painful penance for their sin to procure God to pity them and withdraw his indignation.  Anna, who in her widowhood abode so many years with fasting and praying in the temple till the birth of Christ, was not, I suppose, in her old age so sore disposed to the wantonness of the flesh that she fasted for all that.  Nor St. Paul, who fasted so much, fasted not all for that, neither.  The scripture is full of places that prove fasting to be not the invention of man but the institution of God, and to have many more profits than one.  And that the fasting of one man may do good unto another, our Saviour showeth himself where he saith that some kind of devils cannot be cast out of one man by another “without prayer and fasting.”  And therefore I marvel that they take this way against fasting and other bodily penance.

And yet much more I marvel that they mislike the sorrow and heaviness and displeasure of mind that a man should take in thinking of his sin.  The prophet saith, “Tear your hearts and not your clothes.”  And the prophet David saith, “A contrite heart and an humbled”—­that is to say, a heart broken, torn, and laid low under foot with tribulation of heaviness for his sins—­“shalt thou not, good Lord, despise.”  He saith also of his own contrition, “I have laboured in my wailing; I shall every night wash my bed with my tears, my couch will I water.”

But why should I need in this matter to lay forth one place or twain?  The scripture is full of those places, by which it plainly appeareth that God looketh of duty, not only that we should amend and be better in the time to come, but also that we should be sorry and weep and bewail our sins committed before.  And all the old holy doctors be full and whole of that opinion, that men must have for their sins contrition and sorrow in heart.

VII

Vincent:  Forsooth, uncle, this thing yet seemeth to me a somewhat sore sentence, not because I think otherwise but that there is good cause and great wherefore a man should so sorrow, but because of truth sometimes a man cannot be sorry and heavy for his sin that he hath done, though he never so fain would.  But though he can be content for God’s sake to forbear it thenceforth, yet not only can he not weep for every sin that is past, but some were haply so wanton that when he happeth to remember them he can scantly forbear to laugh.

Now, if contrition and sorrow of heart be so requisite of necessity to remission, many a man should stand, it seemeth, in a very perilous state.

Anthony:  Many so should indeed, cousin, and indeed many do so.  And the old saints write very sore on this point.  Howbeit, “the mercy of God is above all his works,” and he standeth bound to no common rule.  “And he knoweth the frailty of this earthen vessel that is of his own making, and is merciful and hath pity and compassion upon our feeble infirmities,” and shall not exact of us above the thing that we can do.