The Four Last Things - by St Thomas More : The Remembrance of Death (Pt 2)

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

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 shown as [ ] 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 Remembrance of Death (Pt 2)

Other things are there which will peradventure seem no great matter to them that feel them not. But unto him that shall lie in that case they shall be tedious out of all measure. 

Troubles in death

The Four Last Things.Maarten van Heemskerck (1565). Royal Collection.

Have ye not ere this in a sore sickness felt it very grievous to have folk babble to you, and namely such things as ye should make answer to when it was a pain to speak? Think ye not now that it will be a gentle pleasure when we lie dying, all our body in pain, all our mind in trouble, our soul in sorrow, our heart all in dread, while our life walketh awayward, while our death draweth toward, while the devil is busy about us, while we lack stomach and strength to bear any one of so manifold heinous troubles ; will it not be, as I was about to say, a pleasant thing to see before thine eyes and hear at thine ears a rabble of fleshly friends, or rather of flesh-flies, skipping about thy bed and thy sick body, like ravens about thy corpse, now almost carrion, crying to thee on every side : “What shall I have? What shall I have?” 

Children. Wife. Executors.

Then shall come thy children and cry for their parts. Then shall come thy sweet wife and where in thine health haply she spake thee not one sweet word in six weeks, now shall she call thee sweet husband, and weep with much work, and ask thee what shall she have. Then shall thine executors ask for the keys, and ask what money is owing thee, ask what substance thou hast, and ask where thy money lieth. And while thou liest in that case, their words shall be so tedious that thou wilt wish all that they ask for upon a red fire, so thou mightest lie one half hour in rest.

The devil.

Now is there one thing which a little I touched before, I wot not whether more painful or more perilous – the marvellous intentive business and solicitation of our ghostly enemy the devil, not only in one fashion present but surely never absent from him that draweth towards death. For sith that of his pestilent envy conceived from the beginning of man’s creation, by which he lay in await to take our first mother Eve in a train[1], and thereby drawing our former father Adam into the breach of God’s behest, found the means, not without the grievous increase of his own damnation, to deprive us of paradise and bereave us our immortality, making us into subjection not only of temporal death, but also of his eternal tormentry, were we not, by the great bounty of God and Christ’s painful passion, restored to the possibility of everlasting life, he never ceased since to run about like a ramping lion, looking whom he might devour[2], it can be no doubt but he most busily travaileth in that behalf at the time that he perceiveth us about to depart hence. For well he knoweth that then he either winneth a man for ever, or for ever loseth him. For have he him never so fast afore, yet if he break from him then, he can after his death never get him again. 

Purgatory.

Well he may peradventure have him as his jailer in his prison of purgatory, for the time of his punition temporal. But as he would have him for his perpetual slave, shall he never have him after, how sure soever he had him afore, if he get from him at the time of his death. For so lost he suddenly the thief that hung on the right hand of Christ. And on the other side, if he catch a man fast at the time of his death, he is sure to keep him for ever. For, as the Scripture saith, wheresoever the stone falleth, there shall it abide[3]. And sith he knoweth this for very surety, and is of malice so venomous and envious that he had liefer[4] double his own pain than suffer us to escape from pain, he, when we draw to death, doeth his uttermost device to bring us to damnation, never ceasing to minister by subtle and incogitable[5] means, first unlawful longing to live, horror to go gladly to God at his calling.

The devil’s temptations at the time of death

Then giveth he some false glade[6] of escaping that sickness, and thereby putteth in our mind a love yet and cleaving to the world, keeping of our goods, loathsomeness of Christ, sloth toward good works. And if we be so far gone that we see we cannot recover, then he casteth in our minds presumption and security of salvation as a thing well won by our own works ; of which, if we have any done well, he casteth them into our minds with over great liking, and thereby withdraweth as from the haste of doing any more, as a thing that either needeth not or may be done by our executors. And, instead of sorrow for our sins and care of heaven, he putteth us in mind of provision for some honourable burying, so many torches, so many tapers, so many black gowns, so many merry mourners laughing under black hoods, and a gay hearse, with the delight of goodly and honourable funerals, in which the foolish sick man is sometime occupied, as though he thought that he should stand in a window and see how worshipfully he shall be brought to church.

And thus inveigleth he them that either be good or but meetly bad.

Wicked sinners

But as for those that he hath known for special wretches, whose whole life hath in effect been all bestowed in his service, whom he hath brought into great and horrible sins, by the horror whereof he hath kept them from confession – these folk at their end he handleth on another fashion. For into their minds he bringeth their shameful sins by heap, and by the abominable sight thereof draweth them into desperation. For the agrieving whereof our Lord after their deserving suffereth him to shew himself to them for their more discomfort, in some fearful figure and terrible likeness, by the beholding whereof they conceive sometime despair of salvation, and yield themselves as captives quick[7], beginning their hell in this world, as hath appeared by the words and wretched behaviour of many that of a shameful sinful life have died and departed with heavy desperate death. Now death being such as I have described, or rather much more horrible than any man can describe, it is not to be doubted but, if we busily remembered the terror and grief thereof, it must needs be so bitter to the fleshly mind that it could not fail to take away the vain delight of all worldly vanities.

Let from the consideration of death.

But the thing that letteth[8] us to consider death in his kind, and to take great profit that would arise of the remembrance thereof, is that for by the hope of long life we look upon death either [as] so far off that we see him not at all, or but a slight and uncertain sight, as a man may see a thing so far off that he wotteth not whether it be a bush or a beast. And surely so fare we by death, looking thereat afar off, through a great long space of as many years as we hope to live. And those we imagine many, and perilously and foolishly beguile ourselves. For likewise as wives would their husbands should ween[9] by the example of Sara, that there were no woman so old but she might have a child, so is there none old man so old but that, as Tully saith, he trusteth to live one year yet. And as for young folk, they look not how many be dead in their own days younger than themselves, but who is the oldest man in the town, and upon his years they make their reckoning. 

An old man cannot live long

Where the wiser way were to reckon that a young man may die soon, and an old man cannot live long, but within a little while die the one may, the other must. And with this reckoning shall they look upon death much nearer hand, and better perceive him in his own likeness, and thereby take the more fruit of the remembrance and make themselves the more ready thereto.

Footnotes

[1] i.e., stratagem. [train : an act or scheme designed to deceive or entrap, a trick, stratagem, artifice, wile. Also: a lie, a false story. OED 1.b. ?a1400–1838]

[2] Your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, goeth about seeking whom he may devour: 1 Pet. v. 8.

[3] Cf.  If the tree fall to the south, or to the north, in what place soever it shall fall, there shall it be. Ecclesiastes xi. 3.

[4] i.e., rather.

[5] i.e., unimaginable. 

[6] i.e., hope.

[7] i.e., during their lifetime.

[8] i.e., hindereth.

[9] i.e., think.

+       +        +

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.