VINCENT:  That is soon said, uncle, but it is hard to do.

ANTHONY:  Our froward mind maketh every good thing hard, and that to our own more hurt and harm.  But in this case, if we will be good Christian men, we shall have great cause gladly to be content, for the great comfort that we may take thereby.  For we remember that in the patient and glad doing of our service unto that man for God’s sake, according to his high commandment by the mouth of St. Paul, "Servi obedite dominis carnalibus," we shall have our thanks and our whole reward of God.

Finally, if we remember the great humble meekness of our Saviour Christ himself—­that he, being very almighty God, “humbled himself and took the form of a bondsman or slave,” rather than that his Father should forsake us—­we may think ourselves very ungrateful caitiffs (and very frantic fools, too) if, rather than to endure this worldly bondage for awhile, we would forsake him who hath by his own death delivered us out of everlasting bondage to the devil, and who will for our short bondage give us everlasting liberty.

VINCENT:  Well fare you, good uncle, this is very well said!  Albeit that bondage is a condition that every man of any spirit would be very glad to eschew and very loth to fall in, yet have you well made it so open that it is a thing neither so strange nor so sore as it before seemed to me.  And specially is it far from such as any man who hath any wit should, for fear of it, shrink from the confession of his faith.  And now, therefore, I pray you, speak somewhat of imprisonment.

XIX

ANTHONY:  That shall I, cousin, with good will.  And first, if we could consider what thing imprisonment is of its own nature methinketh we should not have so great horror of it.  For of itself it is, perdy, but a restraint of liberty, which hindereth a man from going whither he would.

VINCENT:  Yes, by St. Mary, uncle, but methinketh it is much more sorry than that.  For beside the hindrance and restraint of liberty, it hath many more displeasures and very sore griefs knit and adjoined to it.

ANTHONY:  That is, cousin, very true indeed.  And those pains, among many sorer than those, thought I not afterward to forget.  Howbeit, I purpose now to consider first imprisonment as imprisonment alone, without any other incommodity besides.  For a man may be imprisoned, perdy, and yet not set in the stocks or collared fast by the neck.  And a man may be let walk at large where he will, and yet have a pair of fetters fast riveted on his legs.  For in this country, you know, and Seville and Portugal too, so go all the slaves.  Howbeit, because for such things men’s hearts have such horror of it, albeit that I am not so mad as to go about to prove that bodily pain were no pain, yet since it is because of this manner of pains that we so especially abhor the state and condition of prisoners, methinketh