XVI

ANTHONY:  Much less than this may serve, cousin, with calling and trusting upon God’s help, without which much more than this cannot serve.  But the fervour of the Christian faith so sore fainteth nowadays and decayeth, coming from hot unto luke-warm and from luke-warm almost to key-cold, that men must now be fain to lay many dry sticks to it, as to a fire that is almost out, and use much blowing at it.

But else I think, by my troth, that unto a warm faithful man one thing alone, of which we have spoken yet no word, would be comfort enough in this kind of persecution, against the loss of all his goods.

VINCENT:  What thing may that be, uncle?

ANTHONY:  In good faith, cousin, even the bare remembrance of the poverty that our Saviour willingly suffered for us.  For I verily suppose that if there were a great king who had so tender love for a servant of his that he had, to help him out of danger, forsaken and lost all his worldly wealth and royalty and become poor and needy for his sake, that servant could scantly be found who would be of such a base unnatural heart that if he himself came afterward to some substance he would not with better will lose it all again than shamefully to forsake such a master.

And therefore, as I say, I surely suppose that if we would well remember and inwardly consider the great goodness of our Saviour toward us, when we were not yet his poor sinful servants but rather his adversaries and his enemies, and what wealth of this world he willingly forsook for our sakes—­for he was indeed universal king of this world, and so having the power in his own hand to have used it if he had wished, instead of which, to make us rich in heaven, he lived here in neediness and poverty all his life and neither would have authority nor keep either lands or goods.  If we would remember this, the deep consideration and earnest advisement of this one point alone would be able to make any true Christian man or woman well content rather for his sake in return to give up all that ever God hath lent them (and lent them he hath, all that they have) than unkindly and unfaithfully to forsake him.  And him they forsake if, for fear, they forsake the confessing of his Christian faith.

And therefore, to finish this piece withal, concerning the dread of losing our outward worldly goods, let us consider the slender commodity that they bring; with what labour they are bought; what a little while they abide with whomsoever they abide with longest; what pain their pleasure is mingled with; what harm the love of them doth unto the soul; what loss is in the keeping if Christ’s faith is refused for them; what winning is in the loss, if we lose them for God’s sake; how much more profitable they are when well given than when ill kept; and finally what ingratitude it would be if we would not forsake them for Christ’s sake rather than for them to forsake Christ unfaithfully, who while he lived for our sake forsook all the world, beside the suffering of shameful and painful death, of which we shall speak afterward.