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Rh proverb, “changed a bad for a worse;” but it is ordinary for those that have professed themselves his servants, after a while to give him the slip, and return again to me. Do thou so too, and all shall be well.

. I have given him my faith, and sworn my allegiance to him; how then can I go back from this, and not be hanged as a traitor.

. Thou didst the same by me, and yet I am willing to pass by all, if now thou wilt yet turn again and go back.

. What I promised thee was before I was of age: and besides, I count that the Prince under whose banner I now stand is able to absolve me, yea, and to pardon also what I did as to my compliancy with thee. And besides, oh, thou destroying Apollyon, to speak truth, I like his service, his wages, his servants, his government, his company, and country, better than thine; therefore leave off to persuade me further: I am his servant, and I will follow him.

. Consider again, when thou art in cold blood, what art thou like to meet with in the way that thou goest. Thou knowest that for the most part his servants come to an ill end, because they are transgressors against me and my ways. How many of them have been put to shameful deaths! And besides, thou countest his service better than mine; whereas he never yet came from the place where he is, to deliver any that served him out of their enemies’ hands: but as for me, how many times, as all the world very well knows, have I delivered, either by power or fraud, those that have faithfully served me, from him and his, though taken by them! And so will I deliver thee.

. His forbearing at present to deliver them, is