2. The patience of man, which
is right and laudable and worthy of the name of virtue, is
understood to be that by which we tolerate evil things with an even
mind, that we may not with a mind uneven desert good things,
through which we may arrive at better. Wherefore the impatient,
while they will not suffer ills, effect not a deliverance from
ills, but only the suffering of heavier ills. Whereas the patient
who choose rather by not committing to bear, than by not
bearing to commit, evil, both make lighter what through patience
they suffer, and also escape worse ills in which through impatience
they would be sunk. But those good things which are great and
eternal they lose not, while to the evils which be temporal and
brief they yield not: because “the sufferings of this present
time are not worthy to be compared,” as the Apostle says, “with
the future glory that shall be revealed in us.”2630
And again
he says, “This our temporal and
light tribulation doth in
inconceivable manner work for us an eternal weight of glory.”
2631
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