We cannot
therefore but be very sure (unless we are very shamefully cowardous
of heart and out of measure faint in faith toward God, and in love
less than luke-warm or waxed even key-cold) we may be very sure, I
say, either that God will not suffer the Turks to invade this land;
or that, if they do, God shall provide such resistance that they
shall not prevail; or that, if they prevail, yet if we take the way
that I have told you we shall by their persecution take little harm
or rather none harm at all, but that which shall seem harm indeed
be to us no harm at all but good. For if God make us and keep us
good men, as he hath promised to do if we pray well therefore, then
saith holy scripture, "Unto good folk all things turn them to good."
And therefore, cousin, since God knoweth what shall happen and not
we, let us in the meanwhile with a good hope in the help of God's
grace have a good purpose of standing sure by his holy faith
against all persecutions. And if we should hereafter, either for
fear or pain or for lack of his grace lost in our own default,
mishap to decline from his good purpose--which our Lord forbid--yet
we would have won the well-spent time beforehand, to the
diminishment of our pain, and God would also be much the more
likely to lift us up after our fall and give us his grace again.
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