that every tongue shall confess that our lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God his Father.”  Now if it be so as these great learned men say, upon such authorities of holy scripture, that our Saviour merited as man, and as man deserved reward not for us only but for himself also; then were there in his deeds, it seemeth, sundry degrees and differences of deserving.  His washing of the disciples’ feet was not, then, of like merit as his passion, nor his sleep of like merit as his vigil and his prayer—­no, nor his prayers peradventure all of like merit, either.  But though there was not, nor could be, in his most blessed person any prayer but was excellent and incomparably surpassing the prayer of any mere creature, yet his own were not all alike, but one far above another.  And then if it thus be, of all his holy prayers, the chief seemeth me those that he made in his great agony and pain of his bitter passion.  The first was when he thrice fell prostrate in his agony, when the heaviness of his heart with fear of death at hand, so painful and so cruel as he well beheld it, made such a fervent commotion in his blessed body that the bloody sweat of his holy flesh dropped down on the ground.  The others were the painful prayers that he made upon the cross, where, for all the torment that he hanged in—­of beating, nailing, and stretching out all his limbs, with the wresting of his sinews and breaking of his tender veins, and the sharp crown of thorns so pricking him into the head that his blessed blood streamed down all his face—­in all these hideous pains, in all their cruel despites, yet two very devout and fervent prayers he made.  One was for the pardon of those who so dispiteously put him to his pain, and the other about his own deliverance, commending his own soul to his holy Father in heaven.  These prayers of his, made in his most pain, among all that ever he made, reckon I for the chief.  And these prayers of our Saviour at his bitter passion, and of his holy martyrs in the fervour of their torment, shall serve us to see that there is no prayer made at pleasure so strong and effectual as that made in tribulation.

Now come I to the reasoning you make, when you tell me that I grant you that both in wealth and in woe a man may be wicked and offend God, in the one by impatience and in the other by fleshly lust.  And on the other hand, both in tribulation and prosperity too, a man may also do very well and deserve thanks of God by thanksgiving to God for his gift of riches, worship, and wealth, as well as for his gift of need and penury, imprisonment, sickness, and pain.  And therefore you cannot see why I should give any pre-eminence in comfort unto tribulation, but you would rather allow prosperity for the thing more comforting.  And that not a little, but in manner by double, since therein hath the soul comfort and the body too—­the soul by thanksgiving unto God for his gifts, and the body by being well at ease—­whereas the person pained in tribulation taketh no comfort but in his soul alone.