Peter
was.
ANTHONY: That man's reason, cousin, is like a three-footed
stool--so tottering on every side that whosoever sits on it may
soon take a foul fall. For these are the three feet of this
tottering stool: fantastical fear, false faith, and false
flattering hope.
First, it is a fantastical fear that the man conceiveth, that it
should be perilous to stand in the confession of the faith at the
beginning, lest he might afterward, through the bitterness of the
pain, fall to the forsaking and so die there in the pain, out of
hand, and thereby be utterly damned. As though, if a man were
overcome by pain and so forsook his faith, God could not or would
not as well give him grace to repent again, and thereupon give him
forgiveness, as he would give it to him who forsook his faith in
the beginning and set so little by God that he would rather forsake
him than suffer for his sake any manner of pain at all! As though
the more pain that a man taketh for God's sake, the worse would God
be to him! If this reason were not unreasonable, then should our
Saviour not have said, as he did, "Fear not them that may kill the
body, and after that have nothing that they can do further." For he
should, by this reason, have said, "Dread and fear them that may
slay the body, for they may, by the torment of painful death
(unless thou forsake me betimes in the beginning and so save thy
life, and get of me thy pardon and forgiveness afterward) make thee
peradventure forsake me too late, and so be damned forever.
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