And on the other hand, while we now think on it—­and not to think on it, in so great likelihood of it, I suppose no wise man can—­if we should for the fear of worldly loss or bodily pain, framed in our own minds, think that we would give over and to save our goods and lives forsake our Saviour by denial of his faith, then whether the Turks come or come not, we are meanwhile gone from God.  And then if they come not indeed, or come and are driven to flight, what a shame should that be to us, before the face of God, in so shameful cowardly wise to forsake him for fear of that pain that we never felt or that never was befalling us!

VINCENT:  By my troth, uncle, I thank you.  Methinketh that though you never said more in the matter, yet have you, even with this that you have spoken here already of the fear of bodily pain in this persecution, marvellously comforted mine heart.

ANTHONY:  I am glad, cousin, if your heart have taken comfort thereby.  But if you so have, give God the thanks and not me, for that work is his and not mine.  For neither am I able to say any good thing except by him, nor can all the good words in the world—­no, not the holy words of God himself, and spoken also with his own holy mouth—­profit a man with the sound entering at his ear, unless the Spirit of God also inwardly work in his soul.  But that is his goodness ever ready to do, unless there be hindrance through the untowardness of our own froward will.

XVIII

And now, being somewhat in comfort and courage before, we may the more quietly consider everything, which is somewhat more hard and difficult to do when the heart is before taken up and oppressed with the troublous affection of heavy sorrowful fear.  Let us therefore examine now the weight and the substance of those bodily pains which you rehearsed before as the sorest part of this persecution.  They were, if I remember you right, thraldom, imprisonment, and painful and shameful death.  And first let us, as reason is, begin with the thraldom, for that was, as I remember it, the first.

VINCENT:  I pray you, good uncle, say then somewhat of that.  For methinketh, uncle, that captivity is a marvellous heavy thing, namely when they shall (as they most commonly do) carry us far from home into a strange unknown land.

ANTHONY:  I cannot deny that some grief it is, cousin, indeed.  But yet, as for me, it is not half so much as it would be if they could carry me out into any such unknown country that God could not know where nor find the means to come at me!