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"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.
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!
'Bunyan employs pry, says Miss Peacock in her excellent notes, 'in a more favourable sense than it now bears. As, for instance, it is said in another part of this same book that the men of Mansoul were allowed to pry into the words of the Holy Ghost and to expound them to their best advantage. Honest anxiety for the welfare of his fellow-townsmen was Mr. Prywell's chief characteristic.
'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.
'Two things, says one who had long looked at his own matters with Mr. Prywell's eyes 'two things, O Lord, I recognise in myself: nature, which Thou hast made, and sin, which I have added. My brethren, that recognition, that discovery in yourselves, when it comes to you, will sober you as it has sobered so many men before you: when it comes to you, that is, about yourselves.
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.
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.
Prywell's intelligence make in the famous town of Mansoul.
And this was the way that the subordinate preacher did take to alarm the town therewith. The same hour he caused the lecture bell to be rung; so the people came together: he gave them then a short exhortation to watchfulness, and made Mr. Prywell's news the argument thereof.
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