comfort.

And here shall I note you two kinds of folk who are in tribulation
and heaviness: one sort that will not seek for comfort, and another
sort that will.

And again, of those that will not, there are also two sorts. For
the first there are the sort who are so drowned in sorrow that they
fall into a careless deadly dullness, regarding nothing, thinking
almost of nothing, no more than if they lay in a lethargy. With
them it may so befall that wit and remembrance will wear away and
fall even fair from them. And this comfortless kind of heaviness in
tribulation is the highest kind of the deadly sin of sloth.

Another sort there are, who will seek for no comfort, nor yet
receive none, but in their tribulation (be it loss or sickness) are
so testy, so fuming, and so far out of all patience that it
profiteth no man to speak to them. And these are as furious with
impatience as though they were in half a frenzy. And, from a custom
of such behaviour, they may fall into one full and whole. And this
kind of heaviness in tribulation is even a dangerous high branch of
the mortal sin of ire.

Then is there, as I told you, another kind of folk, who fain would
be comforted. And yet are they of two sorts too. One sort are those
who in their sorrow seek for worldly comfort. And of them shall we
now speak the less, for the divers occasions that we shall
afterwards have to touch upon them in more places than one. But
here will I say this, which I learned of St. Bernard: He who in
tribulation turneth himself unto worldly vanities, to get help and