So I was taken up before the justices; and because I would not
consent that they or any should be bound for me (for I was innocent
of any ill behaviour, and had spoken the Word of life and truth unto
them), Justice Bennet rose up in a rage; and, as I was kneeling down
to pray to the Lord to forgive him, he ran upon me, and struck me
with both his hands, crying, "Away with him, jailer; take him away,
jailer." Whereupon I was taken again to prison, and there kept till
the time of my commitment for six months was expired.
But I had now the liberty of walking a mile by myself, which I made
use of as I felt freedom. Sometimes I went into the market and
streets, and warned the people to repent of their wickedness, and
returned to prison again. And there being persons of several sorts
of religion in the prison, I sometimes visited them in their meetings
on First-days.
While I was yet in the house of correction there came unto me a
trooper, and said that as he was sitting in the steeple-house,
hearing the priest, exceeding great trouble fell upon him; and the
voice of the Lord came to him, saying, "Dost thou not know that my
servant is in prison? Go to him for direction." So I spake to his
condition, and his understanding was opened. I told him that that
which showed him his sins, and troubled him for them, would show him
his salvation; for He that shows a man his sin is the same that takes
it away.
While I was speaking to him the Lord's power opened his mind, so that
he began to have a good understanding in the Lord's truth, and to be
sensible of God's mercies. He spoke boldly in his quarters amongst
the soldiers, and to others, concerning truth (for the Scriptures
were very much opened to him), insomuch that he said that his colonel
was "as blind as Nebuchadnezzar, to cast the servant of the Lord into
prison."
Upon this his colonel conceived a spite against him, and at Worcester
fight, the year after, when the two armies lay near one another,
and two came out from the king's army and challenged any two of
the Parliament army to fight with them, his colonel made choice of
him and another to answer the challenge. When in the encounter his
companion was slain, he drove both his enemies within musket-shot of
the town without firing a pistol at them. This, when he returned,
he told me with his own mouth. But when the fight was over he saw
the deceit and hypocrisy of the officers, and, being sensible how
wonderfully the Lord had preserved him, and seeing also to the end of
fighting, he laid down his arms.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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