t their fancy doubleth their fear of
everything of which they perceive any manner of dread, and maketh
them often think that it were much worse than indeed it is.

The prophet saith in the psalter, "Thou hast, good Lord, set the
darkness and made was the night, and in the night walk all the
beasts of the woods, the whelps of the lions roaring and calling
unto God for their meat." Now, though the lions' whelps walk about
roaring in the night and seek for their prey, yet can they not get
such meat as they would always, but must hold themselves content
with such as God suffereth to fall in their way. And though they
be not aware of it, yet of God they ask it and of him they have
it. And this may be comfort to all good men in their night's fear,
that though they fall in their dark tribulation into the claws of
the devil or the teeth of those lions' whelps, yet all that they
can do shall not pass beyond the body, which is but as the garment
of the soul. For the soul itself, which is the substance of the
man, is so surely fenced in round about with the shield of God,
that as long as he will abide faithfully in the hope of God's help
the lions' whelp shall not be able to hurt it. For the great Lion
himself could never be suffered to go further in the tribulation
of Job than God from time to time gave him leave.

And therefore the deep darkness of the midnight maketh men who
stand out of faith and out of good hope in God to be in far the
greater fear in their tribulation, for lack of the light of faith,
by which they might perceive that the uttermost of their peril is
a far less thing than they take it for. But we are so wont to set
so much by our body, which we see and feel, and in the feeding and
fostering of which we set out delight and our wealth; and so
little (alas) and so seldom we think upon our soul, because we
cannot see that but by spiritual understanding, and most
especially by the eye of our faith (in the meditation of which we
bestow, God knows, little time), that the loss of our body we take
for a sorer thing and for a great deal greater tribulation than we
do the loss of our soul. Our Saviour biddeth us not fear those
lions' whelps that can but kill our bodies and when that is done
have no further thing in their power with which they can do us
harm, but he biddeth us stand in dread of him who when he hath
slain the body is able then beside to cast the soul into
everlasting fire. Yet are we so blind in the dar