Welcome to The College of Saint Thomas More

Thomas Moreís Legacy Readings
composed by Dr. Gerard Wegemer

Reading #1: passages on conscience
a. In a letter to his children's teacher:
"The whole fruit of their [educational] endeavors should consist in the testimony of God and a good conscience. Thus they will be inwardly calm
and at peace and neither stirred by praise of flatterers nor stung by the follies of unlearned mockers of learning.... A mind must be uneasy which ever wavers between joy and sadness because of other men's opinions." ("Letter to Gonell," Selected Letters [SL], p. 105)

b. On the clearness of conscience as seen in More's response to the judges who condemned him:
"I verily trust and shall therefore right heartily pray, that though your lordships have now here in earth been judges to my condemnation, we may yet hereafter in heaven merrily all meet together" (Roper's Life, NY: Everyman, p. 47).

Reading #3, on conscience and law
I never intend, God being my good Lord, to pin my soul to another man's back, not even the best man that I know this day living: for I know not where he may hap to carry it. There is no man living, of whom while he lives, I may make myself sure. Some may do for favor, and some may do for fear, and so might they carry my soul a wrong way. And some might hap to frame himself a conscience and think that, while he did it for fear, God would forgive it....

But Margaret, first, as for the law of the land, though everyone born in and inhabiting it is bound to keep it in every case under pain of some temporal punishment, and in many cases also under pain of God's displeasure, still no one is bound to swear that every law is well made, or bound under pain of God's displeasure to perform any point of the law that is actually unlawful....

I know well that if they were to make a law to do me any harm, that law could never be lawful, ...and then, as I told you, this is like a riddle, a case in which a man may lose his head and have no harm.... (From Correspondence of Sir Thomas More, pp. 521ff, emphasis added)

Reading #4: on law and its relationship to freedom, conscience, and statesmanship
Human laws, which More considered to be "the traditions of men," arise as the work of prudent civic leaders concerned for the common good (CW, vol. 5, p. 281). They provide a "sure and substantial shield" (CW, vol. 6, p. 262) that is absolutely necessary for true freedom and a relatively just society (Ibid., pp. 368-72, 403-5). More recognized an objective law of nature written in the human heart (CW, vol. 6, p. 141). Even though this law can be known by reason, human beings have free will and, More knew well, all can ignore this law as known by conscience and can follow the "foolish fantasy" of their own imagination -- but only for a limited time since conscience always makes itself known. Because of his deep understanding of human nature, More understood clearly that "unlimited power has a tendency to weaken good minds, and that even in the case of very gifted men." (CW, vol. 3.2, p. 105). For that reason, More recognized that the rule of law must be for everyone, even the king.

Just and courageous individuals are needed to execute these laws, however; otherwise

they will fall from impartiality and support false claims of their friends.... Then, as [Plutarch] said, they will turn the laws made against criminals into something much like cobwebs: the little gnats and flies will stick to them and will hang, but the big bumblebees will break them, and fly right through. And the laws made to be shields defending the innocent, those they will turn into swords with which to cut and deeply wound them.... (More's Dialogue of Comfort, Scepter Pr, p. 222)

More says explicitly that no law or set of laws can totally protect the innocent (CW, vol.10, pp.163ff). Therefore, those administering the laws must treat them with the greatest respect -- but prudently, as a physician who uses all the means at his disposal to bring about a cure (CW, vol. 6, p. 261). Laws, like medicines, can be applied only by individuals; the justice that results will be proportionate to the prudence and courage and temperance of those who apply them....

Law alone, therefore, will never be enough to insure justice. More was convinced that statesmen will always be needed, good people whose words and good living persuasively teach the spirit of the laws.... Without diligent statesmen, the thickets of the law could be easily torn done and, then, [as Robert Bolt paraphrases More], who "could stand upright in the winds that would blow?" [Thomas More on Statesmanship, pp.67-70 ,210, 213]

Reading #5a: on acquiring a calm and clear-sighted mind
For serenity and clear sight, one needs a well-cultivated soul that has come to love the "spiritual pleasure...of truth." So long as the soul is "overgrown with the barren weeds of carnal pleasures," it will have "no place for the good corn of spiritual pleasure."

The whole point is to "keep our minds occupied with good thoughts," for a "wandering mind" is never capable of "wisdom and good manners." Hence, the "active study of the four last things, and the deep consideration of them, is the thing that will keep us from sin." This "diligent remembrance" is well worth the effort it takes, for it is sure to flower in "not a false imagination, but a very true contemplation" of God and the world as they exist. (A paraphrase of More's argument, from Thomas More: A Portrait of Courage, Scepter Press, pp. 93-4.)

Reading #5b: how King Saul loses his calm and clear-sighted mind
In Thomas More's last works, proud King Saul emerges as the recurring example of the danger facing any ruler.... Saul was chosen by God and entrusted with enforcing the laws of Israel, and he began as a just and energetic advocate of Israel's common good. Yet faced with tribulations, Saul became impatient and "murmured, grudged, and mistrusted God" .... After "boldly framing himself a conscience with a gloss of his own making...," he ended up consulting witches, a practice explicitly forbidden by a law that Saul himself had proclaimed (CW, vol. 13, p. 213). Contrast Saul's approach to the advice Thomas More gives while he is imprisoned:

"He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge" (Psalm 91:4). Look, here is a sure promise for every faithful person. In the blistering heat of temptation or tribulation (for as I've said several times already, these overlap to a great extent: the devil uses every tribulation as a temptation to impatience, and therefore to murmuring and resentment and blasphemy; and every kind of temptation, to a good person who fights against it and refuses to follow it, is a very painful tribulation)--in the blistering heat, I therefore say, of every temptation, God gives the faithful person who hopes in him the shade of his holy shoulders, which are broad and large. It is shade sufficient to cool and refresh anyone in the heart...

"He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge." This verse says to the faithful person something further yet. It says that for the good hope you have in his help, God will take you as close to himself, just as snugly under his protection, as a hen nestles her young chicks together under her own wings to keep them safe from the hawk. (More's Dialogue of Comfort, Scepter, pp.109-110, emphasis added)

Reading #6: on the import of attending to conscience, despite weariness and opposition
More warns that, if a leader allows weariness to so grip "the mind that its strength is sapped and reason gives up the reins, if a [leader] is so overcome by heavy-hearted sleep that he neglects to do what the duty of his office requires ... -- like a cowardly ship's captain who is so disheartened by the furious din of a storm that he deserts the helm, hides away cowering in some cranny, and abandons the ship to the waves -- if a [leader] does this, I would certainly not hesitate to juxtapose and compare his sadness with the sadness that leads as [Paul] says, to hell.... (Sadness of Christ, Scepter Press, p. 47)

Reading #7: Thomas More on the Importance of Integrity
I considered it my duty to protect the integrity of my reputationÖ. After resigning my office, I waited until the opening of the new term, and, so far, no one has advanced a complaint against my integrity. Either my life has been so spotless or, at any rate, I have been so circumspect that, if my rivals oppose my boasting of the one, they are forced to let me boast of the other. As a matter of fact, the King himself has pronounced on this situation at various times, frequently in private, and twice in public. ("Letter to Erasmus, June 1533," SL pp. 179-180)

Reading #8: More's famous statement on the scaffold, which alluded to previous conversations with Henry VIII about conscience.
I die the king's good servant, and God's first. (Paris Newsletter, August 4, 1535: "...qu'il mouroit son bon serviteur et de Dieu premierement.")

...His Highness...made me [in 1529], as you well know, his Chancellor of this realm. Soon after, his Grace asked me yet again to look and consider his great matter, and well and indifferently to ponder such things as I should find.... And nevertheless he graciously declared unto me that he would in no wise that I should do or say anything except that I should perceive my own conscience should serve me, and that I should first look unto God and after God unto him, which most gracious words was the first lesson also that ever his Grace gave me at his first coming into his noble service. ("Letter to Cromwell, March 5, 1534," SL, p. 209)

I have always, from the beginning [of my service to Henry VIII in 1518], truly used myself o looking first upon God and next upon the King according to the lesson that his Highness taught me at my first coming to his noble service, the most virtuous lesson that ever prince taught his servant.... ("Letter to Margaret, June 3, 1535"; see SL, pp. 250-1.)

For another account of both of the above events, see Moreís "Letter to Wilson," SL, p. 229.

1. "Friendship he seems born and designed for; no one is more open-hearted in making friends or more tenacious in keeping them, nor has he any fear of that plethora of friendships against which Hesiod warns us.... Nobody is less swayed by public opinion, and yet nobody is closer to the feelings of ordinary men." - Erasmus, 1519

2. "More is a man of an angel's wit and singular learning. He is a man of many excellent virtues; I know not his fellow. For where is the man (in whom is so many goodly virtues) of that gentleness, lowliness, and affability, and as time requires, a man of marvelous mirth and pastimes and sometime of steadfast gravity -- a man for all seasons."
- Robert Whittington, 1520

3. Thomas More: "the best friend the poor ever had"... who embodied a "marriage of wit and wisdom" - Book of Sir Thomas More, by Shakespeare et al, 1590

4. Thomas More: "a man of the most tender and delicate conscience that the world saw since Augustine." - John Donne, 1608

5. "He's a learned man. May he . . . do justice

For truth's sake and his conscience." - Shakespeare's Henry VIII, 1613

6. "He was the person of the greatest virtue these islands ever produced." - Jonathan Swift, 1736

7. "Blessed Thomas More is more important at this moment than at any moment since his death, even perhaps the great moment of his dying; but he is not quite so important as he will be in about a hundred years' time." - G. K. Chesterton, 1929

8. Thomas More: "a strong and courageous spirit...[who] knew how to despise resolutely the flattery of human respect, how to resist, in accordance with his duty, the supreme head of the state."

- Canonization, 1935, with Hitler near the zenith of his power

9. "Che uomo completo!" (What a complete man!) - Pius XI, 1935

10. The world will need More as much as ever in the third millennium...as the epitome of the 'man of singular virtue,' 'the King's good servant but God's first'..., as the moral 'standard' against which the values of our own society can be judged.... More's reputation is unassailable."

- John Guy in Thomas More, Oxford UP, 2000

11 a. The life and martyrdom of Saint Thomas More have been the source of a message which spans the centuries and which speaks to people everywhere of the inalienable dignity of the human conscience, which, as the Second Vatican Council reminds us, is "the most intimate center and sanctuary of a person, in which he or she is alone with God, whose voice echoes within them" (Gaudium et Spes, 16). Whenever men or women heed the call of truth, their conscience then guides their actions reliably towards good. Precisely because of the witness which he bore, even at the price of his life, to the primacy of truth over power, Saint Thomas More is venerated as an imperishable example of moral integrity. And even outside the Church, particularly among those with responsibility for the destinies of peoples, he is acknowledged as a source of inspiration for a political system which has as its supreme goal the service of the human person. (#1)

11 b. ...[Thomas More's] profound detachment from honors and wealth, his serene and joyful humility, his balanced knowledge of human nature and of the vanity of success, his certainty of judgment rooted in faith: these all gave him that confident inner strength that sustained him in adversity and in the face of death. His sanctity shone forth in his martyrdom, but it had been prepared by an entire life of work devoted to God and neighbor.... This harmony between the natural and the supernatural is perhaps the element which more than any other defines the personality of this great English statesman: he lived his intense public life with a simple humility marked by good humor, even at the moment of his execution. This was the height to which he was led by his passion for the truth. What enlightened his conscience was the sense that man cannot be sundered from God, nor politics from morality.... And it was precisely in defense of the rights of conscience that the example of Thomas More shone brightly. It can be said that he demonstrated in a singular way the value of a moral conscience which is "the witness of God himself, whose voice and judgment penetrate the depths of man's soul." (#4)

- John Paul IIís Proclamation of Thomas as Patron of Statesmen, 2000

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