G. F. It was not long after this ere Fleming’s wife died, and left him thirteen or fourteen motherless children. When I was prisoner at Lancaster, there was prisoner also one Major Wiggan, a Baptist preacher. He boasted much beforehand what he would say at the assize, if the oath should be put to him; and that he would refuse to swear. But when the assize came, and the oath was tendered him, he desired time to consider of it; and that being granted him till the next assize, he got leave to go to London before the assize came again, and stayed there till the plague broke forth, and there both he and his wife were cut off. He was a very wicked man, and the judgments of God came upon him; for he had published a book against Friends, full of lies and blasphemies; the occasion of which was this. Whilst he was in Lancaster castle he challenged Friends to a dispute. Whereupon I got leave of the jailer to go up to them; and entering into discourse with him, he affirmed, “that some men never had the Spirit of God, and that the true light, which enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world, is natural.” For proof of his first assertion he instanced Balaam, affirming, “that Balaam had not the Spirit of God.” I affirmed and proved, “that Balaam had the Spirit of God, and that wicked men have the Spirit of God; else how could they quench it, and vex it, and grieve it, and resist the Holy Ghost, like the stiff-necked Jews?” To his second assertion I answered, “that the true light, which enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world, was the life in the Word, and that was divine and eternal, and not natural; and he might as well say that the Word was natural, as that the life in the Word was natural. And wicked men were enlightened by this light, else how could they hate it? Now it is expressly said, that they did hate it; and the reason given why they hated it was, because ‘their deeds were evil;’ and they would not come to it, because it reproved them; and that must needs be in them, that reproved them. Besides, that light could not be the Scriptures of the New Testament, for it was testified of before any part of the New Testament was written; so it must be the divine light, which is the life in Christ, the Word, before the Scriptures were. And the grace of God, which brought salvation, had appeared unto all men, and taught the saints; but they that turned it into wantonness, and walked despitefully against the Spirit of Grace, were the wicked. Again, the Spirit of Truth, the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, which leads the disciples of Christ into all truth, the same should reprove the world of sin, of righteousness, of judgment, and of their unbelief. So the wicked world had it to reprove them; and the true disciples and learners of Christ, that believed in the light as Christ commands, had it to lead them. But the world that did not believe in the light, though they were lighted;