VINCENT:  Then were they more than mad.  But did he tell them too where they should have hid it, to make it sure?

ANTHONY:  Yea, by St. Mary, did he!  For else he would have told them but half a tale.  But he told them a whole tale, bidding them that they should in no wise hide their treasure in the ground.  And he showed them a good cause, for there thieves dig it out and steal it away.

VINCENT:  Why, where should they hide it, then, said he?  For thieves may hap to find it out in any place.

ANTHONY:  Forsooth, he counselled them to hide their treasure in heaven and there lay it up, for there it shall lie safe.  For thither, he said, there can no thief come, till he have left his theft and become a true man first.  And he who gave this counsel knew well enough what he said, for it was our Saviour himself, who in the sixth chapter of St. Matthew saith, “Hoard not up your treasures in earth, where the rust and the moth fret it out and where thieves dig it out and steal it away.  But hoard up your treasures in heaven, where neither the rust nor the moth fret them out, and where thieves dig them not out nor steal them away.  For where thy treasure is, there is thine heart too.”

If we would well consider these words of our Saviour Christ, methinketh we should need no more counsel at all, nor no more comfort either, concerning the loss of our temporal substance in this Turk’s persecution for the faith.  For here our Lord in these words teacheth us where we may lay up our substance safe, before the persecution come.  If we put it into the poor men’s bosoms, there shall it lie safe, for who would go search a beggar’s bag for money?  If we deliver it to the poor for Christ’s sake, we deliver it unto Christ himself.  And then what persecutor can there be, so strong as to take it out of his hand?

VINCENT:  These things, uncle, are undoubtedly so true that no man can with words wrestle therewith.  But yet ever there hangeth in a man’s heart a lothness to lack a living!

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ANTHONY:  There doth indeed, in theirs who either never or but seldom hear any good counsel against it, or who, when they hear it, hearken to it but as they would to an idle tale, rather for a pastime or for the sake of manners than for any substantial intent and purpose to follow good advice and take any fruit by it.  But verily, if we would lay not only our ear but also our heart to it, and consider that the saying of our Saviour Christ is not a poet’s fable or a harper’s song but the very holy word of almighty God himself, we would be full sore ashamed of ourselves—­and well we might!  And we would be full sorry too, when we felt in our affection those words to have in our hearts no more strength and weight but what we remain still of the same dull mind as we did before we heard them.