the pure pangs of death pulled their
heart from their play, and put them in such a case that they could
not reckon their game. And then their gamesters left them and slyly
slunk away, and it was not long ere they galped up the ghost. And
what game they came then to, that God knoweth and not I. I pray God
it were good, but I fear it very sore.

Some men are there also that do as did King Saul, and in their
tribulation go seek unto the devil. This king had commanded all
those to be destroyed who used the false abominable superstition of
this ungracious witchcraft and necromancy. And yet fell he to such
folly afterwards himself, that ere he went to battle he sought unto
a witch and besought her to raise up a dead man to tell him how he
should fare. Now God had showed him by Samuel before that he should
come to naught, and he went about no amendment, but waxed worse and
worse, so that God would not look to him. And when he sought by the
prophet to have answer of God, there came no answer to him, which
he thought strange. And because he was not heard by God at his
pleasure, he made suit to the devil, desiring a woman by witchcraft
to raise up the dead Samuel. But he had such success thereof as
commonly they have who in their business meddle with such matters.
For an evil answer had he, and an evil fortune thereafter--his army
discomfited and himself slain. And as it is rehearsed in
Paralipomenon, the tenth chapter of the first book, one cause of
his fall was for lack of trust in God, for which he left off taking
counsel of God and fell to seek counsel of the witch, against God's
prohibition in the law and against his own good deed by which he
punished and put out all witches so short a time before. Such
fortune let them look for, who play the same part! I see many do
so, who in a great loss send to seek a conjurer to get their
belongings again. And marvellous things there they see, sometimes,
but never great of their good. And many a silly fool is there who,
when he lies sick, will meddle with no physic in no manner of wise,
nor send his urine to no learned man, but will send his cap or his
hose to a wisewoman, otherwise called a witch. Then sendeth she
word back that she hath spied in his hose where, when he took no
heed, he was taken with a spirit between two doors as he went in
the twilight. But the spirit would not let him feel it for five
days after, and it hath all the while festered in his body, and
that is the gri