o
die and long for to be dead.

VINCENT: That would be, uncle, a very strange case!

ANTHONY: The case, I fear me, cousin, falleth not very often. But
yet sometimes it doth, as where there is any man of that good mind
that St. Paul was. For the longing that he had to be with God, he
would fain have been dead, but for the profit of other folk he was
content to live here in pain, and defer and forbear for the while
his inestimable bliss in heaven: _"Desiderium habens dissolvi et
esse cum Christo, multo magis melius, permanere autem in carne,
necessarium propter vos."_

But of all these kinds of folk, cousin, who are loth to die (except
for the first kind only, who lack faith), there is I suppose none
who would hesitate, for the bare respect of death alone, unless the
fear of shame or sharp pain joined unto death should be the
hindrance, to depart hence with good will in this case of the
faith. For he would well know by his faith that his death, taken
for the faith, should cleanse him clean of all his sins and send
him straight to heaven. And some of these (namely the last kind)
are such that shame and pain both joined unto death would be
unlikely to make them loathe death or fear death so sore but what
they would suffer death in this case with good will, since they
know well that the refusing of the faith, for any cause in this
world (seemed the cause never so good), should yet sever them from
God, with whom, save for other folk's profit, they so fain would
be. And charity it cannot be, for the profit of the whole world,
deadly to displease him who made it.

Some are these, I say also, who are loth to die for lack of wit.
Albeit that they believe in the world that is to come and hope also
to come thither, yet they love so much the wealth of this world and
such things as delight them therein, that they would fain keep them
as long as ever they can, even with tooth and nail. And when they
can be suffered in no wise to keep it longer, but death taketh them
from it, then, if it can be no better, they will agree to be, as
soon as they be hence, hauled up into heaven and be with God
forthwith! These folk as as very idiot fools as he who had kept
from his childhood a bag full of cherry stones, and cast such a
fancy to it that he would not go from it for a bigger bag filled
with gold.

These folk fare, cousin, as AEsop telleth in a fable that the snail
did. For when Jupiter (whom the poets feign for the great god)
invi