Book

“When at the first I took my pen in hand

Thus for to write, I did not understand

That I at all should make a little book

In such a mode; nay, I had undertook

To make another; which, when almost done,

Before I was aware, I this begun.

 And thus it was:  I, writing of the way

And race of saints, in this our gospel day,

Fell suddenly into an allegory

About their journey, and the way to glory,

In more than twenty things which I set down.

Book

 ”What is truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an

answer. Certainly there be, that delight in giddiness, and count it

a bondage to fix a belief; affecting free-will in thinking, as well as

in acting. And though the sects of philosophers of that kind be

gone, yet there remain certain discoursing wits, which are of the same

veins, though there be not so much blood in them, as was in those of

the ancients. But it is not only the difficulty and labor, which men

take in finding out of truth, nor again, that when it is found, it

imposeth upon men’s thoughts, that doth bring lies in favor; but a

natural though corrupt love, of the lie itself….”

Book

“To comfort the desponding parent with the thought that, without

diminishing the stock which is imperiously demanded to furnish the

more pressing and homely wants of our nature, he has disposed of one

or more perhaps out of a numerous offspring, under the shelter of a

care scarce less tender than the paternal, where not only their bodily

cravings shall be supplied, but that mental pabulum is also

dispensed, which HE hath declared to be no less necessary to our

sustenance, who said, that, “not by bread alone man can live”: for

this Christ’s Hospital unfolds her bounty….”