{144} Chr.  I was born, indeed, in your dominions, but your service was hard, and your wages such as a man could not live on, “for the wages of sin is death” [Rom 6:23]; therefore, when I was come to years, I did, as other considerate persons do, look out, if, perhaps, I might mend myself.

Apollyon’s flattery

APOL.  There is no prince that will thus lightly lose his subjects, neither will I as yet lose thee; but since thou complainest of thy service and wages, be content to go back:  what our country will afford, I do here promise to give thee.

Chr.  But I have let myself to another, even to the King of princes; and how can I, with fairness, go back with thee?

{145} APOL.  Thou hast done in this, according to the proverb, “Changed a bad for a worse”; but it is ordinary for those that have professed themselves his servants, after a while to give him the slip, and return again to me.  Do thou so too, and all shall be well.

Chr.  I have given him my faith, and sworn my allegiance to him; how, then, can I go back from this, and not be hanged as a traitor?

APOL.  Thou didst the same to me, and yet I am willing to pass by all, if now thou wilt yet turn again and go back.

{146} Chr.  What I promised thee was in my nonage; and, besides, I count the Prince under whose banner now I stand is able to absolve me; yea, and to pardon also what I did as to my compliance with thee; and besides, O thou destroying Apollyon! to speak truth, I like his service, his wages, his servants, his government, his company, and country, better than thine; and, therefore, leave off to persuade me further; I am his servant, and I will follow him.

{147} APOL.  Consider, again, when thou art in cool blood, what thou art like to meet with in the way that thou goest.  Thou knowest that, for the most part, his servants come to an ill end, because they are transgressors against me and my ways.  How many of them have been put to shameful deaths! and, besides, thou countest his service better than mine, whereas he never came yet from the place where he is to deliver any that served him out of their hands; but as for me, how many times, as all the world very well knows, have I delivered, either by power, or fraud, those that have faithfully served me, from him and his, though taken by them; and so I will deliver thee.

Chr.  His forbearing at present to deliver them is on purpose to try their love, whether they will cleave to him to the end; and as for the ill end thou sayest they come to, that is most glorious in their account; for, for present deliverance, they do not much expect it, for they stay for their glory, and then they shall have it when their Prince comes in his and the glory of the angels.

APOL.  Thou hast already been unfaithful in thy service to him; and how dost thou think to receive wages of him?

Chr.  Wherein, O Apollyon! have I been unfaithful to him?