A BUTTON-MAKER OF AMSTERDAM

Is one that is fled over for his conscience, and left his wife and

children upon the parish. For his knowledge he is merely a Horn-book

without a Christ-cross before it; and his zeal consists much in hanging

his Bible in a Dutch button. He cozens men in the purity of his clothes;

and 'twas his only joy when he was on this side, to be in prison. He

cries out, 'tis impossible for any man to be damned that lives in his

religion, and his equivocation is true--as long as a man lives in it, he

cannot; but if he die in it, there's the question. Of all feasts in the

year he accounts St. George's feast the profanest, because of St.

George's cross, yet sometimes he doth sacrifice to his own belly,

provided that he put off the wake of his own nativity or wedding till

Good Friday. If there be a great feast in the town, though most of the

wicked (as he calls them) be there, he will be sure to be a guest, and

to out-eat six of the fattest burghers. He thinks, though he may not

pray with a Jew, he may eat with a Jew. He winks when he prays, and

thinks he knows the way so now to heaven, that he can find it blindfold.

Latin he accounts the language of the beast with seven heads; and when

he speaks of his own country, cries, he is fled out of Babel. Lastly,

his devotion is obstinacy; the only solace of his heart, contradiction;

and his main end, hypocrisy.

Character Writings of the Seventeenth Century · 第 89 / 429 题