I hereby do declare, I never came
Before Thy throne, and found Thee loath to hear,
But always ready with an open ear;
And, though sometimes Thou seem'st Thy face to hide,
As one that had withdrawn his love from me,
'T is that my faith may to the full, be tried,
And that I thereby may the better see
How weak I am when not upheld by Thee!"

The next year, 1670, an act of Parliament, in relation to "Conventicles,"
provided that any person who should be present at any meeting, under
color or pretence of any exercise of religion, in other manner than
according to the liturgy and practice of the Church of England, "should
be liable to fines of from five to ten shillings; and any person
preaching at or giving his house for the meeting, to a fine of twenty
pounds: one third of the fines being received by the informer or
informers." As a natural consequence of such a law, the vilest
scoundrels in the land set up the trade of informers and heresy-hunters.
Wherever a dissenting meeting or burial took place, there was sure to be
a mercenary spy, ready to bring a complaint against all in attendance.
The Independents and Baptists ceased, in a great measure, to hold public
meetings, yet even they did not escape prosecution. Bunyan, for
instance, in these days, was dreaming, like another Jacob, of angels
ascending and descending, in Bedford prison. But upon the poor Quakers
fell, as usual, the great force of the unjust enactment. Some of these
spies or informers, men of sharp wit, close countenances, pliant tempers,
and skill in dissimulation, took the guise of Quakers, Independents, or
Baptists, as occasion required, thrusting themselves into the meetings of
the proscribed sects, ascertaining the number who attended, their rank
and condition, and then informing against them. Ellwood, in his Journal
for 1670, describes several of these emissaries of evil. One of them
came to a Friend's house, in Bucks, professing to be a brother in the
faith, but, overdoing his counterfeit Quakerism, was detected and
dismissed by his host. Betaking himself to the inn, he appeared in his
true character, drank and swore roundly, and confessed over his cups that
he had been sent forth on his mission by the Rev. Dr. Mew, Vice-
Chancellor of Oxford. Finding little success in counterfeiting
Quakerism, he turned to the Baptists, where, fo