it and
satisfaction that Christ has merited and satisfied for us
himself--this liberal goodness of God, I say, shall yet at our
faithful instance and request cause our penance and tribulation
patiently taken in this world to serve us in the other world both
for release and reward, tempered after such rate as his high
goodness and wisdom shall see best for us, whereof our blind
mortality cannot here imagine nor devise the stint.

And thus hath yet even the first and most base kind of tribulation,
though not fully so great as the second and very far less than the
third, far greater cause of comfort yet than I spoke of before.

XII

VINCENT: Verily, good uncle, this pleaseth me very well. But yet
are there, you know, some of these things now brought in question.
For as for any pain due for our sin, to be diminished in purgatory
by the patient sufferance of tribulation here, there are, you know,
many who utterly deny that, and affirm for a sure truth that there
is no purgatory at all. And then, if they say true, is the cause of
the comfort gone, if the comfort that we should take be but in vain
and needless.

They say, you know, also that men merit nothing at all, but God
giveth all for faith alone, and that it would be sin and sacrilege
to look for reward in heaven either for our patience and glad
suffering for God's sake, or for any other good deed. And then is
there gone, if this be thus, the other cause of our further comfort
too.

ANTHONY: Cousin, if some things were as they be not, then should
some things be as they shall not! I cannot indeed deny that some
men have of late brought up some such opinions, and many more than
these besides, and have spread them abroad. And it is a right heavy
thing to see such variousness in our belief rise and grow among
ourselves, to the great encouragement of the common enemies of us
all, whereby they have our faith in derision and catch hope to
overwhelm us all. Yet do three things not a little comfort my mind.
The first is that, in some communications had of late together,
there hath appeared good likelihood of some good agreement to grow
together in one accord of our faith. The second is that in the
meanwhile, till this may come to pass, contentions, disputations,
and uncharitable behaviour are prohibited and forbidden in effect
upon all parties--all such parties, I mean, as fell before to fight
for it. The third is that in Germany, for all their diverse
opinions, yet