ggarly benefactor
to obedience, and _per consequens_, to fear neither men, nor that
God Who can cast both body and soul into unquenchable fire. In
which respect I neither account you of the Church, nor esteem of
your blood, otherwise than the blood of Infidels. Talk as long as
you will of the joys of heaven, or pains of hell, and turn from
yourselves the terror of that judgment how you will, which shall
bereave blushing iniquity of the fig-leaves of hypocrisy, yet
will the eye of immortality discern of your painted pollutions,
as the ever-living food of perdition. The humours of my eyes are
the habitations of fountains, and the circumference of my heart
the enclosure of fearful contrition, when I think how many souls
at that moment shall carry the name of Martin on their foreheads
to the vale of confusion, in whose innocent blood thou swimming
to hell, shalt have the torments of ten thousand thousand sinners
at once, inflicted upon thee. There will envy, malice, and
dissimulation be ever calling for vengeance against thee, and
incite whole legions of devils to thy deathless lamentation.
Mercy will say unto thee, I know thee not, and Repentance, what
have I to do with thee? All hopes shall shake the head at thee,
and say: there goes the poison of purity, the perfection of
impiety, the serpentine seducer of simplicity. Zeal herself will
cry out upon thee, and curse the time that ever she was mashed by
thy malice, who like a blind leader of the blind, sufferedst her
to stumble at every step in Religion, and madest her seek in the
dimness of her sight, to murder her mother the Church, from whose
paps thou like an envious dog but yesterday pluckedst her.
However, proud scorner, thy whorish impudency may happen
hereafter to insist in the derision of these fearful
denunciations, and sport thy jester's pen at the speech of my
soul, yet take heed least despair be predominant in the day of
thy death, and thou instead of calling for mercy to thy Jesus,
repeat more oftener to thyself, _Sic morior damnatus ut Judas_!
And thus much, Martin, in the way of compassion, have I spoke for
thy edification, moved thereto by a brotherly commiseration,
which if thou be not too desperate in thy devilish attempts, may
reform thy heart to remorse, and thy pamphlets to so