Kaina kai palaia Things new and old, or, A store-house of similies, sentences, allegories, apophthegms, adagies, apologues, divine, morall, politicall, &c. : with their severall applications / collected and observed from the writings and sayings of the learned in all ages to this present by John Spencer ...

[ 1349] The great danger of Use in jesting at Religion and Piety.

WHen Iulian the Apostata had received his deaths wound,* 1.1 he could not but confesse that the fatall arrow which shot him, came from Hea∣ven, yet he confessed it in a phrase of scorn, Vicisti Galilaee, The day is thine O Galilean, and no more; not as he should have said, Thou hast accomplished thy purpose O my God, O my Maker, O my Redeemer, but in a style of contempt, Vicisti Galilaee and no more. And thus it is, that many who have used and ac∣customed their mouths to Oaths and blasphemies all their lives,* 1.2 have made it their last syllable and their last gasp to swear they shall dye. And others there are too, that enlarge and ungird their wits in jesting at Religion and Goodnesse, but what becomes on't? they passe away at last in negligence of all spiritual assi∣stances, and scarcely find half a minute betwixt their last jest here in this life, and their everlasting earnest in that which is to come.

Notes

• * 1.1

  In hist. tripar∣tit. Nauclenis Marcellin.
• * 1.2

  J. Donne, D. D. Serm. at Fun. of the L. Danvers. 1627.