VINCENT: By my troth, uncle, I thank you. Methinketh that though you never said more in the matter, yet have you, even with this that you have spoken here already of the fear of bodily pain in this persecution, marvellously comforted mine heart.
ANTHONY: I am glad, cousin, if your heart have taken comfort thereby. But if you so have, give God the thanks and not me, for that work is his and not mine. For neither am I able to say any good thing except by him, nor can all the good words in the world—no, not the holy words of God himself, and spoken also with his own holy mouth—profit a man with the sound entering at his ear, unless the Spirit of God also inwardly work in his soul. But that is his goodness ever ready to do, unless there be hindrance through the untowardness of our own froward will.
XVIII
And now, being somewhat in comfort and courage before, we may the more quietly consider everything, which is somewhat more hard and difficult to do when the heart is before taken up and oppressed with the troublous affection of heavy sorrowful fear. Let us therefore examine now the weight and the substance of those bodily pains which you rehearsed before as the sorest part of this persecution. They were, if I remember you right, thraldom, imprisonment, and painful and shameful death. And first let us, as reason is, begin with the thraldom, for that was, as I remember it, the first.
VINCENT: I pray you, good uncle, say then somewhat of that. For methinketh, uncle, that captivity is a marvellous heavy thing, namely when they shall (as they most commonly do) carry us far from home into a strange unknown land.
ANTHONY: I cannot deny that some grief it is, cousin, indeed. But yet, as for me, it is not half so much as it would be if they could carry me out into any such unknown country that God could not know where nor find the means to come at me!
But now in good faith, cousin, if my migration into a strange country were any great grief unto me, the fault should be much in myself. For since I am very sure that whithersoever man convey me, God is no more verily here than he shall be there, if I get (as I can, if I will) the grace to set mine whole heart upon him and long for nothing but him, it can then make no matter to my mind, whether they carry me hence or leave me here. And then, if I find my mind much offended therewith, that I am not still here in mine own country, I must consider that the cause of my grief is mine own wrong imagination, whereby I beguile myself with an untrue persuasion, thinking that this were mine own country. Whereas in truth it is not so, for, as St. Paul saith, "We have here no city nor dwelling-country at all, but we seek for one that we shall come to." And in whatsoever country we walk in this world, we are but as pilgrims and wayfaring men. And if I should take any country for mine own, it must be the country to which I come and not the country from which I came. That country, which shall be to me then for a while so strange, shall yet perdy be no more strange to me—nor longer strange to me, neither—than was mine own native country when first I came into it. And therefore if my being far from hence be very grievous to me, and I find it a great pain that I am not where I wish to be, that grief shall in great part grow for lack of sure setting and settling my mind in God, where it should be. And when I mend that fault of mine, I shall soon ease my grief.
Now, as for all the other griefs and pains that are in captivity, thraldom, and bondage, I cannot deny that many there are and great. Howbeit, they seem yet somewhat the more—what say I, "somewhat"? I may say a great deal the more—because we took our former liberty for a great deal more than indeed it was.
Let us therefore consider the matter thus: Captivity, bondage, or thraldom, what is it but the violent restraint of a man, being so subdued under the dominion, rule, and power of another that he must do whatever the other please to command him, and may not do at his liberty such things as he please himself? Now, when we shall be carried away by a Turk and be fain to be occupied about such things as he please to set us, we shall lament the loss of our liberty and think we bear a heavy burden of our servile condition. And we shall have, I grant well, many times great occasion to do so. But yet we should, I suppose, set somewhat the less by it, if we would remember well what liberty that was that we lost, and take it for no larger than it was indeed. For we reckon as though we might before do what we would, but in that we deceive ourselves. For what free man is there so free that he can be suffered to do what he please? In many things God hath restrained us by his high commandment—so many, that of those things which we would otherwise do, I daresay it be more than half. Howbeit, because (God forgive us) we forbear so little for all that, but do what we please as though we heard him not, we reckon our liberty never the less. But then is our liberty much restrained by the laws made by man, for the quiet and politic governance of the people. And these too would, I suppose, hinder our liberty but little, were it not for the fear of the penalties that fall thereupon. Look then, whether other men who have authority over us never command us some business which we dare not but do, and therefore often do it full sore against our wills. Some such service is sometimes so painful and so perilous too, that no lord can command his bondsmen worse, and seldom doth command him half so sore. Let every free man who reckoneth his liberty to stand in doing what he please, consider well these points, and I daresay he shall then find his liberty much less than he took it for before.
And yet have I left untouched the bondage that almost every man is in who boasteth himself for free—the bondage, I mean, of sin. And that it be a true bondage, I shall have our Saviour himself to bear me good record. For he saith, "Every man who committeth sin is the thrall, or the bondsman, of sin." And then if this be thus (as it must needs be, since God saith it is so), who is there then who can make so much boast of his liberty that he should take it for so sore a thing and so strange to become through chance of war, bondsman unto a man, since he is already through sin become willingly thrall and bondsman unto the devil?