A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 06
General
A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 06
English drama
PHILOLOGUS.
With as good will as did the devil out of the deaf man go. [_Aside_.
O God, which dwellest in the heavens, &c.
Tush! sirs, you do your labours lose: see, where Belzabub doth come,
And doth invite me to a feast: you therefore speak in vain.
Yea, if you ask ought more of me, in answer I will be dumb:
I will not waste my tongue for nought; as soon shall one small grain
Of mustard-seed fill all the world, as I true faith attain.
THEOLOGUS.
We will no longer stay you now, but let you hence depart.
EUSEBIUS.
Yet will we pray continually that God would you convert.
THEOLOGUS.
Gisbertus and Paphinitius, conduct him to his place;
But see he have good company: let him not be alone.
AMBO.
We shall so do: God us assist with his most holy grace!
GISBERTUS.
Come, father, do you not think good that we from hence be gone?
PHILOLOGUS.
Let go my hands at liberty: assistance I crave none.
O, that I had a sword awhile! I should soon eased be.
AMBO.
Alas! dear father, what do you?
EUSEBIUS.
His will we may now see.
[_Exeunt_ Philologus, Gisbertus, Paphinitius.
THEOLOGUS.
O glorious God, how wonderful those judgments are of thine:
Thou dost behold the secret heart; nought doth thy eyes beguile.
O, what occasion is us given to fear thy might divine,
And from our hearts to hate and loathe iniquities so vile,
Lest for the same thou in thy wrath dost grace from us exile.
The outward man doth thee not please, nor yet the mind alone,
But thou requirest both of us, or else regardest none.
EUSEBIUS.
Here may the worldlings have a glass, their states for to behold,
And learn in time for to escape the judgments of the Lord;
Whilst they by flattering of themselves, of faith both dead and cold,
Do sell their souls to wickedness, of all good men abhorr'd:
But godliness doth not depend in knowing of the word;
But in fulfilling of the same, as in this man we see,
Who though he did to others preach, his life did not agree.
THEOLOGUS.
Again, Philologus witnesseth which is the truth of Christ,
For that consenting to the Pope he did the Lord abjure,
Whereby he teach the wavering faith on which side to persist:
And those which have the truth of God, that still they may endure.
The tyrants which delight in blood he likewise doth assure,
In whose affairs they spend their time--but let us homeward go.
EUSEBIUS.
I am content that after meat we may resort him to.
[_Exeunt_ THEOLOGUS _and_ EUSEBIUS.
ACT VI. SCENE LAST.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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