Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation: With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica StevensMore, Thomas, Saint
Religion
Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation: With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens
More, Thomas, Saint
Consolation
For as before a great storm the sea beginneth sometimes to work and
roar in itself, ere ever the winds wax boisterous, so methinketh I
hear at mine ear some of our own here among us, who within these
few years could no more have borne the name of Turk than the name
of devil, begin now to find little fault in them--yea, and some to
praise them little by little, as they can, more glad to find faults
at every state of Christendom: priests, princes, rites, ceremonies,
sacraments, laws, and customs spiritual, temporal, and all.
ANTHONY: In good faith, cousin, so begin we to fare here indeed,
and that but even now of late. For since the title of the crown
hath come in question, the good rule of this realm hath very sore
decayed, as little a while as it is. And undoubtedly Hungary shall
never do well as long as men's minds hearken after novelty and have
their hearts hanging upon a change. And much the worse I like it,
when their words walk so large toward the favour of the Turk's
sect, which they were ever wont to have in so great abomination, as
every true-minded Christian man--and Christian woman, too--must
have.
I am of such age as you see, and verily from as far as I can
remember, it hath been marked and often proved true, that when
children in Buda have fallen in a fancy by themselves to draw
together and in their playing make as it were corpses carried to
church, and sing after their childish fashion the tune of the
dirge, great death hath followed shortly thereafter. And twice or
thrice I can remember in my day when children in divers parts of
this realm have gathered themselves in sundry companies and made as
it were troops and battles. And after their battles in sport, in
which some children have yet taken great hurt, there hath fallen
true battle and deadly war indeed. These tokens were somewhat like
your example of the sea, since they are tokens going before, of
things that afterward follow, through some secret motion or
instinct of which the cause is unknown.
But, by St. Mary, cousin, these tokens like I much worse--these
tokens, I say, not of children's play nor of children's songs, but
old knaves' large open words, so boldly spoken in the favour of
Mahomet's sect in this realm of Hungary, which hath been ever
hitherto a very sure key of Christendom. And without doubt if
Hungary be lost and the Turk have it once fast in his possession,
he shall, ere it be long afterward, have an open ready way into
almost all the rest of Christendom. Though he win it not all in a
week, the great part will be won, I fear me, within very few years
after.
VINCENT: But yet evermore I trust in Christ, good uncle, that he
shall not suffer that abominable sect of his mortal enemies in such
wise to prevail against his Christian countries.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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