When Mr. Prywell had heard this story, he did quickly believe it was true:  wherefore he went forthwith to my Lord Mayor’s house, and acquainted him therewith; who, sending for the subordinate preacher, brake the business to him; and he as soon gave the alarm to the town; for he was now the chief preacher in Mansoul, because, as yet, my Lord Secretary was ill at ease.  And this was the way that the subordinate preacher did take to alarm the town therewith.  The same hour he caused the lecture bell to be rung; so the people came together:  he gave them then a short exhortation to watchfulness, and made Mr. Prywell’s news the argument thereof.  ‘For,’ said he, ’an horrible plot is contrived against Mansoul, even to massacre us all in a day, nor is this story to be slighted; for Mr. Prywell is the author thereof.  Mr. Prywell was always a lover of Mansoul, a sober and judicious man, a man that is no tattler, nor raiser of false reports, but one that loves to look into the very bottom of matters, and talks nothing of news, but by very solid arguments.

‘I will call him, and you shall hear him your own selves;’ so he called him, and he came and told his tale so punctually, and affirmed its truth with such ample grounds, that Mansoul fell presently under a conviction of the truth of what he said.  The preacher did also back him, saying, ’Sirs, it is not irrational for us to believe it, for we have provoked Shaddai to anger, and have sinned Emmanuel out of the town; we have had too much correspondence with Diabolonians, and have forsaken our former mercies:  no marvel then, if the enemy both within and without should design and plot our ruin; and what time like this to do it?  The sickness is now in the town, and we have been made weak thereby.  Many a good meaning man is dead, and the Diabolonians of late grow stronger and stronger.

‘Besides,’ quoth the subordinate preacher, ’I have received from this good truth-teller this one inkling further, that he understood by those that he overheard, that several letters have lately passed between the furies and the Diabolonians in order to our destruction.’  When Mansoul heard all this, and not being able to gainsay it, they lift up their voice and wept.  Mr. Prywell did also, in the presence of the townsmen, confirm all that their subordinate preacher had said.  Wherefore they now set afresh to bewail their folly, and to a doubling of petitions to Shaddai and his Son.  They also brake the business to the captains, high commanders, and men of war in the town of Mansoul, entreating them to use the means to be strong, and to take good courage; and that they would look after their harness, and make themselves ready to give Diabolus battle by night and by day, shall he come, as they are informed he will, to beleaguer the town of Mansoul.

When the captains heard this, they being always true lovers of the town of Mansoul, what do they but like so many Samsons they shake themselves, and come together to consult and contrive how to defeat those bold and hellish contrivances that were upon the wheel by the means of Diabolus and his friends against the now sickly, weakly, and much impoverished town of Mansoul; and they agreed upon these following particulars:-