VINCENT:  Every man, uncle, naturally grudgeth at pain, and is very loth to come to it.

ANTHONY:  That is very true, and no one biddeth any man to go run into it, unless he be taken and cannot flee.  Then, we say that reason plainly telleth us that we should rather suffer and endure the less and the shorter pain here, than in hell the sorer and so far the longer too.

VINCENT:  I heard of late, uncle, where such a reason was made as you make me now, which reason seemed undoubted and inevitable to me.  Yet heard I lately, as I say, a man answer it thus:  He said that if a man in this persecution should stand still in the confession of his faith and thereby fall into painful tormentry, he might peradventure happen, for the sharpness and bitterness of the pain, to forsake our Saviour even in the midst of it, and die there with his sin, and so be damned forever.  Whereas, by the forsaking of the faith in the beginning, and for the time—­and yet only in word, keeping it still nevertheless in his heart—­a man might save himself from that painful death and afterward ask mercy and have it, and live long and do many good deeds, and be saved as St. Peter was.

ANTHONY:  That man’s reason, cousin, is like a three-footed stool—­so tottering on every side that whosoever sits on it may soon take a foul fall.  For these are the three feet of this tottering stool:  fantastical fear, false faith, and false flattering hope.

First, it is a fantastical fear that the man conceiveth, that it should be perilous to stand in the confession of the faith at the beginning, lest he might afterward, through the bitterness of the pain, fall to the forsaking and so die there in the pain, out of hand, and thereby be utterly damned.  As though, if a man were overcome by pain and so forsook his faith, God could not or would not as well give him grace to repent again, and thereupon give him forgiveness, as he would give it to him who forsook his faith in the beginning and set so little by God that he would rather forsake him than suffer for his sake any manner of pain at all!  As though the more pain that a man taketh for God’s sake, the worse would God be to him!  If this reason were not unreasonable, then should our Saviour not have said, as he did, “Fear not them that may kill the body, and after that have nothing that they can do further.”  For he should, by this reason, have said, “Dread and fear them that may slay the body, for they may, by the torment of painful death (unless thou forsake me betimes in the beginning and so save thy life, and get of me thy pardon and forgiveness afterward) make thee peradventure forsake me too late, and so be damned forever.”