The Four Last Things - by St Thomas More : Of Gluttony (Pt 1 of 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 Gluttony (Pt 1 of 2)

Now have we to consider how this part of our medicine, that is to wit the remembrance of death, may be applied to the cure and help of gluttony, which is a beastly sickness and an old sore. For this was in the beginning joined with pride in our mother Eve, who beside the proud appetite that she had to be by knowledge made in manner a goddess, yet took she such delight also in the beholding of the apple that she longed to feel the taste. And so entered death at the windows of our own eyes into the house of our heart, and there burnt up all the goodly building that God had wrought therein. 

The wickedness of the eye

And surely so falleth it daily that the eye is not only the cook and the tapster to bring the ravenous appetite of delicate meals and drink into the belly, so far forth that men commonly say, It were better fill his belly than his eye, and many men mind it not at all till they see the meat on the board ; but the eye is also the hand to bring the heart to the desire of the foul, beastly pleasure. . . . And therefore saith the holy prophet : “Turn away thine eyes from the beholding of vanities.”[1] Now, as I began to say, sith it is so that this old sore of gluttony was the vice and sin by which our forefathers, eating the forbidden fruit, fell from the felicity of paradise and from their immortality into death and into the misery of this wretched world, well ought we to hate and abhor it, although there should now no new harm grow thereof. But so it is now that so much harm daily groweth thereof new, not to the soul only but to the body also, that, if we love either, we see great cause to have it in hatred and abomination, though it had never done us hurt of old. For hard it is to say whether this vice be more pestilent to the body or to the soul ; surely very pestilent to both. And as to the soul, no man doubteth how deadly it is

Gorbellied gluttony

For sith the body rebelleth alway against the spirit[2], what can be more venomous and mortal to the soul than gorbellied[3] gluttony, which so pampereth the body that the soul can have no rule thereof, but carrieth it forth like an headstrong horse till he have cast his master in the mire. And if the corruptible body be, as the wise man saith[4], burdenous[5] to the soul, with what a burden chargeth he the soul that so pampereth his paunch that he is scant[6] able [to] bear the burden of his own belly though it were taken from the place[7] and laid upon his back !

The body a prison of the soul

If the body be to the soul a prison, how strait a prison maketh he the body, that stuffeth it so full of riffraff that the soul can have no room to stir itself, but as one were to set hand and foot in a strait stocks that he can neither stand up nor lie down, so the soul is so stifled in such a stuffed body that it can nothing wield itself that appertaineth unto his part, but is, as it were, enclosed not in a prison but in a grave, dead in manner already for any good operation that the unwieldy body can suffer it to do. And yet is gluttony to the soul not so pernicious and pestilent for the hurt it doth itself as for the harm and destruction that is done by such other vices as commonly come thereon.

Sloth and lechery the daughters of gluttony

For no man doubteth but sloth and lechery be the daughters of gluttony. And then needs must it be a deadly enemy to the soul, that bringeth forth two such daughters, of which either one killeth the soul eternally – I mean not the substance of the soul but the wealth and felicity of the soul, without which it were better never to have been born. What good can the great glutton do with his belly standing a strout like a tabour[8] and his noll totty[9] with drink, but balk up his brewes in the midst of his matters[10], or lie down and sleep like a swine ? And who doubteth but that the body delicately[11] fed maketh, as the rumour saith, an unchaste bed ?

Inconveniences following the gluttonous feasts

Of our glutton-feasts followeth not only sloth and lechery but oftentimes lewd and perilous talking, foolhardiness, back-biting, debate, variance, chiding, wrath and fighting, with readiness to all manner mischief running to ruin for lack of circumspection, which can never be without soberness. The holy Scripture rehearseth that in [the] desert the children of Israel, when they had sitten down and well eaten and drunken, then rose they up and played the idolaters, whereof by the occasion of gluttony the wrath of God fell upon them[12]. Holy Job[13], when his children fell to feasting, feared so greatly that the occasion of gluttony should in their feasts make them fall into foolish talking and blasphemy, that while they were about their feasts he fell to prayer and sacrifice, that God might at his prayer send them grace so to make good cheer that they fell not in the vices usually coming of gluttony. Now, to the body what sin is so noyous[14] ? what sin so shameful ? Is it not a beastly thing to see a man that hath reason so to rule himself that his feet may not bear him, but when he cometh out he weeneth that the sky would fall on his head, and there rolleth and reeleth till he fall down the canal[15], and there lie down till he be taken up and borne to bed as a corpse were borne in [a] bier? And in good faith in my mind much wrong is there done him that any man presumeth to take him up, and that he is not suffered to take his ease all night at his pleasure in the king's highway that is free for every man.

Virtue is pleasant, sin is painful.

Wonder it is that the world is so mad that we had liefer[16] take sin with pain than virtue with pleasure. For, as I said in the beginning and often shall I say, virtue bringeth his pleasure, and vice is not without pain. And yet speak I not of the world to come, but of the life present. If virtue were all painful and vice all pleasant, yet sith death shall shortly finish both the pain of the one and the pleasure of the other, great madness were it if we would not rather take a short pain for the winning of everlasting pleasure, than a short pleasure for the winning of everlasting pain. But now if it be true, as it is indeed, that our sin is painful and our virtue pleasant, how much is it then a more madness to take sinful pain in this world, that shall win us eternal pain in hell, rather than pleasant virtue in this world, that shall win us eternal pleasure in heaven.

If thou ween that I teach thee wrong when I say that in virtue is pleasure, and in sin is pain, I might prove it by many plain texts of holy Scripture, as by the words of the Psalmist, where he saith : “I have had as great pleasure in the way of Thy testimonies as in all manner of riches.”[17] And Solomon saith of virtue thus: “Her ways are all full of pleasure and her paths are peaceable.”[18] And further he saith : “The way of the wicked is as it were hedged with thorns, but the way of the righteous is without stumbling.”[19] “And we be wearied (shall the wretches say) in the way of wickedness ; we have walked in hard and cumbrous ways.”[20] And the wise man saith : “The way of the sinners is set or laid with stones, but in the end is hell, darkness and pains.”[21] But to tell us worldly wretches the words of holy writ is but a dull prose. For our beastly taste savoureth not the sweetness of heavenly things. And as for experience, we can none get of the one part, that is to wit the pleasure that is in virtue. The other part we cannot perceive for bitter for the corruption of our custom, whereby sour seemeth us sweet. But yet if we would consider our sin well with the dependents thereupon, we should not fail to perceive the painful bitterness of our valued sweet sin. For no man is so mad that [he] will reckon that thing for pleasant that hath with little pleasure much pain. For so might we call a man of Inde white because of his white teeth.

Footnotes

[1] Ps. cxviii. 37.

[2] For the flesh lusteth against the spirit: and the spirit against the flesh; for these are contrary one to another: so that you do not the things that you would. Gal. v. 16.

[3] Big-bellied. Having a protuberant belly; corpulent.

[4] For the corruptible body is a load upon the soul, and the earthly habitation presseth down the mind that museth upon many things. Wisd. ix. 15.

[5] Burdensome.

[6] Scarcely.

[7] i.e., its place.

[8] Blown out like a drum.

[9] His head shaky.

[10] Belch up his broth in the midst of his doings (Gottschalk).

[11] Intemperately.

[12] The people sat down to eat, and drink, and they rose up to play: Exod. xxxii.6.

[13] Job. i. 

[14] Noisome (disagreeable, unpleasant, offensive).

[15] i.e., ditch.

[16] i.e., rather.

[17] Ps. cxviii. 14.

[18] Prov. iii. 17.

[19] Ibid. xv. 19.

[20] Wisd. v. 7.

[21] Ecclus xxl, 1 1.

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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.