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: Then need I say no more, cousin. For then is all the
matter plain and open evident truth, which I said I took for truth.
And it is yet a little more now than I told you before, when you
took my proof yet but for a sophistical fancy, and said that, for
all my reasoning that every man is a prisoner, yet you thought
that, except those whom the common people call prisoners, there is
else no man a very prisoner indeed. And now you grant yourself
again for very substantial truth, that every man, though he be the
greatest king upon earth, is set here by the ordinance of God in a
place, be it never so large, yet a place, I say (and you say the
same) out of which no man can escape. And you grant that every man
is there put under sure and safe keeping to be readily set forth
when God calleth for him, and that then he shall surely die. And is
not then, cousin, by your own granting before, every man a very
prisoner, when he is put in a place to be kept to be brought forth
when he would not, and himself knows not whither?
VINCENT: Yes, in good faith, uncle, I cannot but well perceive
this to be so.
ANTHONY: This would be true, you know, even though a man were but
taken by the arm and in a fair manner led out of this world unto
his judgment. But now, we well know that there is no king so great
but what, all the while he walketh here, walk he never so loose,
ride he with never so strong an army for his defence, yet he
himself is very sure--though he seek in the meantime some other
pastime to put it out of his mind--yet is he very sure, I say, that
escape he cannot. And very well he knoweth that he hath already
sentence given upon him to die, and that verily die he shall. And
though he hope for long respite of his execution, yet can he not
tell how soon it will be. And therefore, unless he be a fool, he
can never be without fear that, either on the morrow or on the
selfsame day, the grisly cruel hangman Death, who from his first
coming in hath ever hoved aloof and looked toward him, and ever
lain in wait for him, shall amid all his royalty and all his main
strength neither kneel before him nor make him any reverence, nor
with any good manner desire him to come forth. But he shall
rigorously and fiercely grip him by the very breast, and make all
his bones rattle, and so by long and divers sore torments strike
him stark dead in his prison. And then shall he cause his body to
be cast into the ground in a foul pit in some corner of the same,
there to rot and be eaten by the wretched worms of the earth,
sending yet his soul out further into a more fearful judgment. Of
that judgment at his temporal death his success is uncertain and
therefore, though by God's grace not out of good hope, for all that
in the meanwhile in very sore dread and fear and peradventure in
peril inevitable of eternal fire, too.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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