Howbeit, cousin, fain would I know who hath told you how small is the pain in the natural death!  As far as I can perceive, those folk that commonly depart of their natural death have ever one disease and sickness or another.  And if the pain of the whole week or twain in which they lie pining in their bed, were gathered together in so short a time as a man hath his pain who dieth a violent death, it would, I daresay, make double the pain that is his.  So he who dieth naturally often suffereth more pain rather than less, though he suffer it in a longer time.  And then would many a man be more loth to suffer so long, lingering in pain, than with a sharper pang to be sooner rid.  And yet lieth many a man more days than one, in well-near as great pain continually, as is the pain that with the violent death riddeth the man in less than half an hour—­unless you think that, whereas the pain is great to have a knife cut the flesh on the outside from the skin inward, the pain would be much less if the knife might begin on the inside and cut from the midst outward!  Some we hear, on their deathbed, complain that they think they feel sharp knives cut in two their heartstrings.  Some cry out and think they feel, within the brainpan, their head pricked even full of pins.  And those who lie in a pleurisy think that, every time they cough, they feel a sharp sword snap them to the heart.

XXV

Howbeit, what need we to make any such comparison between the natural death and the violent, for the matter that we are in hand with here?  Without doubt, he who forsaketh the faith of Christ for fear of the violent death, putteth himself in peril to find his natural death a thousand times more painful.  For his natural death hath his everlasting pain so instantly knit to it, that there is not one moment of time between, but the end of the one is the beginning of the other, which never after shall have an end.

And therefore was it not without great cause that Christ gave us so good warning before, when he said, as St. Luke in the twenty-second chapter rehearseth, “I say to you that are my friends, be not afraid of them that kill the body, and when that is done are able to do no more.  But I shall show you whom you should fear.  Fear him who, when he hath killed, hath in his power further to cast him whom he killeth into everlasting fire.  So I say to you, be afraid of him.”  God meaneth not here that we should not dread at all any man who can but kill the body, but he meaneth that we should not in such wise dread any such man that we should, for dread of them, displease him who can everlastingly kill both body and soul with a death ever-dying and that shall yet never die.  And therefore he addeth and repeateth in the end again, the fear that we should have of him, and saith, “So I say to you, fear him.”