uncle, in this world at this day, meseemeth your comfort
unto good men who are rich, and are troubled with fear of
damnation for the keeping, can very scantly serve.

ANTHONY: Hard is it, cousin, in many manner of things, to bid or
forbid, affirm or deny, reprove or approve, a matter nakedly
proposed and put forth; or precisely to say "This thing is
good," or "This thing is evil," without consideration of the
circumstances.

Holy St. Austine telleth of a physician who gave a man in a certain
disease a medicine that helped him. The selfsame man at another
time in the selfsame disease took the selfsame medicine himself,
and had of it more harm than good. This he told the physician, and
asked him how the harm should have happened. "That medicine," quoth
he, "did thee no good but harm because thou tookest it when I gave
it thee not." This answer St. Austine very well approveth, because,
though the medicine were the same, yet might there be peradventure
in the sickness some such difference as the patient perceived
not--yea, or in the man himself, or in the place, or in the time of
the year. Many things might make the hindrance, for which the
physician would not then have given him the selfsame medicine that
he gave him before.

To peruse every circumstance that might, cousin, in this matter be
touched, and were to be considered and weighed, would indeed make
this part of this devil of Business a very busy piece of work and
a long one! But I shall open a little the point that you speak of,
and shall show you what I think therein, with as few words as I
conveniently can. And then will we go to dinner.

First, cousin, he who is a rich man and keepeth all his goods, he
hath, I think, very good cause to be very afraid indeed. And yet I
fear me that such folk fear the least. For they are very far from
the state of good men, since, if they keep all, they are then very
far from charity, and do, as you know well, either little alms or
none at all.

But now our question, cousin, is not in what case that rich man
standeth who keepeth all, but whether we should suffer men to
stand in a perilous dread and fear for the keeping of any great
part. For if, by the keeping of so much as maketh a rich man
still, they stand in the state of damnation, then are the curates
bound to tell them so plainly, according to the commandment of God
given unto them all in the person of Ezechiel: "If, when I say to
the wicked man, 'Thou shalt die,'