The Four Last Things - by St Thomas More : Pt 3

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.

Last Judgement. Jüngstes Gericht - Stefan Lochner (c.1435).
Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud

The Four Last Things (continued)

 

I would not so long tarry in this point, nor make so many words of the pleasure that men may find by the receipt of this medicine, were it not that I well perceive the world so set upon the seeking of pleasure that they set by pleasure much more than by profit. And, therefore, to the intent that ye may perceive that it is not a fantasy founden of mine own head, that the abandoning and refusing of carnal pleasure, and the ensuing of labour, travail, penance and bodily pain, shall bring therewith to a Christian man, not only in the world that is coming but also in this present life, very sweetness, comfort, pleasure and gladness, I shall prove it to be true by their testimony and witness whose authority, speaking of their own experience, there will (I ween[1]) none honest man mistrust. 

St Austin. Gladness in sorrow.

Lo ! the holy doctor, St Austin, exhorting penitents and repentant sinners to sorrow for their offences, sayeth unto them : 

“Sorrow,” saith this holy man, and be glad of thy sorrow.” 

In vain should he bid him be glad of his sorrow if man in sorrow could not be glad. But this holy father sheweth by this counsel not only that a man may be joyful and glad for all his sorrow, but also that he may be and hath cause to be glad because of his sorrow.

Long were it to rehearse the places that prove this point among the holy doctors of Christ’s Church. But we will, instead of them all, allege you the words of Him that is Doctor of them all, our Saviour Jesu Christ. He saith that the way to heaven is strait and aspre[2] or painful. And therefore He saith that few folk find it out or walk therein[3]. And yet saith He for all that : “My yoke is easy and My burden light.”[4] How could these two sayings stand together were it not that, as the labour, travail and affliction of the body is painful and sharp to the flesh, so the comfort and gladness that the soul conceiveth thereof, rising into the love of our Lord and a hope of His glory to come, so tempereth and overmastereth the bitterness of the grief that it maketh the very labour easy, the sourness very sweet and the very pain pleasant ?

Will ye see the sample[5]? Look upon His holy apostles, when they were taken and scourged with whips for Christ’s sake, did it grieve them, think ye ? Imagine yourself in the same case, and I think ye will think yea. Now see then, for all that pain of their flesh what joy and pleasure they conceived in their soul. The holy Scripture saith[6] that they rejoiced and joyed that God had accounted them worthy for Christ’s sake not only to be scourged, but also – which would be far greater grief to an honest man than the pain itself – to be scourged with despite and shame, so that the more their pain was the more was their joy. 

St Chrysostom. Pleasant pain.

For, as the holy doctor St Chrysostom saith, though pain be grievous for the nature of the affliction, yet is it pleasant by the alacrity and quick mind of them that willingly suffer it. And, therefore, though the nature of the torments make great grief and pain, yet the prompt and willing mind of them that were scourged passed and overcame the nature of the thing, that is to wit, mastering the outward fleshly pain with inward spiritual pleasure. 

A token of God’s favour

And surely this is so true that it may stand for a certain token that a penitent beginneth to profit and grow in grace and favour of God, when he feeleth a pleasure and quickness in his labour and pain taken in prayer, alms-deed, pilgrimage, fasting, discipline, tribulation, affliction and such other spiritual exercise, by which the soul willingly worketh with the body by their own punishment, to purge and rub out the rusty, cankered spots that sin hath defiled them with in the sight of God, and to leave the fewer to be burnt out in the fire of purgatory. And whensoever, as I say, that a man feeleth in this pain a pleasure, he hath a token of great grace and that his penance is pleasant to God. For, as the holy Scripture saith, our Lord loveth a glad giver[7]. And on the other side, whereas one doth such spiritual business with a dulness of spirit and weariness of mind, he doth twice as much, and thereby taketh four times as much pain, sith his bodily pain is relieved with no spiritual rejoice nor comfort. I will not say that his labour is lost, but I dare be bold to say that he profiteth much less with much more pain. 

Comfort

For certain it is that the best souls, and they that have best travailed in spiritual business, find most comfort therein. And, therefore, if they most pleased God that in the bodily pain of their penance took less spiritual pleasure, it should thereof follow that the farther a man proceeded in the perfection of spiritual exercise, in the worse case he were. Which can in no wise be so, sith[8] that we see the holy apostles and other holy men and women, the better that they were, the more pleasure they perceived in their fleshly afflictions, either put unto them by God or taken by themselves for God’s sake.

Footnotes

[1] ween : To think, surmise, suppose, conceive, believe, consider.

[2] i.e., rough, rugged.

[3] How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leadeth to life: and few there are that find it! Matt. vii. 14.

[4] Matt. xi. 30.

[5] Would you like to see an illustration?

[6] And they indeed went from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were accounted worthy to suffer reproach for the name of Jesus. Acts. v. 41.

[7] 2 Cor. ix. 7.

[8] i.e., since, seeing that.

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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.