THOMAS MORE et al.
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wicked men be vexed or not with continual thought and torment: it is the word of God
which neither may deceive nor be deceived. Cor impii quasi mare fervens quod
quiescere non potest
. The wicked man's heart is like a stormy sea it may not rest, there
is to him nothing sure, nothing peaceable, but all thing fearful, all thing sorrowful, all
thing deadly. Shall we then envy these men: shall we follow them: & forgetting our
own country heaven, & our own heavenly Father where we were free born: shall we
wilfully make ourselves their bondsmen: & with them wretchedly living more
wretchedly die: and at the last most wretchedly in everlasting fire be punished. O the
dark minds of men. O the blind hearts. Who saith not more clear than light that all
these things be (as they say) truer than truth itself, & yet do we not that it we know is
to be done. In vain we would pluck our foot out of the clay but we stick still. There
shall come to thee my son doubt it not (in these places namely where thou art
conversant) innumerable impediments every hour: which might fear thee from the
purpose of good and virtuous living & (but if thou beware) shall throw thee down
headlong. But among all things the very deadly pestilence is this: to be conversant day
and night among them whose life is not only on every side an allective to sin: but over
that all set in the expugnation of virtue, under their captain the devil, under the banner
of death, under the stipend of hell, fighting against heaven, against our Lord God and
against his Christ. But cry thou therefore with the prophet. Dirumpamus vincula
eorum & projiciamus a nobis iugum ipsorum.
Let us break the bands of them and let
us cast off the yoke of them. These be they whom (as the glorious apostle Saint Paul
saith) our Lord hath delivered into the passions of rebuke and to a reprovable sense to
do those things that are not convenient, full of all iniquity, full of envy, man-
slaughter, contention, guile, & malice: backbiters, odious to God, contumelious,
proud, stately, finders of evil things, foolish, dissolute, without affection, without
covenant, without mercy. Which when they daily see the justice of God, yet
understand they not that such as these things commit are worthy death: not only they
that do such things: but also they which consent to the doing: wherefore my child go
thou never about to please them whom virtue displeaseth: but evermore let these
words of the apostle be before thine eyes. Oportet magis Deo placere quam
hominibus
. We must rather please God than men. And remember these words of Saint
Paul also. Si hominibus placerem, servus Christi non essem. If I should please men I
were not Christ's servant. Let enter into thine heart an holy pride & have disdain to
take them for masters of thy living which have more need to take thee for a master of
theirs. It were far more seeming that they should with thee by good living begin to be
men than thou shouldst with them by the leaving of thy good purpose shamefully
begin to be a beast. There holdeth me sometime by almighty God as it were even a
swoon and an insensibility for wonder when I begin in my self: I wot never whether I
shall say: to remember or to sorrow, to marvel or to bewail the appetites of men, or if
I shall more plainly speak: the very madness not to believe the gospel whose truth the
blood of martyrs crieth, the voice of apostles soundeth, miracles proveth, reason
confirmeth, the world testifieth, the elements speaketh, devils confesseth. But a far
greater madness is it if thou doubt not but that the gospel is true: to live then as though
thou doubtest not but that it were false. For if these words of the words of the gospel
be true, that it is very hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven why do we
daily then gape after the heaping up of riches. And if this be true that we should seek
for the glory and praise not that cometh of men, but that cometh of God, why do we
then ever hang upon the judgement & opinion of men and no man recketh whether
God like him or not. And if we surely believe it once the time shall come in which our
Lord shall say, go thee cursed people into everlasting fire, & again, come thee my
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blessed children possess the kingdom that hath been prepared for you from the
forming of the world, why is there nothing than it we less fear than hell, or it we less
hope for than the kingdom of God. What shall we say else but that there be many
Christian men in name but few in deed. But thou my son enforce thyself to enter by
the straight gate that leadeth to heaven & take no heed what thing many men do: but
what thing the very law of nature, what thing very reason, what thing our Lord
himself showeth thee to be done. For neither thy glory shall be less if thou be happy
with few nor thy pain more easy if thou be wretched with many. Thou shalt have .ii.
specially effectual remedies against the world & the devil with which two as with .ii.
wings thou shalt out of this vale of misery be lifted up in heaven, that is to say, alms
deed & prayer. What may we do without the help of God, or how shall he help us if he
be not called upon.
But over that: certainly he shall not hear thee when thou callest on him if thou hear
not first the poor man when he calleth upon thee, and verily it is according that God
should despise thee being a man when thou being a man despisest a man. For it is
written: in what measure that ye mete, it shall be mete you again. And in another
place of the gospel it is said: blessed be merciful men for they shall get mercy. When I
stir thee to prayer I stir thee not to the prayer which standeth in many words, but to
that prayer which in the secret chamber of the mind, in the privy closet of the soul
with very affect speaketh to God, and in the most lightsome darkness of
contemplation not only presenteth the mind to the Father: but also unieth it with him
by inspeakable ways which only they know that have essayed. Nor I care not how
long or how short thy prayer be, but how effectual, how ardent, and rather interrupted
& broken between with sighs than drawn on length with a continual row & number of
words. If thou love thine health, if thou desire to be sure from the grennes[29] of the
devil, from the storms of this world, from th' await of thine enemies, if thou long to be
acceptable to God, if thou covet to be happy at the last: let no day pass thee but thou
once at the least wise present thyself to God by prayer, and falling down before him
flat to the ground with an humble affect of devout mind, not from the extremity of thy
lips but out of the inwardness of thine heart, cry these words of the prophet. Delictia
juventutis mee ignorantias meas ne memineris, sed secundum misericordiam tuam
memento mei propter bonitatem tuam Domine
. The offences of my youth and mine
ignorances remember not good Lord, but after thy mercy Lord for thy goodness
remember me. When thou shalt in thy prayer ask of God: both the Holy Spirit which
prayeth for us & eke thine own necessity shall every hour put in thy mind, & also
what thou shalt pray for: thou shall find matter enough in the reading of holy scripture
which that thou wouldst now (setting poet's fables & trifles aside) take ever in thine
hand I heartily pray thee.[30] Thou mayst do nothing more pleasant to God, nothing
more profitable to thyself: than if thine hand cease not day nor night to turn and read
the volumes of holy scripture. There lieth privily in them a certain heavenly strength
quick and effectual, which with a marvellous power transformeth & changeth the
reader's mind into the love of God, if they be clean and lowly entreated. But I have
passed now the bounds of a letter, the matter drawing me forth & the great love that I
have had to thee, both ever before: & specially sith that hour in which I have had first
knowledge of thy most holy purpose. Now to make an end with this one thing I warn
thee (of which when we were last together I often talked with thee) that thou never
forget these .ii. things, that both the Son of God died for thee & that thou shalt also
thyself die shortly, live thou never so long. With these twain as with two spurs, the
one of fear the other of love, spur forth thine horse through the short way of this
momentary life to the reward of eternal felicity, sith we neither ought nor may prefer