The Divine Lamp

Note: What follows is the introductory dialogue to St Thomas More’s wonderful work. I have provided in italics what I hope are useful introductory and guidance notes.
Though his uncle Anthony is nearing death, Vincent has come to him, not to give him comfort so much as to get comfort from him. He notes that even if he had come to give him comfort, he might very well do so by telling him that dying is more a comfort than living. Both these points are motivated by the state of tribulation into which the world has fallen. The reason he seeks comfort from his uncle rather than someone else is due to Anthony’s learning and holiness, and to the fact that many of the tribulations facing Vincent have been not only experienced, but endured by his uncle. What he has endured is imprisonment in Turkey at the hands of Muslims, and the looming tribulation Vincent fears is “the Turk.” Is the imprisonment a reference to St Thomas More’s suffering of religious persecution for his convictions? Is “the Turk” in reality Protestantism which is threatening England?

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.

We find that the dialogue is set in Hugary, the proverbial place
of battle in More's time due to constant Muslim incursions.
Anthony responds to his cousin's words about how comfort is given
And criticizes it, for a dying man (or, for that matter, a man in
the prime of his life!) ought to have his thoughts focused on death
judgement, heaven and hell.  For it is silly for an old man facing
death to focus on life to the extent that he leaves himself un-
prepared for the meeting of his maker.

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.

Anthony then takes up Vincent's worry that he and the rest of
his family will be left as "a sorry company of comfortless
orphans."  He begins by humbly acknowledging that he did not
do half the job he should and could have done in giving help
and comfort to his own.  He then goes on to insist that he
ought never be considered as the chief comfort of anyone, for
that belongs properly to God, and exchanging one for the other
is like replacing a stout staff (walking stick) with a rotten reed.

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 admits the truth of these words, and the fact that he
should have remembered them.  The fact that his uncle has
reminded him of the truth proves his continuing need for Anthony's
counsel. 

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 admits this ("very well, good uncle") but goes on to note
that were he to rely solely on God's inward teaching when outward
counsel was still available he would be tempting God.  Further,
he notes, he has little hope that new teachers of his uncle's
stature will rise up in his place.  Vincent thinks it is his
God given duty to ask for Anthony's counsel as long as his uncle
is available.

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.

Anthony goes on to note his own inability to keep his family
comforted, especially now that "the Turk" is working such havoc
against the faith.  Such havoc included robbing, burning, the
separation of families by imprisonment and exile, slavery, and
the abandonment of the true faith by embracing a false one.  He
then expresses his fear that those who have embraced the false
faith may then turn on their former co-religionists "for their
is no Turk so cruel to Christian folk as is the false Chrisitian
that falleth from the faith."  For these reasons the words of
Anthony are sorely needed and sought for as long as they can be
had. 

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.

Hearing all this, Anthony notes how heavy his heart is.  He then
goes on to rehearse the history of the quick advance of "the Turk."
In doing so he notes that "the Turk" has now "destroyed or 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!."  Are we to understand "two" as a reference to
"the Turk" and the King?  And who or what is "the third dog"
that he prays may not take the bone from the "two"?  Is the
third dog the spirit of dissension which exists among the
faithful, and which led to the advent of the "two"?

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.

Shortly before Vincent came to him Anthony had been thinking upon
the Turk, but then his mind began to reflect on his impending death,
switched back to the Turk and then to thoughts of hell.  In light of
his thoughts on the last things the current trouble posed by the Turk
Struck him as being of little account.  Nevertheless, for the sake
of those whom he will leave behind at his death, he decides to provide
Vincent with comfort he can provide to the family once Anthony has gone. 

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.

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