one disease
and sickness or another. And if the pain of the whole week or twain
in which they lie pining in their bed, were gathered together in so
short a time as a man hath his pain who dieth a violent death, it
would, I daresay, make double the pain that is his. So he who dieth
naturally often suffereth more pain rather than less, though he
suffer it in a longer time. And then would many a man be more loth
to suffer so long, lingering in pain, than with a sharper pang to
be sooner rid. And yet lieth many a man more days than one, in
well-near as great pain continually, as is the pain that with the
violent death riddeth the man in less than half an hour--unless you
think that, whereas the pain is great to have a knife cut the flesh
on the outside from the skin inward, the pain would be much less if
the knife might begin on the inside and cut from the midst outward!
Some we hear, on their deathbed, complain that they think they feel
sharp knives cut in two their heartstrings. Some cry out and think
they feel, within the brainpan, their head pricked even full of
pins. And those who lie in a pleurisy think that, every time they
cough, they feel a sharp sword snap them to the heart.

XXV

Howbeit, what need we to make any such comparison between the
natural death and the violent, for the matter that we are in hand
with here? Without doubt, he who forsaketh the faith of Christ for
fear of the violent death, putteth himself in peril to find his
natural death a thousand times more painful. For his natural death
hath his everlasting pain so instantly knit to it, that there is
not one moment of time between, but the end of the one is the
beginning of the other, which never after shall have an end.

And therefore was it not without great cause that Christ gave us so
good warning before, when he said, as St. Luke in the twenty-second
chapter rehearseth, "I say to you that are my friends, be not
afraid of them that kill the body, and when that is done are able
to do no more. But I shall show you whom you should fear. Fear him
who, when he hath killed, hath in his power further to cast him
whom he killeth into everlasting fire. So I say to you, be afraid
of him." God meaneth not here that we should not dread at all any
man who can but kill the body, but he meaneth that we should not in
such wise dread any such man that we should, for dread of them,
displease him who can everlastingly kill both body and soul with a
death ev