exhort them: sometimes in markets, fairs,
streets, and by the highway-side: calling people to repentance, and to
turn to the Lord with their hearts as well as their mouths; directing
them to the light of Christ within them, to see, examine, and consider
their ways by, and to eschew the evil, and do the good and acceptable
will of God. And they suffered great hardships for this their love and
good-will; being often stocked, stoned, beaten, whipped, and imprisoned,
though honest men, and of good report where they lived; that had left
wives, children, and houses and lands to visit them with a living call to
repentance. And though the priests generally set themselves to oppose
them, and wrote against them, and insinuated most false and scandalous
stories to defame them, stirring up the magistrates to suppress them,
especially in those northern parts; yet God was pleased to fill them with
his living power, and give them such an open door of utterance in his
service, that there was a mighty convincement over those parts.

And through the tender and singular indulgence of judge Bradshaw, and
judge Fell, and colonel West, in the infancy of things, the priests were
never able to gain the point they laboured for, which was to have
proceeded to blood; and, if possible, Herod-like, by a cruel exercise of
the civil power, to have cut them off, and rooted them out of the
country. But especially judge Fell, who was not only a check to their
rage in the course of legal proceedings, but otherwise upon occasion; and
finally countenanced this people. For, his wife receiving the truth with
the first, it had that influence upon his spirit, being a just and wise
man, and seeing in his own wife and family a full confutation of all the
popular clamours against the way of truth, that he covered them what he
could, and freely opened his doors, and gave up his house to his wife and
her friends; not valuing the reproach of ignorant or evil-minded people:
which I here mention to his and her honour, and which will be, I believe,
an honour and a blessing to such of their name and family, as shall be
found in that tenderness, humility, love, and zeal for the truth and
people of the Lord.

That house was for some years, at first especially, until the truth had
opened its way into the southern parts of this island, an eminent
receptacle of this people. Others, of good note and substance in those
northern countries, had also opened their houses, to