could not have found such a pack of ill-looked rascals,” says another. Some of them stopped their ears, and went on without minding us. Others we put out of countenance, and they came over to us. And a third sort came out of pure love to our company. After this, I observed a great many people afar off in a by-path: with as much contrition and devotion in their looks and gestures as ever I saw in men. They walked shaking their heads, and lifting up their hands to heaven; and they had most of them large ears, and, to my thinking, Geneva Bibles. These, thought I, are a people of singular integrity, and strictness of life, above their fellows; but coming nearer, we found them to be hypocrites; and that though they’d none of our company upon the road, they would not fail to meet us at our journey’s end. Fasting, repentance, prayer, mortification, and other holy duties, which are the exercise of good Christians, in order to their salvation, are but a kind of probation to these men, to fit them for the devil. They were followed by a number of devotees, and holy sisters, that kissed the skirts of their garments all the way they went, but whether out of zeal, spiritual, or natural, is hard to say; and undoubtedly, some women’s kisses are worse than Judas’s. For though his kiss was treacherous in the intention, it was right yet in the application: but this was one Judas kissing another, which makes me think there was more of the flesh than of the spirit in the case. Some would be drawing a thread now and then out of the holy man’s garment, to make a relic of. Others would cut out large snips, as if they had a mind to see them naked. Some again desired they would remember them in their prayers; which was just as much as if they had commended themselves to the devil by a third person. Some prayed for good matches for their daughters; others begged children for themselves: and sure the husband that allows his wife to ask children abroad will be so civil as to take them home, when they are given him. In fine, these hypocrites may for a while perchance impose upon the world, and delude the multitude; but no mask or disguise is proof against the all-piercing eye of the Almighty. There are I must confess many religious and godly men, for whose persons and prayers I have a great esteem. But these are not of the hypocrites’ humour, to build their hopes and ambition upon popular applause, and with a counterfeit humility, to proclaim their weakness and unworthiness; their failings; yea and their transgressions in the market-place; all which is indeed but a true jest; for they are really what they say, though they would not be thought so.