us) we forbear so little for all that, but do what we please as though we heard him not, we reckon our liberty never the less.  But then is our liberty much restrained by the laws made by man, for the quiet and politic governance of the people.  And these too would, I suppose, hinder our liberty but little, were it not for the fear of the penalties that fall thereupon.  Look then, whether other men who have authority over us never command us some business which we dare not but do, and therefore often do it full sore against our wills.  Some such service is sometimes so painful and so perilous too, that no lord can command his bondsmen worse, and seldom doth command him half so sore.  Let every free man who reckoneth his liberty to stand in doing what he please, consider well these points, and I daresay he shall then find his liberty much less than he took it for before.

And yet have I left untouched the bondage that almost every man is in who boasteth himself for free—­the bondage, I mean, of sin.  And that it be a true bondage, I shall have our Saviour himself to bear me good record.  For he saith, “Every man who committeth sin is the thrall, or the bondsman, of sin.”  And then if this be thus (as it must needs be, since God saith it is so), who is there then who can make so much boast of his liberty that he should take it for so sore a thing and so strange to become through chance of war, bondsman unto a man, since he is already through sin become willingly thrall and bondsman unto the devil?

Let us look well how many things, and of what vile wretched sort, the devil driveth us to do daily, through the rash turns of our blind affections, which we are fain to follow, for our faultful lack of grace, and are too feeble to refrain.  And then shall we find in our natural freedom our bondservice such that never was there any man lord of any so vile a bondsman that he ever would command him to so shameful service.  And let us, in the doing of our service to the man that we be slave unto, remember what we were wont to do about the same time of day while we were at our free liberty before, and would be well likely, if we were at liberty, to do again.  And we shall peradventure perceive that it were better for us to do this business than that.  Now we shall have great occasion of comfort, if we consider that our servitude, though in the account of the world it seem to come by chance of war, cometh unto us yet in very deed by the provident hand of God, and that for our great good if we will take it well, both in remission of sins and also as matter of our merit.

The greatest grief that is in bondage or captivity, I believe, is this:  that we are forced to do such labour as with our good will we would not.  But then against that grief, Seneca teacheth us a good remedy:  “Endeavour thyself evermore that thou do nothing against thy will, but the things that we see we shall needs do, let us always put our good will thereto.”