more was the king in Nineveh and all the city, but they wailed
and did painful penance for their sin to procure God to pity them
and withdraw his indignation. Anna, who in her widowhood abode so
many years with fasting and praying in the temple till the birth
of Christ, was not, I suppose, in her old age so sore disposed to
the wantonness of the flesh that she fasted for all that. Nor St.
Paul, who fasted so much, fasted not all for that, neither. The
scripture is full of places that prove fasting to be not the
invention of man but the institution of God, and to have many more
profits than one. And that the fasting of one man may do good unto
another, our Saviour showeth himself where he saith that some kind
of devils cannot be cast out of one man by another "without prayer
and fasting." And therefore I marvel that they take this way
against fasting and other bodily penance.

And yet much more I marvel that they mislike the sorrow and
heaviness and displeasure of mind that a man should take in
thinking of his sin. The prophet saith, "Tear your hearts and not
your clothes." And the prophet David saith, "A contrite heart and
an humbled"--that is to say, a heart broken, torn, and laid low
under foot with tribulation of heaviness for his sins--"shalt thou
not, good Lord, despise." He saith also of his own contrition, "I
have laboured in my wailing; I shall every night wash my bed with
my tears, my couch will I water."

But why should I need in this matter to lay forth one place or
twain? The scripture is full of those places, by which it plainly
appeareth that God looketh of duty, not only that we should amend
and be better in the time to come, but also that we should be
sorry and weep and bewail our sins committed before. And all the
old holy doctors be full and whole of that opinion, that men must
have for their sins contrition and sorrow in heart.

VII

VINCENT: Forsooth, uncle, this thing yet seemeth to me a somewhat
sore sentence, not because I think otherwise but that there is
good cause and great wherefore a man should so sorrow, but because
of truth sometimes a man cannot be sorry and heavy for his sin
that he hath done, though he never so fain would. But though he
can be content for God's sake to forbear it thenceforth, yet not
only can he not weep for every sin that is past, but some were
haply so wanton that when he happeth to remember them he can
scantly forbear to laugh.

Now, if contrition and sorr