And yet it
may well fortune that, beside the bare imprisonment, there shall
happen to us no hard handling at all. Or else it may happen to us
for only a short while--and yet, beside all this, peradventure not
at all. And which of all these ways shall be taken with us, lieth
all in his will for whom we are content to take it, and who for
that intent of ours favoureth us and will suffer no man to put more
pain to us than he well knoweth we shall be able to bear. For he
himself will give us the strength for it, as you have heard his
promise already by the mouth of St. Paul: "God is faithful, who
suffereth you not to be tempted above what you may bear, but giveth
also with the temptation a way out."
But now, if we have not lost our faith already before we come to
forsake it for fear, we know very well by our faith that, by the
forsaking of our faith, we fall into that state to be cast into the
prison of hell. And that can we not tell how soon; but, as it may
be that God will suffer us to live a while here upon earth, so may
it be that he will throw us into that dungeon beneath before the
time that the Turk shall once ask us the question. And therefore,
if we fear imprisonment so sore, we are much more than mad if we
fear not most the imprisonment that is far more sore.
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