ner,
because he is kept for execution? Or no prisoner, because he is in
the meanwhile so favourably handled and suffered to do all that he
would, save escape? And I bid you not here be hasty in your answer,
but advise it well that you grant no such thing in haste as you
would afterward at leisure mislike, and think yourself deceived.

VINCENT: Nay, by my troth, uncle, this thing needeth no study at
all, to my mind. But, for all this favour showed him and all this
liberty lent him, yet being condemned to death, and being kept for
it, and kept with sure watch laid upon him that he cannot escape,
he is all that while a very plain prisoner still.

ANTHONY: In good faith, cousin, methinketh you say very true. But
then one thing must I yet desire you, cousin, to tell me a little
further. If there were another laid in prison for a brawl, and
through the jailors' displeasure were bolted and fettered and laid
in a low dungeon in the stocks, where he might lie peradventure for
a while and abide in the meantime some pain but no danger of death
at all, but that out again he should come well enough--which of
these two prisoners would stand in the worse case? He that hath all
this favour, or he that is thus hardly handled?

VINCENT: By our Lady, uncle, I believe that most men, if they
should needs choose, had liefer be such prisoners in every point as
he who so sorely lieth in the stocks, than in every point such as
he who walketh at such liberty about the park.

ANTHONY: Consider, then, cousin, whether this thing seem any
sophistry to you that I shall show you now. For it shall be such as
seemeth in good faith substantially true to me. And if it so happen
that you think otherwise, I will be very glad to perceive which of
us both is beguiled.

For it seemeth to me, cousin, first, that every man coming into
this world here upon earth as he is created by God, so cometh he
hither by the providence of God. Is this any sophistry first, or
not?

VINCENT: Nay, verily, this is very substantial truth.

ANTHONY: Now take I this, also, for very truth in my mind: that
there cometh no man nor woman hither into the earth but what, ere
ever they come alive into the world out of the mother's womb, God
condemneth them unto death by his own sentence and judgment, for
the original sin that they bring with them, contracted in the
corrupted stock of our forefather Adam. Is this, think you, cousin,
verily thus or not?

VINCENT: This is,