80} Faithful's answer to Discontent

FAITH. I told him, that although all these that he named might claim
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, as 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 our affections.

CHR. Met you with nothing else in that valley?

{181} FAITH. Yes, I met with Shame; but of all the men that I met
with in 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 [1 Cor. 1:26; 3:18; Phil. 3:7,8]; nor any of
them neither [John 7:48], before they were persuaded to be fools,
and to be of a voluntary fondness, to venture the loss of all, for
nobody knows what. He, moreover, objected 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, about a great many more things than here I relate; as, that
it was a shame to sit whining and mourning under a sermon, and
a shame to come sighing and groaning home: that it was a shame to
ask my neighbour forgiveness for petty faults, or to make restitution
where I have taken from any. He said, also, that religion made
a man grow strange to the great, because of a few vices, which
he called by finer names; and made him own and respect the base,
because of the same religious fraternity. An