set here by the ordinance of God in a place, be it never so large, yet a place, I say (and you say the same) out of which no man can escape.  And you grant that every man is there put under sure and safe keeping to be readily set forth when God calleth for him, and that then he shall surely die.  And is not then, cousin, by your own granting before, every man a very prisoner, when he is put in a place to be kept to be brought forth when he would not, and himself knows not whither?

VINCENT:  Yes, in good faith, uncle, I cannot but well perceive this to be so.

ANTHONY:  This would be true, you know, even though a man were but taken by the arm and in a fair manner led out of this world unto his judgment.  But now, we well know that there is no king so great but what, all the while he walketh here, walk he never so loose, ride he with never so strong an army for his defence, yet he himself is very sure—­though he seek in the meantime some other pastime to put it out of his mind—­yet is he very sure, I say, that escape he cannot.  And very well he knoweth that he hath already sentence given upon him to die, and that verily die he shall.  And though he hope for long respite of his execution, yet can he not tell how soon it will be.  And therefore, unless he be a fool, he can never be without fear that, either on the morrow or on the selfsame day, the grisly cruel hangman Death, who from his first coming in hath ever hoved aloof and looked toward him, and ever lain in wait for him, shall amid all his royalty and all his main strength neither kneel before him nor make him any reverence, nor with any good manner desire him to come forth.  But he shall rigorously and fiercely grip him by the very breast, and make all his bones rattle, and so by long and divers sore torments strike him stark dead in his prison.  And then shall he cause his body to be cast into the ground in a foul pit in some corner of the same, there to rot and be eaten by the wretched worms of the earth, sending yet his soul out further into a more fearful judgment.  Of that judgment at his temporal death his success is uncertain and therefore, though by God’s grace not out of good hope, for all that in the meanwhile in very sore dread and fear and peradventure in peril inevitable of eternal fire, too.

Methinketh therefore, cousin, that, as I told you, this keeping of every man in this wretched world for execution of death is a very plain imprisonment indeed.  And it is, as I say, such that the greatest king is in this prison in much worse case, for all his wealth, than is many a man who, in the other imprisonment, is sore and hardly handled.  For while some of those lie not there attainted nor condemned to death, the greatest man of this world and the most wealthy in this universal prison is laid in to be kept undoubtedly for death.

VINCENT:  But yet, uncle, in that case is the other prisoner too, for he is as sure that he shall die, perdy.