Note 74 — Chapter XIV

Katherine Evans and Sarah Chevers suffered a dreadful confinement for about four years in the Inquisition at Malta, of which a full account has been published. A more condensed one may be seen in Select Miscellanies, v. p. 50-68.

“——These ministers of Christ did leave

Their homes in England, faithfully to bear

The Saviour’s message into Eastern lands;

And here, at Malta, they were seized upon

By bigoted intolerance, and shut

Within this fearful engine of the Pope.

Priests and inquisitors assail them there,

And urge the claims of Popery. The rack

And cruel deaths are threatened; and again

Sweet liberty is offered, as the price

Of their apostacy. All, all in vain!

For years these tender women have been thus

Victims of cruelty. At times apart,

Confined in gloomy, solitary cells.

But all these efforts to convert them failed;

The inquisition had not power enough

To shake their faith and confidence in Him,

Whose holy presence anciently was seen

To save his children from devouring flames;

He from this furnace of affliction brought

These persecuted women, who came forth

Out of the burning, with no smell of fire

Upon their garments, and again they trod

Their native land, rejoicing.”

Some idea of the sufferings of these poor creatures may be formed from the fact of their often lying down before the crevice of their prison-door, to inhale what air could be obtained from it. In this state their skin was parched, the hair fell off their heads, and, they frequently fainted; and, in moments when the strength and glory of the Divine presence was not so feelingly experienced as at others, it cannot occasion surprise that, through human weakness, they wished for death; their distress sometimes being such, that when it was day they longed for night, and yet when night came it was only to prompt the constant sigh for returning light. Yet the heavenly content which, on the whole, was the portion of these sufferers for Christ’s sake, in this dark and cloudy day, was remarkable. One of them, in writing to her relatives in England, says, “We are witnesses that the Lord can provide a table in the wilderness, both spiritual and temporal. In all our afflictions and miseries, the Lord remembered mercy, and did not leave nor forsake us, nor suffer his faithfulness to fail; but caused the sweet drops of his mercy to distil upon us, and the brightness of his glorious countenance to shine into our hearts.”

The other of these suffering captives writes that she could not, by pen and paper, set forth the extent of the love of God to her soul, in fulfilling his gracious promises to her in the wilderness. They were indeed enabled to “sing the Lord’s song in a strange land;” and in the midst of heaviness, “their mouths were often filled with laughter, and their tongues with joy,” being strong in the faith, giving praises and glory to God.

The following, composed by them in the Inquisition, affords a view of the motives and abilities of these devoted women:—

“In prisons strong, and dungeons deep,

To God alone we cry and weep;

Our sorrows none can learn nor read,

But those that in our path do tread.

But he whose beauty shineth bright,

Who turneth darkness into light,

Makes cedars bow, and oaks to bend,

To him that’s sent to the same end;

He is a fountain pure and clear,

His crystal streams run far and near

To cleanse all those that come to him

For to be healed of their sin:

All them that patiently abide,

And never swerve nor go aside,

The Lord will free them out of all

Bondage, captivity, and thrall.”

It was not in the Inquisition only that these women suffered, but much also in England. In 1657, Katherine Evans was stripped, and tied to a whipping-post in the market-place at Salisbury, and there whipped, for exhorting the people to repentance. Her husband, a man of property, also suffered several imprisonments, and at last died in prison for obeying our Saviour’s command, “Swear not at all.”