Page:The Pilgrim's Progress, the Holy War, Grace Abounding Chunk1.djvu/79

Rh Chr. Well, and how did you answer him?

Faith. I told him that although all these that he named might claim a kindred of me, and that rightly (for, indeed, they were my relations according to the flesh), yet since I became a pilgrim they have disowned me, and I also have rejected them, and therefore they were to me now no more than if they had never been of my lineage. I told him, moreover, that as to this valley, he had quite misrepresented the thing; for "before honour is humility," and "a haughty spirit before a fall." Therefore, said I, I had rather go through this valley to the honour that was so accounted by the wisest, than choose that which he esteemed most worthy of our affections.

Chr. Met you with nothing else in that valley?

Faith. Yes, I met with Shame; but of all the men that I met with on my pilgrimage, he, I think, bears the wrong name. The others would be said nay, after a little argumentation and somewhat else; but this bold-faced Shame would never have done.

Chr. Why, what did he say to you?

Faith. What! why he objected against religion itself. He said it was a pitiful, low, sneaking business for a man to mind religion. He said that a tender conscience was an unmanly thing; and that for a man to watch over his words and ways, so as to tie up himself from that hectoring liberty that the brave spirits of the times accustom themselves unto, would make him the ridicule of the times. He objected also, that but few of the mighty, rich, or wise, were ever of my opinion; nor any of them neither, before they were persuaded to be fools, and to be of a voluntary fondness to venture the loss of all for nobody else knows what. (John vii. 48. 1 Cor. i. 26; iii. 18. Phil. iii. 7–9.) He, moreover, objected to the base and low estate and condition of those that were chiefly the pilgrims of the times in which they lived; also their ignorance and want of understanding in all natural science, Yea, he did hold me to it at that rate also