The Four Last Things - by St Thomas More : Of Pride (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 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 2)

As for all other kinds of pride, rising of beauty, strength, wit or cunning, me thinketh that the remembrance of death may right easily mend it, sith that they be such things as shall shortly by death lose all their gloss, the owners wot [not how] near, how soon.

Hypocrites

And as lightly may there by the same consideration be cured the pride of these foolish proud hypocrites, which are yet more fools than they that plainly follow the ways of the world and pleasure of their body. For they, though they go to the devil therefor, yet somewhat they take therefor. 

Vainglory

These mad hypocrites be so mad that, where they sink in hell as deep as the other, yet in reward of all their pain taken in this world, they be content to take the vain praise of the people, a blast of wind of their mouths, which yet percase[1] praise them not, but call them as they be. And if they do [praise them], yet themselves hear it not often. And sure they be that within short time death shall stop their ears, and the clods cover all the mouths that praise them. Which if they well and advisedly considered, they would, I ween turn their appetites from the laud[2] of silly mortal men, and desire to deserve their thanks and commendation of God only, whose praise can never die.

Ambition.

Now the high mind of proud fortune, rule and authority, Lord God, how slight a thing it would seem to him that would often and deeply remember that death shall shortly take away all this royalty, and his glory shall, as Scripture saith, never walk with him into his grave[3], but he that overlooketh[4] every man, and no man may be so homely[5] [as] to come too near him, but thinketh that he doth much for them whom he vouchsafeth to take by the hand or beck upon[6], whom so many men dread and fear, so many wait upon – he shall within a few years, and only God knoweth within how few days, when death arresteth him, have his dainty body [turned] into stinking carrion, be borne out of his princely palace, laid in the ground and there left alone, where every lewd[7] lad will be bold to tread on his head. Would not, ween ye, the deep consideration of this sudden change, so surely to come and so shortly to come, withdraw the wind that puffeth us up in pride upon the solemn sight of worldly worship ? 

A stage play.

If thou shouldest perceive that one were earnestly proud of the wearing of a gay golden gown, while the lorel[8] playeth the lord in a stage play, wouldest thou not laugh at his folly, considering that thou art very sure that when the play is done he shall go walk a knave in his old coat? Now thou thinkest thyself wise enough, while thou art proud in thy player’s garment, and forgettest that, when thy play is done, thou shalt go forth as poor as he. Nor thou rememberest not that thy pageant may happen to be done as soon as his.

All prisoners.

We shall leave the examples of plays and players, which be too merry for this matter. I shall put thee a more earnest image of our condition, and that not a feigned similitude, but a very true fashion and figure of our worshipful estate. Mark this well, for of this thing we be very sure, that old and young, man and woman, rich and poor, prince and page, all the while we live in this world we be but prisoners, and be within a sure prison, out of which there can no man escape[9]. And in worse case be we than those that be taken and imprisoned for theft. For they, albeit their heart heavily harkeneth after the sessions, yet have they some hope either to break prison the while, or to escape there by favour, or after condemnation some hope of pardon. 

All condemned to death.

But we stand all in other plight; we be very sure that we be already condemned to death, some one, some other, none of us can tell what death we be condemned to, but surely can we all tell that die we shall. And clearly know we that of this death we get no manner of pardon. For the King, by whose high sentence we be condemned to die, would not of this death pardon His own Son. As for escaping, no man can look for [it]. The prison is large, and many prisoners in it, but the jailer can lose none ; he is so present in every place that we can creep into no corner out of his sight. For as holy David saith[10] to this jailer: “Whither shall I go from thy spirit, or whither shall I flee from Thy face ?” as who saith : No whither. There is no remedy therefore, but as condemned folk and remedyless in this prison of the earth we drive forth awhile, some bounden to a post, some wandering abroad, some in the dungeon, some in the upper ward, some building them bowers and making palaces in the prison, some weeping, some laughing, some labouring, some playing, some singing, some chiding, some fighting, no man almost remembering in what case he standeth till that suddenly, nothing less looking for, young, old, poor and rich, merry and sad, prince, page, pope and poor soul-priest, now one, now other, sometimes a great rabble at once, without order, without respect of age or of estate, all stripped stark naked and shifted out in a sheet, be put to death in divers wise in some corner of the same prison, and even there thrown in a hole, and either worms eat him underground or crows above. 

Builders.

Now come forth, ye proud prisoner, for I wis[11] ye be no better, look ye never so high, when ye build in the prison a palace for your blood, is it not a great royalty if it be well considered ? Ye build the tower of Babylon in a corner of the prison, and be very proud thereof, and sometimes the jailer beateth it down again with shame. Ye leave your lodging for your own blood, and the jailer, when ye be dead, setteth a strange prisoner in your building, and thrusteth your blood into some other cabin. 

Arms of ancestry. 

Ye be proud of the arms of your ancestors set up in the prison, and all your pride is because ye forget that it is a prison. For if ye took the matter aright, the place a prison, yourself a prisoner condemned to death, from which ye cannot escape, ye would reckon this gear as worshipful as if a gentleman thief, when he should go to Tyburn, would leave for a memorial the arms of his ancestors painted on a post in Newgate. Surely, I suppose that if we took not [the] true figure for a fantasy, but reckoned it, as it is indeed, the very express fashion and manner of all our estate, men would bear themselves not much higher in their hearts for any rule or authority that they bear in this world, which they may well perceive to be indeed no better but one prisoner bearing a rule among the remnant, as the tapster doth in the Marshalsea[12]; or, at the uttermost, one so put in trust with the jailer, that he is half an under-jailer over his fellows till the sheriff and the cart come for him.

Footnotes

[1] Perhaps. 

[2] Praise.

[3] Ps. xlviii. 18.

[4] looketh down on.

[5] familiar (i.e., show such familiarity).

[6] Nod to.

[7] Common, ordinary; of low social status. Also: ill-bred, ill-mannered, vulgar, uncouth. Obsolete.

[8] A worthless fellow.

[9] This passage derives a very deep interest from the reflection that the author of it was to spend fifteen months in the Tower and be thence led out to execution.

[10] Psalm cxxxviii. 7.

[11] I wis = iwis: Certainly, assuredly, indeed, truly. The writing with capital I, and separation of the two elements, have led later authors to understand and use it as equivalent to I wot, I know, as if a present of I wist. OED.

[12] Prison in Southwark.

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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.