But yet may we not always pray for the taking away from us of every kind of temptation.  For if a man should in every sickness pray for his health again, when should he show himself content to die and to depart unto God?  And that mind must a man have, you know, or else it will not be well with him.  It is a tribulation to good men to feel in themselves the conflict of the flesh against the soul and the rebellion of sensuality against the rule and governance of reason—­the relics that remain in mankind of old original sin, of which St. Paul so sore complaineth in his epistle to the Romans.  And yet may we not pray, while we stand in this life, to have this kind of tribulation utterly taken from us.  For it is left us by God’s ordinance to strive against it and fight with it, and by reason and grace to master it and use it for the matter of our merit.

For the salvation of our soul may we boldly pray.  For grace may we boldly pray, for faith, for hope, and for charity, and for every such virtue as shall serve us toward heaven.  But as for all the other things before mentioned (in which is contained the matter of every kind of tribulation), we may never well make prayers so precisely but that we must express or imply a condition therein—­that is, that if God see the contrary better for us, we refer it wholly to his will.  And if that be so, we pray that God, instead of taking away our grief, may send us of his goodness either spiritual comfort to take it gladly or at least strength to bear it patiently.

For if we determine with ourselves that we will take no comfort in anything but the taking of our tribulation from us, then either we prescribe to God that he shall do us no better turn, even though he would, than we will ourselves appoint him; or else we declare that we ourselves can tell better than he what is better for us.  And therefore, I say, let us in tribulation desire his help and comfort, and let us remit the manner of that comfort unto his own high pleasure.  When we do this, let us nothing doubt but that, as his high wisdom better seeth what is best for us than we can see it ourselves, so shall his sovereign high goodness give us that thing that shall indeed be best.

For otherwise, if we presume to stand to our own choice—­unless God offer us the choice himself, as he did to David in the choice of his own punishment, after his high pride conceived in the numbering of the people—­we may foolishly choose the worst.  And by prescribing unto God ourselves so precisely what we will that he shall do for us, unless of his gracious favour he reject our folly, he shall for indignation grant us our own request, and afterward shall we well find that it shall turn us to harm.

How many men attain health of body for whom it would be better, for their soul’s health, that their bodies were sick still?  How many get out of prison who happen outside on such harm as the prison would have kept them from?  How many who have been loth to lose their worldly goods have, in keeping of their goods, soon afterward lost their life?  So blind is our mortality and so unaware what will befall—­so unsure also what manner of mind we ourselves will have tomorrow—­that God could not lightly do a man more vengeance than to grant him in this world his own foolish wishes.