He was brought before
several tribunals, laughed at, caressed, reviled, menaced, but in vain.
He was facetiously told that he was quite right in thinking that he
ought not to hide his gift; but that his real gift was skill in
repairing old kettles. He was compared to Alexander the coppersmith. He
was told that, if he would give up preaching, he should be instantly
liberated. He was warned that, if he persisted in disobeying the law, he
would be liable to banishment; and that if he were found in England
after a certain time, his neck would be stretched. His answer was, "If
you let me out to-day, I will preach again to-morrow." Year after year
he lay patiently in a dungeon, compared with which the worst prison now
to be found in the island is a palace. His fortitude is the more
extraordinary because his domestic feelings were unusually strong.
Indeed, he was considered by his stern brethren as somewhat too fond and
indulgent a parent. He had several small children, and among them a
daughter who was blind, and whom he loved with peculiar tenderness. He
could not, he said, bear even to let the wind blow on her; and now she
must suffer cold and hunger, she must beg, she must be beaten. "Yet," he
added, "I must, I must do it." While he lay in prison, he could do
nothing in the way of his old trade for the support of his family. He
determined, therefore, to take up a new trade. He learned to make long
tagged thread-laces; and many thousands of these articles were furnished
by him to the hawkers.
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