For by faith all they that have been of old time before us — and all they be now and shall be hereafter — they all please, and have [pleased] and shall please God by faith. For as it is aforesaid: Withouten faith it is impossible to please God.
Also double profit should induce every sick man to be stable in faith. One is: For faith may do all things; as our Lord Himself witnesseth in the gospel, and saith: Omnia possibilia sunt credenti. [S. Mark 9:22] All things are possible to him that believeth steadfastly. Another is: For faith getteth a man all things. As our Lord saith: Quicquid orantes petitis, credite quia accipietis, et fiet vobis, etc. [S. Mark 11:24] Whatever it be that ye will pray and ask, believe verily that [ye] shall take[1] it, and ye shall have it; though that ye would say to an hill that he should lift himself up and fall into the sea, as the hills of Capsye by prayer and petition of King Alexander, the great conqueror, were closed together.
II. The Second Temptation is Desperation; the which is against [the] hope and confidence that every man should have unto God. For when a sick man is sore tormented and vexed, with sorrow and sickness of his body, then the devil is most busy to superadd sorrow to sorrow, with all [the] ways that he may, objecting his sins against him for to induce him into despair.
Furthermore as Innocent the Pope, in his third of the wickedness of mankind, saith: Every man both good and evil, or[2] his soul pass out of his
