y our keeping for death, he letteth us in the meanwhile, for as
long as he pleases to respite us, walk about in the prison and do
there what we will, using ourselves in such wise as he hath, by
reason and revelation, from time to time told us his pleasure.

And hence it cometh, lo, that by reason of this favour for a time
we wax, as I said, so wanton, that we forget where we are. And we
think that we are lords at large, whereas we are indeed, if we
would consider, even poor wretches in prison. For, of very truth,
our very prison this earth is. And yet we apportion us out divers
parts of it diversely to ourselves, part by covenants that we make
among ourselves, and part by fraud and violence too. And we change
its name from the odious name of prison, and call it our own land
and our livelihood. Upon our prison we build; our prison we garnish
with gold and make it glorious. In this prison they buy and sell;
in this prison they brawl and chide. In this they run together and
fight; in this they dice; in this they play at cards. In this they
pipe and revel; in this they sing and dance. And in this prison
many a man who is reputed right honest forbeareth not, for his
pleasure in the dark, privily to play the knave.

And thus, while God our king and our chief jailor too, suffereth us
and letteth us alone, we think ourselves at liberty. And we abhor
the state of those whom we call prisoners, taking ourselves for no
prisoners at all. In this false persuasion of wealth and
forgetfulness of our own wretched state, which is but a wandering
about for a while in this prison of this world, till we be brought
unto the execution of death, we forget in our folly both ourselves
and our jail, and our under-jailors the angels and devils both, and
our chief jailor God too--God, who forgetteth not us, but seeth us
all the while well enough. And being sore discontent to see so ill
rule kept in the jail, he sendeth the hangman Death to put some to
execution here and there, sometimes by the thousands at once. And
he handleth many of the rest, whose execution he forbeareth yet
unto a farther time, even as hardly and punisheth them as sorely,
in this common prison of the world, as there are any handled in
those special prisons which, for the hard handling used in them,
you say your heart hath in such horror and so sore abhorreth.

VINCENT: The rest will I not gainsay, for methinketh I see it so
indeed. But that God, our chief jailor in this wo