ob. And think you then that, if he will suffer the Turk to take
away your goods albeit that by the keeping and confessing of his
faith you please him, he will, when you displease him by forsaking
his faith, suffer you to rejoice or enjoy any benefit of those
goods that you get or keep thereby?

VINCENT: God is gracious, and though men offend him, yet he
suffereth them many times to live in prosperity long after.

ANTHONY: Long after? Nay, by my troth, that doth he no man! For
how can that be, that he should suffer you to live in prosperity
long after, when your whole life is but short in all-together, and
either almost half of it or more than half, you think yourself, I
daresay, spent out already before? Can you burn out half a short
candle, and then have a long one left of the rest?

There cannot in this world be a worse mind than for a man to
delight and take comfort in any commodity that he taketh by sinful
means. For it is the very straight way toward the taking of
boldness and courage in sin, and finally to falling into infidelity
and thinking that God careth not or regardeth not what things men
do here nor of what mind we be. But unto such-minded folk speaketh
holy scripture in this wise: "Say not, I have sinned and yet there
hath happed me none harm, for God suffereth before he strike." But,
as St. Austine saith, the longer he tarrieth ere he strike, the
sorer is the stroke when he striketh.

And therefore, if you will do well, reckon yourself very sure that
when you deadly displease God for the getting or the keeping of
your goods, God shall not suffer those goods to do you good. But
either he shall shortly take them from you, or else suffer you to
keep them for a little while to your more harm and afterward, when
you least look for it, take you away from them.

And then, what a heap of heaviness will there enter into your
heart, when you shall see that you shall so suddenly go from your
goods and leave them here in the earth in one place, and that your
body shall be put in the earth in another place, and--which then
shall be the most heaviness of all--when you shall fear (and not
without great cause) that your soul first forthwith, and after that
at the final judgment your body, shall be driven down deep toward
the centre of the earth into the fiery pit and dungeon of the devil
of hell, there to tarry in torment, world without end! What goods
of this world can any man imagine, the pleasure and commodity