V

VINCENT: Forsooth, uncle, this is very great comfort unto that kind of tribulation. And so great, also, that it may make many a man bold to abide in his sin even unto his end, trusting to be then saved as that thief was.

ANTHONY: Very sooth you say, cousin, that some wretches are there who so abuse the great goodness of God that the better he is the worse in return are they. But, cousin, though there be more joy made of his turning who from the point of perdition cometh to salvation, for pity that God had and all his saints of the peril of perishing that the man stood in, yet is he not set in like state in heaven as he should have been if he had lived better before. Unless it so befall that he live so well afterward and do so much good that he outrun, in the shorter time, those good folk that yet did so much in much longer. This is proved in the blessed apostle St. Paul, who of a persecutor became an apostle, and last of all came in unto that office, and yet in the labour of sowing the seed of Christ's faith outran all the rest so far that he forbore not to say of himself, "I have laboured more than all the rest have."

But yet, my cousin, though I doubt not that God be so merciful unto those who, at any time of their life, turn and ask his mercy and trust in it, though it be at the last end of a man's life; and that he hireth him as well for heaven who cometh to work in his vineyard toward night at such time as workmen leave work, and goeth home, being then willing to work if time should serve, as he hireth him who cometh in the morning; yet may no man upon the trust of this parable be bold all his life to lie still in sin. For let him remember that no man goeth into God's vineyard but he who is called thither. Now he who, in hope to be called toward the night, will sleep out the morning and drink out the day, is full likely to pass at night unspoken to. And then shall he with ill rest go supperless to bed!

They tell of one who was wont always to say that all the while he lived he would do what he pleased, for three words when he died should make all safe enough. But then it so happed that long ere he was old his horse once stumbled upon a broken bridge. And as he laboured to recover him, when he saw that it would not be, but that down into the flood headlong he must go, in sudden dismay he cried out in the falling, "Have all to the devil!" And there was he drowned with his three words ere he died, whereon his hope hung all his wretched life.

And therefore let no man sin in hope of grace, for grace cometh but at God's will, and that state of mind may be the hindrance that grace of fruitful repenting shall never after be offered him, but that he shall either graceless go linger on careless, or with a care that is fruitless shall fall into despair.