Note 269 — MR. COTTON’S LETTER EXAMINED AND ANSWERED. (continued 2)

[“Mr. Ainsworth’s name is of best esteem, without all exception, in that way who refused communion with hearing in England. And if his people suffered him to live on ninepence a week, with roots boiled, surely either the people were grown to a very extreme low estate, or else the growth of their godliness was grown to a very low ebb.” Cotton’s Answer, p. 122. The remarks of Mr. Hanbury, with the quotation he produces from the preface, by a friend of Ainsworth, to his Annotations on Solomon’s Song, do not appear in the least to invalidate the statement of Williams. In the earlier part of his exile, in common with Johnson and the other separatists, he was exposed to great straits and difficulties, and it may be to that period that Mr. Williams refers. See Hanbury, i. 433.]