From RYE I went to ROMNEY, where, the people having had notice of my coming some time before, there was a very large meeting. Thither came Samuel Fisher, an eminent preacher among the Baptists, who had had a parsonage reputed worth about two hundred pounds a year, which for conscience sake he had given up. There was also the pastor of the Baptists, and abundance of their people. The power of the Lord was so mightily over the meeting, that many were reached thereby, and one greatly shaken, and the life sprung up in many. One of the pastors of the Baptists, being amazed at the work of the Lord’s power, bid one of our friends that was so wrought upon, have a good conscience; whereupon I was moved of the Lord to bid him take heed of hypocrisy and deceit; and he was silent. A great convincement there was that day; many were turned from darkness to the divine light of Christ, and came to see their teachers’ errors, and to sit under the Lord Jesus Christ’s teaching, to know him their way, and the covenant of light, which God had given to be their salvation; and they were brought to the one baptism, and to the one baptizer, Christ Jesus. When the meeting was over, Samuel Fisher’s wife said, “Now we may discern this day between flesh and spirit, and distinguish spiritual teaching from fleshly.” The people were generally well satisfied with what had been declared; but the two Baptist teachers and their company, when they were gone from the meeting, fell to reasoning amongst the people. Samuel Fisher, with many others, reasoned for the word of life, which had been declared that day; and the other pastor and his party reasoned against it; so it divided them asunder, and cut them in the midst. A friend came and told me, that the Baptists were disputing one with another; and desired me to go up to them; but I said “let them alone, the Lord will divide them; and they that reason for truth, will be too hard for the other;” and so it was. Samuel Fisher received the truth in the love of it, became a faithful minister, preached Christ freely, and laboured much in the service of the Lord, being moved to go and declare the word of life at Dunkirk and in Holland, and in divers parts of Italy, as Leghorn, and Rome itself; yet the Lord preserved him and his companion John Stubbs, out of their Inquisitions.[37] Footnote 37: Sewell states that Samuel Fisher and John Stubbs, when at Rome, conversed with some of the cardinals, and testified against Popish superstitions. They also spread books among the friars, some of whom expressed their contents to be true; but, said they, if we should acknowledge this publicly, we might expect to be burned for it.