set apart and commissioned to be a teacher of righteousness; and
he was fully determined to obey God rather than man. 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 worse 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. While
his hands were thus busied, he had other employment for his mind
and his lips. He gave religious instruction to his fellow-
captives, and formed from among them a little flock, of which he
was himself the pastor. He studied indefatigably the few books