As I have said before, I relate to much of David Brainerd’s life and sufferings.  He wrote these words after his ejection from Yale when all his dreams and hopes were dashed, and how much they struck a chord to me, with variuos people both far and near I cannot tell you.

I was still occupied with some business depending on certain grandees for performance. Alas! how much men may lord and tyrannize over their fellow countrymen, yet pretend that all their treatment of them is full of lenity and kindness,—that they owe them some special regard,–that they would hardly treat another with so much tenderness, and the like. Like the Holy Court of Inquisition, when they put a poor innocent to the rack, they tell him what they do is for all the benefit of his soul! Lord, deliver my soul from this temper!
–David Brainerd, July 9, 1743 at New Haven.