Thomas More - Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation
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Thomas More >> Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation
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22 DIALOGUE OF COMFORT AGAINST TRIBULATION
by St. Thomas More
with modifications to obsolete language by Monica Stevens
______________________________
PUBLISHED 1951
BY SHEED AND WARD, LTD.
110/111 FLEET STREET,
LONDON, E.C.4
AND
SHEED AND WARD, INC.
830 BROADWAY,
NEW YORK, 3
______________________________
NOTE
This edition of the Dialogue of Comfort has been transcribed from
the 1557 version as it appears in Everyman's Library. The Everyman
edition is heartily recommended to readers who would like to taste
the dialogue in its original form.
The first plan was to change only the spelling. It soon became
evident that the punctuation would have to be changed to follow
present usage. The longest sentences were then broken up into two
or three, and certain others were rearranged into a word order
more like that of today. Nothing was omitted, however, and nothing
was added except relative pronouns, parts of "to be," and other
such neutral connectives. Finally, obsolete words were changed to
more familiar equivalents except when they were entirely clear and
too good to lose. Thus "wot" became "know" but "gigglot" and "galp
up the ghost" were retained. Words that have come to have a quite
different meaning for us, such as "fond" and "lust" were replaced
by less ambiguous ones--wherever possible, by ones that More
himself used elsewhere.
The text has not been cut or expanded, re-interpreted or edited.
Any transcription seems to involve some interpretation, conscious
or otherwise, but an effort has been made to keep it to a minimum.
Passages that seemed to make no sense have therefore been left
unaltered. If other readers find solutions for them their
suggestions will be welcomed.
This is not in any sense a scholarly piece of work. That would
require a very different method, as well as a far more thorough
knowledge of sixteenth-century English. It would be a most
commendable undertaking, but it might result in an edition for the
learned. This one is for everyone who has the two essentials,
faith and intelligence, presupposed by Anthony in Chapter II.
MONICA STEVENS
Middlebury, Vermont.
Feast of St. Benedict, 1950.
______________________________
BOOK ONE
VINCENT: Who would have thought, O my good uncle, a few years
past, that those in this country who would visit their friends
lying in disease and sickness would come, as I do now, to seek and
fetch comfort of them? Or who would have thought that in giving
comfort to them they would use the way that I may well use to you?
For albeit that the priests and friars be wont to call upon sick
men to remember death, yet we worldly friends, for fear of
discomforting them, have ever had a way here in Hungary of lifting
up their hearts and putting them in good hope of life.
But now, my good uncle, the world is here waxed such, and so great
perils appear here to fall at hand, that methinketh the greatest
comfort a man can have is when he can see that he shall soon be
gone. And we who are likely long to live here in wretchedness have
need of some comforting counsel against tribulation to be given us
by such as you, good uncle. For you have so long lived virtuously,
and are so learned in the law of God that very few are better in
this country. And you have had yourself good experience and assay
of such things as we do now fear, as one who hath been taken
prisoner in Turkey two times in your days, and is now likely to
depart hence ere long.
But that may be your great comfort, good uncle, since you depart to
God. But us of your kindred shall you leave here, a company of
sorry comfortless orphans. For to all of us your good help,
comfort, and counsel hath long been a great stay--not as an uncle
to some, and to others as one further of kin, but as though to us
all you had been a natural father.
ANTHONY: Mine own good cousin, I cannot much deny but what there
is indeed, not only here in Hungary but also in almost all places
in Christendom, such a customary manner of unchristian comforting.
And in any sick man it doth more harm than good, by drawing him in
time of sickness, with looking and longing for life, from the
meditation of death, judgment, heaven, and hell, with which he
should beset much of his time--even all his whole life in his best
health. Yet is that manner of comfort to my mind more than mad when
it is used to a man of mine age. For as we well know that a young
man may die soon, so are we very sure that an old man cannot live
long. And yet there is (as Tully saith) no man so old but that, for
all that, he hopeth yet that he may live one year more, and of a
frail folly delighteth to think thereon and comfort himself
therewith. So other men's words of such comfort, adding more sticks
to that fire, shall (in a manner) quite burn up the pleasant
moisture that should most refresh him--the wholesome dew, I mean,
of God's grace, by which he should wish with God's will to be
hence, and long to be with him in Heaven.
Now, as for your taking my departing from you so heavily (as that
of one from whom you recognize, of your goodness, to have had here
before help and comfort), would God I had done to you and to others
half so much as I myself reckon it would have been my duty to do!
But whensoever God may take me hence, to reckon yourselves then
comfortless, as though your chief comfort stood in me--therein
would you make, methinketh, a reckoning very much as though you
would cast away a strong staff and lean upon a rotten reed. For God
is, and must be, your comfort, and not I. And he is a sure
comforter, who (as he said unto his disciples) never leaveth his
servants comfortless orphans, not even when he departed from his
disciples by death. But he both sent them a comforter, as he had
promised, the Holy Spirit of his Father and himself, and he also
made them sure that to the world's end he would ever dwell with
them himself. And therefore, if you be part of his flock and
believe his promise, how can you be comfortless in any tribulation,
when Christ and his Holy Spirit, and with them their inseparable
Father, if you put full trust and confidence in them, are never
either one finger-breadth of space nor one minute of time from you?
VINCENT: O, my good uncle, even these selfsame words, with which
you prove that because of God's own gracious presence we cannot be
left comfortless, make me now feel and perceive how much comfort we
shall miss when you are gone. For albeit, good uncle, that while
you tell me this I cannot but grant it for true, yet if I had not
now heard it from you, I would not have remembered it, nor would it
have fallen to my mind. And moreover, as our tribulations shall
increase in weight and number, so shall we need not only one such
good word or twain, but a great heap of them, to stable and
strengthen the walls of our hearts against the great surges of this
tempestuous sea.
ANTHONY: Good cousin, trust well in God and he shall provide you
outward teachers suitable for every time, or else shall himself
sufficiently teach you inwardly.
VINCENT: Very well, good uncle, but yet if we would leave the
seeking of outward learning, when we can have it, and look to be
inwardly taught by God alone, then should be thereby tempt God and
displease him. And since I now see the likelihood that when you are
gone we shall be sore destitute of any other like you, therefore
methinketh that God bindeth me of duty to pray you now, good uncle,
in this short time that we have you, that I may learn of you such
plenty of good counsel and comfort, against these great storms of
tribulation with which both I and all mine are sore beaten already,
and now upon the coming of this cruel Turk fear to fall in far
more, that I may, with the same laid up in remembrance, govern and
stay the ship of our kindred and keep it afloat from peril of
spiritual drowning.
You are not ignorant, good uncle, what heaps of heaviness have of
late fallen among us already, with which some of our poor family are
fallen into such dumps that scantly can any such comfort as my poor
wit can give them at all assuage their sorrow. And now, since these
tidings have come hither, so hot with the great Turk's enterprise
into these parts here, we can scantly talk nor think of anything
else than his might and our danger. There falleth so continually
before the eyes of our heart a fearful imagination of this terrible
thing: his mighty strength and power, his high malice and hatred,
and his incomparable cruelty, with robbing, spoiling, burning, and
laying waste all the way that his army cometh; then, killing or
carrying away the people thence, far from home, and there severing
the couples and the kindred asunder, every one far from the other,
some kept in thraldom and some kept in prison and some for a
triumph tormented and killed in his presence; then, sending his
people hither and his false faith too, so that such as are here and
still remain shall either both lose all and be lost too, or be
forced to forsake the faith of our Saviour Christ and fall to the
false sect of Mahomet. And yet--that which we fear more than all
the rest--no small part of our own folk who dwell even here about
us are, we fear, falling to him or already confederated with him.
If this be so, it may haply keep this quarter from the Turk's
invasion. But then shall they that turn to his law leave all their
neighbours nothing, but shall have our goods given them and our
bodies too, unless we turn as they do and forsake our Saviour too.
And then--for there is no born Turk so cruel to Christian folk as
is the false Christian that falleth from the faith--we shall stand
in peril, if we persevere in the truth, to be more hardly handled
and die a more cruel death by our own countrymen at home than if we
were taken hence and carried into Turkey. These fearful heaps of
peril lie so heavy at our hearts, since we know not into which we
shall fortune to fall and therefore fear all the worst, that (as
our Saviour prophesied of the people of Jerusalem) many among us
wish already, before the peril come, that the mountains would
overwhelm them or the valleys open and swallow them up and cover
them.
Therefore, good uncle, against these horrible fears of these
terrible tribulations--some of which, as you know, our house hath
already, and the rest of which we stand in dread of--give us, while
God lendeth you to us, such plenty of your comforting counsel as I
may write and keep with us, to stay us when God shall call you
hence.
ANTHONY: Ah, my good cousin, this is a heavy hearing. And just as
we who dwell here in this part now sorely fear that thing which a
few years ago we feared not at all, so I suspect that ere long they
shall fear it as much who now think themselves very sure because
they dwell further off.
Greece feared not the Turk when I was born, and within a while
afterward that whole empire was his. The great Sultan of Syria
thought himself more than his match, and long since you were born
hath he that empire too. Then hath he taken Belgrade, the fortress
of this realm. And since that hath he destroyed our noble young
goodly king, and now two of them strive for us--our Lord send the
grace that the third dog carry not away the bone from them both!
What of the noble strong city of Rhodes, the winning of which he
counted as a victory against the whole body of Christendom, since
all Christendom was not able to defend that strong town against
him? Howbeit, if the princes of Christendom everywhere would, where
there was need, have set to their hands in time, the Turk would
never have taken any one of all those places. But partly because of
dissensions fallen among ourselves, and partly because no man
careth what harm other folk feel, but each part suffereth the other
to shift for itself, the Turk has in a few years wonderfully
increased and Christendom on the other hand very sorely decayed.
And all this is worked by our wickedness, with which God is not
content.
But now, whereas you desire of me some plenty of comforting things,
which you may put in remembrance, to comfort your company
with--verily, in the rehearsing and heaping of your manifold fears,
I myself began to feel that there would be much need, against so
many troubles, of many comforting counsels. For surely, a little
before you came, as I devised with myself upon the Turk's coming,
it happened that my mind fell suddenly from that to devising upon
my own departing. Now, albeit that I fully put my trust in God and
hope to be a saved soul by his mercy, yet no man is here so sure
that without revelation he may stand clean out of dread. So I
bethought me also upon the pain of hell, and afterward, then, I
bethought me upon the Turk again. And at first methought his terror
nothing, when I compared with it the joyful hope of heaven. Then I
compared it on the other hand with the fearful dread of hell,
casting therein in my mind those terrible fiendish tormentors, with
the deep consideration of that furious endless fire. And methought
that if the Turk with his whole host, and all his trumpets and
timbrels too, were to come to my chamber door and kill me in my
bed, in respect of the other reckoning I would regard him not a
rush. And yet, when I now heard your lamentable words, laying forth
as though it were present before my face that heap of heavy
sorrowful tribulations that (besides those that are already
befallen) are in short space likely to follow, I waxed myself
suddenly somewhat dismayed. And therefore I well approve your
request in this behalf, since you wish to have a store of comfort
beforehand, ready by you to resort to, and to lay up in your heart
as a remedy against the poison of all desperate dread that might
arise from occasion of sore tribulation. And I shall be glad, as my
poor wit shall serve me, to call to mind with you such things as I
before have read, heard, or thought upon, that may conveniently
serve us to this purpose.
I
First shall you, good cousin, understand this: The natural wise men
of this world, the old moral philosophers, laboured much in this
matter. And many natural reasons have they written by which they
might encourage men to set little by such goods--or such hurts,
either--the going and coming of which are the matter and cause of
tribulation. Such are the goods of fortune, riches, favour,
friends, fame, worldly honour, and such other things: or of the
body, as beauty, strength, agility, liveliness, and health. These
things, as you know, coming to us, are matter of worldly wealth.
And, taken from us by fortune or by force or the fear of losing
them, they are matter of adversity and tribulation. For tribulation
seemeth generally to signify nothing else but some kind of grief,
either pain of the body or heaviness of the mind. Now that the body
should not feel what it feeleth, all the wit in the world cannot
bring that about. But that the mind should not be grieved either
with the pain that the body feeleth or with occasions of heaviness
offered and given unto the soul itself, this thing the philosophers
laboured very much about. And many goodly sayings have they toward
strength and comfort against tribulation, exciting men to the full
contempt of all worldly loss and the despising of sickness and all
bodily grief, painful death and all.
Howbeit, indeed, for anything that ever I read in them, I never
could yet find that those natural reasons were ever able to give
sufficient comfort of themselves. For they never stretch so far but
that they leave untouched, for lack of necessary knowledge, that
special point which not only is the chief comfort of all but
without which also all other comforts are nothing. And that point
is to refer the final end of their comfort unto God, and to repute
and take for the special cause of comfort that by the patient
sufferance of their tribulation they shall attain his favour and
for their pain receive reward at his hand in heaven. And for lack
of knowledge of this end, they did, as they needs must, leave
untouched also the very special means without which we can never
attain to this comfort, which is the gracious aid and help of God
to move, stir, and guide us forward in the referring of all our
ghostly comfort--yea, and our worldly comfort too--all unto that
heavenly end. And therefore, as I say, for the lack of these
things, all their comforting counsels are very far insufficient.
Howbeit, though they be far unable to cure our disease of
themselves and therefore are not sufficient to be taken for our
physicians, some good drugs have they yet in their shops. They may
therefore be suffered to dwell among our apothecaries, if their
medicines be made not of their own brains but after the bills made
by the great physician God, prescribing the medicines himself and
correcting the faults of their erroneous recipes. For unless we
take this way with them, they shall not fail to do as many bold
blind apothecaries do who, either for lucre or out of a foolish
pride, give sick folk medicines of their own devising. For
therewith do they kill up in corners many such simple folk as they
find so foolish as to put their lives in the hands of such ignorant
and unlearned Blind Bayards.
We shall therefore neither fully receive these philosophers'
reasons in this matter, nor yet utterly refuse them. But, using
them in such order as may beseem them, we shall fetch the principal
and effectual medicines against these diseases of tribulation from
that high, great, and excellent physician without whom we could
never be healed of our very deadly disease of damnation. For our
necessity in that regard, the Spirit of God spiritually speaketh of
himself to us, and biddeth us give him the honour of all our
health. And therein he thus saith unto us: "Honour thou the
physician, for him hath the high God ordained for thy necessity."
Therefore let us pray that high physician, our blessed Saviour
Christ, whose holy manhood God ordained for our necessity, to cure
our deadly wounds with the medicine made of the most wholesome
blood of his own blessed body. And let us pray that, as he cured
our mortal malady by this incomparable medicine, it may please him
to send us and put in our minds at this time such medicines as may
so comfort and strengthen us in his grace against the sickness and
sorrows of tribulation, that our deadly enemy the devil may never
have the power, by his poisoned dart of murmur, grudge, and
impatience, to turn our short sickness of worldly tribulation into
the endless everlasting death of infernal damnation.
II
Since all our principal comfort must come from God, we must first
presuppose, in him to whom we shall give any effectual comfort with
any ghostly counsel, one ground to begin with, on which all that we
shall build may be supported and stand; that is, the ground and
foundation of faith. Without this, had ready before, all the
spiritual comfort that anyone may speak of can never avail a fly.
For just as it would be utterly vain to lay natural reasons of
comfort to him who hath no wit, so would it undoubtedly be
frustrate to lay spiritual causes of comfort to him who hath no
faith. For unless a man first believe that holy scripture is the
word of God, and that the word of God is true, how can he take any
comfort in that which the scripture telleth him? A man must needs
take little fruit of scripture, if he either believe not that it be
the word of God, or else think that, though it were, it might yet
for all that be untrue! As this faith is more strong or more faint,
so shall the comforting words of holy scripture stand the man in
more stead or less.
This virtue of faith can no man give himself, nor yet any man to
another. But though men may with preaching be ministers unto God
therein; and though a man can, with his own free will, obeying
freely the inward inspiration of God, be a weak worker with
almighty God therein; yet is the faith indeed the gracious gift of
God himself. For, as St. James saith, "Every good gift and every
perfect gift is given from above, descending from the Father of
lights." Therefore, feeling our faith by many tokens very faint,
let us pray to him who giveth it to us, that it may please him to
help and increase it. And let us first say with him in the gospel,
"I believe, good Lord, but help thou the lack of my belief." And
afterwards, let us pray with the apostles, "Lord, increase our
faith." And finally, let us consider, by Christ's saying unto them,
that, if we would not suffer the strength and fervour of our faith
to wax lukewarm--or rather key-cold--and lose its vigour by
scattering our minds abroad about so many trifling things that we
very seldom think of the matters of our faith, we should withdraw
our thought from the respect and regard of all worldly fantasies,
and so gather our faith together into a little narrow room. And
like the little grain of mustard seed, which is by nature hot, we
should set it in the garden of our soul, all weeds being pulled out
for the better feeding of our faith. Then shall it grow, and so
spread up in height that the birds--that is, the holy angels of
heaven--shall breed in our soul, and bring forth virtues in the
branches of our faith. And then, with the faithful trust that
through the true belief of God's word we shall put in his promise,
we shall be well able to command a great mountain of tribulation to
void from the place where it stood in our heart, whereas with a
very feeble faith and faint, we shall be scantly able to remove a
little hillock.
And therefore, as for the first conclusion, since we must of
necessity before any spiritual comfort presuppose the foundation of
faith, and since no man can give us faith but only God, let us
never cease to call upon God for it.
VINCENT: Forsooth, good uncle, methinks that this foundation of
faith which, as you say, must be laid first, is so necessarily
requisite, that without it all spiritual comfort would be given
utterly in vain. And therefore now shall we pray God for a full and
fast faith. And I pray you, good uncle, proceed you farther in the
process of your matter of spiritual comfort against tribulation.
ANTHONY: That shall I, cousin, with good will.
III
I will in my poor mind assign, for the first comfort, the desire
and longing to be comforted by God. And not without some reason
call I this the first cause of comfort. For, as the cure of that
person is in a manner desperate, who hath no will to be cured, so
is the comfort of that person desperate, who desireth not his own
comfort.
And here shall I note you two kinds of folk who are in tribulation
and heaviness: one sort that will not seek for comfort, and another
sort that will.
And again, of those that will not, there are also two sorts. For
the first there are the sort who are so drowned in sorrow that they
fall into a careless deadly dullness, regarding nothing, thinking
almost of nothing, no more than if they lay in a lethargy. With
them it may so befall that wit and remembrance will wear away and
fall even fair from them. And this comfortless kind of heaviness in
tribulation is the highest kind of the deadly sin of sloth.
Another sort there are, who will seek for no comfort, nor yet
receive none, but in their tribulation (be it loss or sickness) are
so testy, so fuming, and so far out of all patience that it
profiteth no man to speak to them. And these are as furious with
impatience as though they were in half a frenzy. And, from a custom
of such behaviour, they may fall into one full and whole. And this
kind of heaviness in tribulation is even a dangerous high branch of
the mortal sin of ire.
Then is there, as I told you, another kind of folk, who fain would
be comforted. And yet are they of two sorts too. One sort are those
who in their sorrow seek for worldly comfort. And of them shall we
now speak the less, for the divers occasions that we shall
afterwards have to touch upon them in more places than one. But
here will I say this, which I learned of St. Bernard: He who in
tribulation turneth himself unto worldly vanities, to get help and
comfort from them, fareth like a man who in peril of drowning
catcheth whatsoever cometh next to hand, and that holdeth he fast,
be it never so simple a stick. But then that helpeth him not, for
he draweth that stick down under the water with him, and there they
lie both drowned together. So surely, if we accustom ourselves to
put our trust of comfort in the delight of these childish worldly
things, God shall for that foul fault suffer our tribulation to
grow so great that all the pleasures of this world shall never bear
us up, but all our childish pleasure shall drown with us in the
depth of tribulation.
The other sort is, I say, of those who long and desire to be
comforted by God. And as I told you before, they undoubtedly have a
great cause of comfort even in that point alone, that they consider
themselves to desire and long to be comforted by almighty God. This
mind of theirs may well be cause of great comfort to them, for two
great considerations.
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