Puritan Thomas Case was arrested in 1651 and spent about six months in the Tower of London. Imprisonment taught him important lessons, and he has wise words about the sanctifying power of suffering, and the duties of obedience even in distress:
“There is no condition or trial in the world that does not give a man an opportunity for the exercise of some special grace or the doing of some special duty. This is the work of a Christian in every new state and in every new trial—to mind what new duty God expects, and what new grace he is to exert and exercise. To attend to deliverance only is self love which is natural to man… Men make more haste to get afflictions removed than to become sanctified.”
From Thomas Case, When Christians Suffer, 46.