Page:The Life of Sir Thomas More (William Roper, ed by Samuel Singer).djvu/82

 wherein there was a chapel, a library, and a gallery, in which, as his use was on other days to occupy himself in prayer and study there together, so on the Fridays used he continually to be there from morning till evening, spending his time only in devout prayers and spiritual exercises. And to provoke his wife and children to the desire of heavenly things, he would sometimes use these words unto them. " It is now no mastery for you children to go to heaven, for every body giveth you good counsel, every body giveth you good example. You see virtue rewarded and vice punished, so that you are carried up to heaven even by the chins. But if you live in the time that no man will give you good counsel, no man will give you good example, when you shall see virtue punished and vice rewarded, if you will then stand fast and firmly stick to God upon pain of life, though you be but half good, God will allow you for whole good." If his wife or any of his children had been diseased or troubled, he would say unto them: "We may not look, at our pleasures, to go to heaven in featherbeds, it is not the way; for our Lord himself went thither with great pain, and by many tribulations, which was the path wherein he walked thither, and the servant may not look to be in better case than his Master."