y the theft and meekly took his death for
it. And he had, I doubt not, both strength and comfort in his pain,
and died a very good man. Yet, if he had never come in tribulation,
he would have been in peril never haply to have had just remorse in
all his whole life, but might have died wretchedly and gone to the
devil eternally. And thus made this thief a good medicine of his
well-deserved pain and tribulation.

Consider well the converted thief who hung on Christ's right hand.
Did not he, by his meek sufference and humble knowledge of his
fault, asking forgiveness of God and yet content to suffer for his
sin, make of his just punishment and well-deserved tribulation a
very good special medicine to cure him of all pain in the other
world, and win him eternal salvation?

And thus I say that this kind of tribulation, though it seem the
most base and the least comfortable, is yet, if the man will so
make it, a very marvellous wholesome medicine. And it may therefore
be, to the man who will so consider it, a great cause of comfort
and spiritual consolation.

IX

VINCENT: Verily, mine uncle, this first kind of tribulation have
you to my mind opened sufficiently. And therefore, I pray you,
resort now to the second.

ANTHONY: The second kind, you know, was of such tribulation as is
so sent us by God that we know no certain cause deserving that
present trouble, as we certainly know that upon such-and-such a
surfeit we fell in such-and-such a sickness, or as the thief
knoweth that for a certain theft he is fallen into a certain
punishment. But yet, since we seldom lack faults against God worthy
and well-deserving of great punishment, indeed we may well
think--and wisdom it is to do so--that with sin we have deserved it
and that God for some sin sendeth it, though we know not certainly
for which. And therefore thus far is this kind of tribulation
somewhat in effect to be taken alike unto the other. For you see,
if we thus will take it, reckoning it to be sent for sin and
suffering it meekly therefor, it is medicinable against the pain of
the other world to come for our past sins in this world, And this
is, as I have showed you, a cause of right great comfort.

But yet may then this kind of tribulation be, to some men of more
sober living and thereby of more clear conscience, somewhat a
little more comfortable. They may none otherwise reckon themselves
than sinners, for, as St. Paul saith, "My conscience grudgeth me
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