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Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens by Saint Sir Thomas More
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knoweth that for a certain theft he is fallen into a certain
punishment. But yet, since we seldom lack faults against God worthy
and well-deserving of great punishment, indeed we may well
think--and wisdom it is to do so--that with sin we have deserved it
and that God for some sin sendeth it, though we know not certainly
for which. And therefore thus far is this kind of tribulation
somewhat in effect to be taken alike unto the other. For you see,
if we thus will take it, reckoning it to be sent for sin and
suffering it meekly therefor, it is medicinable against the pain of
the other world to come for our past sins in this world, And this
is, as I have showed you, a cause of right great comfort.

But yet may then this kind of tribulation be, to some men of more
sober living and thereby of more clear conscience, somewhat a
little more comfortable. They may none otherwise reckon themselves
than sinners, for, as St. Paul saith, "My conscience grudgeth me
not of anything, but yet am I not thereby justified," and, as St.
John saith, "If we say that we have no sin in us, we beguile
ourselves and truth is there not in us." Yet, forasmuch as
the cause is to them not so certain as it is to the others
afore-mentioned in the first kind, and forasmuch as it is also
certain that God sometimes sendeth tribulation to keep and preserve
a man from such sin as he would otherwise fall in (and sometimes
also for exercise of their patience and increase of merit), great
cause of increase in comfort have those folk of the clearer
conscience in the fervour of their tribulation. For they may take
the comfort of a double medicine, and also of that thing that is of
the kind that we shall finally speak of, that I call "better than
medicinable."

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