Page:Books Condemned to be Burnt - James Anson Farrer.djvu/124

108 curious title: ''Mysteries Discovered, or a Mercurial Picture pointing out the way from Babylon to the Holy City, For the Good of all such as during that Night of General Error and Apostacy, II Thess. ii. 3, Rev. iii, 10, have been so long misled with Rome's Hobgoblin, by me, Paul Best, prisoner in the Gatehouse, Westminster''. It concluded with a prayer for release from an imprisonment, which had then lasted more than three years, for certain theological opinions "committed to a minister (a supposed friend) for his judgment and advice only." This minister was the Rev. Roger Leys, who infamously betrayed the trust reposed in him, and made public the frankness of private conversation.

Best had been imprisoned in the Gatehouse for certain expressions he was supposed to have used about the Trinity; and before he wrote this pamphlet the House of Commons had actually voted that he should be hanged. Justly, therefore, he wrote: "Unless the Lord put to His helping hand of the magistrate for the manacling of Satan in that persecuting power, there is little hope either of the liberty of the subject or the law of God amongst us." And if he was not orthodox, he was sensible, for he says: "I