Verily, if we people of the Christian nations were such as would God we were, I would little fear all the preparations that the great Turk could make.  No, nor yet, being as bad as we are, I doubt not at all but that in conclusion, however base Christendom be brought, it shall spring up again, till the time be come very near to the day of judgment, some tokens of which methinketh are not come yet.  But somewhat before that time shall Christendom be straitened sore, and brought into so narrow a compass that, according to Christ’s words, “When the Son of Man shall come again”—­that is, to the day of general judgment—­“thinkest thou that he shall find faith in the earth?” as who should say, “but a little.”  For, as appeareth in the Apocalypse and other places of scripture, the faith shall be at that time so far faded that he shall, for the love of his elect, lest they should fall and perish too, abridge those days and accelerate his coming.  But, as I say, methinketh I miss yet in my mind some of those tokens that shall, by the scripture, come a good while before that.  And among others, the coming in of the Jews and the dilating of Christendom again before the world come to that strait.  So I say that for mine own mind I have little doubt that this ungracious sect of Mahomet shall have a foul fall, and Christendom spring and spread, flower and increase again.  Howbeit, the pleasure and comfort shall they see who shall be born after we are buried, I fear me, both twain.  For God giveth us great likelihood that for our sinful wretched living he goeth about to make these infidels, who are his open professed enemies, the sorrowful scourge of correction over evil Christian people who should be faithful and who are of truth his falsely professing friends.

And surely, cousin, albeit that methinketh I see divers evil tokens of this misery coming to us, yet can there not, to my mind, be a worse prognostication of it than this ungracious token that you note here yourself.  For undoubtedly, cousin, this new manner of men’s favourable fashion in their language toward these ungracious Turks declareth plainly not only that their minds give them that hither shall he come, but also that they can be content both to live under him and, beside that, to fall from the true faith of Christ into Mahomet’s false abominable sect.

VINCENT:  Verily, mine uncle, as I go about more than you, so must I needs hear more (which is a heavy hearing in mine ear) the manner of men in this matter, which increaseth about us here—­I trust that in other places of this realm, by God’s grace, it is otherwise.  But in this quarter here about us, many of these fellows who are fit for the war were wont at first, as it were in sport, to talk as though they looked for a day when, with a turn to the Turk’s faith, they should be made masters here of true Christian men’s bodies and owners of all their goods.  And, in a while after that, they began to talk so half between game and earnest—­and now, by our Lady, not far from fair flat earnest indeed.