words of the old man, I was very glad, and my
heart yearned towards him, and I would fain enter into conversation with
him; and I said, 'Why are you an Antinomian? For my part I would rather
be a dog than belong to such a religion.' 'Nay, friend,' said the
Antinomian, 'thou forejudgest us; know that those who call us Antinomians
call us so despitefully, we do not acknowledge the designation.' 'Then
you do not set all law at nought?' said I. 'Far be it from us,' said the
old man, 'we only hope that, being sanctified by the Spirit from above,
we have no need of the law to keep us in order. Did you ever hear tell
of Lodowick Muggleton?' 'Not I.' 'That is strange; know then that he
was the founder of our poor society, and after him we are frequently,
though opprobriously, termed Muggletonians, for we are Christians. Here
is his book, which, perhaps, you can do no better than purchase, you are
fond of rare books, and this is both curious and rare; I will sell it
cheap. Thank you, and now be gone, I will do all I can to procure the
Bible.'

And in this manner I procured the Danish Bible, and I commenced my task;
first of all, however, I locked up in a closet the volume which had
excited my curiosity, saying, 'Out of this closet thou comest not till I
deem myself competent to read thee,' and then I sat down in right
earnest, comparing every line in the one version with the corresponding
one in the other; and I passed entire nights in this manner, till I was
almost blind, and the task was tedious enough at first, but I quailed
not, and soon began to make progress: and at first I had a misgiving that
the old book might not prove a Danish book, but was soon reassured by
reading many words in the Bible which I remembered to have seen in the
book; and then I went on right merrily, and I found that the language
which I was studying was by no means a difficult one, and in less than a
month I deemed myself able to read the book.

Anon, I took the book from the closet, and proceeded to make myself
master of its contents; I had some difficulty, for the language of the
book, though in the main the same as the language of the Bible, differed
from it in some points, being apparently a more ancient dialect; by
degrees, however, I overcame this difficulty, and I understood the
contents of the book, and well did they correspond with all those ideas
in which I had indulged connected with the Danes. For the book was a
book of ballad