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

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 author did not finish the work and this posts represents the conclusion.

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 2 of 2)

Now if thou shouldest for a little itch claw thyself suddenly deep into the flesh, thou wouldest not call thy clawing pleasant, though it liked thee a little in the beginning. But so is it that for the little itching pleasure of sin we claw ourselves suddenly to the hard bones, and win thereby not a little pain, but an intolerable torment. Which thing I might prove, beginning at pride, in every kind of sin, saving that the digression would be over long. For the abridging whereof let us consider it but in the self-same sin that we have in hand.

That gluttony is painful

The pleasure that the glutton hath in his viand can be no longer any very pleasure than while it is joined with hunger, that is to say with pain. For the very pleasure of eatnig is but the minishing of his pain in hungering. Now all that ever is eaten after, in which gluttony beginneth, is in effect pain altogether. And then the head acheth and the stomach gnaweth, and the next meal is eaten without appetite, with gorge upon gorge and grief upon grief, till the gorbelly be compelled to cast up all again, and then fall to a rare[1] supper.

Gluttony disfigureth the body

If God would never punish gluttony, yet bringeth it punishment enough with itself; it disfigurelh the face, discoloureth the skin, and disfashioneth the body, it maketh the skin tawny, the body fat and fobby[2], the face drowsy, the nose dropping, the mouth spitting, the eyes bleared, the teeth rotten, the head hanging, and the feet tottering, and finally no part left in right course and frame. And beside the daily dulness and grief that the unwieldy body feeleth by the stuffing of his paunch so full, it bringeth in by leisure the dropsy, the colic, the stone, the strangury[3], the gout, the cramp, the palsy, the pox, the pestilence and the apoplexy – diseases and sickness of such kind that either shortly destroy us, or else, that worse is, keep us in such pain and torment that the longer we live the more wretched we be.

Gluttony oppresseth nature

Howbeit very long lasteth no man with the surfeits of gluttony. For undoubtedly nature, which is sustained with right little – as well appeared by the old fathers that so many years lived in desert with herbs only and roots – is very sore oppressed and in manner. overwhelmed with the great weight and burden of much and divers viands, and so much laboureth to master the meat and to divide and sunderly to send it into all parlies of the body, and there to turn it into the like and retain it, that she is by the force and great resistance of so much meat as she hath to work upon (of which every part laboureth to conserve and keep his own nature and kind such as it is), forewearied and overcome and giveth it over except it be holpen by some outward aid. 

Potions

And this driveth us of necessity to have so much recourse to medicines, to pills, potions, plasters, clysters[4] and suppositories ; and yet all too little, our gluttony is so great and therewith so divers that while one meat digesteth another lieth and putrefieth, and ever we desire to have some help to keep the body in health. But when we be counselled to live temperately, and forbear our delicates[5] and our gluttony, that will we not hear of, but fain would we have some medicine as purgations and vomits to pull down and avoid that we cram in too much.

Plutarch

And in this we fare, as the great moral philosopher Plutarch saith, like a lewd[6] master of a ship that goeth not about to see the ship tight and sure, but letteth by his lewdness the ship fall on a leak, and then careth not yet to stop the chinks, but set more men to the pump rather with much travail and great peril to draw it dry than with little labour and great surety to keep it dry. Thus fare we, saith Plutarch, that through intemperate living drive ourselves in sickness and botch us up with physic, where we might with sober diet and temperance have less need of [physic] and keep ourselves in health.

If we see men die some dear year by famine, we thereof make a great matter, we fall to procession, we pray for plenty, and reckon the world at an end. But whereas yearly there dieth in good years great people of gluttony, thereof we take none heed at all, but rather impute the blame to the sickness whereof they die, than to the gluttony whereof the sickness cometh.

And if there be a man slain of a stroke, there is, as reason is, much speech made thereof – the coroner sitteth, the quest[7] is charged, the verdict given, the felony founden, the doer indicted, the process sued, the felon arraigned and dieth for the deed. And yet if men would ensearch how many be slain with weapon, and how many eat and drink themselves to death, there should be found, as Solomon saith[8], more dead of the cup and the kitchen than of the dent of sword, and thereof is no words made at all.

Gluttons kill themselves

Now if a man willingly kill himself with a knife, the world wondereth thereupon, and, as well worthy is, he is indicted of his own death, his goods forfeited, and his corpse cast out on a dung hill, his body never buried in Christian burial. These gluttons daily kill themselves [with] their own hands, and no man findeth fault but carrieth his carrion corpse into the choir, and with much solemn service burieth the body boldly at the high altar, when they have all their life, as the apostle saith[9], made their belly their god, and liked to know none other, abusing not only the name of Christian men, preferring their belly joy before all the joys of heaven, but also abusing the part and office of a natural man and reasonable creature.

Gluttons live to eat

For whereas nature and reason sheweth us that we should eat but for to live, these gluttons are so glutted in the beastly pleasure of their taste that they would not wish to live if it were not to eat. 

But surely wisdom were it for these gluttons well and effectually to consider that, as St Paul saith[10], meats for the belly, and the belly to the meat ; but God shall destroy both the meat and the belly.

Now should they remember and think upon the painful time of death, in which the hands shall not be able to feed the mouth, and the mouth that was wont to pour in by the pottle[11] and cram in the flesh by the handfuls, shall scant be able to take in three drops with a spoon, and yet spew it out again.

Oft have they had a sick drunken head and slept themselves sober, but then shall they feel a swimming and aching in their drunken head, when the dazing of death shall keep all sweet sleep out of their watery eyes. Oft have they fallen in the mire, and thence borne to bed ; but now shall they fall in the bed, and from thence laid and left in the mire till Gabriel blow them up.

Whereas these considerations much ought to move any man, yet specially should it so much the more move those gluttons in how much that they may well wit that their manner of living must needs accelerate this dreadful day and draw it shortly to them, albeit that by course of nature in temperate diet, it might seem many years off. Which thing, if these intemperate would well and advisedly remember, I would ween verily it would not fail to make them more moderate in their living, and utterly flee such outrageous riot and pestilent excess.

Footnotes

[1] Light.

[2] = foggy: II.6.a. a1529– Of a person, animal, part of the body, etc.: unhealthily fat, flabby; bloated; puffy; (of flesh, fat, etc.) soft or spongy in consistency. Now archaic and rare. OED.

[3] A disease of the urinary organs characterized by slow and painful emission of urine; also the condition of slow and painful urination

[4] A medicine injected into the rectum, to empty or cleanse the bowels, to afford nutrition, etc.; an injection, enema.

[5] A delicious or choice food; a favoured dish. 

[6] Of a person, action, etc.: bad, wicked, unprincipled; good-for-nothing, worthless. Obsolete (archaic in later use).

[7] i.e., inquest.

[8] Be not greedy in any feasting, and pour not out thyself upon any meat: For in many meats there will be sickness, and greediness will turn to choler.  34 By surfeiting many have perished: but he that is temperate, shall prolong life. Ecclus xxxvii. 32-34.

[9] Phil. iii. 19.

[10]  Cor. vi. 13,.

[11] A pot or tankard. A unit of capacity used chiefly for liquids (but also for corn and other dry goods, and rarely for butter), equal to half a gallon (approx. 2.3 litres). Now historical.

Of Sloth

Of the mortal sin of sloth men make a small matter. Sloth is a sin so common, and no notable act therein that is accounted for heinous and abominable in the estimation of the world, as is in theft, manslaughter, false forswearing, or treason, with any of which every man would be loth to be defamed, for the worldly perils that do depend thereupon, that therefore of sloth there is no man ashamed, but we take it as for a laughing matter and a sport.

But surely, sith it is a great capital sin in deed, the less that we set thereby the more perilous it is, for the less we go about to amend it.

Now to the intent that we do not deadly deceive ourselves, it is necessary that we consider well the weight. Which, if we do, we shall find it far greater than we would before have weened.

Two points requisite to salvation

There are, ye wot well, two points requisite unto salvation, that is to wit the declining or going: aside from evil, and the doing of good[1]. Now whereas in the first part there are all the other six to be eschewed, that is to wit pride, envy, wrath, luttony, covetise and lechery ; the other part, that is the one-half of our way to heaven, even sloth alone is able to destroy.

Footnotes

[1] Ps. xxxiii ; i Peter iii.

CONCLUSION 

Sir Thomas More wrote no farther of this work which remains unfinished.

Sancte Thoma 

Ora pro nobis.

+       +        +

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.