Page:Memoirs of a Huguenot Family.djvu/325

 Rh of complying with it. Let us pass by those we are under to Almighty God for our creation, preservation and redemption, and all the other blessings of this life, which are without number, and which we enjoy in common with the rest of mankind, and let us turn our eyes upon that continued chain of miracles which hath been wrought in our favor, and which are sufficient to rouse the most stupid to a sense of the duty enjoined in the text. To date our relation as high as the deliverance of our parents out of the bondage of France, we will find subject matter enough to make us cry out with holy David, "how great is thy goodness which thou hast laid up for them that fear thee, which thou hast wrought for them that trust in thee before the sons of men."

Several months was our parent obliged to shift amongst forests and deserts for his safety, because he had preached the word of God to a congregation of innocent and sincere persons, who desired to be instructed in their duty and confirmed in their faith. The woods afforded him a shelter, and the rocks a resting-place; but his enemies gave him no quiet until, of his own accord, he delivered himself up to their custody. They loaded his hands with chains, his feet stuck fast in the mire, a dungeon was his abode, and murderers and thieves his companions, until, God, by the means of a pious gentlewoman, whose kindness ought to be remembered by us even to latest posterity, withdrew him from thence, and was the occasion that his confinement was more tolerable.

His charge was preaching in the woods and praying aloud in the prison; by the former they pretended that he perverted the fidelity of the people towards their prince, and by the latter interrupted their devotions at Mass, both which accusations, could they have been fairly made out, would have