VIII. They could have no design to themselves in this work, thus to
expose themselves to scorn and abuse; to spend and be spent; leaving wife
and children, house and land, and all that can be accounted dear to men,
with their lives in their hands, being daily in jeopardy, to declare this
primitive message revived in their spirits, by the good Spirit and power
of God, viz.
That God is light, and in him is no darkness at all; and that he has sent
his Son a light into the world, to enlighten all men in order to
salvation; and that they that say they have fellowship with God, and are
his children and people, and yet walk in darkness, viz. in disobedience
to the light in their consciences, and after the vanity of this world,
lie and do not the truth. But that all such as love the light, and bring
their deeds to it, and walk in the light, as God is light, the blood of
Jesus Christ his Son should cleanse them from all sin. Thus John i. 4.
19. Chap. iii. 20, 21. 1 John i. 5, 6, 7.
IX. Their known great constancy and patience in suffering for their
testimony in all the branches of it; and that sometimes unto death, by
beatings, bruisings, long and crowded imprisonments, and noisome
dungeons: four of them in New England dying by the hands of the
executioner, purely for preaching amongst that people: besides
banishments, and excessive plunders and sequestrations of their goods and
estates, almost in all parts, not easily to be expressed, and less to
have been endured, but by those that have the support of a good and
glorious cause; refusing deliverance by any indirect ways or means, as
often as it was offered unto them.
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