XI

Vincent:  Of truth, good uncle, albeit that every one of these kinds of tribulations have cause of comfort in them, as you have well declared, if men will so consider them, yet hath this third kind above all a special prerogative therein.

Anthony:  That is undoubtedly true.  But yet even the most base kind of them all, good cousin, hath more causes of comfort than I have spoken of yet.

For I have, you know, in that kind that is sent us for our sin, spoken of no other comfort yet but twain:  one that it refraineth us from sin that otherwise we would fall in; and one that it serveth us, through the merit of Christ’s passion, as a means by which God keepeth us from hell and serveth for the satisfaction of such pain as we should otherwise endure in purgatory.  Howbeit, there is therein another great cause of joy besides this.  For surely those pains here sent us for our sin, in whatsoever wise they happen to us (be our sin never so sore nor never so open and evident unto ourselves and all the world too), yet if we pray for grace to take them meekly and patiently; and if, confessing to God that it is far too little for our fault, we beseech him nevertheless, since we shall come hence so void of all good works for which we should have any reward in heaven, to be not only so merciful to us as to take our present tribulation in relief of our pains in purgatory, but also so gracious unto us as to take our patience therein for a matter of merit and reward in heaven; I verily trust—­and nothing doubt it—­that God shall of his high bounty grant us our boon.

For as in hell pain serveth only for punishment without any manner of purging, because all possibility of purging is past; and as in purgatory punishment serveth only for purging, because the place of deserving is past; so while we are yet in this world in which is our place and our time of merit and well-deserving, the tribulation that is sent us for our sin here shall, if we faithfully so desire, beside the cleansing and purging of our pain, serve us also for increase of reward.  And so shall, I suppose and trust in God’s goodness, all such penance and good works as a man willingly performeth, enjoined by his ghostly father in confession, or which he willingly further doth of his own devotion beside.  For though man’s penance, with all the good works that he can do, be not able to satisfy of themselves for the least sin that we do, yet the liberal goodness of God, through the merit of Christ’s bitter passion—­without which all our works could never satisfy so much as a spoonful to a great vesselful in comparison with the merit and satisfaction that Christ has merited and satisfied for us himself—­this liberal goodness of God, I say, shall yet at our faithful instance and request cause our penance and tribulation patiently taken in this world to serve us in the other world both for release and reward, tempered after such rate as his high goodness and wisdom shall see best for us, whereof our blind mortality cannot here imagine nor devise the stint.