But unto you, my Lord, since you believe and confess, as a wise man should, that though the Turk keep you his promise in letting you keep your substance, because you do him pleasure in the forsaking of your faith, yet God, whose faith you forsake, and thereby do him displeasure, may so take them from you that the great Turk, with all the power he hath, is not able to keep you them—­why will you be so unwise with the loss of your soul to please the great Turk for your goods, since you know well that God whom you displease therewith may take them from you too?

Besides this, since you believe there is a God, you cannot but believe also that the great Turk cannot take your goods from you without his will or sufferance, no more than the devil could from Job.  And think you then that, if he will suffer the Turk to take away your goods albeit that by the keeping and confessing of his faith you please him, he will, when you displease him by forsaking his faith, suffer you to rejoice or enjoy any benefit of those goods that you get or keep thereby?

VINCENT:  God is gracious, and though men offend him, yet he suffereth them many times to live in prosperity long after.

ANTHONY:  Long after?  Nay, by my troth, that doth he no man!  For how can that be, that he should suffer you to live in prosperity long after, when your whole life is but short in all-together, and either almost half of it or more than half, you think yourself, I daresay, spent out already before?  Can you burn out half a short candle, and then have a long one left of the rest?

There cannot in this world be a worse mind than for a man to delight and take comfort in any commodity that he taketh by sinful means.  For it is the very straight way toward the taking of boldness and courage in sin, and finally to falling into infidelity and thinking that God careth not or regardeth not what things men do here nor of what mind we be.  But unto such-minded folk speaketh holy scripture in this wise:  “Say not, I have sinned and yet there hath happed me none harm, for God suffereth before he strike.”  But, as St. Austine saith, the longer he tarrieth ere he strike, the sorer is the stroke when he striketh.

And therefore, if you will do well, reckon yourself very sure that when you deadly displease God for the getting or the keeping of your goods, God shall not suffer those goods to do you good.  But either he shall shortly take them from you, or else suffer you to keep them for a little while to your more harm and afterward, when you least look for it, take you away from them.

And then, what a heap of heaviness will there enter into your heart, when you shall see that you shall so suddenly go from your goods and leave them here in the earth in one place, and that your body shall be put in the earth in another place, and—­which then shall be the most heaviness of all—­when you shall fear (and not without great cause) that your soul first forthwith, and after that at the final