ANTHONY: Cousin, in those days that AEsop speaketh of, though those
harts and other brute beasts had (if he say sooth) the power to
speak and talk, and in their talking power to talk reason too, yet
they never had given them the power to follow reason and rule
themselves thereby. And in good faith, cousin, as for such things
as pertain to the conducting of reasonable men to salvation, I
think that without the help of grace men's reasoning shall do
little more. But then are we sure, as I said before, that if we
desire grace, God is at such reasoning always present and very
ready to give it. And unless men will afterward willingly cast it
away, he is ever ready still to keep it and glad from time to time
to increase it. And therefore our Lord biddeth us, by the mouth of
the prophet, that we should not be like such brutish and
unreasonable beasts as were those harts, and as are horses and
mules: "Be not you like a horse and a mule, that hath no
understanding." And therefore, cousin, let us never dread but what,
if we will apply our minds to the gathering of comfort and courage
against our persecutions, and hear reason and let it sink into our
heart and cast it not out again (nor vomit it up, nor even there
choke it up and stifle it with pampering in and stuffing up our
stomachs with a surfeit of worldly vanities), God shall so well
work with it that we shall feel strength therein.
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