Consider first the loss of those outward things, as being somewhat less in weight than the body itself.  What may a man lose in them, and thereby what pain may he suffer?

VINCENT:  He may lose, uncle, money, plate, and other movable substance (of which I should somewhat lose myself); then, offices and authority; and finally all the lands of his inheritance for ever that he himself and his heirs perpetually might otherwise enjoy.  And of all these things, uncle, you know well that I myself have some—­little, in respect of that which some others have here, but yet somewhat more than he who hath most here would be well content to lose.

Upon the loss of these things follow neediness and poverty; the pain of lacking, the shame of begging (of which twain I know not which is the most wretched necessity); besides, the grief and heaviness of heart, in beholding good men and faithful and his dear friends bewrapped in like misery, and ungracious wretches and infidels and his mortal enemies enjoying the commodities that he himself and his friends have lost.

Now, for the body very few words should serve us.  For therein I see none other harm but loss of liberty, labour, imprisonment, and painful and shameful death.

ANTHONY:  There needeth not much more, cousin, as the world is now.  For I fear me that less than a fourth part of this will make many a man sore stagger in his faith, and some fall quite from it, who yet at this day, before he come to the proof, thinketh himself that he would stand very fast.  And I beseech our Lord that all those who so think, and who would yet when they were brought to the point fall from the faith for fear or pain, may get of God the grace to think still as they do and not to be brought to the essay, where pain or fear would show them, as it showed St. Peter, how far they are deceived now.

But now, cousin, against these terrible things, what way shall we take in giving men counsel of comfort?  If the faith were in our days as fervent as it hath been ere this in times past, little counsel and little comfort would suffice.  We should not much need with words and reasoning to extenuate and diminish the vigour and asperity of the pains.  For of old times, the greater and the more bitter the pain were, the more ready was the fervour of faith to suffer it.  And surely, cousin, I doubt little in my mind but what, if a man had in his heart so deep a desire and love—­longing to be with God in heaven, to have the fruition of his glorious face—­as had those holy men who are martyrs in old time, he would no more now stick at the pain that he must pass between than those old holy martyrs did at that time.  But alas, our faint and feeble faith, with our love to God less than lukewarm because of the fiery affection that we bear to our own filthy flesh, maketh us so dull in the desire of heaven that the sudden dread of every bodily pain woundeth us to the heart and striketh our devotion dead.  And therefore hath