Another Cambridge University man asked Bunyan, "How dare you preach, seeing you have not the original, being not a scholar?"
"Have you the original?" asked Bunyan.
"Yes," said the scholar.
"Nay, but have you the very self-same original copies that were written by the penmen of the Scriptures, prophets and apostles?"
"No," was the reply, "but we have the true copies of these originals."
"How do you know that?" said Bunyan.
"How?" said the scholar, "why, we believe what we have is a true copy of the original."
"Then," said Bunyan, "so do I believe our English Bible is a true copy of the original." Then away rode the scholar.
Bunyan met with many obstacles in his preaching. When Dr. William Dell, the Puritan master of Caius College, Cambridge, asked him to preach in the parish church on Christmas, the orthodox parishioners were indignant. Some of the university professors were "angry with the tinker because he strove to mend souls as well as kettles and pans." Others declared him a witch, a highwayman, and accused him of nearly every vice. All these things deeply wounded the earnest man, but he kept steadily at work.
His first book, about two hundred pages, "Some Gospel Truths Opened according to the Scriptures," was published in London, in 1656, when Bunyan was twenty-eight years old. The Rev. John Burton, the pastor who succeeded Mr. Gifford, wrote the introduction, and commended the young author as one who had "neither the greatness nor the wisdom of the world to commend him ... not being chosen out of an earthly but out of a heavenly university,—the Church of Christ."