The Remembrance of Death

What profit and commodity cometh unto man's soul by the meditation of death, is not only marked of the chosen people of Death. God, but also of such as were the best sort among gentiles and painims.f For some of the old famous philosophers, when they were demanded what faculty pliilosophy was, answered that it was the mediPhilosophy. tation or exercise of death. For like as death maketh a severance of the body and the soul, when they by course of nature must needs depart asunder, so, said they, doth the study of philosophy labour to sever the soul from the love and affections of the body while they be together. Now if this be the whole study and labour of philosophy, as the best philosopher said that it is, then may we within a short time be well learned in philosophy. For nothing is there that may more effectually withdraw the soul from the wretched affections of the body than may the remembrance of death, if we do not remember '^^^/^^^^^^^^^^ it hourly, as one heareth a of death., j i ^ •. y^ ,- word and let it pass by his

■ear without any receiving of the sentence into t i.e., pag^ans.

rHE FOUR LAST THINGS aj his heart. But if we not only hear this word '* death," but also let sink into our heart the very fantasy and deep imagination thereof, we shall perceive thereby that we were never so greatly moved by the beholding of the dance of death pictured in Poules,"*^ as we shall feel ourselves stirred and altered by the feeling of that imagination in our hearts. And no marvel. For those pictures express only the loathly figure of our dead bony bodies, bitten away the flesh, which though it be ugly to behold, yet neither the sight thereof nor the sight of all the dead heads in the charnel house,t nor the apparition of a very ghost, is half so grisly as the deep-conceived fantasy of death in his nature by the lively imagination graven in thine own heart. For there seest thou not one plain grievous sight of the bare bones hanging by the sinews, but thou seest

• An allusion to the famous picture, the " Dance of Death," in the cloister of Pardon Church Haugh, at old St Paul's, London. Death was represented by a skeleton, leading away all sorts and conditions of men, beginning with pope and emperor. The accompanying verse of John Lydgate, monk of Bury, was as gruesome as the picture itself.

t The charnel-house was situated near the Haugh, and contained a chapel and three chantries. Underneath was a vault for the decent reception of any bones that might be disinterred, and hence the name.

(if thou fantasy thine own death, for so art thou by this counsel advised), thou seest, I say, thyself, if thou die no worse death, yet at the leastwise lying in thy bed, thy head o?death"^ shooting, thy back aching, thy veins beating, thine heart panting, thy throat rattling, thy flesh trembling, thy mouth gaping, thy nose sharping, thy legs cooling, thy fingers fumbling, thy breath shorting, all thy strength fainting, thy life vanishing, and thy death drawing on.

If thou couldst now call to thy remembrance some of those sicknesses which have most grieved thee and tormented thee in thy days, as every man hath felt some, and then findest thou that some one disease in some one part of thy body, as percase * the stone or the strangury, have put thee to thine own mind to no less torment than thou shouldst have felt if one had put up a knife into the same place, and wouldst, as thee then seemed, have been content with such a change, think what it will be then when thou shalt feel so many such pains in every part of thy body breaking thy veins and thy life-strings with like pain and grief as though as many knives as thy body might receive should everywhere enter and meet in the midst.

• i.e., perhaps.

A Stroke of a staff, a cut of a knife, the flesh singed with fire, the pain of sundry sickness, many men have assayed in themselves. And they that have not yet, somewhat have heard by them that felt it. But what manner dolour and pain, what manner of grievous pangs, what intolerable torment the silly* creature feeleth in the dissolution and severance of the soul from the body, never was there body that yet could tell the tale.

Some conjecture and token of this point we have of the bitter passion and piteous departing of our Saviour Jesu Christ, of whom we nothing read that ever He cried for any pain, neither for the whips and rods beating His blessed body, or the sharp thorns pricking His holy head, or the great long nails piercing His precious hands and feet. But when the point approached in which His sacred soul should depart out of His blessed body, at that point He cried loud once or Christ cried, twice to His Father in heaven, Markxv^"' ^^^^ whose mighty and merciful Luke xxi'ii. hands at that extreme point with a great loud cry He gave up the Ghost. Now if that death was so painful and rageous f to our Saviour Christ, whose

• i.e., weak, helpless. t i.e., violent.

joy and comfort of His Godhead, if He would have suffered it, might in such wise have redounded into His soul, and so forth into His body, that it should not only have supped up all His pain, but also have transformed His holy body into a glorious form, and made it impossible, what intolerable torment will death be then to us miserable wretches, of which, the more part, among the pangs of our passage, shall have yet so painful twitches of our own conscience that the fear of hell, the dread of the devil, and sorrow at our heart at the sight of our sins, shall pass and exceed the deadly pains of our body!

Other things are there which will peradventure seem no great matter to them that feel them not. But unto him that shall lie in that case they shall be tedious out of all measure.

Have ye not ere this in a sore sickness felt it very grievous to have folk babble to you, and namely such things as ye Troubles in g^Quld make answer to when it was a pain to speak? Think ye not now that it will be a gentle pleasure when we lie dying, all our body in pain, all our mind in trouble, our soul in sorrow, our heart all in dread, while our life walketh away-ward, while our death draweth toward, while the devil is busy about us, while we lack stomach and strength to bear any one of so manifold heinous troubles; will it not be, as I was about to say, a pleasant thing to see before thine eyes and hear at thine ears a rabble of fleshly friends, or rather of flesh-flies, skipping about thy bed and thy sick body, like ravens about thy corpse, now almost carrion, crying to thee on every side: " What shall I have? What shall I have?" Then shall come thy children and cry for their Children. parts. Then shall come thy sweet Executors. "^^i^^> ^"d where in thine health haply she spake thee not one sweet word in six weeks, now shall she call thee sweet husband, and weep with much work, and ask thee what shall she have. Then shall thine executors ask for the keys, and ask what money is owing thee, ask what substance thou hast, and ask where thy money lieth. And while thou liest in that case, their words sliall he so tedious that thou wilt wish all that they ask for upon a red fire, so thou mightest lie one half hour in rest.

Now is there one thing which a little I touched before, I wot not whether more painful or more perilous — the marvellous intentive business and solicitation of our ghostly enemy the devil, not only in one The devil. fashion present but surely never absent from him that draweth towards death. For sith that of his pestilent envy conceived from the beginning of man's creation, by which he lay in await to take our first mother Eve in a train,* and thereby drawing our former father Adam into the breach of God's behest, found the means, not without the grievous increase of his own damnation, to deprive us of paradise and bereave us our immortality, making us into subjection not only of temporal death, but also of his eternal tormentry, were we not, by the great bounty of God and Christ's painful passion, restored to the possibility of everlasting life, he never ceased since to run about like a ramping lion, looking whom he might devour, it can be no doubt but he most busily travaileth in that behalf at the time that he perceiveth us about to depart hence. For well he knoweth that then he either winneth a man for ever, or for ever loseth him. For have he him never so fast afore, yet if he break from him then, he can after his death never get him again. Well

• i.e., stratagem.

he may peradventure have him as his jailer in his prison of purgatory, for the time of his punition temporal. But as he would have Purgatory, him for his perpetual slave, shall he never have him after, how sure soever he had him afore, if he get from him at the time of his death. For so lost he suddenly the thief that hung on the right hand of Christ. And on the other side, if he catch a man fast at the time of his death, he is sure to keep him for ever. For, as the Scripture saith, wheresoever the stone falleth, there shall it abide.* And sith he knoweth this for very surety, and is of malice so venomous and envious that he had liefer f double his own pain than suffer us to escape from pain, he, when we draw to death, doeth his uttermost device to bring us to damnation, never ceasing to minister by subtle and incogitable t means, first unlawful longing to live, horror to go gladly to God at his calling. Then giveth he some false glade § of escaping that sickness, and thereby putteth in our mind a love yet and cleaving to the The devil's temp- ^^.Q^ld, keeping of our goods, tatioiis 3,t tne 1,1 r /^" •, 1.1 time of death. loathsomeness of Cnnst, sloth toward good works. And if

• Eccles xi. t i.e., rather. % i.e., unimaginable. § i.e., hope.

JO DE ^ATUOR NOVISSIMIS we be so far gone that we see we cannot recover, then he casteth in our minds presumption and security of salvation as a thing well won by our own works; of which, if we have any done well, he casteth them into our minds with over great liking, and thereby withdraweth as from the haste of doing any more, as a thing that either needeth not or may be done by our executors. And, instead of sorrow for our sins and care of heaven, he putteth us in mind of provision for some honourable burying, so many torches, so many tapers, so many black gowns, so many merry mourners laughing under black hoods, and a gay hearse, with the delight of goodly and honourable funerals, in which the foolish sick man is sometime occupied, as though he thought that he should stand in a window and see how worshipfully he shall be brought to church.

And thus inveigleth he them that either be good or but meetly bad.

But as for those that he hath known for special wretches, whose whole life hath in effect been all bestowed in his service, whom VVicked i^g \3,\\ brought into great and horrible sins, by the horror whereof he hath kept them from confession — these folk at their end he handleth on another fashion. For into their minds he bringeth their shameful sins by heap, and by the abominable sight thereof draweth them into desperation. For the agrieving whereof our Lord after their deserving suffereth him to shew himself to them for their more discomfort, in some fearful figure and terrible likeness, by the beholding whereof they conceive sometime despair of salvation, and yield themselves as captives quick,* beginning their hell in this world, as hath appeared by the words and wretched behaviour of many that of a shameful sinful life have died and departed with heavy desperate death. Now death being such as I have described, or rather much more horrible than any man can describe, it is not to be doubted but, if we busily remembered the terror and grief thereof, it must needs be so bitter to the fleshly mind that it could not fail to take away the vain delight of all worldly vanities. But the thing that letteth * us to Let from the con- consider death in his kind, sideration of j^^i ^ c^^il jjgatl^^ and to take great profit that would arise of the remembrance thereof, is that for by the hope of long life we look upon death either [as] so far off that we

• i.e., during their lifetime. t i.e., hindcreth.

DE H^Uy^rUOR NOFISSIMIS see him not at all, or but a slight and uncertain sight, as a man may see a thing so far off that he wotteth not whether it be a bush or a beast. And surely so fare we by death, looking thereat afar off, through a great long space of as many years as we hope to live. And those we imagine many, and perilously and foolishly beguile ourselves. For likewise as wives would their husbands should ween,"^ by the example of Sara, that there were no woman so old but she might have a child, so is there none old man so old but that, as Tully saith, he trusteth to live one year yet. And as for young folk, they look not how many be dead in their own days younger than themselves, but who is the oldest man in the town, and upon his years they make their reckoning. Where the wiser way were to reckon that a young man may die soon, and an old man cannot live long, but An old man can- ^^^^1^^^^ ^ little while die the not live lone.,, ^,,

** one may, the other must.

And with this reckoning shall they look upon death much nearer hand, and better perceive him in his own likeness, and thereby take the more fruit of the remembrance and make themselves the more ready thereto.

• i.e., think.

Thou wouldst somewhat remember death the more effectually, and look upon him somewhat the more nearly, if thou Remembrance of ^newest thyself sick, and es-death by sick-.,, r ■, • ^ j^ggg^ •' pecialiy of any perilous sickness that would make an end of thee, though thou feltest yet little pain. For commonly when we be sick then begin we to know ourselves, then pain bringeth us home, then we think how merry a thing it were to be praying in health, which we cannot now do for grief. "^ Then care we little for our gay gear, then desire we no delicate dainties, and as for lady lechery, then abhor we to think on [it]. And then we think in ourselves that if ever we recover and mend in body we will amend in soul, leave all vices and be virtuously occupied the remnant of our life. Insomuch that very true we find the words of the epistle that the well-learned man, Plinius Plmius Secundus, after his sickness becundus., . u- r • j u wrote unto his friend, wherein, after the description of men's fantasies in their disease, he closeth up his letter in this wise: " Look," saith he, "all the good counsel and precepts that all the philosophers and

• i.e., pain or sickness.

wise men in this world give us for instruction of virtuous living, all that I can compendiously give to myself and thee in few words; no more, lo! but let us be such when we be whole as we think we will be when we be sick."

Now then, if thou be ever sick, and ever sick of a perilous sickness, wouldst thou not, if thou knewest thyself in such Ever sick. case, have better remembrance of death than thou hast? It would be hard perad venture to make thee believe thyself sick while thou feelest no harm, and yet is that no sure knowledge of health. Trow ye not that many a man is infect with the great sickness a good while ere he perceive it, and the body sore corrupt within ere he feel the grief? How many men have there been that have gone about with God's marks on their body never perceiving themselves to be sick, but as merry as ever they were in their lives, till other men gave them warning how near they were their deaths? And therefore never reckon thyself whole, though thou feel no grief.

But thou wilt haply say: " Be it that I cannot surely reckon myself whole, yet ye show me not why I should reckon myself sick." Thou sayest right well, and that shall I show thee now. Tell me, if one were in case that he must be fain once or twice a day to swaddle and plaster his leg, and else he could not keep his life, wouldst thou reckon his leg sick or whole? I ween ye will agree that his leg is is not well at ease, nor the owner neither. Now if ye felt your belly in such case that ye must be fain all day to tend it with warm clothes, or else ye were not able to abide the pain, would ye reckon your belly sick or whole? I ween ye would reckon your belly not in good quart."^ If thou shouldst see one in such case that he could not hold up his head, that he could not stand on his feet, that he should be fain to lie down along and there lie speechless as a dead stock an hour or two every day, wouldst thou not say that he were perilously sick, and had good cause to remember death, when he lieth every day in such case as though he were dead already?

Now then, I pray thee consider me, that all our bodies be ever in such case, so tender of themselves that except we lapped them continually with warm clothes we were not able to live one winter week. Consider that our bodies have so sore a sickness and such a continual consumption in themselves that the strongest

• i.e., health.

were not able to endure and continue ten days together, were it not that once

Meat and drink ^^ twice a day we be fain to be medicines.,, j- • • j..

take medicines inward, to clout * them up withal, and keep them as long as we can. For what is our meat and drink but medicines against hunger and thirst, that give us warning of that we daily lose by our inward consumption? And of that consumption shall we die in conclusion, for all the medicines that we use, though never other sickness came at us.

Consider also that all our swaddling and tending with warm clothes and daily medicines, yet can our bodies not bear themselves, but that almost half our time ever in twenty-four hours, we be fain to fall in Sleep a swoon. ^ swoon which we call sleep. Sleep the Image ^"d ^^^re lie like dead Stocks of death. by a long space ere we come to ourselves again; insomuch that among all wise men of old it is agreed that sleep is the very image of death.

Now thou wilt, peradventure, say that this is but a fantasy. For, though we call this hunger sickness and meat a medicine, yet men

• i.e., to patch.

know well enough what very sickness is, and what very medicines be; and thereby we know well enough that they be none.

If thou think this, then would I wit * of thee what thou callest a sickness. Is not that a sickness that will make an end of Sickness, thee if it be not holpen? f If that be so, then I suppose thou bearest ever thy sickness with thee. For very sure art thou that it will make an end of thee if thou be not holpen.

What callest thou then a medicine? Is it not such a thing as, either applied outwardly to thy body or received inward, Medicine. shall preserve thee against that sore or sickness that else would put thee or some part of thee in peril? What can be more properly and more verily a medicine than is our meat and drink, by which is resisted the peril and undoubted death that else should in so few days follow by the inward sickness of our own nature continually consuming us within? For as for that ye reckon that we know which be sicknesses, that is but a custom of calling by which we call no sickness by that name but such as be casual

• i.e., know. f Helped.

and come and go. For that that is common to all men and never from any man, because we reckon it natural, we give it not the name of sickness; but we name sickness a passion that Cometh seldomer and, as we reckon, against nature, whereas the conflict of the divers qualified elements tempered in our body, continually labouring each to vanquish other and thereby to dissolve the whole, though it be as sore against the continuance of our nature, and as sore laboureth to the dissolution of the whole body as other sickness do, yet we neither call it sickness nor the meat that resisteth it we call no medicine, and that for none other cause but for the continual familiarity that we have therewith.

But now consider if it were so that one whole country were born all lepers, which is a sickness rather foul and perilous than painful, or all an whole country born with the falling sickness, so that never any of them had ever in their lives known or heard of either themselves or any other void of those diseases, trow ye that then that they would ever have reckoned them for sickness? Nay surely, but they would have counted for sickness the colic and the stone, and such other like as come and go. But as for their leprosy and falling evil, they would never account it other than we account hunger or sleep. For as for that that thy hunger doth thee pleasure when it is fed, so doth some time the itch of a sore leg when thou clawest about the brinks."*

And thus mayest thou surely see that all our whole life is but a sickness never curable, but as one incurable canker, Our life a con- ^^,j^^ continual swaddling and tinual sickness., ^.,, 1 j °,- plastermg botched up to live as long as we may, and in conclusion, undoubtedly, to die of the same sickness and though there never came other.

So that, if thou consider this well, thou mayest look upon death not as a stranger, but as a nigh neighbour. For

P.'^l^hn "'^^ as the flame is next the smoke, neienbour. • j 1 • 11 so is death next an mcurable sickness, and such is all our life.

And yet, if this move you little, but that ye think for all this that death is far from you, I will go somewhat near you. Thou reckonest every man near his death when he is dying. Then if thyself be now already dying, how canst thou reckon thyself far from death?

Some man saith merrily to his fellow: " Be

• i.e., when thou scratchest near the precipice.

merry, man; thou shalt never die as long as thou livest." And albeit he seemeth to say true, yet saitli he more than he can make good. For if that were true, I could make him much merrier, for that he should never die.

Ye will peradventure marvel of this, but it is ethe* to prove. For I think ye will grant me that there is no time after that a man hath once life, but he is either alive or dead. Then will there no man say that one can die, either before he get life or after that he hath lost it, and so hath he no time left to die in, but while he hath life. Wherefore, if we neither die before our life, nor when we be dead already, needs must it follow that we never die but while we live.

It is not all one to die and to be dead.

Truth it is that we be never dead while we live. And it is, me seemeth, as true not only that we die while we live, but We die all the ^jg^ ^j^^^ ^^^ ^j^ ^jj ^^^^ ^^j^^g ^^ while we live.... • ^ • -it live. What thmg is dying? Is it any other thing than the passage and going out of this present life?

Now tell me then, if thou wert going out of an house, whether art thou going out only when thy foot is on the uttermost inch of the

• i.e., easy.

threshold, thy body half out of the door, or else when thou beginnest to set the first foot forward to go out, in what place of the house soever ye stand when ye buskle"^ forward? I would say that ye he going out of the house from the first foot ye set fox'ward to go forth. No man will think other, as I suppose, but all is one reason in going hence and coming hither. Now if one were coming hither to this town, he were not only coming hither while he were entering in at the gate, but all the way also from whence he came hitherward. Nor in likewise in going hence from this town, a man is not only going from this town while he hath his body in the gate going outward, but also while he setteth his foot out of his host's house to go forward. And therefore, if a man met him by the way, far yet within the town, and asked him whither he were going, he should truly answer that he were going out of the town, allf were the towr^ so long that he had ten miles to go ere he came at the gate.

And surely me thinketh that in likewise a man is not only dying, that is to say, going in his-way out of this life, while he lieth drawing on, but also all the while that he is going toward his end, which is by all the whole time of his

• Bustle. t i.e., although.

life, since the first moment to the last finished, that is, to wit, sith the first moment in which he began to live until the last moment of his life, or rather the first in which he is full dead.

Now if this he thus, as me seemeth that reason proveth, a man is always dying from afore his birth; and every hour of our age, as it passeth by, cutteth his own length out of our life, and maketli it shorter by so much, and our death so much the nearer. Which measuring of time and minishing of life, with approaching toward death, is nothing else but, from our beginning to our ending, one continual dying; so that wake we, sleep we, eat we, drink we, mourn we, sing we, in what wise soever live we, all the same while die we.

So that we never ought to look toward death as a thing far off, considering that although he made no haste toward us, yet we never cease ourselves to make haste toward him.

Now, if thou thinkest this reason but a sopliistical subtlety, and thinkest while thou art a young man thou mayest for all this think thy death far off, that is to wit as far as thou hast by likelihood of nature many years to live, then will I put thee an homely example, not very pleasant, but nathless very true and very fit for the matter.

If there were two, both condemned to death, both carried out at once toward execution, of which two the one were sure that the place of his execution were within one mile, the other twenty miles off — yea, an hundred, an ye will — he that were in the cart to be carried a hundred miles would not take much more pleasure than his fellow in the length of his way, notwithstanding that it were a hundred times as long as his fellow's, and that he had thereby a hundred times as long to live, being sure and out of all question to die at the end.

Reckon me now yourself a young man in your best lust * — twenty years of age if ye will. Let there be another, ninety. Both must ye die, both be ye in the cart carrying forward. His gallows and death standeth within ten mile at the farthest, and yours within eighty. I see not why ye should reckon much less of your death than he, though your way be longer, since ye be sure ye shall never cease riding till ye come at it.

And this is true, although ye were sure that the place of your execution stood so far beyond his.

But what if there were to the place of your

• i.e., vigour.

execution two ways, of which the one were four score mile farther about than your fellow's, the other nearer by five mile than his; and when ye were put in the cart ye had warning of both, and though ye were shewed that it were likely that ye should be carried the longer way, yet it might hap ye should go the shorter, and whether ye were carried the one or the other ye should never know till ye come to the place; I trow ye could not in this case make much longer of your life than of your fellow's.

Now in this case are we all, for our Lord hath not indented * with us of the time. He hath appointed what we may not pass, but not how soon we shall go, nor where, nor in what wise. And therefore if thou wilt consider how little cause thou hast to reckon thy death so far off by reason of thy youth, reckon how many as young as thou have been slain in the selfsame ways in which thou ridest, how many have been drowned in the self-same waters in which thou rowest. And thus shalt thou well see that thou hast no cause to look upon thy death as a thing far off, but a thing undoubtedly nigh thee and ever walking with thee. By

• i.e., made a contract. Job xiv.

which — not a false imagination, but a very true contemplation — thou shalt behold him and advise him such as he is, and thereby take occasion to flee vain pleasures of the flesh that keep out the very * pleasures of the soul.

• i.e., true.