Page:Curious and compendious description of Borrowdale.pdf/6

 Seathwaite. They are situated on a rising ground, and Borrowdale is a most pleasant rountry in summer, but it is most horrible in winter; and at it lives a most careless set of people. They care not what they either say or do. Oh my dear friends, for I cannot call you Christians; You have nothing but its name: you are not what you pretend to be. At the best you are but pilgrims and strangers on the earth, and Oh, what ups and downs is in your life-time. You are on this poor but transcendant world; you are but strangers from the cradle to the grave, to which all of you are approaching: and it is a place where the worm dieth no:not [sic]no:, neither will the fir be quenched, and to it we are all going, and it is the place or the house appointed for all living. And if any of you will but consider how short on earth is your thread of life. You have no abiding place here, but in time you must look out for another one, whose builder and maker is God, and all things from him do proceed. But to that too many people in Borrowdale give themselves no con-cern at all, as if they were to live upon earth always. But the time it will come, when from your, riches you must die, and leave them behind you, and it certainly and shortly will come, when you all must cease from your tale; when your luxurious great ones in Borrowdale shall no more tread down the poor ones to the ground, and the time it will come, when there will be no respect of persons with God; when all at his tri-bunal seat must stand ; and so my dear friends, since it hath pleased the Almighty to send you all kinds of grain, and too many of you cannot take the use of them, so never more be inclined to the hoarding of the riches of this poor but transcendant world, for you must die, and bid farewell to all this world’s gran-deur, and be blended down and brought into dust; to moulder in the monsoulæms and the mansions of the tombs. And all your promiscuous multitude of you will be bundled together, and all erudition, with-out any rank or seniority, must come to a retirement, and suppose some of you people in Borrow dale domi-