ike
your example of the sea, since they are tokens going before, of
things that afterward follow, through some secret motion or
instinct of which the cause is unknown.

But, by St. Mary, cousin, these tokens like I much worse--these
tokens, I say, not of children's play nor of children's songs, but
old knaves' large open words, so boldly spoken in the favour of
Mahomet's sect in this realm of Hungary, which hath been ever
hitherto a very sure key of Christendom. And without doubt if
Hungary be lost and the Turk have it once fast in his possession,
he shall, ere it be long afterward, have an open ready way into
almost all the rest of Christendom. Though he win it not all in a
week, the great part will be won, I fear me, within very few years
after.

VINCENT: But yet evermore I trust in Christ, good uncle, that he
shall not suffer that abominable sect of his mortal enemies in such
wise to prevail against his Christian countries.

ANTHONY: That is very well said, cousin. Let us have our sure hope
in him, and then shall we be very sure that we shall not be
deceived. For we shall have either the thing that we hope for, or a
better thing in its stead. For, as for the thing itself that we
pray for and hope to have, God will not always send it to us. And
therefore, as I said in our first communication, in all things save
only for heaven, our prayer and our hope may never be too precise,
although the thing may be lawful to ask.

Verily, if we people of the Christian nations were such as would
God we were, I would little fear all the preparations that the
great Turk could make. No, nor yet, being as bad as we are, I doubt
not at all but that in conclusion, however base Christendom be
brought, it shall spring up again, till the time be come very near
to the day of judgment, some tokens of which methinketh are not
come yet. But somewhat before that time shall Christendom be
straitened sore, and brought into so narrow a compass that,
according to Christ's words, "When the Son of Man shall come
again"--that is, to the day of general judgment--"thinkest thou
that he shall find faith in the earth?" as who should say, "but a
little." For, as appeareth in the Apocalypse and other places of
scripture, the faith shall be at that time so far faded that he
shall, for the love of his elect, lest they should fall and perish
too, abridge those days and accelerate his coming. But, as I say,
methinketh I miss yet in my mind some of those