d
imprisonment is a thing of great horror and fear, both for the
straitness of the keeping and for the hard handling that many men
have therein. Of all the griefs that you speak of, we feel nothing
at all. And therefore every man abhorreth the one, and would be
loth to come into it. And no man abhorreth the other, for they feel
no harm and find no fault therein.

Therefore, uncle, in good faith, though I cannot find fitting
answers with which to avoid your arguments, yet (to be plain with
you and tell you the very truth) my mind findeth not itself
satisfied on this point. But ever methinketh that these things,
with which you rather convince and conclude me than induce a
credence and persuade me that every man is in prison already, are
but sophistical fancies, and that except those that are commonly
called prisoners, other men are not in any prison at all.

ANTHONY: Well fare thine heart, good Cousin Vincent! There was, in
good faith, no word that you spoke since we first talked of these
matters that I liked half so well as these that you speak now. For
if you had assented in words and your mind departed unpersuaded,
then, if the thing be true that I say, yet had you lost the fruit.
And if it be peradventure false, and I myself deceived therein,
then, since I should have supposed that you liked it too, you would
have confirmed me in my folly. For, in good faith, cousin, such an
old fool am I that this thing (in the persuading of which unto you
I had thought I had quit me well, and yet which, when I have all
done, appeareth to your mind but a trifle and sophistical fancy) I
myself have so many years taken it for so very substantial truth
that as yet my mind cannot give me to think it any other. But I
would not play the part of that French priest who had so long used
to say _Dominus_ with the second syllable long that at least he
thought it must needs be so, and was ashamed to say it short. So to
the intent that you may the better perceive me and I may the better
perceive myself, we shall here between us a little more consider
the thing. So spit well on your hands boldly, and take good hold,
and give it not over against your own mind, for then we would be
never the nearer.

VINCENT: Nay, by my troth, uncle, that intend I not to do. Nor
have I done it yet since we began. And that may you well perceive
by some things which, without any great cause, save for the further
satisfaction of my own mind, I repeated and debat