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
ANTHONY: That is very well said, cousin. Let us have our sure hope
in him, and then shall we be very sure that we shall not be
deceived. For we shall have either the thing that we hope for, or a
better thing in its stead. For, as for the thing itself that we
pray for and hope to have, God will not always send it to us. And
therefore, as I said in our first communication, in all things save
only for heaven, our prayer and our hope may never be too precise,
although the thing may be lawful to ask.
Verily, if we people of the Christian nations were such as would
God we were, I would little fear all the preparations that the
great Turk could make. No, nor yet, being as bad as we are, I doubt
not at all but that in conclusion, however base Christendom be
brought, it shall spring up again, till the time be come very near
to the day of judgment, some tokens of which methinketh are not
come yet. But somewhat before that time shall Christendom be
straitened sore, and brought into so narrow a compass that,
according to Christ's words, "When the Son of Man shall come
again"--that is, to the day of general judgment--"thinkest thou
that he shall find faith in the earth?" as who should say, "but a
little." For, as appeareth in the Apocalypse and other places of
scripture, the faith shall be at that time so far faded that he
shall, for the love of his elect, lest they should fall and perish
too, abridge those days and accelerate his coming. But, as I say,
methinketh I miss yet in my mind some of those tokens that shall,
by the scripture, come a good while before that. And among others,
the coming in of the Jews and the dilating of Christendom again
before the world come to that strait. So I say that for mine own
mind I have little doubt that this ungracious sect of Mahomet shall
have a foul fall, and Christendom spring and spread, flower and
increase again. Howbeit, the pleasure and comfort shall they see
who shall be born after we are buried, I fear me, both twain. For
God giveth us great likelihood that for our sinful wretched living
he goeth about to make these infidels, who are his open professed
enemies, the sorrowful scourge of correction over evil Christian
people who should be faithful and who are of truth his falsely
professing friends.
And surely, cousin, albeit that methinketh I see divers evil tokens
of this misery coming to us, yet can there not, to my mind, be a
worse prognostication of it than this ungracious token that you
note here yourself. For undoubtedly, cousin, this new manner of
men's favourable fashion in their language toward these ungracious
Turks declareth plainly not only that their minds give them that
hither shall he come, but also that they can be content both to
live under him and, beside that, to fall from the true faith of
Christ into Mahomet's false abominable sect.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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