The priest let me linger and look round, when he had crossed himself
and given me the holy water; and then I saw that the walls were
figured all over with stories, a huge St. Christopher with his black
beard looking like Will Green, being close to the porch by which we
entered, and above the chancel arch the Doom of the last Day, in which
the painter had not spared either kings or bishops, and in which a
lawyer with his blue coif was one of the chief figures in the group
which the Devil was hauling off to hell.
"Yea," said John Ball, "'tis a goodly church and fair as you may see
'twixt Canterbury and London as for its kind; and yet do I misdoubt me
where those who are dead are housed, and where those shall house them
after they are dead, who built this house for God to dwell in. God
grant they be cleansed at last; forsooth one of them who is now alive
is a foul swine and a cruel wolf. Art thou all so sure, scholar, that
all such have souls? and if it be so, was it well done of God to make
them? I speak to thee thus, for I think thou art no delator; and if
thou be, why should I heed it, since I think not to come back from
this journey.
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