Consider well the story of Acham, who committed sacrilege at the great city of Jericho.  Thereupon God took a great vengeance upon the children of Israel, and afterward told them the cause and bade them go seek the fault and try it out by lots.  When the lot fell upon the very man who did it—­being tried by the lot falling first upon his tribe and then upon his family and then upon his house and finally upon his person—­he could well see that he was deprehended and taken against his will.  But yet at the good exhortation of Josue saying unto him, “Mine own son, give glory to the God of Israel, and confess and show me what thou hast done, and hide it not,” he confessed humbly the theft and meekly took his death for it.  And he had, I doubt not, both strength and comfort in his pain, and died a very good man.  Yet, if he had never come in tribulation, he would have been in peril never haply to have had just remorse in all his whole life, but might have died wretchedly and gone to the devil eternally.  And thus made this thief a good medicine of his well-deserved pain and tribulation.

Consider well the converted thief who hung on Christ’s right hand.  Did not he, by his meek sufference and humble knowledge of his fault, asking forgiveness of God and yet content to suffer for his sin, make of his just punishment and well-deserved tribulation a very good special medicine to cure him of all pain in the other world, and win him eternal salvation?

And thus I say that this kind of tribulation, though it seem the most base and the least comfortable, is yet, if the man will so make it, a very marvellous wholesome medicine.  And it may therefore be, to the man who will so consider it, a great cause of comfort and spiritual consolation.

IX

Vincent:  Verily, mine uncle, this first kind of tribulation have you to my mind opened sufficiently.  And therefore, I pray you, resort now to the second.

Anthony:  The second kind, you know, was of such tribulation as is so sent us by God that we know no certain cause deserving that present trouble, as we certainly know that upon such-and-such a surfeit we fell in such-and-such a sickness, or as the thief knoweth that for a certain theft he is fallen into a certain punishment.  But yet, since we seldom lack faults against God worthy and well-deserving of great punishment, indeed we may well think—­and wisdom it is to do so—­that with sin we have deserved it and that God for some sin sendeth it, though we know not certainly for which.  And therefore thus far is this kind of tribulation somewhat in effect to be taken alike unto the other.  For you see, if we thus will take it, reckoning it to be sent for sin and suffering it meekly therefor, it is medicinable against the pain of the other world to come for our past sins in this world, And this is, as I have showed you, a cause of right great comfort.