life of john picus earl of mirandola - The Center for Thomas More ...

Dead be they that live
not to God.
Evil Custom
[92]
40 Thomas More’s Life of John Picus
namely since all error is with amendment to be taken away and not with
imitation and following to be increased. Let them therefore neigh, let
them bawl, let them bark, go thou boldly forth° thy journey as thou
hast begun, and of their wickedness and misery consider how much
thyself art beholden to God, Which hath illumined thee sitting in the
shadow of death, and translating thee out of the company of them
which like drunken men without a guide wander hither and thither,
in obscure darkness, hath associated thee to the children of light. Let
that same sweet voice of our Lord always sound in thine ears: Sine
mortuos sepelire mortuos suos, tu me sequere,–“Let dead men alone with dead
men, follow thou me.” 1 Dead be they that live not to God and in the
space of this temporal death laboriously purchase themselves eternal
death. Of whom if thou ask whereto they draw, whereto they refer
their studies, their works, and their business, and finally what end they
have appointed themselves in the adoption° whereof they should be
happy, either they shall have utterly nothing to answer or they shall
bring forth words repugnant in themselves and contrary each to other,
like the raving of Bedlam people. 2 Nor they wot never themselves what
they do, but like them that swim in swift floods, they be borne forth
with the violence of evil custom as it were with the boisterous course
of the stream. And their wickedness blinding them on this side, and
the devil pricking them forward on that side, they run forth headlong
into all mischief, as blind guides of blind men, 3 till that death set on
them unawares, and till that it be said unto them ⌐ that Christ saith in
the Gospel: ¬ “My friend, this night ⌐ the devils ¬ shall take thy soul from
thee. These goods then that thou hast gathered, whose shall they be?” 4
Then shall they envy them whom they despised, then shall they commend
them that they mocked, then shall they covet to ensue them in
living when they may not, whom when they might have ensued they
pursued. Stop therefore thine ears,¦ my most dear son, and whatsoever
men say of thee, whatsoever men think on thee, account it for noth-
3 forth forth on / 15 adoption Apparently in the sense of “taking up and treating as one’s own”;
if so, More’s usage antedates the first recorded in OED (s.v. adoption 2a)
¦30 More omits ceras, “with wax” (CW 1:360, 361).
1. Sine…me: Matthew 8:22.
2. like the raving of Bedlam people: More’s translation of the Latin, verba velut fanaticorum deliramenta,
“like the babblings of madmen” (CW 1:358). The “Bedlam people” are those of the Bethlehem
Hospital for the insane. OED cites this instance as the earliest usage of “Bedlam” in the attributive
sense meaning “mad” (s.v. Bedlam 6).
3. blind guides…men: An allusion to Matthew 15:14.
4. this night…they be: Cf. Luke 12:20.
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