Page:Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation.djvu/24

ceived well the general commodity of the book, whatsoever the common sort and furious multitude of them would do for their accustomed malice and envy against all benefit of the Christian, yet (no doubt) a man should find some good member of them so tractable and indifferent, that would for their own sakes in considering of their own need, and the general condition of all men, neither gainsay their Christian captives to seek them some ease in their misery, nor yet refuse themselves, to use (from among the rest) such comforts here and there as may serve their own turns. For we see that even in the midst of their own countries they suffer many Christian folk to dwell, paying certain tributes and taxes for their safe guard and sufferance to live there. And in other countries also which they newly subdue and win from the Christians, they do not so dispeople the whole lands and main countries, but that they let many thousands dwell there still, professing openly and freely their faith, with churches and chapels allowed for them: this only provided, that they agnize the Turk to be lord of the land, and themselves to live in quiet and civil subjection under him.

But blessed be God, that the Turks themselves, though they have overrun almost all Hungary, and thereto won Cyprus of late, are far enough off from us yet: and would God all their Turkish fashions and persecutions were as far off from us too, and that Christian charity did reign more truly and plentifully in the hearts of all that bear the name of Christians in Christendom. For then a great part of the comforts that are in this book, should not greatly need, nor we should not greatly need neither to fear lest any Christian folk would shew themselves so unchristian, as to find fault or mislike with the use and free having of the same among all men, whereas the matter and argument thereof toucheth men all so near.

Howbeit very few shall be found here in our quarters (by all likelihood) that have so much degenerated from the nature of true Christianity, as expressly to disannul or disallow the same, lest they might thereby seem, not only to be no Christians at all, but rather right renegades, which are indeed much worse than any natural Turks.