VINCENT: What thing may that be, uncle?
ANTHONY: In good faith, cousin, even the bare remembrance of the
poverty that our Saviour willingly suffered for us. For I verily
suppose that if there were a great king who had so tender love for
a servant of his that he had, to help him out of danger, forsaken
and lost all his worldly wealth and royalty and become poor and
needy for his sake, that servant could scantly be found who would
be of such a base unnatural heart that if he himself came afterward
to some substance he would not with better will lose it all again
than shamefully to forsake such a master.
And therefore, as I say, I surely suppose that if we would well
remember and inwardly consider the great goodness of our Saviour
toward us, when we were not yet his poor sinful servants but rather
his adversaries and his enemies, and what wealth of this world he
willingly forsook for our sakes--for he was indeed universal king
of this world, and so having the power in his own hand to have used
it if he had wished, instead of which, to make us rich in heaven,
he lived here in neediness and poverty all his life and neither
would have authority nor keep either lands or goods. If we would
remember this, the deep consideration and earnest advisement of
this one point alone would be able to make any true Christian man
or woman well content rather for his sake in return to give up all
that ever God hath lent them (and lent them he hath, all that they
have) than unkindly and unfaithfully to forsake him.
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