Then take up this
card with your heart, and lay them together: that done, you have won the
game of the Turk, whereby you have defaced and overcome him by true and
lawful play. But, alas for pity! the Rhodes are won and overcome by
these false Turks; the strong castle Faith is decayed, so that I fear it
is almost impossible to win it again.
The great occasion of the loss of this Rhodes is by reason that christian
men do so daily kill their own nation, that the very true number of
Christianity is decayed; which murder and killing one of another is
increased specially two ways, to the utter undoing of Christendom, that
is to say, by example and silence. By example, as thus: when the father,
the mother, the lord, the lady, the master, the dame, be themselves
overcome by these Turks, they be continual swearers, avouterers,
disposers to malice, never in patience, and so forth in all other vices:
think you not, when the father, the mother, the master, the dame, be
disposed unto vice or impatience, but that their children and servants
shall incline and be disposed to the same? No doubt, as the child shall
take disposition natural of the father and mother, so shall the servants
apply unto the vices of their masters and dames: if the heads be false in
their faculties and crafts, it is no marvel if the children, servants,
and apprentices do joy therein.
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