148 MR. WILLIAM E. A. AXON ON THE 



for those barbarous actions^ and renounced all friendsbip 

 with him, and would travel with him no longer nor keep 

 him company. Whereupon the young man smiling at the 

 honest zeal of the Eremite, and putting off his mortal 

 disguise, appeared as he was, in the form and lustre of an 

 angel of God, and told him he was sent to ease his mind 

 of the great anxiety it was encumbered with touching the 

 Divine Providence. ' In which/ said he, ' nothing can 

 occur more perplexing and paradoxical than what you have 

 been offended at since we two travelled together. But yet 

 I will demonstrate to you,^ said he, ^ that all that I have 

 done is very just and right. "For, as for that first man 

 from whom I took the gilded cup, it was a real compen- 

 sation indeed of his hospitality ; that cup being so forcible 

 an occasion of the good man^s distempering himself and of 

 hazarding his health and life, which would be a great loss 

 to his poor neighbours, he being of so good and charitable 

 a nature. But I put it into the window of that harsh and 

 unhospitable man that used us so ill, not as a booty to him, 

 but as a plague and a scourge to him, and for an ease to 

 his oppressed neighbours, that he may fall into intemper- 

 ance, disease, and death itself. For I knew very well that 

 there was that enchantment in this cup', that they that 

 had it would be thus bewitched with it. As for that civil 

 person whose child I strangled in the cradle, it was in great 

 mercy to him and no real hurt to the child, who is now 

 with God. But if that child had lived, whereas this gen- 

 tleman had been piously, charitably, and devotedly given, 

 his mind, I saw, would have unavoidably sunk into the 

 love of the world, out of love to his child, he having had 

 none before, and doting so hugely on it ; and therefore I 

 took away this momentaiy life from the body of the child, 

 that the soul of the father might live for ever. And for 

 this last act, which you so much abhor, it was the most 



