VINCENT: In good faith, good uncle, I can deny none of this. And
indeed, unto those who were despoiled and robbed by the Turk's
overrunning of the country, and all their substance movable and
unmovable bereft and lost already, their persons only fled and
safe, I think that these considerations--considering also that, as
you lately said, their sorrow could not amend their chance--might
unto them be good occasion of comfort, and cause them, as you said,
to make a virtue of necessity.
But in the case, uncle, that we now speak of, they have yet their
substance untouched in their own hands, and the keeping or the
losing shall both hang in their own hands, by the Turk's offer,
upon the retaining or the renouncing of the Christian faith. Here,
uncle, I find it, as you said, that this temptation is most sore
and most perilous. For I fear me that we shall find few of such as
have much to lose who shall find it in their hearts so suddenly to
forsake their goods, with all those other things before rehearsed
on which their worldly wealth dependeth.
ANTHONY: That fear I much, cousin, too. But thereby shall it well
appear, as I said, that, seemed they never so good and virtuous
before, and flattered they themselves with never so gay a gloss of
good and gracious purpose that they kept their goods for, yet were
their hearts inwardly in the deep sight of God not sound and sure
such as they should be (and as peradventure some had themselves
thought they were) but like a puff-ring of Paris--hollow, light,
and counterfeit indeed.
And yet, they being even such, this would I fain ask one of them.
And I pray you, cousin, take you his person upon you, and in this
case answer for him. "What hindereth you," would I ask, "your
Lordship," (for we will take no small man for an example in this
part, nor him who would have little to lose, for methinketh such a
one who would cast away God for a little, would be so far from all
profit, that he would not be worth talking with). "What hindereth
you," I say, therefore, "that you be not gladly content, without
any deliberation at all, in this kind of persecution, rather than
to leave your faith, to let go all that ever you have at once?"
VINCENT: Since you put it unto me, uncle, to make the matter more
plain, that I should play that great man's part who is so wealthy
and hath so much to lose, albeit that I cannot be very sure of
another man's mind, nor of what another man would say, yet as far
as mine own mind can conjecture, I shall answer in his person what
I think would be his hindrance. And therefore to your question I
answer that there hindereth me the thing that you yourself may
lightly guess: the losing of the many commodities which I now
have--riches and substance, lands and great possessions of
inheritance, with great rule and authority here in my country. All
of which things the great Turk granteth me to keep still in peace
and have them enhanced, too, if I will forsake the faith of Christ.
Yea, I may say to you, I have a motion secretly made me further, to
keep all this yet better cheap; that is, not to be compelled
utterly to forsake Christ nor all the whole Christian faith, but
only some such parts of it as may not stand with Mahomet's law.
And only granting Mahomet for a true prophet and serving the Turk
truly in his wars against all Christian kings, I shall not be
hindered to praise Christ also, and to call him a good man, and
worship and serve him too.
ANTHONY: Nay, nay, my lord--Christ hath not so great need of your
Lordship as, rather than to lose your service, he would fall at
such covenants with you as to take your service at halves, to serve
him and his enemy both! He hath given you plain warning already by
St. Paul that he will have in your service no parting-fellow: "What
fellowship is there between light and darkness? Between Christ and
Belial?" And he hath also plainly told you himself by his own
mouth, "No man can serve two lords at once." He will have you
believe all that he telleth you, and do all that he biddeth you,
and forbear all that he forbiddeth you, without any manner of
exception. Break one of his commandments, and you break all.
Forsake one point of his faith, and you forsake all, as for any
thanks that you get of him for the rest. And therefore, if you
devise, as it were, indentures between God and you--what you will
do for him and what you will not do, as though he should hold
himself content with such service of yours as you yourself care to
appoint him--if you make, I say, such indentures, you shall seal
both the parts yourself, and you get no agreement thereto from him.
And this I say: Though the Turk would make such an appointment with
you as you speak of, and would, when he had made it, keep
it--whereas he would not, I warrant you, leave you so when he had
once brought you so far forth. But he would, little by little, ere
he left you, make you deny Christ altogether and take Mahomet in
his stead. And so doth he in the beginning, when he will not have
you believe him to be God. For surely, if he were not God, he would
be no good man either, since he plainly said he was God. But
through he would go never so far forth with you, yet Christ will,
as I said, not take your service by halves, but will that you shall
love him with all your whole heart. And because, while he was
living here fifteen hundred years ago, he foresaw this mind of
yours that you have now, with which you would fain serve him in
some such fashion that you might keep your worldly substance still,
but rather forsake his service than put all your substance from
you, he telleth you plainly fifteen hundred years ago with his own
mouth that he will have no such service of you, saying, "You cannot
serve both God and your riches together."
And therefore, this thing being established for a plain conclusion,
which you must needs grant if you have faith--and if you be gone
from that ground of faith already, then is all our disputation, you
know, at an end. For how should you then rather lose your goods
than forsake your faith, if you have lost your faith and let it go
already? This point, I say, therefore, being put first for a
ground, between us both twain agreed, that you have yet the faith
still and intend to keep it always still in your heart, and are
only in doubt whether you will lose all your worldly substance
rather than forsake your faith in your word alone; now shall I
reply to the point of your answer, wherein you tell me the lothness
of the loss and the comfort of the keeping hinder you from forgoing
your goods and move you rather to forsake your faith.
I let pass all that I have spoken of the small commodity of them
unto your body and of the great harm that the having of them doth
to your soul. And since the promise of the Turk, made unto you for
the keeping of them, is the thing that moveth you and maketh you
thus to doubt, I ask you first whereby you know that, when you have
done all that he will have you do against Christ, to the harm of
your soul--whereby know you, I say, that he will keep you his
promise in these things that he promiseth you concerning the
retaining of your well-beloved worldly wealth, for the pleasure of
your body?
VINCENT: What surety can a man have of such a great prince except
his promise, which for his own honour it cannot become him to break?
ANTHONY: I have known him, and his father before him too, to break
more promises than five, as great as this is that he should here
make with you. Who shall come and cast it in his teeth, and tell
him it is a shame for him to be so fickle and so false of his
promise? And then what careth he for those words that he knoweth
well he shall never hear? Not very much, though they were told him
too!
If you might come afterward and complain your grief unto his own
person yourself, you should find him as shamefast as a friend of
mine, a merchant, once found the Sultan of Syria. Being certain
years about his merchandise in that country, he gave to the Sultan
a great sum of money for a certain office for him there for the
while. But he had scantly granted him this and put it in his hand
when, ere ever it was worth aught to him, the Sultan suddenly sold
it to another of his own sect, and put our Hungarian out. Then came
he to him and humbly put him in remembrance of his grant, spoken
with his own mouth and signed with his own hand. Thereunto the
Sultan answered him, with a grim countenance, "I will have thee
know, good-for-nothing, that neither my mouth nor mine hand shall
be master over me, to bind all my body at their pleasure. But I
will be lord and master over them both, that whatsoever the one say
and the other write, I will be at mine own liberty to do what I
like myself, and ask them both no leave. And therefore, go get thee
hence out of my countries, knave!" Think you now, my lord, that
Sultan and this Turk, being both of one false sect, you may not
find them both alike false of their promise?
VINCENT: That must I needs jeopard, for other surety can there
none be had.
ANTHONY: An unwise jeoparding, to put your soul in peril of
damnation for the keeping of your bodily pleasures, and yet without
surety to jeopard them too!
But yet go a little further, lo. Suppose me that you might be very
sure that the Turk would break no promise with you. Are you then
sure enough to retain all your substance still?
VINCENT: Yea, then.
ANTHONY: What if a man should ask you how long?
VINCENT: How long? As long as I live.
ANTHONY: Well, let it be so, then. But yet, as far as I can see,
though the great Turk favour you never so much and let you keep
your goods as long as ever you live, yet if it hap that you be this
day fifty years old, all the favour he can show you cannot make you
one day younger tomorrow. But every day shall you wax older than
the day before, and then within a while must you, for all his
favour, lose all.
VINCENT: Well, a man would be glad, for all that, to be sure not
to lack while he liveth.
ANTHONY: Well, then, if the great Turk give you your goods, can
there then in all your life none other take them from you again?
VINCENT: Verily, I suppose not.
ANTHONY: May he not lose this country again unto Christian men,
and you, with the taking of this way, fall in the same peril then
that you would now eschew?
VINCENT: Forsooth, I think that if he get it once, he will never
lose it after again in our days.
ANTHONY: Yes, by God's grace. But yet if he lose it after our day,
there goeth your children's inheritance away again! But be it now
that he could never lose it; could none take your substance from
you then?
VINCENT: No, in good faith, none.
ANTHONY: No, none at all? Not God?
VINCENT: God? Why, yes, perdy. Who doubteth of that?
ANTHONY: Who? Marry, he who doubteth whether there be any God or
no. And that there lacketh not some such, the prophet testifieth
where he said, "The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God."
With the mouth the most foolish will forbear to say it unto other
folk, but in the heart they forbear not to say it softly to
themselves. And I fear me there be many more such fools than every
man would think. And they would not hesitate to say it openly, too,
if they forbore it not more for dread or for shame of men than for
any fear of God. But now those who are so frantic foolish as to
think there were no God, and yet in their words confess him, though
(as St. Paul saith) in their deeds they deny him--we shall let them
pass till it please God to show himself unto them, either inwardly,
in time, by his merciful grace, or else outwardly, but over-late
for them, by his terrible judgment.
But unto you, my Lord, since you believe and confess, as a wise man
should, that though the Turk keep you his promise in letting you
keep your substance, because you do him pleasure in the forsaking
of your faith, yet God, whose faith you forsake, and thereby do him
displeasure, may so take them from you that the great Turk, with
all the power he hath, is not able to keep you them--why will you
be so unwise with the loss of your soul to please the great Turk
for your goods, since you know well that God whom you displease
therewith may take them from you too?
Besides this, since you believe there is a God, you cannot but
believe also that the great Turk cannot take your goods from you
without his will or sufferance, no more than the devil could from
Job. And think you then that, if he will suffer the Turk to take
away your goods albeit that by the keeping and confessing of his
faith you please him, he will, when you displease him by forsaking
his faith, suffer you to rejoice or enjoy any benefit of those
goods that you get or keep thereby?
VINCENT: God is gracious, and though men offend him, yet he
suffereth them many times to live in prosperity long after.
ANTHONY: Long after? Nay, by my troth, that doth he no man! For
how can that be, that he should suffer you to live in prosperity
long after, when your whole life is but short in all-together, and
either almost half of it or more than half, you think yourself, I
daresay, spent out already before? Can you burn out half a short
candle, and then have a long one left of the rest?
There cannot in this world be a worse mind than for a man to
delight and take comfort in any commodity that he taketh by sinful
means. For it is the very straight way toward the taking of
boldness and courage in sin, and finally to falling into infidelity
and thinking that God careth not or regardeth not what things men
do here nor of what mind we be. But unto such-minded folk speaketh
holy scripture in this wise: "Say not, I have sinned and yet there
hath happed me none harm, for God suffereth before he strike." But,
as St. Austine saith, the longer he tarrieth ere he strike, the
sorer is the stroke when he striketh.
And therefore, if you will do well, reckon yourself very sure that
when you deadly displease God for the getting or the keeping of
your goods, God shall not suffer those goods to do you good. But
either he shall shortly take them from you, or else suffer you to
keep them for a little while to your more harm and afterward, when
you least look for it, take you away from them.
And then, what a heap of heaviness will there enter into your
heart, when you shall see that you shall so suddenly go from your
goods and leave them here in the earth in one place, and that your
body shall be put in the earth in another place, and--which then
shall be the most heaviness of all--when you shall fear (and not
without great cause) that your soul first forthwith, and after that
at the final judgment your body, shall be driven down deep toward
the centre of the earth into the fiery pit and dungeon of the devil
of hell, there to tarry in torment, world without end! What goods
of this world can any man imagine, the pleasure and commodity of
which could be such in a thousand years as to be able to recompense
that intolerable pain that there is to be suffered in one year?
Yea, or in one day or one hour, either? And then what a madness is
it, for the poor pleasure of your worldly goods of so few years, to
cast yourself both body and soul into the everlasting fire of hell,
which is not diminished by the amount of a moment by lying there
the space of a hundred thousand years?
And therefore our Saviour, in few words, concluded and confuted all
these follies of those who, for the short use of this worldly
substance, forsake him and his faith and sell their souls unto the
devil for ever. For he saith, "What availeth it a man if he won all
the whole world, and lost his soul?" This would be, methinketh,
cause and occasion enough, to him who had never so much part of
this world in his hand, to be content rather to lose it all than
for the retaining or increasing of his worldly goods to lose and
destroy his soul.
VINCENT: This is, good uncle, in good faith very true. And what
other thing any of them who would not for this be content, have to
allege in reason for the defence of their folly, that can I not
imagine. I care not in this matter to play the part any longer, but
I pray God give me the grace to play the contrary part in deed. And
I pray that I may never, for any goods or substance of this
wretched world, forsake my faith toward God either in heart or
tongue. And I trust in his great goodness that so I never shall.