John Bunyan, Vol. 1 of 4: Edited, With Original Introductions, Notes, and Memoir of the Author When Charles the First ascended the throne, the men who had any knowledge of public rights, or of the nature of the safeguards by which alone they can be defended, still stood apart from the people. Acquaintance with Church principles or Christian privileges, however instinctively coveted, was, as yet, no branch of popular knowledge. A great change had taken place since men rested with implicit confidence in the truth of whatever was told them, and surrendered whatever they were asked to give. They were awakening to a. New sense both Of their rights and their duties. But nothing was really clear to their apprehension; and the mass of the people in England seemed, for a time, to have exhausted their activity in passing from torpid indifference into ignorant perplexity. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.