r the chief. And these prayers of our
Saviour at his bitter passion, and of his holy martyrs in the
fervour of their torment, shall serve us to see that there is no
prayer made at pleasure so strong and effectual as that made in
tribulation.

Now come I to the reasoning you make, when you tell me that I grant
you that both in wealth and in woe a man may be wicked and offend
God, in the one by impatience and in the other by fleshly lust. And
on the other hand, both in tribulation and prosperity too, a man
may also do very well and deserve thanks of God by thanksgiving to
God for his gift of riches, worship, and wealth, as well as for his
gift of need and penury, imprisonment, sickness, and pain. And
therefore you cannot see why I should give any pre-eminence in
comfort unto tribulation, but you would rather allow prosperity for
the thing more comforting. And that not a little, but in manner by
double, since therein hath the soul comfort and the body too--the
soul by thanksgiving unto God for his gifts, and the body by being
well at ease--whereas the person pained in tribulation taketh no
comfort but in his soul alone.

First, as for your double comfort, cousin, you may cut off the one!
For a man in prosperity, though he be bound to thank God for his
gifts, wherein he feeleth ease, and may be glad also that he giveth
thanks to God; yet hath he little cause of comfort in that he
taketh his ease here, unless you wish to call by the name of
comfort the sensual feeling of bodily pleasure. I deny not that
sometimes men so take it, when they say, "This good drink
comforteth well mine heart." But comfort, cousin, is properly
taken, by them that take it right, rather for the consolation of
good hope that men take in their heart, of some good growing toward
them, than for a present pleasure with which the body is delighted
and tickled for a while.

Now, though a man without patience can have no reward for his pain,
yet when his pain is patiently taken for God's sake and his will
conformed to God's pleasure therein, God rewardeth the sufferer in
proportion to his pain. And this thing appeareth by many a place in
scripture, some of which I have showed you and yet shall I show you
more. But never found I any place in scripture that I remember in
which, though a rich man thanked God for his gifts, our Lord
promised him any reward in heaven for the very reason that he took
his ease and his pleasures here. And therefore, since I sp