6.  Now, if any total stranger to all that shall ask me:  What good there is in all that? and, Why I so labour in such a world of unaccustomed and unpleasant things as that?  I have many answers to his censure.  For example, and first, I labour and will continue to labour more and more in this world of things, and less and less in any other world, because here we begin to see things as they are—­the deepest things of God and of man, that is.  Also, because I have the precept, and the example, and the experience of God’s greatest and best saints before me here.  Because, also, our full and true salvation begins here, goes on here, and ends here.  Because, also, teaching these things and learning these things will infallibly make us the humblest of men, the most contrite, the most self-despising, the most prayerful, and the most patient, meek, and loving of men.  And, students, I labour in this because this is science; because this is the first in order and the most fruitful of all the sciences, if not the noblest and the most glorious of all the sciences.  There is all that good for us in this subject of the will and the heart, and whole worlds of good lie away out beyond this subject that eye hath not seen nor ear heard.

CHAPTER VII—­SELF-LOVE

’This know, that men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, unthankful, without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, traitors, heady, high-minded:  from all such turn away.’—­Paul.

’Pray, sir, said Academicus, tell me more plainly just what this self of ours actually is.  Self, replied Theophilus, is hell, it is the devil, it is darkness, pain, and disquiet.  It is the one and only enemy of Christ.  It is the great antichrist.  It is the scarlet whore, it is the fiery dragon, it is the old serpent that is mentioned in the Revelation of St John.  You rather terrify me than instruct me by this description, said Academicus.  It is indeed a very frightful matter, returned Theophilus; for it contains everything that man has to dread and to hate, to resist and to avoid.  Yet be assured, my friend, that, careless and merry as this world is, every man that is born into this world has all those enemies to overcome within himself; and every man, till he is in the way of regeneration, is more or less governed by those enemies.  No hell in any remote place, no devil that is separate from you, no darkness or pain that is not within you, no antichrist either at Rome or in England, no furious beast, no fiery dragon, without you or apart from you, can do you any real hurt.  It is your own hell, your own devil, your own beast, your own antichrist, your own dragon that lives in your own heart’s blood that alone can hurt you.  Die to this self, to this inward nature, and then all outward enemies are overcome.  Live to this self, and then, when this life is out, all that is within you, and all that is