now,
verily are we now as deceived as those prisoners would be then.

VINCENT: I cannot, uncle, in good faith deny that you have
performed all that you promised. But yet, since, for all this,
there appeareth no more but that as they are prisoners so are we
too, and that as some of them are sore handled so are some of us
too; we know well, for all this, that when we come to those prisons
we shall not fail to be in a straiter prison than we are now, and
to have a door shut upon us where we have none shut upon us now.
This shall we be sure of at least if there come no worse--and then
there may come worse, you know well, since it cometh there so
commonly. And therefore is it yet little marvel that men's hearts
grudge much against it.

ANTHONY: Surely, cousin, in this you say very well. Howbeit, your
words would have touched me somewhat the nearer if I had said that
imprisonment were no displeasure at all. But the thing that I say,
cousin, for our comfort in the matter, is that our fancy frameth us
a false opinion by which we deceive ourselves and take it for sorer
than it is. And that we do because we take ourselves for more free
before than we were, and imprisonment for a stranger thing to us
than it is indeed. And thus far, as I say, I have proved truth in
very deed.

But now the incommodities that you repeat again--those, I say, that
are proper to the imprisonment of its own nature; that is, to have
less room to walk and to have the door shut upon us--these are,
methinketh, so very slender and slight that in so great a cause as
to suffer for God's sake we might be sore ashamed so much as once
to think upon them.

Many a good man there is, you know, who, without any force at all,
or any necessity wherefor he should do so, suffereth these two
things willingly of his own choice, with much other hardness more.
Holy monks, I mean, of the Charterhouse order, such as never pass
their cells save only to the church, which is set fast by their
cells, and thence to their cells again. And St. Brigit's order, and
St. Clare's much alike, and in a manner all enclosed religious
houses. And yet anchorites and anchoresses most especially, all
whose whole room is less than a good large chamber. And yet are
they there as well content many long years together as are other
men--and better, too--who walk about the world. And therefore you
may see that the lothness of less room and the door shut upon us,
since so many folk are so well