ANTHONY: All his forgiveness goeth, cousin, as you see well, but by "perhaps." But as it may be "perhaps yea," so may it be "perhaps nay," and where is he then? And yet, you know, he shall never, by any manner of hap, hap finally to escape from death, for fear of which he forsook his faith.
VINCENT: No, but he may die his natural death, and escape that violent death. And then he saveth himself from much pain and so winneth much ease. For a violent death is ever painful.
ANTHONY: Peradventure he shall not avoid a violent death thereby, for God is without doubt displeased, and can bring him shortly to as violent a death by some other way.
Howbeit, I see well that you reckon that whosoever dieth a natural death, dieth like a wanton even at his ease. You make me remember a man who was once in a light galley with us on the sea. While the sea was sore wrought and the waves rose very high, he lay tossed hither and thither, for he had never been to sea before. The poor soul groaned sore and for pain thought he would very fain be dead, and ever he wished, "Would God I were on land, that I might die in rest!" The waves so troubled him there, with tossing him up and down, to and fro, that he thought that trouble prevented him from dying, because the waves would not let him rest! But if he might get once to land, he thought he should then die there even at his ease.
VINCENT: Nay, uncle, this is no doubt, but that death is to every man painful. But yet is not the natural death so painful as the violent.
ANTHONY: By my troth, cousin, methinketh that the death which men commonly call "natural" is a violent death to every may whom it fetcheth hence by force against his will. And that is every man who, when he dieth, is loth to die and fain would yet live longer if he could.
Howbeit, cousin, fain would I know who hath told you how small is the pain in the natural death! As far as I can perceive, those folk that commonly depart of their natural death have ever one disease and sickness or another. And if the pain of the whole week or twain in which they lie pining in their bed, were gathered together in so short a time as a man hath his pain who dieth a violent death, it would, I daresay, make double the pain that is his. So he who dieth naturally often suffereth more pain rather than less, though he suffer it in a longer time. And then would many a man be more loth to suffer so long, lingering in pain, than with a sharper pang to be sooner rid. And yet lieth many a man more days than one, in well-near as great pain continually, as is the pain that with the violent death riddeth the man in less than half an hour—unless you think that, whereas the pain is great to have a knife cut the flesh on the outside from the skin inward, the pain would be much less if the knife might begin on the inside and cut from the midst outward! Some we hear, on their deathbed, complain that they think they feel sharp knives cut in two their heartstrings. Some cry out and think they feel, within the brainpan, their head pricked even full of pins. And those who lie in a pleurisy think that, every time they cough, they feel a sharp sword snap them to the heart.
XXV
Howbeit, what need we to make any such comparison between the natural death and the violent, for the matter that we are in hand with here? Without doubt, he who forsaketh the faith of Christ for fear of the violent death, putteth himself in peril to find his natural death a thousand times more painful. For his natural death hath his everlasting pain so instantly knit to it, that there is not one moment of time between, but the end of the one is the beginning of the other, which never after shall have an end.
And therefore was it not without great cause that Christ gave us so good warning before, when he said, as St. Luke in the twenty-second chapter rehearseth, "I say to you that are my friends, be not afraid of them that kill the body, and when that is done are able to do no more. But I shall show you whom you should fear. Fear him who, when he hath killed, hath in his power further to cast him whom he killeth into everlasting fire. So I say to you, be afraid of him." God meaneth not here that we should not dread at all any man who can but kill the body, but he meaneth that we should not in such wise dread any such man that we should, for dread of them, displease him who can everlastingly kill both body and soul with a death ever-dying and that shall yet never die. And therefore he addeth and repeateth in the end again, the fear that we should have of him, and saith, "So I say to you, fear him."