found in the light, as it was obeyed
in the manifestation of it in man: for in the word was life, and that
life is the light of men. Life in the word, light in men; and life in
men too, as the light is obeyed; the children of the light living by the
life of the word, by which the word begets them again to God, which is
the generation and new birth, without which there is no coming into the
kingdom of God, and to which whoever comes is greater than John: that
is, than John's dispensation, which was not that of the kingdom, but the
consummation of the legal, and forerunning of the gospel times, the time
of the kingdom. Accordingly several meetings were gathering in those
parts; and thus his time was employed for some years.

In the year 1652, "he had a visitation of the great work of God in the
earth, and of the way that he was to go forth, in a public ministry, to
begin it." He directed his course northward, "and in every place where
he came, if not before he came to it, he had his particular exercise and
service shown to him, so that the Lord was his leader indeed." He made
great numbers of converts to his opinions, and many pious and good men
joined him in his ministry. These were drawn forth especially to visit
the public assemblies to reprove, reform, and exhort them; sometimes in
markets, fairs, streets, and by the highway-side, "calling people to
repentance, and to return to the Lord, with their hearts as well as
their mouths; directing them to the light of Christ within them, to see,
examine, and to consider their ways by, and to eschew the evil, and to
do the good and acceptable will of God."

They were not without opposition in the work they imagined themselves
called to, being often set in the stocks, stoned, beaten, whipped and
imprisoned, though, as our author observes, honest men of good report,
that had left wives, children, houses, and lands, to visit them with a
living call to repentance. But these coercive methods rather forwarded
than abated their zeal, and in those parts they brought over many
proselytes, and amongst them several magistrates, and others of the
better sort. They apprehended the Lord had forbidden them to pull off
their hats to any one, high or low, and required them to speak to the
people, without distinction, in the language of thou and thee. They
scrupled bidding people good-morrow, or good-night, nor might they bend
the knee to any one, even in supreme authority. Both men and woman