ld have had it otherwise than the King
would have it. But it is a good thing to be zealously affected in a work
like mine, he would say, in self-defence and in self-encouragement. And
then, though not many, there were always some in the city who said, Let
him smite me and it shall be a kindness; let him reprove me and it shall
be an excellent oil which shall not break my head. It was in Mansoul
with Mr. Prywell as it was in Kidderminster with Richard Baxter, when
some of his people said to one another, 'We will take all things well
from one that we know doth entirely love us.' 'Love them,' said
Augustine, 'and then say anything you like to them.' Now, that was Mr.
Prywell's way. He loved Mansoul, and then he said many things to her
that a false lover and a flatterer would never have dared to say.

3. Then, as the saying is, it goes without saying that 'Mr. Prywell was
always a jealous man.' Great lovers are always jealous men, and Mr.
Prywell showed himself to be a great lover by the great heat of his
jealousy also. 'Vigilant,' says the excellent editress again; 'cautious
against dishonour, reasonably mistrustful--low Latin _zelosus_, full of
zeal. "And he said, I have been very jealous for the Lord God of
hosts."' Now, it so happened that some of Mr. Prywell's most private and
not at all professional papers--papers evidently, and on the face of
them, connected with the state of the spy's own soul--came into my hands
as good lot would have it just the other night. The moth-eaten chest was
full of his old papers, but the pieces that took my heart most were, as
it looked to me, actually gnashed through with his remorseful teeth, and
soaked and sodden past recognition with his sweat and his tears and his
agonising hands. But after some late hours over those remnants I managed
to make some sense to myself out of them. There are some parts of the
parchments that pass me; but, if only to show you that this arch-spy's so
vigilant jealousy was not all directed against other people's bad hearts
and bad habits, I shall copy some lines out of the old box. 'Have I
penitence?' he begins without any preface. 'Have I grief, shame, pain,
horror, weariness for my sin? Do I pray and repent, if not seven times a
day as David did, yet at least three times, as Daniel? If not as
Solomon, at length, yet shortly as the publican? If not like Christ, the
whole night, at least for one hour? If not on the ground and in ashes,
a