第142章 19th September,1838(3)

The above are incidents which I have hitherto kept within the privacy of my own bosom and which I have confided to none;they were but experiments,which at that time I had no wish to repeat,nor to be requested so to do.I was perfectly aware that such a line of conduct,if followed before the proper time,would give offence to the clergy,not only to the Carlist but the liberal clergy,and likewise to the Government;and it formed no part of my plan to be on ill terms with either.For I remembered that I was a stranger and a labourer on sufferance in Christ's cause in a half-barbaric land,on which the light of freedom and true religion was just beginning to dawn,and I was unwilling by over-precipitance and for the sake of a mere temporary triumph to forego the solid and lasting advantages which I foresaw,and had been told that patience and prudence would assure.I resolved to use the knowledge which I had obtained by these experiments only as a last resource,provided any accident which it was impossible for me then to foresee should overturn all the plans which my friends and myself had been forming for the quiet and peaceful introduction of the Scriptures amongst the Spaniards with the consent or at least with the connivance of the Government and clergy,knowing well that a great part of the latter were by no means disposed to offer any serious opposition to such a measure,they having sense and talent enough to perceive that the old system can no longer be upheld of which the essential part is,as is well known,to keep the people in ignorance of the great sterling truths of Christianity.I now come to the most distressing part of my narrative and likewise to the most miserable of my own life.

I returned to Madrid from my long,fatiguing and most perilous journey,in which I must be permitted to say that independent of a thousand miraculous escapes from the factious and the banditti Ihad been twice arrested as a spy,namely,once at Vigo and subsequently at Cape Finisterre,in which latter instance Inarrowly escaped with life,the ignorant fishermen having determined upon shooting me and my guide.Upon finding the booksellers of Madrid,with the exception of Razola,a man of no importance,averse to undertake the sale of the New Testament Idetermined upon establishing a shop of my own,a step to which Iwas advised by many sincere friends of the Cause and of myself.

Having accomplished this,I advertised the work incessantly,not only in the public prints but by placards posted in all the streets of the city;but I wish it to be distinctly understood that the advertisement which I used was the same quiet innocent advertisement,a copy of which you possess,and of which I have availed myself in the provinces,an advertisement which had never given offence nor was calculated to give offence if squandered about the streets by millions.I make this statement in self-justification,I having,in consequence of a letter in which I made some observations respecting advertisements and handbills,received a paragraph in a communication from home,in which I was checked with having made a plentiful use of advertisements and handbills myself.It would have been as well if my respected and revered friend the writer had made himself acquainted with the character of my advertisements before he made that observation.There is no harm in an advertisement,if truth,decency and the fear of God are observed;and I believe my own will be scarcely found deficient in any of these three requisites.It is not the use of a serviceable instrument,but its abuse that merits reproof,and I cannot conceive that advertising was abused by me when I informed the people of Madrid,that the New Testament was to be purchased at a cheap price in the CALLE DEL PRINCIPE.