I was
unwilling by over-precipitance and for the sake of a mere temporary
triumph to forego the solid and lasting advantages which I foresaw, and
had been told that patience and prudence would assure. I resolved to use
the knowledge which I had obtained by these experiments only as a last
resource, provided any accident which it was impossible for me then to
foresee should overturn all the plans which my friends and myself had
been forming for the quiet and peaceful introduction of the Scriptures
amongst the Spaniards with the consent or at least with the connivance of
the Government and clergy, knowing well that a great part of the latter
were by no means disposed to offer any serious opposition to such a
measure, they having sense and talent enough to perceive that the old
system can no longer be upheld of which the essential part is, as is well
known, to keep the people in ignorance of the great sterling truths of
Christianity. I now come to the most distressing part of my narrative
and likewise to the most miserable of my own life.

I returned to Madrid from my long, fatiguing and most perilous journey,
in which I must be permitted to say that independent of a thousand
miraculous escapes from the factious and the banditti I had been twice
arrested as a spy, namely, once at Vigo and subsequently at Cape
Finisterre, in which latter instance I narrowly escaped with life, the
ignorant fishermen having determined upon shooting me and my guide. Upon
finding the booksellers of Madrid, with the exception of Razola, a man of
no importance, averse to undertake the sale of the New Testament I
determined upon establishing a shop of my own, a step to which I was
advised by many sincere friends of the Cause and of myself. Having
accomplished this, I advertised the work incessantly, not only in the
public prints but by placards posted in all the streets of the city; but
I wish it to be distinctly understood that the advertisement which I used
was the same quiet innocent advertisement, a copy of which you possess,
and of which I have availed myself in the provinces, an advertisement
which had never given offence nor was calculated to give offence if
squandered about the streets by millions. I make this statement in
self-justification, I having, in consequence of a letter in which I made
some observations respecting advertisements and handbills, received a
paragraph in a communication from home, in which I was checked with
hav