The three books of the Dialogue, believed by many to represent the three major faculties of the soul, the memory, understanding, and will, explore the interplay between various dimensions of the self as Antony moves from recitation of theological principles in book 1 to accommodation of Vincent’s fear in book 2, to orientation of the will through meditation in book 3. For More, preparation for suffering involves the entire self as he cumulatively draws more and more of the human faculties into the process of surrendering to God. In “Resources of Kind in A
Dialogue of Comfort,” Billingsley argues that book 1 addresses the reason.71 He
compares it a “theological treatise,” “useful for the exposition of faith but wearisome in conversation.”72 In book 1, Antony lays out many of the underlying theological principles and master metaphors on which he builds the rest of the work. The least dialogic of the three parts, however, book 1 also reveals the limitations of reason by showing how difficult it can be for fearful sufferers to apply these principles to themselves.
In chapter 1, Antony refers to human suffering as a “sicknes” (More 12:12), which ultimately stems from the “mortal maladye” and “deadly wounds” (12:11) of human sinfulness and thus effects all human beings. Suffering, paradoxically, however, serves both as a result of sin and as a possible means of curing it.
71Billingsley, “Resources of Kind,” 67.
Throughout book 1, More emphasizes the “medicinable” qualities of affliction, arguing that even pain that comes as a direct result of sin may be “medicinable” if the sufferer will “so take yt.” Tribulation holds curative potential because of it offers an opportunity for expiation of sin, serving “a very good special medisyn, to cure hym of al the payne in the tother world, & wyn hym eternall salvacion” (More 12:27). More emphasizes, however, the need for active participation on the part of the sufferer, arguing that the sufferer may “make” such tribulations “medicinable for hym self” only “yf hym selfe will” (More 12:25). Such sufferers choose to “make a medisyn of ther maladye” (More 12:26), transforming a consequence for sin into an opportunity to work towards their salvation and avoid punishment in the afterlife. The experience of suffering itself raises a challenge to the sufferer as he or she must choose how to receive and respond to affliction.
Suffering that is not the consequence of any known sin may be “better than medicinable because it offers “double medicyn” (More 12:29). While such suffering may also expiate past sin and help the sufferer earn eternal salvation, its function is primarily preventative, acting as “both a cure for the synne passid, & a preseruative for the synne that is to come” (More 12:30). The third type of suffering that Antony describes is “better than medicinable” because, rather than atone for past sin, such suffering provides an opportunity for “the exercise of our pacyens & encrese of our meryte” (12:30). Antony offers Job as an example of such a sufferer (More 12:31), describing this type of suffering as tribulation undergone “for the mayntenaunce of iustice or for the defence of godes cause” (More 12:32) including religious
For More, all three of these forms of affliction contain potential value because they initiate the sufferer’s process of seeking comfort. According to More, this desire is in itself a source of consolation because it serves as a sign that God is at work and has “put such a vertuouse well ordred appetite” in the mind (More 12:16). The desire for comfort thus serves as a “sure vndowtid token, that toward our fynall saluacion our savior is hym selfe so graciously besy abowt vs” (More 12:16). For More, suffering holds value because it shatters the individual’s sense of sufficiency, destroying the “fantasies” that distract them from eternal realities of sin, heaven, and hell. More points out the clarifying effects of suffering, arguing that while “many a man that in an easye tribulacion falleth to seke his ease in the pastyme of worldly fantasies,” in situations of “greater pyane” he finds “all these comfortes so feoble, that he ys fayne to fall to the sekyng of godes help” (More 12:18). Tribulation thus serves as a source of vision, exposing the fictions that, in More’s view, usually dominate human experience. As a result, the afflicted person gains greater access to the underlying reality of Christian experience, which, for More, consists in constant, unrelenting conflict with Satan for the soul. “The sorest tribulation of all,” he
explains, is the “feare of lesyng throw dedly synne” not just physical life, but the life of the soul (More 12:20).
In book 1, More lays out the theological foundations of his perspective on the value of suffering. In More’s view, human existence has a definite order in which earthly suffering is a necessary prerequisite to eternal comfort. More characterizes human life as a period of pilgrimage, as a time of weeping and sowing in preparation for the next life (More 12:41-42). As a result, viewing human life as a time of
laughing and reaping leads to a dangerous reversal of the order that, for More, pervades human existence, since God “settith the wepyng tyme before” the time of laughing, which will “come after in hevyn” (More 12:42). Conversely, those who suffer on earth will enjoy comfort heaven. In support of this argument, More cites a range of scriptural passages, including Hebrews 12:6, the proof-text for the value of suffering used by Roman Catholics and reformists alike: “saint Paule sayth to the hebrewes that god those that he loveth he chastiseth / Et flagellat omnem filium quem
recipit: and he scourgeth euery sone of his that he recevith” (More 12:42). Based on
this pattern, tribulation is an indicator that a person will experience comfort after death. Citing both Paul and Christ, More asserts that a life of suffering is
characteristic of the Christian to the extent that “we can not…come to hevyn but by many tribulacions” (More 12:43).
For More, the body and soul, this life and the next make up unequal but nevertheless interrelated parts of a closed system. God, More asserts, “punyshith not one thing twyse” (More 12:25), so that sins punished on earth will not be punished in the afterlife. Antony cites the authority of Scripture and the unanimity of the church in support of his point: “Thus see we well by the very scripture yt selfe how trew the words are of the old holy sayntes, that with one voise in a maner say all oen thing / that is to wit / that we shall not haue both contynuall welth in this world & in the tother to” (More 12:43). As a result of their sin, human beings must suffer, either on earth or in heaven, making earthly comfort and heavenly comfort mutually exclusive.
Although all sins must be punished once, not all punishments are equal, however. Punishment on earth is, in More’s system, much less severe than punishment in the afterlife:
For likewise as in hell payne serveth onely for punishment without any maner of purging, because all possibilitie of purging is past / in purgatory
punyshment servith for onely purging, because the place of deserving is passyd: so while we be yet in this world in which is our place& our time of merite & well deserving / the tribulacion that is sent vs here for our sinne shall yf we faithfully so desire, beside the clensyng and purging of our payne, serve vs also for encease of rewarde. (More 12:36)
More sees earthly tribulation as full of “possibilitie” that suffering after death, including suffering in purgatory, lacks. Just as tribulation on earth may serve as a substitute for punishment in the afterlife, so also physical pain may take the place of spiritual torture. Invoking man’s nature as both body and soul, he advises those who do not feel sorrow for their sins to take on voluntary physical suffering: “sith the body & the sowle together make the hole man / the lesse affliccion that he felith in his sowle, the more payne in recompence let hym put vppon his body, & pourge the spirite by the affliccion of the flesh” (More 12:98). Thus, in More’s economy of divine reward and punishment, earthly and physical suffering takes on great value when considered in the context of the whole picture, which includes body and soul, earth and heaven.
More makes it clear, however, that man’s suffering on earth only takes on spiritual value through the merit of Christ’s work. Thus, he resists the reformist rejection of the value of human works by arguing that human suffering does have real merit and value, but qualifies his statement by acknowledging that this merit
only comes “by the meane of cristes passion” (More 12:25). Discussing penance, he explains:
For tough mans penaunce with all the good works that he can do / be not hable to satisfie of them selfe for the lest synne that we do / yet the liberall goodness of god thorow the merite of christes bitter passion (without which all our works could neyther satisfie nor deserue / nor yet do not in dede neyther merite nor satisfie so much as a sponefull to a great vessel full, in comparison of the merite and satisfaccion that Christ hath merited & satisfied for vs hym selfe) this liberal goodness of god I say / shall yet at our faithfull instaunce & request, cause our penaunce & tribulacion paciently taken in this world to serue vs in the tother world both for relese & reward tempered after such rate, as his high goodnes & wisdome shall se conveniently for vs / wherof our blynd mortalitie can not here imagine nor devise the stynt. (More 12:36)
More depicts this world and “tother” world as incommensurate yet connected by means of “Christ’s bitter passion,” which imbues human penance and works with redemptive potential, making it possible for these works to lead to “relese” and “reward.” The rate of exchange between human suffering and divine reward, however, operates according to a divine rather than human calculation, as God “tempers” human reward according to his “high goodness and wisdome.” Prayer makes it possible for a human being to believe that their situation of suffering has meaning beyond the capacity of “blind mortality” to understand.
More thus imagines a synergistic relationship between human suffering and the passion of Christ in which God rewards Christians who “do what is in them” by granting them grace through Christ. Rather than a substitution of Christ’s suffering for man’s suffering, as in the reformist conception of atonement, More instead imagines a cooperative process through which man suffers alongside Christ, and, through the merit of Christ, is able to participate in his own atonement. More
captures this dynamic through his image of the Christian as a patient cooperating with the divine physician by making suffering “medicinable” or even “meritorious” through the manner in which it is received. Thus, the Christian participates
synecdochally in the passion of Christ as he enacts or imitates Christ’s suffering by embracing his own tribulation. Thus, imitation of Christ, rather than the analogical act that it would become for reformist thinkers, was a literal participation in Christ’s redemptive work as the believers’ earthly, physical suffering, by the “meane of
Cristes passion,” was believed to contribute literally to the atonement of the believer.