There are some who believe well enough but who, through lewdness of living, fall out of good hope of salvation.  And then I very little marvel that they are loth to die.  Howbeit, some who purpose to mend and would fain have some time left them longer to bestow somewhat better, may peradventure be loth to die also forthwith.  And albeit that a very good will gladly to die and to be with God would be, to my mind, so thankful that it would be well able to purchase as full remission both of sin and pain as peradventure he would be like to purchase, if he lived, in many years’ penance, yet will I not say but what such a kind of lothness to die may be approvable before God.

There are some also who are loth to die, who are yet very glad to die and long for to be dead.

VINCENT:  That would be, uncle, a very strange case!

ANTHONY:  The case, I fear me, cousin, falleth not very often.  But yet sometimes it doth, as where there is any man of that good mind that St. Paul was.  For the longing that he had to be with God, he would fain have been dead, but for the profit of other folk he was content to live here in pain, and defer and forbear for the while his inestimable bliss in heaven:  "Desiderium habens dissolvi et esse cum Christo, multo magis melius, permanere autem in carne, necessarium propter vos."

But of all these kinds of folk, cousin, who are loth to die (except for the first kind only, who lack faith), there is I suppose none who would hesitate, for the bare respect of death alone, unless the fear of shame or sharp pain joined unto death should be the hindrance, to depart hence with good will in this case of the faith.  For he would well know by his faith that his death, taken for the faith, should cleanse him clean of all his sins and send him straight to heaven.  And some of these (namely the last kind) are such that shame and pain both joined unto death would be unlikely to make them loathe death or fear death so sore but what they would suffer death in this case with good will, since they know well that the refusing of the faith, for any cause in this world (seemed the cause never so good), should yet sever them from God, with whom, save for other folk’s profit, they so fain would be.  And charity it cannot be, for the profit of the whole world, deadly to displease him who made it.

Some are these, I say also, who are loth to die for lack of wit.  Albeit that they believe in the world that is to come and hope also to come thither, yet they love so much the wealth of this world and such things as delight them therein, that they would fain keep them as long as ever they can, even with tooth and nail.  And when they can be suffered in no wise to keep it longer, but death taketh them from it, then, if it can be no better, they will agree to be, as soon as they be hence, hauled up into heaven and be with God forthwith!  These folk as as very idiot fools as he who had kept from his childhood a bag full of cherry stones, and cast such a fancy to it that he would not go from it for a bigger bag filled with gold.