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
VINCENT: In good faith, uncle, I am not wholly afraid in this case
only for myself, but well you know I have cause to care also for
many others, and that folk of sundry sorts, men and women both, and
that not all of one age.
ANTHONY: All that you have cause to fear for, cousin, for all of
them, have I cause to fear with you, too, since almost all your
kinsfolk are likewise kin to me. Howbeit, to say the truth, every
man hath cause in this case to fear both for himself and for every
other. For since, as the scripture saith, "God hath given every man
care and charge of his neighbour," there is no man who hath any
spark of Christian love and charity in his breast but what, in a
matter of such peril as this is, in which the soul of man standeth
in so great danger to be lost, he must needs care and take thought
not only for his friends but also for his very foes. We shall
therefore, cousin, not rehearse your harms or mine that may befall
in this persecution, but all the great harms in general, as near as
we can call to mind, that may happen unto any man.
III
Since a man is made of the body and the soul, all the harm that any
man can take, it must needs be in one of these two, either
immediately or by the means of some such thing as serveth for the
pleasure, welfare, or commodity of one of these two.
As for the soul first, we shall need no rehearsal of any harm that
may attain to it by this kind of tribulation, unless by some
inordinate love and affection that the soul bear to the body, she
consent to slide from the faith and thereby do herself harm. Now
there remains the body, and these outward things of fortune which
serve for the maintenance of the body and minister matter of
pleasure to the soul also, through the delight that she hath in the
body for the while that she is matched with it.
Consider first the loss of those outward things, as being somewhat
less in weight than the body itself. What may a man lose in them,
and thereby what pain may he suffer?
VINCENT: He may lose, uncle, money, plate, and other movable
substance (of which I should somewhat lose myself); then, offices
and authority; and finally all the lands of his inheritance for
ever that he himself and his heirs perpetually might otherwise
enjoy. And of all these things, uncle, you know well that I myself
have some--little, in respect of that which some others have here,
but yet somewhat more than he who hath most here would be well
content to lose.
Upon the loss of these things follow neediness and poverty; the
pain of lacking, the shame of begging (of which twain I know not
which is the most wretched necessity); besides, the grief and
heaviness of heart, in beholding good men and faithful and his dear
friends bewrapped in like misery, and ungracious wretches and
infidels and his mortal enemies enjoying the commodities that he
himself and his friends have lost.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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