Page:Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation.djvu/30

Antony.—Good cousin, trust well in God, and he shall provide you teachers abroad convenient in every time, or else shall himself sufficiently teach you within.

Vincent.—Very well, good uncle; but yet if we would leave the seeking of outward learning, where we may have it, and look to be inwardly taught only by God, then should we thereby tempt God, and displease him. And sith that I now see likelihood, that when you be gone, we shall be sore destitute of any such other like; therefore thinketh me that God of duty bindeth me to sue to you now, good uncle, in this short time that we have you, that it may like you, against these great storms of tribulation, with which both I and all mine are sore beaten already, and now, upon the coming of this cruel Turk, fear to fall in far more; I may learn of you such plenty of good counsel and comfort, that I may with the same laid up in remembrance, govern and stay the ship of our kindred, and keep it afloat from peril of spiritual drowning. You be not ignorant, good uncle, what heaps of heaviness hath of late fallen among us already, with which some of our poor family be fallen into such dumps, that scantily can any such comfort, as my poor wit can give them, any thing assuage their sorrow. And now sith these tidings have come hither so brim of the great Turk’s enterprise into these parts here, we can almost neither talk, nor think of any other thing else, than of his might and our mischief; there falleth so continually before the eyen of our heart a fearful imagination of this terrible thing, To this persecution of the Turks may well be resembled the whole practice of heretics in any place where they can prevail his mighty strength and power, his high malice and hatred, and his incomparable cruelty, with robbing, spoiling, burning, and laying waste all the way that his army cometh. Then killing or carrying away the people far thence, far from home, and there sever the couples and the kindred asunder, every one far from other; some kept in thraldom, and some kept in prison, and some for a triumph tormented and killed in his presence. Then send his people hither and his false faith therewith, so that such as here are and remain still shall either both