The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 1: Miscellaneous ProseLamb, Charles
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The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 1: Miscellaneous Prose
Lamb, Charles
English literature
I shall trouble you with one Excerpt more, from a "Dialogue of Comfort
against Tribulation;" because the style of it is solemn and weighty; and
because it was written by More in his last imprisonment in the Tower,
preparatory to his sentence. After witnessing his treatment of Sir John
Hytton, and his brethren, we shall be inclined to mitigate some of our
remorse, that More should have suffered death himself _for conscience
sake_. The reader will not do this passage justice, if he do not read it
as part of a sermon; and as putting himself into the feelings of an
auditory of More's Creed and Times.
----"But some men now when this calling of God [any tribulation]
causeth them to be sad, they be loth to leave their sinful lusts
that hang in their hearts, and specially if they have any such kind
of living, as they must needs leave off, or fall deeper in sin: or
if they have done so many great wrongs, that they have many 'mends
to make, that must (if they follow God) 'minish much their money,
then are these folks (alas) woefully bewrapped, for God pricketh
upon them of his great goodness still, and the grief of this great
pang pincheth them at the heart, and of wickedness they wry away,
and fro this tribulation they turn to their flesh for help, and
labour to shake off this thought, and then they mend their pillow,
and lay their head softer, and assay to sleep; and when that will
not be, then they find a talk awhile with them that lie by them. If
that cannot be neither, then they lie and long for day, and then get
them forth about their worldly wretchedness, the matter of their
prosperity, the self-same sinful things with which they displease
God most, and at length with many times using this manner, God
utterly casteth them off. And then they set nought neither by God
nor Devil. * * * But alas! when death cometh, then cometh again
their sorrow, then will no soft bed serve, nor no company make him
merry, then must he leave his outward worship and comfort of his
glory, and lie panting in his bed as if he were on a pine-bank, then
cometh his fear of his evil life and his dreadful death. Then cometh
the torment, his cumbered conscience and fear of his heavy judgment.
Then the devil draweth him to despair with imagination of hell, and
suffereth him not then to take it for a fable. And yet if he do,
then findeth it the wretch no fable. * * * Some have I seen even in
their last sickness set up in their death-bed underpropped with
pillows take their play-fellows to them, and comfort themselves with
cards, and this they said did ease them well to put fantasies out of
their heads; and what fantasies trow you? such as I told you right
now of, their own lewd life and peril of their soul, of heaven and
of hell that irked them to think of, and therefore cast it out with
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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