n. And now proceed forth, good uncle,
and show us yet farther some other spiritual comfort in tribulation.

ANTHONY: This may be, methinketh, good cousin, great comfort in
tribulation: that every tribulation which any time falleth unto us
is either sent to be medicinable, if men will so take it; or may
become medicinable, if men will so make it; or is better than
medicinable, unless we will forsake it.

VINCENT: Surely this is very comforting--if we can well perceive
it!

ANTHONY: There three things that I tell you, we shall consider
thus: Every tribulation that we fall in, either cometh by our own
known deserving deed bringing us to it, as the sickness that
followeth our intemperate surfeit or the imprisonment or other
punishment put upon a man for his heinous crime; or else it is sent
us by God without any certain deserving cause open and known to
ourselves, either for punishment of some sins past (we know not
certainly which) or for preserving us from sin in which we would
otherwise be like to fall; or finally it is not due to the man's
sin at all but is for the proof of his patience and increase of his
merit. In all the former cases tribulation is, if we will,
medicinable. In this last case of all, it is better than
medicinable.

VIII

VINCENT: This seemeth to me very good, good uncle, save that it
seemeth somewhat brief and short, and thereby methinketh somewhat
obscure and dark.

ANTHONY: We shall therefore, to give it light withal, touch upon
every member of it somewhat more at large.

One member is, as you know, of them that fall in tribulation
through their own certain well-deserving deed, open and known to
themselves, as when we fall in a sickness following upon our own
gluttonous feasting, or when a man is punished for his own open
fault. These tribulations, and others like them, may seem not to be
comfortable, in that a man may be sorry to think himself the cause
of his own harm. Yet hath he good cause of comfort in them, if he
consider that he may make them medicinable for himself if he will.
For whereas there was due to that sin, unless it were purged here,
a far greater punishment after this world in another place, this
worldly tribulation of pain and punishment, by God's good provision
for him put upon him here in this world before, shall by the mean
of Christ's passion, if the man will in true faith and good hope by
meek and patience sufferance of his tribulation so make it, serve
him