Now before I meddle with your second, your third will I join to this.  For upon this answer will the solution of your examples fittingly depend.

As for Solomon, he was, as you say, all his days a marvellous wealthy king, and much was he beloved with God, I know, in the beginning of his reign.  But that the favour of God continued with him, as his prosperity did, that cannot I tell, and therefore will I not warrant it.  But surely we see that his continual wealth made him fall into wanton folly, first in multiplying wives to a horrible number, contrary to the commandment of God, given in the law of Moses, and secondly in taking to wife among others some who were infidels, contrary to another commandment of God’s written law.  Also we see that finally, by means of his infidel wife, he fell into maintenance of idolatry himself.  And of this we find no amendment or repentance, as we find of his father.  And therefore, though he were buried where his father was, yet whether he went to the rest that his father did, through some secret sorrow for his sin at last—­that is to say, by some kind of tribulation—­I cannot tell, and am content therefore to trust well and pray God that he did so.  But surely we are not so sure, and therefore the example of Solomon can very little serve you.  For you might as well lay it for a proof that God favoureth idolatry as that he favoureth prosperity; for Solomon was, you know, in both.

As for Job, since our question hangeth upon prosperity that is perpetual, the wealth of Job, which was interrupted with so great adversity, can, as you yourself see, serve you for no example.  And that God gave him here in this world all things double that he lost, little toucheth my matter, which denieth not prosperity to be God’s gift, and given to some good men, too; namely, to such as have tribulation too.

But in Abraham, cousin, I suppose is all your chief hold, because you not only show riches and prosperity perpetual in him through the course of all his whole life in this world, but after his death also.  Lazarus, that poor man, who lived in tribulation and died for pure hunger and thirst, had after his death his place of comfort and rest in Abraham’s—­that wealthy man’s—­bosom.  But here must you consider that Abraham had not such continual prosperity but what it was discontinued with divers tribulations.

Was it nothing to him, think you, to leave his own country, and at God’s sending to go into a strange land, which God promised him and his seed forever, but in all his life he gave him never a foot?  Was it no trouble, that his cousin Loth and himself were fain to part company, because their servants could not agree together?  Though he recovered Loth again from the three kings, was his capture no trouble to him, think you, in the meanwhile?  Was the destruction of the five cities no heaviness to his heart?  Any man would think so, who readeth in the story what labour he made to save them.