rneys, where (though an enemy to superstition), she
will go in pilgrimage five mile to a silenced minister, when there is a
better sermon in her own parish. She doubts of the virgin Mary's
salvation, and dares not saint her, but knows her own place in heaven as
perfectly as the pew she has a key to. She is so taken up with faith she
has no room for charity, and understands no good works but what are
wrought on the sampler. She accounts nothing vices but superstition and
an oath, and thinks adultery a less sin than to swear _by my truly._ She
rails at other women by the names of Jezebel and Delilah; and calls her
own daughters Rebecca and Abigail, and not Ann but Hannah. She suffers
them not to learn on the virginals, [56] because of their affinity with
organs, but is reconciled to the bells for the chimes' sake, since they
were reformed to the tune of a psalm. She overflows so with the Bible,
that she spills it upon every occasion, and will not cudgel her maids
without Scripture. It is a question whether she is more troubled with
the Devil, or the Devil with her: she is always challenging and daring
him, and her weapon [57] [is The Practice of Piety.] Nothing angers her
so much as that women cannot preach, and in this point only thinks the
Brownist erroneous; but what she cannot at the church she does at the
table, where she prattles more than any against sense and Antichrist,
'till a capon's wing silence her. She expounds the priests of Baal,
reading ministers, and thinks the salvation of that parish as desperate
as the Turk's. She is a main derider to her capacity of those that are
not her preachers, and censures all sermons but bad ones. If her husband
be a tradesman, she helps him to customers, howsoever to good cheer, and
they are a most faithful couple at these meetings, for they never fail.
Her conscience is like others' lust, never satisfied, and you might
better answer Scotus than her scruples. She is one that thinks she
performs all her duties to God in hearing, and shows the fruits of it in
talking. She is more fiery against the maypole than her husband, and
thinks she might do a Phineas' act to break the pate of the fiddler. She
is an everlasting argument, but I am weary of her.

A SCEPTIC IN RELIGION

Is one that hangs in the balance with all sorts of opinions, whereof not
one but stirs him and none sways him. A man guiltier of credulity than
he is taken to be; for it is out of his belief of everything,