s, doubts, and
temptations. "I preached," he Says, "what I felt; for the terrors of
the law and the guilt of transgression lay heavy on my conscience. I
have been as one sent to them from the dead. I went, myself in chains,
to preach to them in chains, and carried that fire in my conscience
which I persuaded them to beware of." At times, when he stood up to
preach, blasphemies and evil doubts rushed into his mind, and he felt
a strong desire to utter them aloud to his congregation; and at other
seasons, when he was about to apply to the sinner some searching and
fearful text of scripture, he was tempted to withhold it, on the
ground that it condemned himself also; but, withstanding the
suggestion of the tempter, to use his own simile, he bowed himself,
like Samson, to condemn sin wherever he found it, though he brought
guilt and condemnation upon himself thereby, choosing rather to die
with the Philistines than to deny the truth.

Foreseeing the consequences of exposing himself to the operation of
the penal laws by holding conventicles and preaching, he was deeply
afflicted at the thought of the suffering and destitution to which his
wife and children might be exposed by his death or imprisonment.
Nothing can be more touching than his simple and earnest words on this
point. They show how warm and deep were his human affections, and what
a tender and loving heart he laid as a sacrifice on the altar of duty.

"I found myself a man compassed with infirmities; the parting with my
wife and poor children hath often been to me in this place as the
pulling the flesh from the bones; and also it brought to my mind the
many hardships, miseries, and wants, that my poor family was like to
meet with, should I be taken from them, especially my poor blind
child, who lay nearer my heart than all beside. Oh, the thoughts of
the hardships I thought my poor blind one might go under would break
my heart to pieces. Poor child! thought I, what sorrow art thou like
to have for thy portion in this world! thou must be beaten, must beg,
suffer hunger, cold, nakedness, and a thousand calamities, though I
cannot now endure the wind should blow upon thee. But yet, thought I,
I must venture you all with God, though it goeth to the quick to leave
you. Oh! I saw I was as a man who was pulling down his house upon the
heads of his wife and children; yet I thought on those 'two milch kine
that were to carry the ark of God into another country, and to lea