Now, for the body very few words should serve us. For therein I see none other harm but loss of liberty, labour, imprisonment, and painful and shameful death. ANTHONY: There needeth not much more, cousin, as the world is now. For I fear me that less than a fourth part of this will make many a man sore stagger in his faith, and some fall quite from it, who yet at this day, before he come to the proof, thinketh himself that he would stand very fast. And I beseech our Lord that all those who so think, and who would yet when they were brought to the point fall from the faith for fear or pain, may get of God the grace to think still as they do and not to be brought to the essay, where pain or fear would show them, as it showed St. Peter, how far they are deceived now. But now, cousin, against these terrible things, what way shall we take in giving men counsel of comfort? If the faith were in our days as fervent as it hath been ere this in times past, little counsel and little comfort would suffice. We should not much need with words and reasoning to extenuate and diminish the vigour and asperity of the pains. For of old times, the greater and the more bitter the pain were, the more ready was the fervour of faith to suffer it. And surely, cousin, I doubt little in my mind but what, if a man had in his heart so deep a desire and love--longing to be with God in heaven, to have the fruition of his glorious face--as had those holy men who are martyrs in old time, he would no more now stick at the pain that he must pass between than those old holy martyrs did at that time. But alas, our faint and feeble faith, with our love to God less than lukewarm because of the fiery affection that we bear to our own filthy flesh, maketh us so dull in the desire of heaven that the sudden dread of every bodily pain woundeth us to the heart and striketh our devotion dead. And therefore hath every man, cousin, as I said before, much the more need to think upon this thing many a time and oft aforehand, ere any such peril befall, by much devising upon it before they see cause to fear it. Since the thing shall not appear so terrible unto them, reason shall better enter, and through grace working with their diligence, engender and set sure, not a sudden slight affection of suffering for God's sake, but, by a long continuance, a strong deep-rooted habit--not like a reed ready to wave with every wind, nor like a rootless tree scantly set up on end in a loose heap of light sand, that will with a blast or two be blown down. IV