90 THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS.

Curis. Well, and how did you answer him?

Farr. I told him that, although all these that he named might claim kindred of
me, and that rightly (for, indeed, they were my relations according to the flesh), yet,
since I became a pilgrim, they have disowned me, as I also have rejected them; and
therefore they were to me now no more than if they had never been of my lineage. I
told him, moreover, that as to this valley, he had quite misrepresented the thing; for
before honor is humility, and a haughty spirit before a fall, « Therefore,” said I, “I
had rather go through this valley to the honor that was so accounted by the wisest, than
choose that which he esteemed most worthy
of our affections.”

Curis. Met you with nothing else in that
valley ?

Farru. Yes, I met with Shame; but, of all
the men that I met with in my pilgrimage, he,
I think, bears the wrong name. The other
would be said nay, after a little argumentation
and somewhat else; but this bold-faced Shame
would never have done.

Curis. Why, what did he say to you?

Farra. What? why, he objected against
religion itself, He said it was a pitiful, low,
sneaking business for a man to mind religion.
He said that a tender conscience was an
unmanly thing; and that for a man to watch
over his words and ways, so as to tie up him-
self from that hectoring liberty that the brave
spirits of the times accustom themselves unto,
would make him the ridicule of the times. He objected also, that but a few of the
mighty, rich, or wise were ever of my opinion; nor any of them neither, before they
were persuaded to be fools, and to be of a voluntary fondness, to venture the loss of all

 

Discontent.

for nobody else knows what."°™ He, moreover, objected the base and low estate
and condition of those that were chiefly the pilgrims of the times in which they lived;
also their ignorance, and want of understanding in all natural science. Yea, he did
hold me to it at that rate also, about a great many more things than here I relate; as,
that it was a shame to sit whining and mourning under a sermon, and a shame to come
sighing and groaning home; that it was a shame to ask my neighbor forgiveness for