VINCENT: No, but he may die his natural death, and escape that
violent death. And then he saveth himself from much pain and so
winneth much ease. For a violent death is ever painful.
ANTHONY: Peradventure he shall not avoid a violent death thereby,
for God is without doubt displeased, and can bring him shortly to
as violent a death by some other way.
Howbeit, I see well that you reckon that whosoever dieth a natural
death, dieth like a wanton even at his ease. You make me remember a
man who was once in a light galley with us on the sea. While the
sea was sore wrought and the waves rose very high, he lay tossed
hither and thither, for he had never been to sea before. The poor
soul groaned sore and for pain thought he would very fain be dead,
and ever he wished, "Would God I were on land, that I might die in
rest!" The waves so troubled him there, with tossing him up and
down, to and fro, that he thought that trouble prevented him from
dying, because the waves would not let him rest! But if he might
get once to land, he thought he should then die there even at his
ease.
VINCENT: Nay, uncle, this is no doubt, but that death is to every
man painful. But yet is not the natural death so painful as the
violent.
ANTHONY: By my troth, cousin, methinketh that the death which men
commonly call "natural" is a violent death to every may whom it
fetcheth hence by force against his will.
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