d
never have taken any one of all those places. But partly because of
dissensions fallen among ourselves, and partly because no man
careth what harm other folk feel, but each part suffereth the other
to shift for itself, the Turk has in a few years wonderfully
increased and Christendom on the other hand very sorely decayed.
And all this is worked by our wickedness, with which God is not
content.

But now, whereas you desire of me some plenty of comforting things,
which you may put in remembrance, to comfort your company
with--verily, in the rehearsing and heaping of your manifold fears,
I myself began to feel that there would be much need, against so
many troubles, of many comforting counsels. For surely, a little
before you came, as I devised with myself upon the Turk's coming,
it happened that my mind fell suddenly from that to devising upon
my own departing. Now, albeit that I fully put my trust in God and
hope to be a saved soul by his mercy, yet no man is here so sure
that without revelation he may stand clean out of dread. So I
bethought me also upon the pain of hell, and afterward, then, I
bethought me upon the Turk again. And at first methought his terror
nothing, when I compared with it the joyful hope of heaven. Then I
compared it on the other hand with the fearful dread of hell,
casting therein in my mind those terrible fiendish tormentors, with
the deep consideration of that furious endless fire. And methought
that if the Turk with his whole host, and all his trumpets and
timbrels too, were to come to my chamber door and kill me in my
bed, in respect of the other reckoning I would regard him not a
rush. And yet, when I now heard your lamentable words, laying forth
as though it were present before my face that heap of heavy
sorrowful tribulations that (besides those that are already
befallen) are in short space likely to follow, I waxed myself
suddenly somewhat dismayed. And therefore I well approve your
request in this behalf, since you wish to have a store of comfort
beforehand, ready by you to resort to, and to lay up in your heart
as a remedy against the poison of all desperate dread that might
arise from occasion of sore tribulation. And I shall be glad, as my
poor wit shall serve me, to call to mind with you such things as I
before have read, heard, or thought upon, that may conveniently
serve us to this purpose.

I

First shall you, good cousin, understand this: The natural wise men
of this wo