man with whom she hunteth,” he said, “is more than a mile behind her.  And she is but a little body, scant half so much as thou, and thy horns can thrust her through before she can touch thy flesh, by more than ten times her tooth-length.”  “By my troth,” quoth the other hart, “I like your counsel well, and methinketh that the thing is even soothly as you say.  But I fear me that when I hear once that cursed bitch bark, I shall fall to my feet and forget all together.  But yet, if you will go back with me, then methinketh we shall be strong enough against that one bitch between us both.”  The other hart agreed, and they both appointed them thereon.  But even as they were about to busk them forward to it, the bitch had found the scent again, and on she came yalping toward the place.  And as soon as the harts heard her, off they went both twain apace!

And in good faith, uncle, even so I fear it would fare by myself and many others too.  Though we think it reason, what you say, and in our minds agree that we should do as you say—­yea, and peradventure think also that we would indeed do as you say—­yet as soon as we should once hear those hell-hounds the Turks come yalping and howling upon us, our hearts should soon fall as clean from us as those other harts fled from the hounds.

ANTHONY:  Cousin, in those days that AEsop speaketh of, though those harts and other brute beasts had (if he say sooth) the power to speak and talk, and in their talking power to talk reason too, yet they never had given them the power to follow reason and rule themselves thereby.  And in good faith, cousin, as for such things as pertain to the conducting of reasonable men to salvation, I think that without the help of grace men’s reasoning shall do little more.  But then are we sure, as I said before, that if we desire grace, God is at such reasoning always present and very ready to give it.  And unless men will afterward willingly cast it away, he is ever ready still to keep it and glad from time to time to increase it.  And therefore our Lord biddeth us, by the mouth of the prophet, that we should not be like such brutish and unreasonable beasts as were those harts, and as are horses and mules:  “Be not you like a horse and a mule, that hath no understanding.”  And therefore, cousin, let us never dread but what, if we will apply our minds to the gathering of comfort and courage against our persecutions, and hear reason and let it sink into our heart and cast it not out again (nor vomit it up, nor even there choke it up and stifle it with pampering in and stuffing up our stomachs with a surfeit of worldly vanities), God shall so well work with it that we shall feel strength therein.  And so we shall not in such wise have all such shameful cowardous hearts as to forsake our Saviour and thereby lose our own salvation and run into eternal fire for fear of death joined therein—­though bitter and sharp, yet short for all that, and (in a manner) a momentary pain.