Agnes Repplier - "Americans and Others"

Margaret, Queen Of Navarre - "The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.)"

George Forbes - "Adventures in Southern Seas"

Various - "The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3"

Books of The Times: Perfect Neighbors, Perfect Strangers
Author Solutions, a publisher of print-on-demand books, has acquired Xlibris, a rival self-publisher, expanding its footprint in one of the fastest-growing segments of publishing.

Arts, Briefly: Self-Publishing Company Acquires Its Rival
In Michel Faber’s novel based on the Prometheus myth, a linguist discovers what appears to be a fifth Gospel, a new account of the Crucifixion.

Books of The Times: A 5th Gospel Can Be Like a 5th Wheel
An independent publisher said it was negotiating to release Herman Rosenblat’s discredited memoir, “Angel at the Fence,” as fiction.

Thomas More - Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation

T >> Thomas More >> Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation




VINCENT: Every man, uncle, naturally grudgeth at pain, and is very
loth to come to it.

ANTHONY: That is very true, and no one biddeth any man to go run
into it, unless he be taken and cannot flee. Then, we say that
reason plainly telleth us that we should rather suffer and endure
the less and the shorter pain here, than in hell the sorer and so
far the longer too.

VINCENT: I heard of late, uncle, where such a reason was made as
you make me now, which reason seemed undoubted and inevitable to
me. Yet heard I lately, as I say, a man answer it thus: He said
that if a man in this persecution should stand still in the
confession of his faith and thereby fall into painful tormentry, he
might peradventure happen, for the sharpness and bitterness of the
pain, to forsake our Saviour even in the midst of it, and die there
with his sin, and so be damned forever. Whereas, by the forsaking
of the faith in the beginning, and for the time--and yet only in
word, keeping it still nevertheless in his heart--a man might save
himself from that painful death and afterward ask mercy and have
it, and live long and do many good deeds, and be saved as St. Peter
was.

ANTHONY: That man's reason, cousin, is like a three-footed
stool--so tottering on every side that whosoever sits on it may
soon take a foul fall. For these are the three feet of this
tottering stool: fantastical fear, false faith, and false
flattering hope.

First, it is a fantastical fear that the man conceiveth, that it
should be perilous to stand in the confession of the faith at the
beginning, lest he might afterward, through the bitterness of the
pain, fall to the forsaking and so die there in the pain, out of
hand, and thereby be utterly damned. As though, if a man were
overcome by pain and so forsook his faith, God could not or would
not as well give him grace to repent again, and thereupon give him
forgiveness, as he would give it to him who forsook his faith in
the beginning and set so little by God that he would rather forsake
him than suffer for his sake any manner of pain at all! As though
the more pain that a man taketh for God's sake, the worse would God
be to him! If this reason were not unreasonable, then should our
Saviour not have said, as he did, "Fear not them that may kill the
body, and after that have nothing that they can do further." For he
should, by this reason, have said, "Dread and fear them that may
slay the body, for they may, by the torment of painful death
(unless thou forsake me betimes in the beginning and so save thy
life, and get of me thy pardon and forgiveness afterward) make thee
peradventure forsake me too late, and so be damned forever."

The second foot of this tottering stool is a false faith. For it is
but a feigned faith for a man to say to God secretly that he
believeth him, trusteth him, and loveth him, and then openly, where
he should to God's honour tell the same tale and thereby prove that
he doth so, there to God's dishonour flatter God's enemies as much
as in him is, and do them pleasure and worship, with the forsaking
of God's faith before the world. And such a one either is faithless
in his heart too, or else knoweth well that he doth God this
despite even before his own face. For unless he lack faith, he
cannot but know that our Lord is everywhere present, and that,
while he so shamefully forsaketh him, he full angrily looketh on.

The third foot of this tottering stool is false flattering hope.
For since the thing that he doth, when he forsaketh his faith for
fear, is forbidden by the mouth of God upon the pain of eternal
death, though the goodness of God forgiveth many folk for the
fault, yet to be bolder in offending for the hope of forgiving is a
very false pestilent hope, with which a man flattereth himself
toward his own destruction.

He who, in a sudden turn for fear or other affection, unadvisedly
falleth, and after, in labouring to rise again, comforteth himself
with hope of God's gracious forgiveness, walketh in the ready way
toward his salvation. But he who with the hope of God's mercy to
follow, doth encourage himself to sin, and thereby offendeth God
first--I have no power to keep the hand of God from giving out his
pardon where he will (nor would I if I could, but rather help to
pray for it), but yet I very sorely fear that such a man may miss
the grace to ask it in such effectual wise as to have it granted.
Nor can I now instantly remember any example or promise expressed
in holy scripture that the offender in such a case shall have the
grace offered afterward, in such wise to seek for pardon that God,
by his other promises of remission promised to penitents, would be
bound himself to grant it. But this kind of presumption, under
pretext of hope, seemeth rather to draw near on the one side (as
despair doth, on the other) toward the abominable sin of blasphemy
against the Holy Ghost. And against that sin, concerning either the
impossibility or at least the great difficulty of forgiveness, our
Saviour himself hath spoken in the twelfth chapter of St. Matthew
and in the third chapter of St. Mark, where he saith that blasphemy
against the Holy Ghost shall never be forgiven, neither in this
world nor in the world to come.

And where the man that you speak of took in his reason an example
of St. Peter, who forsook our Saviour and got forgiveness
afterward, let him consider again on the other hand that he forsook
him not upon the boldness of such a sinful trust, but was overcome
and vanquished by a sudden fear. And yet, by that forsaking, St.
Peter won but little, for he did but delay his trouble for a little
while, as you know well. For beside that, he repented forthwith
very sorely that he had so done, and wept for it forthwith full
bitterly. He came forth at the Whitsuntide ensuing, and confessed
his Master again, and soon after that, he was imprisoned for it.
And not ceasing so, he was thereupon sore scourged for the
confession of his faith, and yet after that imprisoned again
afresh. And, being from thence delivered, he stinted not to preach
on still until, after manifold labours, travails, and troubles, he
was in Rome crucified and with cruel torment slain.

And in like wise I think I might (in a manner) well warrant that no
man who denieth our Saviour once and afterward attaineth remission
shall escape through that denial one penny the cheaper, but that he
shall, ere he come to heaven, full surely pay for it.

VINCENT: He shall peradventure, uncle, afterward work it out in
the fruitful works of penance, prayer, and almsdeed, done in true
faith and due charity, and in such wise attain forgiveness well
enough.

ANTHONY: All his forgiveness goeth, cousin, as you see well, but
by "perhaps." But as it may be "perhaps yea," so may it be "perhaps
nay," and where is he then? And yet, you know, he shall never, by
any manner of hap, hap finally to escape from death, for fear of
which he forsook his faith.

VINCENT: No, but he may die his natural death, and escape that
violent death. And then he saveth himself from much pain and so
winneth much ease. For a violent death is ever painful.

ANTHONY: Peradventure he shall not avoid a violent death thereby,
for God is without doubt displeased, and can bring him shortly to
as violent a death by some other way.

Howbeit, I see well that you reckon that whosoever dieth a natural
death, dieth like a wanton even at his ease. You make me remember a
man who was once in a light galley with us on the sea. While the
sea was sore wrought and the waves rose very high, he lay tossed
hither and thither, for he had never been to sea before. The poor
soul groaned sore and for pain thought he would very fain be dead,
and ever he wished, "Would God I were on land, that I might die in
rest!" The waves so troubled him there, with tossing him up and
down, to and fro, that he thought that trouble prevented him from
dying, because the waves would not let him rest! But if he might
get once to land, he thought he should then die there even at his
ease.

VINCENT: Nay, uncle, this is no doubt, but that death is to every
man painful. But yet is not the natural death so painful as the
violent.

ANTHONY: By my troth, cousin, methinketh that the death which men
commonly call "natural" is a violent death to every may whom it
fetcheth hence by force against his will. And that is every man
who, when he dieth, is loth to die and fain would yet live longer
if he could.

Howbeit, cousin, fain would I know who hath told you how small is
the pain in the natural death! As far as I can perceive, those folk
that commonly depart of their natural death have ever one disease
and sickness or another. And if the pain of the whole week or twain
in which they lie pining in their bed, were gathered together in so
short a time as a man hath his pain who dieth a violent death, it
would, I daresay, make double the pain that is his. So he who dieth
naturally often suffereth more pain rather than less, though he
suffer it in a longer time. And then would many a man be more loth
to suffer so long, lingering in pain, than with a sharper pang to
be sooner rid. And yet lieth many a man more days than one, in
well-near as great pain continually, as is the pain that with the
violent death riddeth the man in less than half an hour--unless you
think that, whereas the pain is great to have a knife cut the flesh
on the outside from the skin inward, the pain would be much less if
the knife might begin on the inside and cut from the midst outward!
Some we hear, on their deathbed, complain that they think they feel
sharp knives cut in two their heartstrings. Some cry out and think
they feel, within the brainpan, their head pricked even full of
pins. And those who lie in a pleurisy think that, every time they
cough, they feel a sharp sword snap them to the heart.


XXV

Howbeit, what need we to make any such comparison between the
natural death and the violent, for the matter that we are in hand
with here? Without doubt, he who forsaketh the faith of Christ for
fear of the violent death, putteth himself in peril to find his
natural death a thousand times more painful. For his natural death
hath his everlasting pain so instantly knit to it, that there is
not one moment of time between, but the end of the one is the
beginning of the other, which never after shall have an end.

And therefore was it not without great cause that Christ gave us so
good warning before, when he said, as St. Luke in the twenty-second
chapter rehearseth, "I say to you that are my friends, be not
afraid of them that kill the body, and when that is done are able
to do no more. But I shall show you whom you should fear. Fear him
who, when he hath killed, hath in his power further to cast him
whom he killeth into everlasting fire. So I say to you, be afraid
of him." God meaneth not here that we should not dread at all any
man who can but kill the body, but he meaneth that we should not in
such wise dread any such man that we should, for dread of them,
displease him who can everlastingly kill both body and soul with a
death ever-dying and that shall yet never die. And therefore he
addeth and repeateth in the end again, the fear that we should have
of him, and saith, "So I say to you, fear him."

O good God, cousin, if a man would well weigh those words and let
them sink down deep into his heart as they should do, and often
bethink himself on them, it would (I doubt not) be able enough to
make us set at naught all the great Turk's threats, and esteem him
not a straw. But we should be well content to endure all the pain
that all the world could put upon us, for so short a while as all
they were able to make us dwell in it, rather than, by shrinking
from those pains (though never so sharp, yet but short), to cast
ourselves into the pain of hell--a hundred thousand times more
intolerable, and of which there shall never come an end. A woeful
death is that death, in which folk shall evermore be dying and
never can once be dead! For the scripture saith, "They shall call
and cry for death, and death shall fly from them."

O, good Lord, if one of them were not put in choice of both, he
would rather suffer the whole year together the most terrible death
that all the Turks in Turkey could devise, than to endure for the
space of half an hour the death that they lie in now. Into what
wretched folly fall, then, those faithless or feeble-faithed folk,
who, to avoid the pain that is so far the less and so short, fall
instead into pain a thousand thousand times more horrible, and
terrible torment of which they are sure they shall never have an
end!

This matter, cousin, lacketh, I believe, only full faith or
sufficient minding. For I think, on my faith, that if we have the
grace verily to believe it and often to think well on it, the fear
of all the Turk's persecution--with all this midday devil were able
to do in the forcing of us to forsake our faith--should never be
able to turn us.

VINCENT: By my troth, uncle, I think it is as you say. For surely,
if we would often think on these pains of hell--as we are very loth
to do, and purposely seek us childish pastimes to put such heavy
things out of our thought--this one point alone would be able
enough, I think, to make many a martyr.


XXVI

ANTHONY: Forsooth, cousin, if we were such as we should be, I
would scant, for very shame, speak of the pains of hell in
exhortation to the keeping of Christ's faith. I would rather put us
in mind of the joys of heaven, the pleasure of which we should be
more glad to get than we should be to flee and escape all the pains
of hell.

But surely God is marvellous merciful to us in the thing in which
he may seem most rigorous. And that is (which many men would little
think) in that he provided hell. For I suppose very surely, cousin,
that many a man--and woman, too--of whom some now sit, and more
shall hereafter sit, full gloriously crowned in heaven, had they
not first been afraid of hell, would never have set foot toward
heaven.

But yet undoubtedly, if we could conceive in our hearts the
marvellous joys of heaven as well as we conceive the fearful pains
of hell--howbeit, we can conceive neither one sufficiently. But if
we could in our imagination approach as much toward the perceiving
of the one as we may toward the consideration of the other, we
would not fail to be far more moved and stirred to suffering for
Christ's sake in this world, for the winning of those heavenly joys
than for the eschewing of all those infernal pains. But forasmuch
as the fleshly pleasures are far less pleasant than the fleshly
pains are painful, therefore we fleshly folk, who are so drowned in
these fleshly pleasures and in the desire of them that we have
almost no manner of savour or taste for any pleasure that is
spiritual, we have no cause to marvel that our fleshly affections
are more abated and refrained by the dread and terror of hell than
spiritual affections are imprinted in us and pricked forward with
the desire and joyful hope of heaven.

Howbeit, if we would set somewhat less by the filthy voluptuous
appetites of the flesh, and would, by withdrawing from them, with
help of prayer through the grace of God, draw nearer to the secret
inward pleasure of the spirit, we should, by the little sipping
that our hearts should have here now, and that instantaneous taste
of it, have an estimation of the incomparable and uncogitable joy
that we shall have (if we will) in heaven, by the very full draught
thereof. For thereof it is written, "I shall be satiate" or
satisfied, or fulfilled, "when thy glory, good Lord, shall appear,"
that is, with the fruition of the sight of God's glorious majesty
face to face. And the desire, expectation, and heavenly hope
thereof, shall more encourage us and make us strong to suffer and
sustain for the love of God and salvation of our soul, than ever we
could be made to suffer worldly pain here by the terrible dread of
all the horrible pains that damned wretches have in hell.

Therefore in the meantime, for lack of such experimental taste as
God giveth here sometimes to some of his special servants, to the
intent that we may draw toward the spiritual exercise too--for
which spiritual exercise God with that gift, as with an
earnest-penny of their whole reward afterward in heaven, comforteth
them here in earth--let us labour by prayer to conceive in our
hearts such a fervent longing for them that we may, for attaining
to them, utterly set at naught all fleshly delight, all worldly
pleasures, all earthly losses, all bodily torment and pain. And let
us do this, not so much with looking to have described what manner
of joys they shall be, as with hearing what our Lord telleth us in
holy scripture how marvellous great they shall be. Howbeit, some
things are there in scripture expressed of the manner of the
pleasures and joys that we shall have in heaven, as, "Righteous men
shall shine as the sun and shall run about like sparkles of fire
among reeds."

Now, tell some carnal-minded man of this manner of pleasure, and he
shall take little pleasure in it, and say he careth not to have his
flesh shine, he, nor like a spark of fire to skip about in the sky.
Tell him that his body shall be impassible and never feel harm, and
he will think then that he shall never be ahungered or athirst, and
shall thereby forbear all his pleasure of eating and drinking, and
that he shall never wish for sleep, and shall thereby lose the
pleasure that he was wont to take in lying slug-abed. Tell him that
men and women shall there live together as angels without any
manner of mind or motion unto the carnal act of generation, and he
will think that he shall thereby not use there his old filthy
voluptuous fashion. He will say then that he is better at ease
already, and would not give this world for that. For, as St. Paul
saith, "A carnal man feeleth not the things that be of the spirit
of God, for it is foolishness to him."

But the time shall come when these foul filthy pleasures shall be
so taken from him that it shall abhor his heart once to think on
them. Every man hath a certain shadow of this experience in the
fervent grief of a sore painful sickness, when his stomach can
scant abide to look upon any meat, and as for the acts of the other
foul filthy lust, he is ready to vomit if he hap to think thereon.
When a man shall after this life feel in his heart that horrible
abomination, of which sickness hath here a shadow, at the
remembrance of these voluptuous pleasures, for which he would here
be loth to change with the joys of heaven: when he shall, I say,
after this life, have his fleshly pleasures in abomination, and
shall have there a glimmering (though far from a perfect sight) of
those heavenly joys which here he set so little by--O, good God,
how fain will he then be, with how good will and how gladly would
he then give this whole world, if it were his, to have the feeling
of some little part of those joys!

And therefore let us all who cannot now conceive such delight in
the consideration of them as we should, have often in our eyes by
reading, often in our ears by hearing, often in our mouths by
rehearsing, often in our hearts by meditation and thinking, those
joyful words of the holy scripture by which we learn how wonderful
huge and great are those spiritual heavenly joys. Our carnal hearts
have so feeble and so faint a feeling of them, and our dull worldly
wits are so little able to conceive so much as a shadow of the
right imagination! A shadow, I say, for, as for the thing as it is,
not only can no fleshly carnal fancy conceive that, but beside that
no spiritual person peradventure neither, so long as he is still
living here in this world. For since the very essential substance
of all the celestial joy standeth in the blessed beholding of the
glorious Godhead face to face, no man may presume or look to attain
it in this life. For God hath said so himself: "There shall no man
here living behold me." And therefore we may well know not only
that we are, for the state of this life, kept from the fruition of
the bliss of heaven, but also I think that the very best man living
here upon earth--the best man, I mean, who is no more than
man--cannot attain the right imagination of it; but those who are
very virtuous are yet (in a manner) as far from it as a man born
blind is from the right imagination of colours.

The words that St. Paul rehearseth of the prophet Isaiah,
prophesying of Christ's incarnation, may properly be verified of
the joys of heaven: _"Oculus non vidit, nec auris audivit, nec in
cor hominis adscendit, quae preparavit Deus diligentibus se."_ For
surely, for this state of this world, the joys of heaven are by
man's mouth unspeakable, to man's ears not audible, to men's hearts
uncogitable, so far excel they all that ever men have heard of, all
that ever men can speak of, and all that men can by natural
possibility think on.

And yet, whereas such be the joys of heaven that are prepared for
every saved soul, our Lord saith yet, by the mouth of St. John,
that he will give his holy martyrs who suffer for his sake many a
special kind of joy. For he saith, "To him that overcometh, I shall
give him to eat of the tree of life. And I shall confess his name
before my Father and before his angels." And also he saith, "Fear
none of those things that thou shalt suffer . . . , but be faithful
unto the death, and I shall give thee the crown of life. He that
overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death." And he saith
also, "To him that overcometh will I give manna secret and hid. And
I will give him a white suffrage, and in his suffrage a new name
written, which no man knoweth but he that receiveth it." They used
of old in Greece, where St. John did write, to elect and choose men
unto honourable offices, and every man's assent was called his
"suffrage," which in some places was by voices and in some places
by hands. And one kind of those suffrages was by certain things
that in Latin are called _calculi_ because, in some places, they
used round stones for them. Now our Lord saith that unto him who
overcometh he will give a white suffrage, for those that were white
signified approving, as the black signified reproving. And in those
suffrages did they use to write the name of him to whom they gave
their vote. Now our Lord saith that to him who overcometh he will
in the suffrage give him a new name, which no man knoweth but him
who receiveth it. He saith also, "He that overcometh, I will make
him a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out
thereof, and I shall write upon him the name of my God and the name
of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem which descendeth from
heaven from my God, and I shall write on him also my new name." If
we wished to enlarge upon this, and were able to declare these
special gifts, with yet others that are specified in the second and
third chapters of the Apocalypse, then would it appear how far
those heavenly joys shall surmount above all the comfort that ever
came in the mind of any man living here upon earth.

The blessed apostle St. Paul, who suffered so many perils and so
many passions, saith of himself that he hath been "in many labours,
in prisons oftener than others, in stripes above measure, at point
of death often times; of the Jews had I five times forty stripes
save one, thrice have I been beaten with rods, once was I stoned,
thrice have I been in shipwreck, a day and a night was I in the
depth of the sea; in my journeys oft have I been in peril of
floods, in peril of thieves, in peril by the Jews, in perils by the
pagans, in perils in the city, in perils in the desert, in perils
in the sea, perils by false brethren, in labour and misery, in many
nights' watch, in hunger and thirst, in many fastings, in cold and
nakedness; beside those things that are outward, my daily instant
labour, I mean my care and solicitude about all the churches," and
yet saith he more of his tribulations, which for the length I let
pass. This blessed apostle, I say, for all these tribulations that
he himself suffered in the continuance of so many years, calleth
all the tribulations of this world but light and as short as a
moment, in respect of the weighty glory that it winneth us after
this world: "This same short and momentary tribulation of ours that
is in this present time, worketh within us the weight of glory
above measure on high, we beholding not these things that we see,
but those things that we see not. For those things that we see are
but temporal things, but those things that are not seen are
eternal."

Now to this great glory no man can come headless. Our head is
Christ, and therefore to him must we be joined, and as members of
his must we follow him, if we wish to come thither. He is our guide
to guide us thither, and he is entered in before us. And he
therefore who will enter in after, "the same way that Christ
walked, the same way must he walk." And what was the way by which
he walked into heaven? He himself showed what way it was that his
Father had provided for him, when he said to the two disciples
going toward the village of Emaus, "Knew you not that Christ must
suffer passion, and by that way enter into his kingdom?" Who can
for very shame desire to enter into the kingdom of Christ with
ease, when he himself entered not into his own without pain?

Copyright (c) 2007. topmasterworks.com. All rights reserved.