all that
country is mine, and I am the prince and god of it. How is it then that
thou hast run away from thy King? Were it not that I hope thou mayest do
me more service, I would strike thee now at one blow to the ground.

_Christian_--I was born indeed in your dominions, but your service was
hard, and your wages such as a man could not live on, "for the wages of
sin is death;" therefore when I was come to years, I did as other
considerate persons do--look out, if perhaps I might mend myself.

_Apollyon_--There is no prince that will thus lightly lose his subjects,
neither will I as yet lose thee; but since thou complainest of thy
service and wages, be content to go back; what our country will afford,
I do here promise to give thee.

_Christian_--But I have let myself to another, even to the King of
Princes, and how can I with fairness go back with thee?

_Apollyon_--Thou hast done in this according to the 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.

_Christian_--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?

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

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

_Apollyon_--Consider again when thou art in cool blood, what thou art
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 came yet from the place where he is to deliver
any that served him out of our 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 h