Of Pride

Now sith I have somewhat laid afore thy face the bodily pains of death, the troubles and vexations spiritual that come therewith by thy ghostly enemy the devil, the unrestful encumbrance of thy fleshly friends, the uncertainty of thyself how soon this dreadful time shall come, that thou art ever sick of that incurable sickness, by which, if none other come, thou shalt yet in few years undoubtedly die, and yet moreover that thou art already dying, and ever hast been since thou first begannest to live, let us now make some proof of this one part of our medicine, how the remembrance of death in this fashion considered in his kind will work with us to the preservation of our souls from every kind of sin, beginning at the Pride the mother gj^ ^j^^^ jg ^^^ head and of all vice. ^ c \ ■.u i. • i.

root or all sms, that is to wit pride, the mischievous mother of all manner of vice.

I have seen many vices ere this that at the first seemed far from pride, and yet, well considered to the uttermost, it would well appear that of that root they sprang. As for wrath and envy, [they] be the known 'T^he^children of children of pride, as rising of a ^" ^' high estimation of our self. But what should seem farther from pride than drunken gluttony? And yet shall ye find more that drink themselves sow drunk of pride to be called good fellows than for lust of the drink itself. So spreadeth this cursed root of pride his branches into all other kinds, besides his proper malice for his own part, not only in high mind of fortune, rule and authority, beauty, wit, strength, learning, or such other gifts of God, but also the false pride of Hypocrites. hypocrites that fain to have pi 1 u pn. ^j^^ virtues that they lack, and the perilous pride of them that for their few spotted "'' virtues, not without the mixture of other mortal vices, take themselves for quick f saints on earth, proudly judging the lives of their even J Christians, disdaining other men's virtue, envying other men's praise, bearing implacable anger where they perceive themselves not accepted and set by § after the worthiness of their own estimation. Which kind of spiritual pride, and thereupon following envy and

• i.e., corrupted. t i.e., living-.

X i.e., consistent fellow Christians. § i.e., esteemed.

wrath, is so much the more pestilent in that it carrieth with it a blindness almost incurable save God's great mercy. For the lecher know- €th he doth naught,* and hath remorse thereof; the glutton perceiveth his own fault and sometime thinketh it beastly; the slothful body misliketh his dulness, and thereby is moved to mend; but this kind of pride, that in his own opinion taketh himself for holy, is farthest from all recovery. For how can he mend his fault that taketh it for none, that weeneth f all is well that he doth himself, and nothing that any man doth else? that covereth his purpose with the pretext of some holy purpose that he will never begin while he liveth? taketh his envy for an holy desire to get before his neighbour in virtue, and taketh his wrath and anger for an holy zeal of justice? And thus, while he proudly liketh his vices, he is out all the way to mend them. In so far forth that I surely think there be some who had in good faith made the best merchandise that ever they made in their lives for their own souls, if they had changed those spiritual vices of pride, wrath and envy, for the beastly carnal sins of gluttony, sloth and lechery. Not that these three were good, which be un-

• i.e., evil. f i.e., thinketh.

doubtedly damnable, but for the like as God said in the Apocalypse unto the Church of

Laodicea, " Thou art neither hot nor cold, but lukewarm; I would thou were cold, that thou mightest wax warm," * signifying that if he were in open and manifest sins he would have more occasion to call fervently for grace and help; so if these folk had these carnal sins they could not be ignorant of their own faults.

For, as St Paul saith,t the fleshly sins be eth % to perceive, and so should they have occasion to call for grace and wax good, where now by their pride, taking themselves for good where they be naught, § they be far from all occasion of amendment, saving the knocking kno'lkiir''^ of our Lord, which always standeth ing"- ^j. j_}^g ^QQj, ^f j^-j^j-j's heart and knocketh,|| whom I pray God we may give ear unto and let him in. And one of His good and gracious knockings is the putting us in remembrance of death, which remembrance, as I have said, let us see what stead it may stand us in against this cursed sin of pride. And surely against this last branch of pride, of such as repute themselves for holy with the dis-

• Apoc. iii, 15. t Gal. v. X i'C., easy.

§ bad. II Apoc. iii.

dain of others, and an inward liking of all their spiritual vices, which they commend unto themselves under the cloak and shadow of some kind of virtue, most hard it is to take remedy by the remembrance of death, forasmuch as they reckon themselves thereby ready to go straight to heaven. But yet if they consider the labour and solicitation of our ghostly enemy, the devil, that shall at the time of their death be busy to destroy the merits and good works of all their life before, and that his subtlest craft and most venomous dart, and the most for them to avoid, shall be under the colour of a faithful hope of heaven, as a thing more than due to their own holiness, to send them wretchedly to the fire of hell for their sinful and wilful blind presumption. I say the remembrance and consideration of this perilous point and fearful jeopardy likely to fall on them at the time of their death is a right effectual ointment long before in their life to wear away the web that covereth the eyes of their souls in such wise as they cannot with a sure sight look upon their own conscience.

As for all other kinds of pride, rising of beauty, strength, wit or cunning, me thinketh that the remembrance of death may right easily mend it, sith that they be such things as shall shortly by death lose all their gloss, the owners wot [not how] near, how soon.

And as lightly may there by the same consideration be cured the pride of these foolish proud hypocrites, which are yet Hypocrites, more fools than they that plainly follow the ways of the world and pleasure of their body. For they, though they go to the devil therefor, yet somewhat they take therefor. These mad hypocrites be so mad that, where they sink in hell as deep as the other, yet in reward of all their pain taken in this world, they be content to take the vain praise of the people, a blast of wind of their mouths, which yet per-Vainglory. case* praise them not, but call them as they be. And if they do, yet themselves hear it not often. And sure they be that within short time death shall stop their ears, and the clods cover all the mouths that praise them. Which if they well and advisedly considered, they would, I ween,t turn their appetites from the laud | of silly mortal men, and desire to deserve their thanks and commendation of God only, whose praise can never die.

Now the high mind of proud fortune, rule * Perhaps. t Think. + Praise.

and authority, Lord God, how slight a thing it would seem to him that would often Ambition. and deeply remember that death shall shortly take away all this royalty, and his glory shall, as Scripture saith, never walk with him into his grave,* but he that overlooketh every man, and no man may be so homely [as] to come too near him, but thinketh that he doth much for them whom he vouchsafeth to take by the hand or beck upon,t whom so many men dread and fear, so many wait upon — he shall within a few years, and only God knoweth within how few days, when death arresteth him, have his dainty body into stinking carrion, be borne out of his princely palace, laid in the ground and there left alone, where every lewd lad will be bold to tread on his head. Would not, ween ye, the deep consideration of this sudden change, so surely to come and so shortly to come, withdraw the wind that puffeth us up in pride upon the solemn sight of worldly worship? If thou shouldest perceive that one were earnestly proud of the wearing of a gay A stag-e play. golden gown, while the lorelj playeth the lord in a stage- * Ps. xlviii. t Nod to. i A worthless fellow.

play, wouldest thou not laugh at his folly, considering that thou art very sure that when the play is done he shall go walk a knave in his old coat? Now thou thinkest thyself wise enough, while thou art proud in thy player's garment, and forgettesl that, when thy play is done, thou shalt go forth as poor as he. Nor thou rememberest not that thy pageant may happen to be done as soon as his.

We shall leave the examples of plays and players, which be too merry for this matter. I shall put thee a more earnest image of our condition, and that not a feigned similitude, but a very true fashion and figure of our worshipful estate. Mark this well, for of this thing we be very sure, that old and young, man and woman, rich and poor, prince and page, all the while we live in this world we be All prisoners, but prisoners, and be within a sure prison, out of which there can no man escape.* And in worse case be we than those that be taken and imprisoned for theft. For they, albeit their heart heavily harkeneth after the sessions, yet have they some hope

• This passag^e derives a very deep interest from the reflection that the author of it was to spend fifteen months in the Tower and be thence led out to execution.

either to break prison the while, or to escape there by favour, or after condemnation some hope of pardon. But we stand all in other plight; we be very sure that we be already condemned to death, some one, AH condemned to g^^^^ ^^her, none of us can ^^ ^* tell what death we be condemned to, but surely can we all tell that die we shall. And clearly know we that of this death we get no manner of pardon. For the King, by whose high sentence we be condemned to die, would not of this death pardon His own Son. As for escaping, no man can look for [it]. The prison is large, and many prisoners in it, but the jailer can lose none; he is so present in every place that we can creep into no corner out of his sight. For as holy David saith to this jailer: "Whither shall I go from thy spirit, and Psalm cxxxviii. whither shall I flee from Thy face? " as who saith: No whither. There is no remedy therefore, but as condemned folk and remedyless in this prison of the earth we drive forth awhile, some bounden to a post, some wandering abroad, some in the dungeon, some in the upper ward, some building them bowers and making palaces in the prison, some weeping, some laughing, some labouring, some playing, some singing, some chiding, some fighting, no man almost remembering in what case he standeth till that suddenly, nothing less looking for, young, old, poor and rich, merry and sad, prince, page, pope and poor soul-priest, now one, now other, sometimes a great rabble at once, without order, without respect of age or of estate, all stripped stark naked and shifted out in a sheet, be put to death in divers wise in some corner of the same prison, and even there thrown in a hole, and either worms eat him underground or crows above. Now come forth, ye proud prisoner, for I wis ye be no better, look ye never so high, when ye build in the prison a palace for your blood, is it not a great royalty if it be well con-Builders, sidered? Ye build the tower of

Babylon in a corner of the prison, and be very proud thereof, and sometimes the jailer beateth it down again with shame. Ye leave your lodging for your own blood, and the jailer, when ye be dead, setteth a strange prisoner in your building, and thrusteth your blood into some other cabin. Arms of ancestry. Ye be proud of the arms of your ancestors set up in the prison, and all your pride is because ye forget

$6 DE ^AlUOR NOVISSIMIS that it is a prison. For if ye took the matter aright, the place a prison, yourself a prisoner condemned to death, from which ye cannot escape, ye would reckon this gear as worshipful as if a gentleman thief, when he should go to Tyburn, would leave for a memorial the arms of his ancestors painted on a post in Newgate. Surely, I suppose that if we took not [the] true figure for a fantasy, but reckoned it, as it is indeed, the very express fashion and manner of all our estate, men would bear themselves not much higher in their hearts for any rule or authority that they bear in this world, which they may well perceive to be indeed no better but one prisoner bearing a rule among the remnant, as the tapster doth in the Marshalsea;* or, at the uttermost, one so put in trust with the jailer, that he is half an under-jailer over his fellows till the sheriff and the cart come for him.

• Prison in Southwark.