The Four Last Things - by St Thomas More : Pt 1

Sir Thomas More. Holbein the Younger (1527). Frick Collection.

Following recovery from a recent illness, I began reading the Four Last Things, a treatise which Thomas More (1478-1535) wrote in 1522. 

The following posts reproduce the text and notes of an edition by D. O’Connor published in 1903 which is close to the English original of 1557. 

The 1903 footnotes are indicated by [ ] and my own by [ ].  

👈While outwardly he enjoyed a life of comfort, in the privacy of his spiritual life he wore a hair shirt, attended daily Mass, and practised a strict discipline of prayer. He is believed to have become a Third Order Franciscan (and indeed his name is listed in the calendar of Franciscan saints). This may be the significance of the cord shown. 

Sancte Thoma 

Ora pro nobis.

The Four Last Things

 

Memorare novissima . . . et in aeternum non peccabis.

“Remember the last things, and thou shalt never sin.” Ecclus vii. 40.

If there were any question among men, whether the words of holy Scripture or the doctrine of any secular author were of greater force and effect to the weal and profit of man’s soul (though we should let pass so many short and weighty words spoken by the mouth of our Saviour Christ Himself, to whose heavenly wisdom the wit of none earthly creature can be comparable), yet this only text written by the wise man in the seventh chapter of Ecclesiasticus is such, that it containeth more fruitful advice and counsel to the forming and framing of man’s manners in virtue, and avoiding of sin, than many whole and great volumes of the best of old philosophers or any other that ever wrote in secular literature.

Long would it be to take the best of their words and compare it with these words of holy writ. Let us consider the fruit and profit of this in itself ; which thing well advised and pondered shall well declare that of none whole volume of secular literature shall arise so very fruitful doctrine. For what would a man give for a sure medicine that were of such strength that it should all his life keep him from sickness, namely, if he might by the avoiding of sickness be sure to continue his life one hundred years ?

Die we must

So is it now that these words give us all a sure medicine (if we forsloth[1] not the receiving) by which we shall keep from sickness not the body – which none health may long keep from death, for die we must in few years, live we never so long – but the soul, which, here preserved from the sickness of sin, shall after this eternally live in joy and be preserved from the deadly life of everlasting pain.

The physician sendeth his bill[2] to the apothecary, and therein writeth sometime a costly receipt[3] of many strange herbs and roots, fetched out of far countries, long lien drugs[4], all the strength worn out, and some none such to be gotten. But this physician sendeth his bill to thyself, no strange thing therein, nothing costly to buy, nothing far to fetch, but to be gathered all times of the year in the garden of thine own soul.

Death, doom, pain and joy

Let us hear then what wholesome receipt this is : “Remember,” saith this bill, “thy last things, and thou shalt never sin”[5] in this world. Here is first a short medicine, containing only four herbs, common and well known, that is to wit, death, doom[6], pain and joy.

This short medicine is of a marvellous force, able to keep us all our life from sin. The physician cannot give no one medicine to every man to keep him from sickness, but to divers men divers, by reason of the diversity of divers complexions[7]. This medicine serveth every man. The physician doth but guess and conjecture that his receipt shall do good ; but this medicine is undoubtedly sure.

How happeth it then, thou wilt haply say, that so few be preserved from sin, if every man have so sure a medicine so ready at hand ? For folk fare commonly as he doth that goeth forth fasting among sick folk for sloth rather than he will take a little treacle[8] before.

Thou wilt say peradventure that some part of this medicine is very bitter and painful to receive. Surely there can be nothing so bitter but wisdom would brook[9] it for so great a profit. But yet this medicine, though thou make a sour face at it, is not so bitter as thou makest for. For well thou wottest[10], he biddeth thee not take neither death nor doom nor pain, but only to remember them, and yet the joy of heaven therewith, to temper them withal. Now if a man be so dainty-stomached, that going where contagion is, he would grudge to take a little treacle, yet were he very nicely wanton if he might not at the leastwise take a little vinegar and rose-water in his handkerchief.

Remembrance of death and purgatory

Yet wot I well that many one will say that the bare remembrance of death alone, if a man consider it and advise it well, were able to bereave a man of all the pleasure of his life. How much more then should his life be painful and grievous, if to the remembrance and consideration of death a man should add and set to the deep imagination of the dreadful doom of God, and bitter pains of purgatory or hell, of which every one passeth and exceedeth many deaths ! This is the sage saws[11] of such as make this world their heaven and their lust their God.

Now see the blindness of us worldly folk, how precisely we presume to shoot our foolish bolts in those matters most in which we least can skill. For I little doubt but that among four thousand taken out at adventure, we shall not find four score, but they shall boldly affirm it for a thing too painful busily[12] to remember these four last things. And yet durst I lay a wager that of those four thousand ye shall not find fourteen that have deeply thought on them four times in all their days.

Footnotes

[1] i.e., forego by negligence.

[2] prescription.

[3] i.e., a recipe.

[4] drugs having lain around for a long time  (Gottshalk).

[5] Ecclus. vii. 40.

[6] judgement.

[7] i.e., constitution, temeperament.

[8] treacle: Old Pharmacology. A medicinal compound, originally a kind of salve, composed of many ingredients, formerly in repute as an alexipharmic against and antidote to venomous bites, poisons generally, and malignant diseases. Popular late Latin *triaca for thēriaca < Greek θηριακή antidote against a venomous bite. 

[9] brook : To put up with, bear with, endure, tolerate.

[10] wottest: from wit, to know.

[11] A saying; discourse; speech. Obsolete.

[12] With fixed attention; carefully, heedfully; attentively, intently. Anxiously, solicitously.

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The Virgin of Tenderness. >12th century.

SUB tuum præsidium confugimus, Sancta Dei Genitrix. Nostras deprecationes ne despicias in necessitatibus, sed a periculis cunctis libera nos semper, Virgo gloriosa et benedicta. Amen. 

 

Totus tuus ego sum

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:

Ad Jesum per Mariam.

He that hearkeneth to me, shall not be confounded: and they that work by me, shall not sin. They that explain me shall have life everlasting. Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) xxiv. 30-31.