After some further parley, the reverend visitors grew angry, threw the
written record of the conversation in the fire, and left the prison, to
report the prisoner incorrigible.

On the 27th of the month, he was again led out of his cell and placed
upon the pillory. Thousands of citizens were gathered around, many of
them earnestly protesting against the extreme cruelty of his punishment.
Robert Rich, an influential and honorable merchant, followed him up to
the pillory with expressions of great sympathy, and held him by the hand
while the red-hot iron was pressed through his tongue and the brand was
placed on his forehead. He was next sent to Bristol, and publicly
whipped through the principal streets of that city; and again brought
back to the Bridewell prison, where he remained about two years, shut out
from all intercourse with his fellow-beings. At the expiration of this
period, he was released by order of Parliament. In the solitude of his
cell, the angel of patience had been with him.

Through the cloud which had so long rested over him, the clear light of
truth shone in upon his spirit; the weltering chaos of a disordered
intellect settled into the calm peace of a reconciliation with God and
man. His first act on leaving prison was to visit Bristol, the scene of
his melancholy fall. There he publicly confessed his errors, in the
eloquent earnestness of a contrite spirit, humbled in view of the past,
yet full of thanksgiving and praise for the great boon of forgiveness. A
writer who was present says, the "assembly was tendered, and broken into
tears; there were few dry eyes, and many were bowed in their minds."

In a paper which he published soon after, he acknowledges his lamentable
delusion. "Condemned forever," he says, "be all those false worships