of the Lord; he
said it was the building of Babel, and they were confounded in the works
of their hands by the confusion of tongues; such crys, says he, went
forth before the desolation of the great city.

Thou the son of grace, says the other, thou art a son of Satan, and hast
preached up iniquity; ye are the evil tares, and the land can never
prosper 'till ye are rooted out from among the good corn.

Thou art an inventer of lies, said the disciple of John Calvin, and the
truth is not in thee; ye are bloody minded wretches, and your fury is
the only sign of your religion, as the steeple is to the church; your
organs are the prophane tinkling of the cimbals of Satan, that tickle
the ears with vanity.

Thus the dispute lasted till they came to us, and getting into the boat,
they jostled for preeminence, which might have proved a sharp conflict,
had not the old fellow took up a stretcher and parted them. After which
we parted peaceably over to the other side: being-landed, the Scot and I
took our way together, and left the furious churchman to vent his spleen
by himself. We had not travelled long before we came to a populous
village, where, from the various multitude, our eyes encountered at a
distance, we might easily conjecture that something more than ordinary
had gathered them together in that manner; it resembled (as near as
I can describe it) that famous place called Sherrick-fair, or a
Staffordshire-Wake. While we were applying our admiration that way, we
arrived at a small hut erected for that purpose, where Nero the tyrant,
like a blind fiddler, was surrounded by a confused tribe of all sorts
and sexes, like another Orpheus among the beasts.

The various remarks I made (some dancing, some prancing; some clapping,
some knapping; some drinking, some winking; some kissing, some pissing;
some reeling, some stealing) urged my curiosity to enquire for what
it was possible those noble sports might be ordained, and was soon
satisfied it was the Anniversary Feast of their Great Lady Proserpine's
birth-day. But these things that I took to be diverting, so elevated the
spleen of my Puritan companion, that he began loudly to exclaim against
those prophane exercises: he said, they were impure, and lifted up
the mind to lewdness; that those that followed them, were the sons of
Belial, and wore the mark of the beast in their foreheads. I endeavoured
to pacify the sanctified brother, by putting him in mind where we were,
an