This was the more significant, as the Bulgarian council, a month before, had enjoined upon the different "trades" of the city and neighboring villages, to have no dealings with two individuals whose names and places of business were specified, nor with any others who were known as inclined to Protestantism.

Such persons were therefore refused bread, or the right of baking at the public ovens, and some were reduced to great distress.

The missionaries talked seriously with the leading men of the city in favor of religious _freedom_, but only a few of them conversed reasonably on the subject, and the masses were wholly opposed to it.

Three men, as a means of asserting their religious liberty, went before the Turkish authorities and declared themselves Protestants, which seemed to be the beginning of a Protestant Bulgarian community.

The missionaries were sometimes threatened with personal violence, but the Turkish government was ready to defend them.
In January, 1869, four Bulgarians were admitted to the communion at Eski Zagra, two of them pupils in the school, and two married men.
The number of Bulgarian communicants in that place was now eleven.
The mission was strengthened, in 1868, by the arrival of Messrs.
Lewis Bond, William Edwin Locke, and Henry Pitt Page, all ordained missionaries, and their wives.