apostles and of the innumerable martyrs, confessors and virgins. The faith of such people ought much to comfort[1] the sick man to the constancy and steadfastness of the faith. For by faith all they of time past, and of this present time, have pleased God; and it is impossible to please God without faith. For faith may all, and very faith getteth all that it requireth.
II. The Second Temptation is against Hope, by Despair. For a person ought to have all hope and confidence in God. And it happeth then, when a person being sick in his body is tormented with great pain and sorrows, that the devil enforceth to bring to him sorrow upon sorrow, in bringing before his remembrance all his sins, by all the ways that he may — at least them that he never confessed him of — to the end that by that means he draw him into desperation. Upon this purpose saith Innocent: That every Christian person — be he good or evil — before that his soul issueth out of his body seeth our Lord Jesu Christ set in the cross. That is to wit: the evil to their confusion, to the end that they have shame and displeasure that they have not gotten in their life the fruit of the Redemption; and the good to their honour and pleasure.
Natheless none ought to have despair in no wise, how much felon and evil he hath been. Though that he had commised as many murders and thefts as there be drops of water and small gravel in the sea, yet were it so that of them he had never done
- ↑ i.e. strengthen.
