2. 'A great lover of Mansoul,' 'always a lover of Mansoul'; again and again that is testified concerning Mr. Prywell. It was not love for the work that led Mr. Prywell to give up his days and his nights as his history tells us he did. Mr. Prywell ran himself into many dangerous situations both within and without the city, and he lost himself far more friends than he made by his devotion to his thankless task. But necessity was laid upon him. And what held him up was the sure and certain knowledge that his King would have that service at his hands. That, and his love for the city, for the safety and the deliverance of the city,--all that kept Mr.
Prywell's heart fixed. Am I therefore your enemy? he would say to some who would 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, at least not in my bed? If not in sackcloth, at least not in purple and fine linen? If not altogether freed from all, at least from immoderate desires? Do I give, if not as Zaccheus did, fourfold, as the law commands, with the fifth part added? If not as the rich, yet as the widow? If not the half, yet the thirtieth part? If not above my power, yet up to my power?' And then over the page there are some illegible pencillings from old authors of his such as this from Augustine: 'A good man would rather know his own infirmity than the foundations of the earth or the heights of the heavens.' And this from Cicero: 'There are many hiding-places and recesses in the mind.' And this from Seneca: 'You must know yourself before you can amend yourself. An unknown sin grows worse and worse and is deprived of cure.' And this from Cicero again:
'Cato exacted from himself an account of every day's business at night'; and also Pythagoras, 'Nor let sweet sleep upon thine eyes descend Till thou hast judged its deeds at each day's end.'
And this from Seneca again: 'When the light is removed out of sight, and my wife, who is by this time aware of my practice, is now silent, I pass the whole of my day under examination, and I
review my deeds and my words. I hide nothing from myself: I pass over nothing.' And then in Mr. Prywell's boldest and least trembling hand: 'O yes! many shall come from the east and the west and shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, when many of the children of the kingdom shall be cast out. O yes.' Now, this 'O yes!' Miss Peacock tells us, is the Anglicised form of a French word for our Lord's words, Take heed how ye hear!
4. 'A sober and a judicious man' it is said of Mr. Prywell also.
To a certainty that. It could not be otherwise than that. For Mr.
Prywell's office, its discoveries and its experiences, would sober any man. 'I am sprung from a country,' says Abelard, 'of which the soil is light, and the temper of the inhabitants is light.' So was it with Mr. Prywell to begin with. But even Abelard was sobered in time, and so was Mr. Prywell. Life sobered Abelard, and Mr.
Prywell too; life's crooks and life's crosses, life's duties and life's disappointments, especially Mr. Prywell. 'The more narrowly a man looks into himself,' says A Kempis, 'the more he sorroweth.'
