Отрывок из книги
Lydia Maria Child
Published by Good Press, 2021
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All that I could relate concerning our godly brethren in Europe, was amply repaid by Mr. Oldham's humorous description of his own wanderings, mistakes, and sufferings. I had heard that he would speak of his own disgraces with the most shameless effrontery, and laugh at them more loudly than any other man; and I knew that many pious men had doubted the vitality of his religion, and had felt themselves darkened by intercourse with him;---but although I was shocked at the blasphemous lightness of his speech, I could hardly refrain from countenancing his ludicrous expressions and gestures by a smile.
"I can give you no idea of that guantlet at Plymouth," said he, "when I passed through a band as long as the laws of the Levites, and every man gave me a tug with the butt of his musket. But after all you may think, it was a season of comfortable outpouring. Two passages of Scripture came to my mind, and I was gifted with great light thereupon. David hath it, 'By thee have I passed through a troop;'---and Amos speaketh at a time when, 'If a man fled from a lion, a bear met him; and if he laid his hand upon the wall, a serpent bit him.' Well, it was much the same with me: but as I told you, it was a time of great light, though it was nothing like the first dawning. I'll tell you how that was. I was sitting thus, with my mug of flip before me, and one hand upon each knee, looking straight into the fire, when suddenly I bethought that I was like that smoking brand, with none to pluck it from the burning. So I took a draught of the good stuff, and all at once a light streamed around me, ten times brighter than the earl of Warwick's big lamp."
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