VINCENT: Of truth, good uncle, albeit that every one of these
kinds of tribulations have cause of comfort in them, as you have
well declared, if men will so consider them, yet hath this third
kind above all a special prerogative therein.
ANTHONY: That is undoubtedly true. But yet even the most base kind
of them all, good cousin, hath more causes of comfort than I have
spoken of yet.
For I have, you know, in that kind that is sent us for our sin,
spoken of no other comfort yet but twain: one that it refraineth us
from sin that otherwise we would fall in; and one that it serveth
us, through the merit of Christ's passion, as a means by which God
keepeth us from hell and serveth for the satisfaction of such pain
as we should otherwise endure in purgatory. Howbeit, there is
therein another great cause of joy besides this. For surely those
pains here sent us for our sin, in whatsoever wise they happen to
us (be our sin never so sore nor never so open and evident unto
ourselves and all the world too), yet if we pray for grace to take
them meekly and patiently; and if, confessing to God that it is far
too little for our fault, we beseech him nevertheless, since we
shall come hence so void of all good works for which we should have
any reward in heaven, to be not only so merciful to us as to take
our present tribulation in relief of our pains in purgatory, but
also so gracious unto us as to take our patience therein for a
matter of merit and reward in heaven; I verily trust--and nothing
doubt it--that God shall of his high bounty grant us our boon.
For as in hell pain serveth only for punishment without any manner
of purging, because all possibility of purging is past; and as in
purgatory punishment serveth only for purging, because the place of
deserving is past; so while we are yet in this world in which is
our place and our time of merit and well-deserving, the tribulation
that is sent us for our sin here shall, if we faithfully so desire,
beside the cleansing and purging of our pain, serve us also for
increase of reward. And so shall, I suppose and trust in God's
goodness, all such penance and good works as a man willingly
performeth, enjoined by his ghostly father in confession, or which
he willingly further doth of his own devotion beside. For though
man's penance, with all the good works that he can do, be not able
to satisfy of themselves for the least sin that we do, yet the
liberal goodness of God, through the merit of Christ's bitter
passion--without which all our works could never satisfy so much as
a spoonful to a great vesselful in comparison with the merit and
satisfaction that Christ has merited and satisfied for us
himself--this liberal goodness of God, I say, shall yet at our
faithful instance and request cause our penance and tribulation
patiently taken in this world to serve us in the other world both
for release and reward, tempered after such rate as his high
goodness and wisdom shall see best for us, whereof our blind
mortality cannot here imagine nor devise the stint.
And thus hath yet even the first and most base kind of tribulation,
though not fully so great as the second and very far less than the
third, far greater cause of comfort yet than I spoke of before.