A Golden Chain

Timoth. Have you a steadfast faith in Christ, (as these arguments seem to prove) without all wavering, doubting, and distrusting of Gods mercy.

Timoth. Haue you a steadfast faith in Christ, (as these arguments seeme to prooue) without all wauering, doubting, and distrusting of Gods mercy.

Euseb. No, no. This my faith which I have in Christ is even fought against with doubting, and ever assailed with desperation, not when I sin only, but also in tentations of adversity, into which God bringeth me to nurture me & to show me mine own heart, the hypocrisy and false thoughts that there lie hid, my almost no faith at all, and as little love• even then haply when I thought my self most perfect of all: for when temptations come I cannot stand, when I have sinned faith is feeble, when wrong is done unto me I cannot forgive, in sickness, in loss of goods, in all tribulation I am unpatient, ⟨p. 625⟩when my neighbour needeth my help that I must depart with him of mine own, then love is cold. And thus I learn and feel that there is no power to do good but of god only. And in all such temptations my faith perisheth not utterly, neither my love and consent to the law of God: but they be weak, sick, wounded, and not clean dead. As I dealt with my parents being a child, so now deal I towards God my loving father. When I was a child my father and mother taught me nurture and wisdom, I loved my father and all his commandments, and perceived the goodness he showed me, that my father loved me, and all his precepts are unto my wealth and profit, and that my father commandeth nothing for any need he hath thereof, but seeketh my profit only, and therefore I have a good faith unto all my fathers promises, and love all his commandments, and do them with good will, and with good will go every day to the school: And by the way haply I saw a company play, and with the sight, was taken and ravished of my memory, and forgot my self, and stood and beheld, and fell to play also forgetting father and mother, and all their kindness, all their Laws, and mine own profit also. Howbeit, the knowledge of my fathers kindness, the faith of his promises, and the love that I had again unto my father, and the obedient mind were not utterly quenched, but lay hid, as all things do when a man sleepeth or lieth in a trance. And as soon as I had played out all my lusts, or else by some had been warned in the mean season, I came again to my old profession.