have presented themselves to have supports and encouragements; yea, when I have started, even as it were at nothing else but my shadow, yet God, as being very tender to me, hath not suffered me to be molested, but would, with one scripture or another, strengthen me against all; insomuch that I have often said, Were it lawful, I could pray for greater trouble, for the greater comfort's sake. (Eccles. vii. 24; 2 Cor. i. 5.)
324. Before I came to prison I saw what was coming, and had especially two considerations warm upon my heart. The first was how to be able to encounter death, should that be here my portion. For the first of these, that scripture, Col. i. 11, was great information to me—namely, to pray to God "to be strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power, unto all, patience and long suffering with joyfulness." I could seldom go to prayer before I was imprisoned; but for not so little as a year together this sentence or sweet petition would, as it were, thrust itself into my mind, and persuade me that if ever I would go through long suffering I must have patience, especially if I would endure it joyfully.
325. As to the second consideration, that saying was of great use to me, "But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead" (2 Cor. i. .9). By this scripture I was made to see that if ever I would suffer rightly I must first pass a sentence of death upon everything that can properly be called a thing of this life, even to reckon myself, my wife, my children, health, my enjoyments, and all as dead to me, and myself as dead to them.
326. The second was to live upon God that is invisible. As Paul said in another place, the away not to faint is to "look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal" (2 Cor. iv. 18.). And thus I reasoned with myself: If I provide only for a prison, then the whip comes at unawares, and so doth
