The Four Last Things - by St Thomas More : The Remembrance of Death (Pt 4)

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 as [ ].

 

👈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 4)

But now consider if it were so that one whole country were born all lepers, which is a sickness rather foul and perilous than painful, or all an whole country born with the falling sickness, so that never any of them had ever in their lives known or heard of either themselves or any other void of those diseases, trow ye that then that they would ever have reckoned them for sickness ? Nay surely, but they would have counted for sickness the colic and the stone, and such other like as come and go. But as for their leprosy and falling evil, they would never account it other than we account hunger or sleep. For as for that that (sic) thy hunger doth thee pleasure when it is fed, so doth some time the itch of a sore leg when thou clawest about the brinks[1].

Our life a continual sicknesses

And thus mayest thou surely see that all our whole life is but a sickness never curable, but as one incurable canker, with continual swaddling and plastering botched up to live as long as we may, and in conclusion, undoubtedly, to die of the same sickness and though there never came other.

Death a nigh neighbour

So that, if thou consider this well, thou mayest look upon death not as a stranger, but as a nigh neighbour. For as the flame is next the smoke, so is death next an incurable sickness, and such is all our life. 

And yet, if this move you little, but that ye think for all this that death is far from you, I will go somewhat near you. Thou reckonest every man near his death when he is dying. Then if thyself be now already dying, how canst thou reckon thyself far from death ? 

Some man saith merrily to his fellow : “Be merry, man ; thou shalt never die as long as thou livest.” And albeit he seemeth to say true, yet saith he more than he can make good. For if that were true, I could make him much merrier, for that he should never die. 

Ye will peradventure marvel of this, but it is ethe[2] to prove. For I think ye will grant me that there is no time after that a man hath once life, but he is either alive or dead. Then will there no man say that one can die, either before he get life or after that he hath lost it, and so hath he no time left to die in, but while he hath life. Wherefore, if we neither die before our life, nor when we be dead already, needs must it follow that we never die but while we live.

We die all the while we live

It is not all one to die and to be dead. Truth it is that we be never dead while we live. And it is, me seemeth, as true not only that we die while we live, but that we die all the while we live. What thmg is dying? Is it any other thing than the passage and going out of this present life ? 

Now tell me then, if thou wert going out of an house, whether art thou going out only when thy foot is on the uttermost inch of the threshold, thy body half out of the door, or else when thou beginnest to set the first foot forward to go out, in what place of the house soever ye stand when ye buskle[3] forward? I would say that ye he going out of the house from the first foot ye set forward to go forth. No man will think other, as I suppose, but all is one reason in going hence and coming hither. Now if one were coming hither to this town, he were not only coming hither while he were entering in at the gate, but all the way also from whence he came hitherward. Nor in likewise in going hence from this town, a man is not only going from this town while he hath his body in the gate going outward, but also while he setteth his foot out of his host's house to go forward. And therefore, if a man met him by the way, far yet within the town, and asked him whither he were going, he should truly answer that he were going out of the town, all[4] were the town so long that he had ten miles to go ere he came at the gate.

And surely me thinketh that in likewise a man is not only dying, that is to say, going in his way out of this life, while he lieth drawing on, but also all the while that he is going toward his end, which is by all the whole time of his life, since the first moment to the last finished, that is, to wit, sith the first moment in which he began to live until the last moment of his life, or rather the first in which he is full dead.

Now if this he thus, as me seemeth that reason proveth, a man is always dying from afore his birth ; and every hour of our age, as it passeth by, cutteth his own length out of our life, and maketh it shorter by so much, and our death so much the nearer. Which measuring of time and minishing of life, with approaching toward death, is nothing else but, from our beginning to our ending, one continual dying ; so that wake we, sleep we, eat we, drink we, mourn we, sing we, in what wise soever live we, all the same while die we.

So that we never ought to look toward death as a thing far off, considering that although he made no haste toward us, yet we never cease ourselves to make haste toward him.

Footnotes

[1] i.e., when thou scratchest near the precipice.

[2] i.e., easy.

[3] Bustle.

[4] i.e., although.

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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.