Great Britain -- History -- Anglo-Saxon period, 449-1066; Middle Ages -- Sources
§ 31. Thou also, who like to the spotted leopard, art diverse in manners
and in mischief, whose head now is growing grey, who art seated on a
throne full of deceits, and from the bottom even to the top art stained
with murder and adulteries, thou naughty son of a good king, like
Manasses sprung from Ezechiah, Vortipore, thou foolish tyrant of the
Demetians,[243] why art thou so stiff? What! do not such violent gulfs
of sin (which thou dost swallow up like pleasant wine, nay rather which
swallow thee up), as yet satisfy thee, especially since the end of thy
life is daily now approaching? Why dost thou heavily clog thy miserable
soul with the sin of lust, which is fouler than any other, by putting
away thy wife, and after her honourable death, by the base practices of
thy shameless daughter? Waste not (I beseech thee) the residue of thy
life in offending God, because as yet an acceptable time and day of
salvation shines on the faces of the penitent, wherein thou mayest take
care that thy flight may not be in the winter, or on the sabbath day.
"Turn away (according to the psalmist) from evil, and do good, seek
peace and ensue it," because the eyes of our Lord will be cast upon
thee, when thou doest righteousness, and his ears will be then open unto
thy prayers, and he will not destroy thy memory out of the land of the
living; thou shalt cry, and he will hear thee, and out of thy
tribulations deliver thee; for Christ doth never despise a heart that is
contrite and humbled with fear of him. Otherwise, the worm of thy
torture shall not die, and the fire of thy burning shall never be
extinguished.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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