And therefore he
addeth and repeateth in the end again, the fear that we should have
of him, and saith, "So I say to you, fear him."
O good God, cousin, if a man would well weigh those words and let
them sink down deep into his heart as they should do, and often
bethink himself on them, it would (I doubt not) be able enough to
make us set at naught all the great Turk's threats, and esteem him
not a straw. But we should be well content to endure all the pain
that all the world could put upon us, for so short a while as all
they were able to make us dwell in it, rather than, by shrinking
from those pains (though never so sharp, yet but short), to cast
ourselves into the pain of hell--a hundred thousand times more
intolerable, and of which there shall never come an end. A woeful
death is that death, in which folk shall evermore be dying and
never can once be dead! For the scripture saith, "They shall call
and cry for death, and death shall fly from them."
O, good Lord, if one of them were not put in choice of both, he
would rather suffer the whole year together the most terrible death
that all the Turks in Turkey could devise, than to endure for the
space of half an hour the death that they lie in now. Into what
wretched folly fall, then, those faithless or feeble-faithed folk,
who, to avoid the pain that is so far the less and so short, fall
instead into pain a thousand thousand times more horrible, and
terrible torment of which they are sure they shall never have an
end!
This matter, cousin, lacketh, I believe, only full faith or
sufficient minding.
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