Now ffriends as yᵉ Lord hath delivʳed us from yᵉ first sore travell that yᵉ hands of those bloud thirsty men could not prevaile to take away oʳ lives, but we came home againe unlookt for of many yᵗ we should ever returne so safelie because yᵉ heate of persecution ranged over yᵉ Nations, & an ill savour & example they set forth wᶜʰ strengthned yᵉ hands of yᵉ wicked in all those Countries as Virginia & Mariland, & over all yᵉ Dutch plantations, thinking to have rooted out yᵉ Truth & its Children. Joan Brocksopp, too, adds her testimony, and in her _Lamentation for New England_ writes:[71] Oh how doth my Soul pity you, ye Rulers of Boston, that ever ye should be so ignorant of your own Salvation, to turn the truth of our God into a ly, and put his Servants to death when he sent them among you to warn you.... Oh ye Rulers of Boston, my heart is made sad when I remember your condition and your state, how you are found out of the ways of God against your own soules.... And say not but that you were warned in your Life time by one who is a true Lover of the Seed of God, known unto the World by the Name of JONE BROOKSOP The 4 Month 1662. And so at length after many hairbreadth escapes, “Elizabeth,” in the words of the old Chronicler, “having also suffered for her Testimony to the Truth returned to old England and abode some space of time at her own Habitation.”[72] A perilous journey for two women, neither of them young, to undertake, and one marvels at the high courage and faith, and the deep sense of the guiding hand of God, which sent them forth “looking death in the face” to deliver the message of their Lord. [Illustration: _See page 28._] CHAPTER III Second Visit to New England It is easy for us, at this comfortable distance, in an ordered society in which one believes what he wants to believe—or peradventure believes nothing at all—to say that these Friends walked of their own accord into the lion’s den.... That is undoubtedly true, but it indicates a superficial acquaintance with the spirit of these Quakers.... They would have preferred the life of comfort to the hard prison and the gallows rope if they could have taken the line of least resistance with inward peace, but that was impossible to them.... They had learned to obey the visions which they _believed_ were heavenly, and they had grown accustomed to go straight ahead where the Voice which they believed to be Divine called them. RUFUS M. JONES, _Quakers in the American Colonies_, p. 80.