Abel being dead yet speaketh

The cause of his departure was this: The corruption of ¹the Times being such, as would not endure his officiating any longer in his station without sin; and the envy of his maligners having procured Letters missive to convent him before the High Commission, which a debauched Inhabitant of that Town (who not long after died of the Plague) undertook to deliver to him, according as he had already done to some others: Mr Cotton having intelligence thereof, and well knowing that nothing but scorns and imprisonment were to be expected; conformably to the advice of many able heads and upright hearts (amongst whom that holy man ⟨p. 21⟩Mr. Dod of blessed memory had a singular influence) he kept himself close for a time in and about London▪ as Luther sometimes at Wittenberg, and Paraeus afterwards at Anvilla. Neither was that season of his recess unprofitable: but as Jerome retired to his den at Bethlehem was an Oracle unto many in his time, so Addresses during that interim were made unto him privately by divers persons of worth and piety, who received from him satisfaction unto their Consciences in cases of greatest concernment. His flight was not like that of Pliny's Mice, that forsake a house foreseeing the ruin of it; or of Mercenaries, who fly from duty in time of danger: but Providence Divine shutting up the door of service in England, and on the other hand opening it in New-England, he was guided both by the word and eye of the Lord. And as David yielded upon the persuasion of his men to absent himself from danger, so he suffered himself to be persuaded by his friends to withdraw from the lust of his Persecutors, for the preservation of so precious a light in Israel; after the example of Jacob, Moses, the Prophets which Obadiah hid in the caves, Polycarp, Athanasius, yea and Christ himself; When they persecute you in one City, fly unto another. Cyprian implieth, that a tempestive Flight is a kind of Confession of our faith; it being an open profession, that our faith is dearer to us then all that we fly from, for the defence thereof. It was not a flight from duty, but from evident, and regularly evitable danger; not from the evil of persecution, but from the evil of obstruction unto serviceableness. It was not a flight from duty, but unto duty; not from the profession of the Truth, but unto a more opportune place for the profession of it.