Читать книгу Character Writings of the Seventeenth Century - Various - Страница 67

Table of Contents

Is one that is fled over for his conscience, and left his wife and children upon the parish. For his knowledge he is merely a Horn-book without a Christ-cross before it; and his zeal consists much in hanging his Bible in a Dutch button. He cozens men in the purity of his clothes; and 'twas his only joy when he was on this side, to be in prison. He cries out, 'tis impossible for any man to be damned that lives in his religion, and his equivocation is true--as long as a man lives in it, he cannot; but if he die in it, there's the question. Of all feasts in the year he accounts St. George's feast the profanest, because of St. George's cross, yet sometimes he doth sacrifice to his own belly, provided that he put off the wake of his own nativity or wedding till Good Friday. If there be a great feast in the town, though most of the wicked (as he calls them) be there, he will be sure to be a guest, and to out-eat six of the fattest burghers. He thinks, though he may not pray with a Jew, he may eat with a Jew. He winks when he prays, and thinks he knows the way so now to heaven, that he can find it blindfold. Latin he accounts the language of the beast with seven heads; and when he speaks of his own country, cries, he is fled out of Babel. Lastly, his devotion is obstinacy; the only solace of his heart, contradiction; and his main end, hypocrisy.