But if nothing will do, unless I
make my conscience a continual butchery or slaughter-shop--unless,
putting out mine own eyes, I commit myself to the blind to lead me,
as I doubt not is desired by some--I have determined, the Almighty
God being my help and shield, yet to suffer, if frail life might
continue so long, even till the moss shall grow on mine eyebrows,
rather than thus to violate my faith and principles.
To the reader. I marvel not that both yourself and others do think
my long imprisonment strange--or rather strangely of me for the sake
of that--for verily I should also have done it myself, had not the
Holy Ghost long since forbidden me. 1 Pet. 4: 12; 1 John, 3: 13.
Nay, verily, notwithstanding that, had the adversary but fastened
the supposition of guilt upon me, my long trials might by this time
have put it beyond dispute; for I have not hitherto been so sordid,
as to stand to a doctrine right or wrong; much less, when so weighty
an argument as above eleven years' imprisonment is continually
dogging of me to weigh and pause and weigh again the grounds and
foundation of those principles for which I thus have suffered. But
having not only at my trial asserted them, but also since--even all
this tedious tract of time, in cool blood, a thousand times--by the
word of God examined them, and found them good, I cannot, I dare not
now revolt or deny the same, on pain of eternal damnation.
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