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
And some tribulations are there, also, that grow upon such causes
that in those cases I would never forbear but always would, without
any doubt, give that counsel and comfort to any man.
VINCENT: What causes, good uncle, are those?
ANTHONY: Marry, cousin, wheresoever a man falleth in tribulation
for the maintenance of justice or for the defence of God's cause.
For if I should happen to find a man who had long lived a very
virtuous life, and had at last happened to fall into the Turks'
hands; and if he there did abide by the truth of his faith and,
with the suffering of all kinds of torments taken upon his body,
still did teach and testify the truth; and if I should in his
passion give him spiritual comfort--might I be bold to tell him no
further but that he should take patience in his pain, and that God
sendeth it to him for his sin, and that he is well worthy to have
it, though it were yet much more? He might then well answer me, and
other such comforters, as Job answered his: "Burdensome and heavy
comforters be you." Nay, I would not fail to bid him boldly, while
I should see him in his passion, to cast sin and hell and purgatory
and all upon the devil's pate, and doubt not but--as, if he gave
over his hold, all his merit would be lost and he would be turned
to misery--so if he stand and persevere still in the confession of
his faith, all his whole pain shall turn all into glory.
Yea, more shall I yet say than this. If there were a Christian man
who had among those infidels committed a very deadly crime, such as
would be worthy of death, not only by their laws but by Christ's
too (as manslaughter, or adultery, or other such thing); and if
when he were taken he were offered pardon of his life upon
condition that he should forsake the faith of Christ; and if this
man would now rather suffer death than so do--should I comfort him
in his pain only as I would a malefactor? Nay, this man, though he
would have died for his sin, dieth now for Christ's sake, since he
might live still if he would forsake him. The bare patient taking
of his death would have served for the satisfaction of his
sin--through the merit of Christ's passion, I mean, without help of
which no pain of our own could be satisfactory. But now shall
Christ, for his forsaking of his own life in the honour of his
faith, forgive the pain of all his sins, of his mere liberality,
and accept all the pain of his death for merit of reward in heaven,
and shall assign no part of it to the payment of his debt in
purgatory, but shall take it all as an offering and requite it all
with glory. And this man among Christian men, although he had been
before a devil, nothing would I doubt afterward to take him for a
martyr.
VINCENT: Verily, good uncle, methinketh this is said marvellous
well. And it specially delighteth and comforteth me to hear it,
because of our principal fear that I first spoke of, the Turk's
cruel incursion into this country of ours.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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