But when you are come to the
town, and shall find fulfilled what I have here related, then
remember your friend, and quit yourselves like men, and commit
the keeping of your souls to your God in well-doing, as unto a
faithful Creator.
Then I saw in my dream, that when they were got out of the
wilderness, they presently saw a town before them, and the name
of that town is Vanity; and at the town there is a fair kept,
called Vanity Fair: it is kept all the year long. it beareth the
name of Vanity Fair because the town where it is kept is lighter
than vanity; and, also because all that is there sold, or that
cometh thither, is vanity. As is the saying of the wise, all
that cometh is vanity.
This fair is no new-erected business, but a thing of ancient
standing; I will shew you the original of it.
Almost five thousand years agone, there were pilgrims walking to
the Celestial City, as these two honest persons are: and
Beelzebub, Apollyon, and Legion, with their companions,
perceiving by the path that the pilgrims made, that their way to
the city lay through this town of
Vanity, they contrived here to set up a fair; a fair wherein,
should be sold all sorts of vanity, and that it should last all
the year long: therefore at this fair are all such merchandise
sold, as houses, lands, trades, places, honours, preferments,
titles, countries, kingdoms, lusts, pleasures, and delights of
all sorts, as whores, bawds, wives, husbands, children, masters,
servants, lives, blood, bodies, souls, silver, gold, pearls,
precious stones, and what not.
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