VINCENT: Verily, good uncle, this seemeth so indeed. Howbeit, yet methinketh that you say very sore in some things concerning such persons as are in continual prosperity. And they are, you know, not a few; and they are also those who have the rule and authority of this world in their hand. And I know well that when they talk with such great learned men as can, I suppose, tell the truth; and when they ask them whether, while they make merry here in earth all their lives, they may not yet for all that have heaven afterwards too; they do tell them "Yes, yes," well enough. For I have heard them tell them so myself. ANTHONY: I suppose, good cousin, that no very wise man, and especially none that is also very good, will tell any man fully of that fashion. But surely such as so say to them, I fear me that they flatter them thus either for lucre or for fear. Some of them think, peradventure, thus: "This man maketh much of me now, and giveth me money also to fast and watch and pray for him. But so, I fear me, would he do no more, if I should go tell him now that all that I do for him will not serve him unless he go fast and watch and pray for himself too. And if I should add thereto and say further that I trust my diligent intercession for him may be the means that God should the sooner give him grace to amend, and fast and watch and pray and take affliction in his own body, for the bettering of his sinful soul, he would be wonderous wroth with that. For he would be loth to have any such grace at all as should make him go leave off any of his mirth, and so sit and mourn for his sin." Such mind as this, lo, have some of those who are not unlearned, and have worldly wit at will, who tell great men such tales as perilously beguile them. For the flatterer who so telleth them would, if he told a true tale, jeopard to lose his lucre.