The Four Last Things - by St Thomas More : Of Pride (Pt 1)

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.

Of Pride (Pt 1)

Now sith I have somewhat laid afore thy face the bodily pains of death, the troubles and vexations spiritual that come therewith by thy ghostly enemy the devil, the unrestful encumbrance of thy fleshly friends, the uncertainty of thyself how soon this dreadful time shall come, that thou art ever sick of that incurable sickness, by which, if none other come, thou shalt yet in few years undoubtedly die, and yet moreover that thou art already dying, and ever hast been since thou first begannest to live, let us now make some proof of this one part of our medicine, how the remembrance of death in this fashion considered in his kind will work with us to the preservation of our souls from every kind of sin, beginning at the sin that is the very head and root or all sins, that is to wit pride, the mischievous mother of all manner of vice. 

The children of pride

I have seen many vices ere this that at the first seemed far from pride, and yet, well considered to the uttermost, it would well appear that of that root they sprang. As for wrath and envy, [they] be the known children of pride, as rising of a high estimation of our self. But [what would] seem farther from pride than drunken gluttony ? And yet shall ye find more that drink themselves sow drunk[1] of pride to be called good fellows than for lust of the drink itself. 

Hypocrites. Spiritual pride.

So spreadeth this cursed root of pride his branches into all other kinds, besides his proper malice for his own part, not only in high mind[2] of fortune, rule and authority, beauty, wit, strength, learning, or such other gifts of God, but also the false pride of hypocrites that fain to have the virtues that they lack, and the perilous pride of them that for their few spotted[3] virtues, not without the mixture of other mortal vices, take themselves for quick[4] saints on earth, proudly judging the lives of their even[5] Christians, disdaining other men’s virtue, envying other men’s praise, bearing implacable anger where they perceive themselves not accepted and set by[6] after the worthiness of their own estimation. 

Which kind of spiritual pride, and thereupon following envy and wrath, is so much the more pestilent in that it carrieth with it a blindness almost incurable save God’s great mercy. For the lecher knoweth he doth naught[7], and hath remorse thereof; the glutton perceiveth his own fault and sometime thinketh it beastly; the slothful body misliketh his dulness[8], and thereby is moved to mend ; but this kind of pride, that in his own opinion taketh himself for holy, is farthest from all recovery. For how can he mend his fault that taketh it for none, that weeneth[9] all is well that he doth himself, and nothing that any man doth else ? that covereth his purpose with the pretext of some holy purpose that he will never begin while he liveth ? taketh his envy for an holy desire to get before his neighbour in virtue, and taketh his wrath and anger for an holy zeal of justice ? And thus, while he proudly liketh his vices, he is out all the way to mend them[10]. 

In so far forth that I surely think there be some who had in good faith made the best merchandise[11] that ever they made in their lives for their own souls, if they had changed those spiritual vices of pride, wrath and envy, for the beastly carnal sins of gluttony, sloth and lechery. Not that these three were good, which be undoubtedly damnable, but for the like as God said in the Apocalypse unto the Church of Laodicea, “Thou art neither hot nor cold, but lukewarm ; I would thou were cold, that thou mightest wax warm,”[12] signifying that if he were in open and manifest sins he would have more occasion to call fervently for grace and help ; so if these folk had these carnal sins they could not be ignorant of their own faults. 

God alway knocking

For, as St Paul saith[13], the fleshly sins be eth[14] to perceive, and so should they have occasion to call for grace and wax good, where now by their pride, taking themselves for good where they be naught[15], they be far from all occasion of amendment, saving the knocking of our Lord, which always standeth at the door of man’s heart and knocketh[16], whom I pray God we may give ear unto and let him in. And one of His good and gracious knockings is the putting us in remembrance of death, which remembrance, as I have said, let us see what stead it may stand us in against this cursed sin of pride. And surely against this last branch of pride, of such as repute themselves for holy with the disdain of others, and an inward liking of all their spiritual vices, which they commend unto themselves under the cloak and shadow of some kind of virtue, most hard it is to take remedy by the remembrance of death, forasmuch as they reckon themselves thereby ready to go straight to heaven. But yet if they consider the labour and solicitation of our ghostly enemy, the devil, that shall at the time of their death be busy to destroy the merits and good works of all their life before, and that his subtlest craft and most venomous dart, and the most for them to avoid, shall be under the colour of a faithful hope of heaven, as a thing more than due to their own holiness, to send them wretchedly to the fire of hell for their sinful and wilful blind presumption. I say the remembrance and consideration of this perilous point and fearful jeopardy likely to fall on them at the time of their death is a right effectual ointment long before in their life to wear away the web that covereth the eyes of their souls in such wise as they cannot with a sure sight look upon their own conscience.

Footnotes

[1] sow drunk : Certain sources suggest that in the Middle Ages there were four distinct phases of intoxication. A man was ‘sheep drunk’ when he was merry and easily handled; then ‘lion drunk’ when he was aggressive and boastful; ‘ape drunk’ when he behaved in a silly, irresponsible manner and finally ‘sow drunk’ when he fell to the ground in an alcoholic stupor. See e.g., Sow-drunk or Sheep-drunk.

[2] conceitedness.

[3] i.e., corrupted.

[4] i.e., living.

[5] i.e., consistent fellow Christians.

[6] i.e., esteemed.

[7] i.e., evil.

[8] Sluggishness, inertness, inactivity.

[9] i.e., thinketh.

[10] he has no way to amend them.

[11] merchandise: here the action or business of buying and selling goods or commodities (obsolete).

[12] Apoc. iii. 15.

[13] Gal. v. 19-21.

[14] i.e., easy.

[15] bad.

[16] Apoc. iii. 20.

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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. 30-31.30-31.