[77] An old tippling custom, more honoured in the breach than in the observance.—Ed.
[78] The dialogues between Hopeful and Christian in Doubting Castle admirably prove the wickedness of suicide. The unlettered tinker triumphs over all the subtleties of the Dean of St. Paul's. See Pilgrim's Progress.—Ed.
[79] This is the most awful of all delusions. It is exemplified in the character of Ignorance, in the Pilgrim's Progress, who was ferried over death by Vain Confidence, but found 'that there was a way to hell, even from the gates of heaven.'—Ed.
[80] Chrisom is a consecrated unguent, or oil, used in the baptism of infants in the Romish Church. It is prepared with great ceremony on Holy Thursday. A linen cloth anointed with this oil, called a chrisom cloth, is laid upon the baby's face. If it dies within a month after these ceremonies, it was called a chrisom child. These incantations and charms are supposed to have power to save its soul, and ease the pains of death. Bishop Jeremy Taylor mentions the phantasms that make a chrisom child to smile at death. Holy Dying, chap. i., sect. 2.—Ed.
[81] These two words are 'cease' and 'ceased' in the first edition; they were corrected to 'seize' and 'seized' in Bunyan's second edition.—Ed.
***
A Few Sighs From Hell;
or,
The Groans of the Damned Soul:
or, An Exposition of those Words in the Sixteenth of Luke, Concerning the Rich Man and the Beggar