remembered, but also by the holy man Job, who in sundry places of his disputations with his burdensome comforters forbore not to say that the clearness of his own conscience declared and showed to himself that he deserved not that sore tribulation that he then had.  Howbeit, as I told you before, I will not advise every man at adventure to be bold upon this manner of comfort.  But yet know I some men such that I would dare, for their more ease and comfort in their great and grievous pains, to put them in right good hope that God sendeth it unto them not so much for their punishment as for exercise of their patience.

And some tribulations are there, also, that grow upon such causes that in those cases I would never forbear but always would, without any doubt, give that counsel and comfort to any man.

Vincent:  What causes, good uncle, are those?

Anthony:  Marry, cousin, wheresoever a man falleth in tribulation for the maintenance of justice or for the defence of God’s cause.  For if I should happen to find a man who had long lived a very virtuous life, and had at last happened to fall into the Turks’ hands; and if he there did abide by the truth of his faith and, with the suffering of all kinds of torments taken upon his body, still did teach and testify the truth; and if I should in his passion give him spiritual comfort—­might I be bold to tell him no further but that he should take patience in his pain, and that God sendeth it to him for his sin, and that he is well worthy to have it, though it were yet much more?  He might then well answer me, and other such comforters, as Job answered his:  “Burdensome and heavy comforters be you.”  Nay, I would not fail to bid him boldly, while I should see him in his passion, to cast sin and hell and purgatory and all upon the devil’s pate, and doubt not but—­as, if he gave over his hold, all his merit would be lost and he would be turned to misery—­so if he stand and persevere still in the confession of his faith, all his whole pain shall turn all into glory.

Yea, more shall I yet say than this.  If there were a Christian man who had among those infidels committed a very deadly crime, such as would be worthy of death, not only by their laws but by Christ’s too (as manslaughter, or adultery, or other such thing); and if when he were taken he were offered pardon of his life upon condition that he should forsake the faith of Christ; and if this man would now rather suffer death than so do—­should I comfort him in his pain only as I would a malefactor?  Nay, this man, though he would have died for his sin, dieth now for Christ’s sake, since he might live still if he would forsake him.  The bare patient taking of his death would have served for the satisfaction of his sin—­through the merit of Christ’s passion, I mean, without help of which no pain of our own could be satisfactory.  But now shall Christ, for his forsaking of his own life in the honour of his faith, forgive the pain of all his sins, of his mere liberality, and accept all the pain of his death for merit of reward in heaven, and shall assign no part of it to the payment of his debt in purgatory, but shall take it all as an offering and requite it all with glory.  And this man among Christian men, although he had been before a devil, nothing would I doubt afterward to take him for a martyr.