n well
in worth. Yea, and though it be taken with very right good will,
yet is pain, you know, pain, and therefore so is it, though a man
do it himself. Then, since the church adviseth every man to take
tribulation for his sin, whatsoever words you find in any prayer,
they never mean, do you be fast and sure, to pray God to keep every
good man (nor every bad man neither) from every kind of tribulation.

Now he who is not in a certain kind of tribulation, as peradventure
in sickness or in loss of goods, is not yet out of tribulation. For
he may have his ease of body or mind disquieted (and thereby his
wealth interrupted) with another kind of tribulation, as is either
temptation to a good man, or voluntary affliction, either of body
by penance or of mind by contrition and heaviness for his sin and
offence against God. And thus I say that for precise perpetual
wealth and prosperity in this world--that is to say, for the
perpetual lack of all trouble and tribulation--no wise man prayeth
either for himself or for any man else. And thus I answer your
first objection.

Now before I meddle with your second, your third will I join to
this. For upon this answer will the solution of your examples
fittingly depend.

As for Solomon, he was, as you say, all his days a marvellous
wealthy king, and much was he beloved with God, I know, in the
beginning of his reign. But that the favour of God continued with
him, as his prosperity did, that cannot I tell, and therefore will
I not warrant it. But surely we see that his continual wealth made
him fall into wanton folly, first in multiplying wives to a
horrible number, contrary to the commandment of God, given in the
law of Moses, and secondly in taking to wife among others some who
were infidels, contrary to another commandment of God's written
law. Also we see that finally, by means of his infidel wife, he
fell into maintenance of idolatry himself. And of this we find no
amendment or repentance, as we find of his father. And therefore,
though he were buried where his father was, yet whether he went to
the rest that his father did, through some secret sorrow for his
sin at last--that is to say, by some kind of tribulation--I cannot
tell, and am content therefore to trust well and pray God that he
did so. But surely we are not so sure, and therefore the example of
Solomon can very little serve you. For you might as well lay it for
a proof that God favoureth idolatry as that he favouret