oever sits on it may
soon take a foul fall. For these are the three feet of this
tottering stool: fantastical fear, false faith, and false
flattering hope.

First, it is a fantastical fear that the man conceiveth, that it
should be perilous to stand in the confession of the faith at the
beginning, lest he might afterward, through the bitterness of the
pain, fall to the forsaking and so die there in the pain, out of
hand, and thereby be utterly damned. As though, if a man were
overcome by pain and so forsook his faith, God could not or would
not as well give him grace to repent again, and thereupon give him
forgiveness, as he would give it to him who forsook his faith in
the beginning and set so little by God that he would rather forsake
him than suffer for his sake any manner of pain at all! As though
the more pain that a man taketh for God's sake, the worse would God
be to him! If this reason were not unreasonable, then should our
Saviour not have said, as he did, "Fear not them that may kill the
body, and after that have nothing that they can do further." For he
should, by this reason, have said, "Dread and fear them that may
slay the body, for they may, by the torment of painful death
(unless thou forsake me betimes in the beginning and so save thy
life, and get of me thy pardon and forgiveness afterward) make thee
peradventure forsake me too late, and so be damned forever."

The second foot of this tottering stool is a false faith. For it is
but a feigned faith for a man to say to God secretly that he
believeth him, trusteth him, and loveth him, and then openly, where
he should to God's honour tell the same tale and thereby prove that
he doth so, there to God's dishonour flatter God's enemies as much
as in him is, and do them pleasure and worship, with the forsaking
of God's faith before the world. And such a one either is faithless
in his heart too, or else knoweth well that he doth God this
despite even before his own face. For unless he lack faith, he
cannot but know that our Lord is everywhere present, and that,
while he so shamefully forsaketh him, he full angrily looketh on.

The third foot of this tottering stool is false flattering hope.
For since the thing that he doth, when he forsaketh his faith for
fear, is forbidden by the mouth of God upon the pain of eternal
death, though the goodness of God forgiveth many folk for the
fault, yet to be bolder in offending for the hope of forgiving is a
very false