eak only
of such comfort as is true comfort indeed, by which a man hath hope
of God's favour and remission of his sins, with diminishing of his
pain in purgatory or else reward in heaven; and since such comfort
cometh of tribulation well taken, but not of pleasure even though
it be well taken; therefore of your comfort that you double by
prosperity, you may, as I told you, very well cut away the half.

Now, why I give prerogative in comfort unto tribulation far above
prosperity, though a man may do well in both, of this will I show
you causes two or three. First, as I before have at length showed
you out of all question, continual wealth interrupted with no
tribulation is a very discomfortable token of everlasting
damnation. Thereupon it followeth that tribulation is one cause of
comfort unto a man's heart, in that it dischargeth him of the
discomfort that he might of reason take of overlong-lasting wealth.
Another is, that the scripture much commendeth tribulation as
occasion of more profit than wealth and prosperity, not only to
those who are therein but to those who resort unto them too. And
therefore saith Ecclesiastes, "Better is it to go to the house of
weeping and wailing for some man's death, than to the house of a
feast; for in that house of heaviness is a man put in remembrance
of the end of every man, and while he liveth he thinketh what shall
come after." And after yet he further saith, "The heart of wise men
is where heaviness is, and the heart of fools is where there is
mirth and gladness." And verily, where you shall hear worldly mirth
seem to be commended in scripture, it is either commonly spoken, as
in the person of some worldly-disposed people, or else understood
of spiritual rejoicing, or else meant of some small moderate
refreshing of the mind against a heavy and discomfortable dullness.

Now, prosperity was promised to the children of Israel in the old
law as a special gift of God, because of their imperfection at that
time, to draw them to God with gay things and pleasant, as men, to
make children learn, give them cake-bread and butter. For, as the
scripture maketh mention, that people were much after the manner of
children in lack of wit and in waywardness. And therefore was their
master Moses called Pedagogus, that is, a teacher of children or
(as they call such a one in the grammar schools) an "usher" or
"master of the petits." For, as St. Paul saith, "the old law
brought nothing unto perfec