content with them and will for God's
love choose to live so, is but a horror enhanced of our own fancy.

And indeed I knew a woman once who came into a prison, to visit of
her charity a poor prisoner there. She found him in a chamber that
was fair enough, to say the truth--at least, it was strong enough!
But with mats of straw the prisoner had made it so warm, both under
foot and round about the walls, that in these things, for the
keeping of his health, she was on his behalf very glad and very
well comforted. But among many other displeasures that for his sake
she was sorry for, one she lamented much in her mind. And that was
that he should have the chamber door made fast upon him by night,
by the jailor who was to shut him in. "For, by my troth," quoth
she, "if the door should be shut upon me, I think it would stop up
my breath!" At that word of hers the prisoner laughed in his
mind--but he dared not laugh aloud or say anything to her, for
indeed he stood somewhat in awe of her, and he had his food there
in great part of her charity for alms. But he could not but laugh
inwardly, for he knew well enough that she used to shut her own
chamber door full surely on the inside every night, both door and
windows too, and used not to open them all the long night. And what
difference, then, as to the stopping of the breath, whether they
were shut up within or without?

And so surely, cousin, these two things that you speak of are
neither one of so great weight that in Christ's cause they ought to
move a Christian man. And one of the twain is so very childish a
fancy, that in a matter almost of three chips (unless it were a
chance of fire) it should never move any man.

As for those other accidents of hard handling, I am not so mad as
to say that they are no grief, but I say that our fear may imagine
them much greater grief than they are. And I say that such as they
be, many a man endureth them--yea, and many a woman too--who
afterward fareth full well.

And then would I know what determination we take--whether for our
Saviour's sake to suffer some pain in our bodies, since he suffered
in his blessed body so great pain for us, or else to give him
warning and be at a point utterly to forsake him rather than to
suffer any pain at all? He who cometh in his mind unto this latter
point--from which kind of unkindness God keep every man!--he
needeth no comfort, for he will flee the need. And counsel, I fear,
availeth him little,