HKB
us and keep us good men, as he hath promised to do if we pray well therefore, then saith holy scripture, "Unto good folk all things turn them to good."
And therefore, cousin, since God knoweth what shall happen and not we, let us in the meanwhile with a good hope in the help of God's grace have a good purpose of standing sure by his holy faith against all persecutions. And if we should hereafter, either for fear or pain or for lack of his grace lost in our own default, mishap to decline from his good purpose--which our Lord forbid--yet we would have won the well-spent time beforehand, to the diminishment of our pain, and God would also be much the more likely to lift us up after our fall and give us his grace again. Howbeit, if this persecution come, we are, by this meditation and well-continued intent and purpose beforehand, the better strengthened and confirmed, and much more likely to stand indeed. And if it so fortune, as with God's grace at men's good prayers and amendment of our evil lives it may well fortune, that the Turks shall either be well withstood and vanquished or peradventure not invade us at all, then shall we, perdy, by this good purpose get ourselves of God a very good cheap thank!
And on the other hand, while we now think on it--and not to think on it, in so great likelihood of it, I suppose no wise man can--if we should for the fear of worldly loss or bodily pain, framed in our own minds, think that we would give over and to save our goods and lives forsake our Saviour by denial of his faith, then whether the Turks come or come not, we are meanwhile gone from God. And then if they come not indeed, or come and are driven to flight, what a shame should that be to us, before the face of God, in so shameful cowardly wise to forsake him for fear of that pain that we never felt or that never was befalling us!
VINCENT: By my troth, uncle, I thank you. Methinketh that though you never said more in the matter, yet have you, even with this that you have spoken here already of the fear of bodily pain in this persecution, marvellously comforted mine heart.
ANTHONY: I am glad, cousin, if your heart have taken comfort thereby. But if you so have, give God the thanks and not me, for that work is his and not mine. For neither am I able to say any good thing except by him, nor can all the good words in the world--no, not the holy words of God himself, and spoken also with his own holy mouth--profit a man with the sound entering at his ear, unless the Spirit of God also inwardly work in his soul. But that is his goodness ever ready to do, unless there be hindrance through the untowardness of our own froward will.
XVIII
And now, being somewhat in comfort and courage before, we may the more quietly consider everything, which is somewhat more hard and difficult to do when the heart is before taken up and oppressed with the troublous affection of heavy sorrowful fear. Let us therefore examine now the weight and the substance of those bodily pains which you rehearsed before as the sorest part of this persecution. They were, if I remember you right, thraldom, imprisonment, and painful and shameful death. And first let us, as reason is, begin with the thraldom, for that was, as I remember it, the first.
VINCENT: I pray you, good uncle, say then somewhat of that. For methinketh, uncle, that captivity is a marvellous heavy thing, namely when they shall (as they most commonly do) carry us far from home into a strange unknown land.