The Bass Rock

To this melancholy place I came, and continued there in prison for two years and a half; for I came in January 1677, and came out in July 1679. And here I had likewise experience of the goodness of God towards me; and, 1. In providing for me, without being chargeable to any for such things as I stood in need of. 2. In preserving and supporting me under great pressures of spirit, from sin, sufferings, tentations, grief’s, sorrows, and untenderness of brethren and friends, so as I was not therewith overwhelmed. 3. In preserving me in health all that time. 4. That in this time, partly belling household-plenishing and improving of my estate I paid and cleared one hundred pounds of debt. 5. I had the comfort and edification of fellow-prisoners, both ministers and others, some there before me, and other brought in since my coming, whose company was sweet and edifying many times to me. 6. We had liberty, for the most part, of taking the air up the hill; my solitary walks were sometimes very pleasant to me. 7. I had the comfort of friends that came in to see us from the city and country. 8. I had some special visits from God, ordinarily in private duties, and sometimes in worshipping and conference with others. 9. Some increase, (I think) I found in gifts, knowledge, and grace; some further discoveries of the knowledge of Christ and the gospel I never had before. 10. I was made some way useful by writing letters abroad, praying with, and preaching to, and conference with others. 11. And that I had a cleanly unexpected deliverance from this sad place, 12. Some improvement I made of this price that was put in my hand through grace that helped me: this I think I was bound to take notice of, and be thankful to the Lord.

As for my exercises here, and improvement of my time; I judged, when I first came here, that I was called to some work and improvement of this price put in my hand: and therefore did I, 1. Exercise myself in lamenting my sins, and mis-spent life, and great short-coming. 2. I laboured after, and desired some further knowledge of God and Christ and grace, and to glorify God in my sufferings. Some hours, morning and evening and mid-day, I spent in meditation, in praising, in reading the Scripture, for keeping up and increasing communion with God, and increase of grace constantly; besides several fast-days, which were my sweetest seasons and best times. 4. Every time I read the Scriptures, exhorted and taught there from, did sing Psalms, and prayed with such of our society as our master did allow and permit to worship God together, and this two times a day. 5. I studied Hebrew and Greek, and gained some knowledge in these Oriental languages. 6. I likewise read some divinity, and wrote a Treatise of Faith, with some other miscellanies, and several letters to Christian friends and relations. Thus I spent my time, and not without some fruit.

But prisons must be prisons, and all afflictions, though never so well-sweetened, will be in some measure grievous. Though the Lord was pleased to “stay his rough wind in the day of his east wind,” and to put a very light yoke upon our necks; yet was it still a yoke, and some bitter ingredients were mixed in this cup, something of the gall and vinegar we found, both that the Lord might discover and manifest to the world the cruel and unclean nature of the spirit of prelacy, and that our patience and faith might be the better exercised, and our faithfulness to so Christ, and finally, to wean us from the world, and sweeten to us the love of God in supporting under such troubles and delivering us out of them. For, 1. It could not be but sad to me and my brethren to think that we were cast out of the vineyard, and become useless, our commission taken from us, and could not glorify God as we had done. 2. Abstinence from natural and civil relations and friends was bitter, whose company was sweet, and which now we could not enjoy. Now we might say, “Lover and friend hast thou removed from us,” Psalm lxxxviii. ult. 3. The company of the ungodly, to whose hands we were delivered, and who ruled over us, who knew nothing of God, but were enemies to him, was grievous; that we lived among lions, wolves and serpents, and dwelt in the tents of Kedar. 4. It was then the “days of old, when the candle of God shined upon our tabernacle, when my wife, children, and relations were about me; when I went with the multitude that kept holy days:” then (I say) did these things of old come and assault my remembrance with a sensible and affecting grief. 5. Our own servants were turned out from us and we made to see servants whom we knew not; but this turned to our good and great advantage. 6. The great comfort that we had in worshipping of God together, and in eating together, was taken away from us by the folly and fears of some, and envy and malice of others, who grudged us this comfort, and who ruled us, and made us separate in worship and diet, and would not suffer us to come together, whereby our expenses were much increased, and we deprived of the variety of gifts. 7. Our letters that came to us, or were sent by us, were al looked many times, though they had no orders for it. 8. Our drink was dear and exceeding bad, and we behooved to take it from our governors, and pay exorbitantly for it. 9. Sometimes when they would take it in their heads, they would shut us all close up, and not suffer any of us to speak to another, and this not only without, but contrary to the council’s order, who committed us free prisoners, and to have the liberty of the Rock. This unwarranted restraint did sometimes afflict us, but our patience overcame it. 10. They vexed us by mixing in our company, and there blaspheming sometimes; and other times by seeking to ensnare us by the words of our lips, and tabling discourse in public matters which, seeing their malicious ends, we shunned. 11. They laboured to debauch our servant-maid to wait upon us. 12. They by force and power kept the poor soldiers and others from conversing with or hearing us on the Lord’s Day, although the poor creatures would gladly have heard us. 13. At the same time, likewise, I was very untenderly handled by some false brethren engaged in the same public cause with ourselves. 14. We were sometimes in winter and spring very hardly put to it for want of victuals and drink, insomuch that we had no other than snow water or corrupted water sprinkled over with a little oat-meal to drink and some dry fish. These with other things made our lives sometimes, and at sometimes bitter to us.
From the “Memoirs of Rev. James Fraser” cited from Volume 2 of “Scottish Puritans.”