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T)onnes SERMONS

Selected Tassages

WITH AN ESSAY by

Logan Pearsall Smith

OXFORD

At the Clarendon Press

'We thank Mr. Pearsall Smith for the great benefit he has conferred upon us, and also for the serene scholarship, gentle- ness, and perspicuity with which he leads us through the Sahara of Donne's Ser- mons. . . . There is no over-laudation of Donne, no flippancy, no "showing off" in Mr. Pearsall Smith's essay, "nothing of the down of angels' wings". It is an exquisite piece of work by a true man of letters.' spectator

'Mr. Pearsall Smith has hereby proved to even the most desultory reader that Donne was not only a great poet and a skilled theologian, but also a supreme master of English prose.'

MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW

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Reference

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http://www.archive.org/details/donnessermonsselOOdonn

Donne's

SERMONS

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T)onnes SERMONS

Selected T^assages

WITH AN ESSAY by

Logan Pearsail Smith

OXFORD At the Clarendon Press

Oxford Uni'uersity PresSy Amen House, London E.C.4

GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE WELLINGTON

BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS KARACHI LAHORE DACCA

CAPE TOWN SALISBURY NAIROBI IBADAN ACCRA

KUALA LUMPUR HONG KONO

FIRST EDITION I919

REPRINTED I 9 2 O, 1932, 1942, I946, I 9 5 O,

1954, 1959, 1964

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, OXFORD

BY VIVIAN RIDLER

PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY

CONTENTS

The Preacher . When I consider I am Not all Here Imperfect Prayers Powers and Principalities

6. Infecting God .

7. Forgiveness of Sins

8. Forgive my Sins.

9. Let Me Wither . ID. Donne and the Worm

11. Preaching Consolation

12. The Beauty of the Soul

13. Spiritual Liberality

14. Eagle's Wings .

15. The Hour-Glass

16. Preaching .

17. Applause .

18. The Bellman .

19. Favourite Scriptures The Psalms Sanctified Passions Style and Language Style of the Holy Ghost Compliments

_ ^ . Lying at Aix

26. Farev^rell on Going to Germany

27. The Vicar of St. Dunstan's .

28. Funeral Sermon on Magdalen Herbert, Lady

vers, 1627 ......

29. Death of Elizabeth and Accession ot James I

20. 21.

22. 23, 24.

25.

Dan-

PAGE

I 2

3 4

5 6

7

9

10

II

13 H 15

17

18

19 20 21

23 24 26 28 28 30 31 34

35

47

VI

Contents.

				PAGE
30. The Gunpowder Plot ...... 50
31. Preached to the Honourable Company of the
Virginian Plantation, 1622 .... 50
32. The Mission of England				. 55
33. James I . . . .				. 56
34. Death of James I				. S7
3^. The Plague, 1625				58
36. Difficult Times .				. 61
37. Polemical Preaching .				. 62
38. The World Decays .				. 65
39. Imperfection				. 66
40. Man				. 68
41. Afflictions ....				. 69
42. Discontent				. 71
43. The World a House .				• 7J
44. Mundus Mare .				■ 72
45. The Indifference of Nature .				. 75
46. Wealth ....				. 76
47. A London Merchant .				. 77
48. Sickness ....				84
49. Public Opinion .				84
50. J07				. 85
51. Women ....				. 85
52. Cosmetics .....				87
53. The Skin				89
54. Mud Walls ....				91
55. Ignorance .....				92
56. The Imperfection of Knowledge .				93
57. Change of Mind				95
58. Reasons and Faith				97
59. True Knowledge				105
60. Terrible Things				IDS
61. The Fate of the Heathen				no
62. The Church a Company				III
63. God Proceeds Legally				112
64. The Church . .				115
65. Reverence in Church .				118
6S. Going to Church				120

Contents,

Vll

68. 69. 70.

71. 72.

73. 74- 75- 76.

77- 78.

79- 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90.

91- 92.

93. 94. 95- 96.

97- 98.

99- 100.

lOI.

102. 103. 104.

Prayer

The Time of Prayer

At Table and Bed

Unconscious Prayer

Sermons .

New Doctrines .

Papist and Puritan

Theological Dissensions

Despair

The Sociableness of God

God a Circle

God's Mirror

God's Names

God's Mercies .

God not Cruel .

The Voice of God

God's Language .

God's Anger

God's Faults

God's Judgements

Terrible Things

God's Malediction

God's Power

Access to God .

The Image of God in Man

Man God's Enemy

The Atheist

The Angels

The Devil.

The Creation

The Heavens and Earth

The Creation of a Harmonious World

God and Adam and Eve

The World since the Fall

Silkworms .

Original Sin

PAGE

121 122 122 124 125 126 129 130 131 133 133

134

135 135 136 140 140 142 144 144

147 148 149 150 152 153 154 15s 157 ^^1 159 161 162 163 164 165 166 168

Vlll

Contents,

105. 106. 107. 108. 109.

no. rii. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134- 135. 136.

137. 138.

139- 140. 141. 142.

The Heart of the Sinner

Light Sins

The Sin of Reason

Delight in Evil

Excuses

Rebuke of Sin

Names of Sins

Pride

Covetousness

Blasphemy

The Burden of Sin

The Sinner

The Sorrows of the Wicked

The Sins of Memory .

The Eye of God

The World Drowned in Sin

The Hand of God .

The Sick Soul .

Sleep

The Gate of Death .

Our Prison

All must Die

Death Inevitable

The Expectation of Death

The Death-bed .

The Death of Ecstasy .

The Dead with Us

Mourning .

A Quiet Grave .

Eternal Damnation

Death of the Good and the Bad Man

The Northern Passage

The Resurrection

The Awakening .

The Resurrection of the Bod

The Last Day .

The Day of Judgement

Joy .

t:i^:^iSiri^

Frontispiece

Portrait of the Author in his Shroud: the frontispiece to Death's Duell 1632

NOTE

I REFER in my notes to the three folios of Donne*s Sermons as I, II, and III respectively. I is the first folio, LXXX Sermons, 1640 ; II is Fifty Sermons, 1649 ; III is XXVI Sermons, 1660. The text of each passage is taken from the first appearance of the sermon which contains it in print, whether in the folios, or in the earlier published quartos of separate sermons printed in Donne*s lifetime, or shortly after his death. The original punctuation has been preserved ; and also the original spelling, except in the use of ' i ' for * j ', of ' u ' for * v * and vice versa, and of contractions for * m * or * n '. I refer to Professor Grierson's edition of Donne's Poems {7he Poems of John Donne, edited by Herbert J. C. Grierson, M.A., Oxford, at the Clarendon Press, 191 2) as Poems ; to 7he Life and Letters of John Donne, by Edmund Gosse (London, William Heinemann, 1899), as Gosse ; to John Donne, by Augustus Jessopp, D.D. (Methuen and Co., 1897), as Jessopp. Spearing refers to Miss Spearing's *A Chronological Arrangement of Donne's Sermons * (Modern Language Review, vol. viii, 191 3) ; Coleridge, to Coleridge's * Notes on Donne ', pub- lished in The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, collected and arranged by Henry Nelson Coleridge, 1838, vol. iii. C. and T. Jas. I, and C. and T . Charles I, refer

xii Note.

to 7 he Court and Times of James the First (1848), and The Court and Times of Charles the First (1848). The references to Donne's Devotions are to the first edition of 1624. Ramsay refers to Miss Ramsay's Les Doctrines medievales chex Donne ^ le Poete metaphysicien de VAngle- terre (Oxford University Press, 19 17). I must express my special thanks to Mr. Edmund Gosse, C.B., for his kindness in lending me a number of very rare first editions of Donne's sermons from his collection of Donne's works.

INTRODUCTION

THE remarkable and somewhat enigmatic figure of John Donne is one that has attracted a good deal of attention in recent years ; his Hfe has been studied, his poems and letters carefully edited, his character analysed, and his position as a poet acutely debated. His harshness, his crabbed and often frigid way of writing, his forced conceits, his cynicism and sensuaUty, are extremely repellent to some readers ; while to others his subtlety, his realism, and a certain modern and intimate quahty in his poems, illuminated as they are with splendid flashes of imaginative fire, possess an extraordinary interest and fascination. There are people who hate Donne ; there are others who love him, but there are very few who have read his poems and remain quite indifferent to him. His character is still a puzzle, his reputation as a poet, eclipsed for a long time and only revived in our own day, is by no means yet the subject of final agreement.

In spite of this modern interest in Donne, and the study which has been devoted to his works, there is one aspect of them which, until recently, has received no very adequate attention. In addition to his poems, his letters, and a few minor prose pieces, Donne left behind him an immense body of theological writings. By birth and

^iv Introduction.

by the tradition of his family a Roman Catholic, and for that reason shut out in his youth from the paths of secular ambition which had so great an attraction for him, he was of necessity much preoccupied with theo- logical considerations ; and it was not till after much study of controversial divinity that he succeeded in convincing himself of the truth of the AngHcan position, which he finally made his own, and which, even in his secular days, he emphatically defended. When at the age of forty-two, after long experience of poverty and many worldly disappointments, he found all other paths of preferment closed to him, and at last, after much hesitation, took rehgious orders, he then began that career as a great divine and preacher which, until the revival of interest in his poetry, remained his principal claim to remembrance. But his fame as a preacher has been this long time fame at second hand ; it is due to Izaak Walton's descriptions of his sermons, rather than to any reading of the sermons themselves. The very quantity, indeed, of his sermons — and no Anglican divine of the period has left behind him such a number — has discouraged students from thorough study of them ; and, indeed, to read these great folio volumes is a task not Hghtly to be undertaken. But it is not only the mere bulk and body of these foHos, the great number and length of Donne's sermons, which daunts the reader ; there is much in the writing itself which renders it diffi- cult and distasteful to the modern mind. In the first place sermons themselves, and especially old sermons, have fallen somewhat out of fashion ; they are not often read now, and the collected and republished editions

Introduction. xv

of the great seventeenth century divines rest for the most part unopened on our shelves. People read novels, biographies, books of travel, social and political treatises instead of the sermons in vi^hich their grandfathers and grandmothers delighted : Hooker, Barrow, South, Tillotson are names indeed, but little more than names to most of us ; and even so great a writer of English prose, so exquisite an artist as Jeremy Taylor, is famiUar to us only in extracts and selected passages. For modern theologians this old divinity, with its obsolete learning and forgotten controversies, has little more than an archaeological interest ; while to the more secular- minded, the old divines, whose severe brows and square faces meet our eyes when we open their great folios, seem, with their imposed dogmas, their heavy and obsolete methods of exposition and controversy, almost as if they belonged to some remote geological era of human thought. We are reminded of Taine*s image of them as giant ichthyosaurians or megatheria, slowly winding their scaly backs through the primeval sHme, and meeting each other, armed with syllogisms and bristling with texts, in theological battle, to tear the flesh from one another's flanks with their great talons, and cover their opponents with filth in their efforts to destroy them.

And yet these old divines were great men and great writers ; their voices enthralled the best and wisest of their own generation, and it is a misfortune for their fame, and a misfortune for our Hterature, that they put their wisdom and observation and deep feeling, their great gifts of imagination, and their often exquisite mastery of the art of expression into the hortatory

xvi Introduction.

and controversial form of the sermon which time has rendered obsolete.

It must be admitted that all the reasons, good or bad, which keep us from reading writers like Jeremy Taylor and South, face us at once, and seem even more valid, when we open a volume of Donne's sermons. All that has ceased to interest, all that actually repels us in the old theology, the scholastic divinity, the patristic learn- ing, the torturing of texts, the interpretation of old prophesies, the obsolete controversies and refutation of forgotten heresies, the insistence on moral commonplaces, the intolerance of human frailty, and the menaces of fearful judgement on it — ^with all these stock subjects, Donne, like his contemporaries, filled his sermons. But his case is even worse than theirs ; not only as a theolo- gian was he of an older breed, more remote and medieval than Jeremy Taylor or South, he had also, personal to himself, the unhappy faculty of developing to their utmost the faults of any form of Hterary expression he adopted ; and when he abandoned verse for sermon- writing, every defect of this kind of composition, every- thing that most offends us in the old preachers and sound expositors, was carried by him to a pitch which gives him a bad eminence over the most unreadable of them all.

That sermons like Donne's should have held great congregations spellbound seems astonishing, not only to the secular mind, but to theologians themselves. One of Donne's most distinguished successors at the Deanery of St. Paul's, Dean Milman, has written of them :

' It is difficult for a Dean of our rapid and restless days to imagine, when he surveys the massy folios of Donne's

Introduction. xvii

sermons — each sermon spreads out over many pages — a vast congregation in the Cathedral or at Paul's Cross, listening not only with patience but with absorbed interest, with unflagging attention, even with deHght and rapture, to these interminable disquisitions, to us teeming with laboured obscurity, false and misplaced wit, fatiguing antitheses. However set oS, as by all accounts they were, by a most graceful and impressive delivery, it is astonishing to us that he should hold a London congregation enthralled, unwearied, unsatiated. Yet there can be no doubt that this was the case. And this congregation consisted, both of the people down to the lowest, and of the most noble, wise, accomphshed of that highly intellectual age. They sat, even stood, undisturbed, except by their own murmurs of admiration, sometimes by hardly suppressed tears.' ^

It is only necessary to open a volume of Donne's sermons to find a justification for his successor's criticism. For instance, in preaching to Charles I at Whitehall on the text * In my Father's house are many mansions, if it were not so, I would have told you ', he begins :

* There are occasions of Controversies of all kinds in this one Verse ; And one is, whether this be one Verse or no ; For as there are Doctrinall Controversies, out of the sense and interpretation of the words, so are there Grammatical! differences about the Distinction, and Interpunction of them : some Translations differing thereinn from the Originall (as the Originall Copies are distinguished, and interpuncted now) and some differing from one another. The first Translation that was, that into Syriaque, as it is expressed by Tremellius, renders these words absolutely, precisely as our two Translations doe ; And, as our two Translations doe, appUes the » Annals of S. PauTs Cathedral, Henry Hart Milman, D.D., 2nd ed., 1869, p. 32S.

ao35»3 b

xviii Introduction.

second clause and proposition, Si quo niinuSy if it were not so, I would have told you, as in affirmation, and confirma- tion of the former. In domo Patris, In my Fathers house there are many Mansions, For, ij it were not so I would have told you. But then, as both our Translations doe, the Syriaque also admits into this Verse a third clause and proposition, Vade parare, I goe to prepare you a place. Now Bez.a doth not so ; Piscator doth not so ; They determine this Verse in those two propositions which constitute our Text, In my Fathers house, etc. And then they let fall the third proposition, as an inducement, and inchoation of the next Verse.* ^

So the sermon goes inexorably on, immense paragraph after paragraph filled with quotations from the Fathers and quibbling controversies with Roman Catholic theologianSjtill suddenly the page lights up with a descrip- tion of the unending day of eternity unsurpassed in our Hterature, how * all the foure Monarchies, with all their thousands of yeares. And all the powerfull Kings, and all the beautifull Queenes of this world, were but as a bed of flowers, some gathered at six, some at seaven, some at eight. All in one Morning, in respect of this Day ', and how, during all the time that had passed since the Creation, in this timeless mansion of Eternity, * there was never heard quarter clock to strike, never seen minute glasse to turne \^

Contrasts almost as surprising as this meet us in the sermons of other seventeenth century preachers, and here and there we come on passages of poignant expression and lyrical or sombre beauty clothed in the noblest language. For while the sermon, regarded merely as

» I. p. 737. » See No. 153.

Introduction. xix

a form of literary expression, has undoubted disadvantages which render the sermons of one age difficult for the next age to appreciate, yet on the other hand this form of expression is one — ^since its subject matter is nothing less than the whole of Hfe — which gives the v^ddest possible scope to a great preacher. He can pour his whole soul into his sermon, his hopes, fears, and self-accusations, the furthest flights of his imagination, the ripest results of his philosophic meditations, all the wisdom of mellow experience, and even the most amusing details of satiric observation. The very circumstances of his dehvery, the ceremonious solemnity of the church and pulpit, the great responsibihty of the occasion, give a nobility to his utterance ; and the presence of the congregation, the need to speak directly to the hearts and minds of men and women, lends a certain dramatic intensity to all he says. Such circumstances, while they are full of danger for an insincere and rhetorical preacher, provide the most splendid opportunities for one endowed with earnest purpose and a sincere imagination. The exhortations of such a preacher can hardly help being noble in expres- sion ; and it is in the sermon therefore that we find some of the highest achievements of EngHsh prose — in the sermon, or in prophetic or didactic or even political eloquence written with the same high impulse and inspira- tion. For great prose needs a great subject matter, needs great themes and a high spectacular point of vision, and solemn and clear and steadfast conception of Hfe and its meaning. It must handle with deep earnest- ness the most profound themes. Good and Evil, Desire and Disillusion, the briefness of Life and the mystery of

b2

XX Introduction.

Death — the universal material and the great common- places of human thought in all ages. Such a mood is the mood of religion, in whatever dogmas it may be clothed ; and it is the religious winter w^ho can most impressively touch those organ stops of grave emotion which move us in the highest achievements of prose literature.

The seventeenth century divines, moreover, with all the lumber which they inherited from the past, inherited much also that gives an enduring splendour to their works. In the doctrines of their faith they found a com- plete conception of existence, a scheme elaborated in all its details, and rich in memories and associations accumu- lated from the dawn of history. The Creation of the world, the Fall of Man, all the vicissitudes of the Chosen People, the sins and punishments of their Kings, the vehemence of their Prophets and their supernatural fore- sight, and the great central tragedy and hope of the Redemption — these were themes that came to their hands elaborated by the Fathers of the Church and by a whole succession of medieval writers ; and now, just at this time, the Sacred Books which were the original sources of this deposit of Christian history and doctrine had been re-translated and clothed afresh in an unsur- passable beauty of language.

This noble diction, this intensity, and what we might almost call inspiration of language, which gives so poetic a colouring to the English version of the Scriptures, was not the achievement of one man, but almost the universal birthright of the time : with the EUzabethan dramatists and translators, the preachers and theological writers had their share in this great utterance, which, whether

Introduction. xxi

due to linguistic causes which ceased to operate, or to an intensity of poetic vision which afterwards vanished, certainly grows fainter and thinner and gradually dies away as the seventeenth century advances, and the age of theology is superseded by the age of Reason and common sense.

If Donne's sermons are full, as we have said, of all that in the old divinity which has become distasteful to us, if he surpasses the preachers of that period in their faults and drawbacks, he shares also in their achievements, and indeed in many ways he overtops them all. Lost in the crabbed, unread, unreadable folios of his sermons, these ' volumes of religion and m.ountains of piety ', there are pages and passages of surprising beauty, which are nevertheless entirely unknown to English readers. It is indeed somewhat curious that with the growing recognition of Donne's merits as a poet, so little attention has been paid to the excellence of his prose. Equal in power and beauty to that of Sir Thomas Browne or Jeremy Taylor, and in passionate intensity surpassing even these great writers, it is almost un^ represented in our prose anthologies ; and indeed, the best of these, Basil Montagu's Selections, includes no specimen of his writing. But the explanation of this is after all a simple one; unhke Jeremy Taylor or Sir Thomas Brov^me, Donne was famous first of all as a poet, and save for his Httle-known Devotions, he wrote no small book, no Holy Dying or Urn Burial in which he gave evidence of his powers as a prose writer. His shorter prose pieces, his Paradoxes and Biathanatos, and his elaborate letters do not represent him at his best ; it is only here and there

xxii Introduction.

in isolated passages of his sermons that he put forth his full strength ; and his best prose, not being therefore easily accessible, has almost entirely escaped notice, and few even of the most enthusiastic readers of Donne's verse are aware that however highly they estimate his meiits as a poet, he is equally worthy of fame as a prose writer — that, indeed, his mastery of the means of expres- sion was perhaps even greater in prose than in poetry ; was less impeded by those defects of technique and tem- perament which kept him from reaching the highest level of poetic achievement.

The object of this volume is to remedy if possible this neglect. After reading Donne's sermons more than once, I have chosen for reprinting those passages which especially impressed me, and which I think will be of interest to modern and secular-minded readers like myself. Any volume of selections from a voluminous author must be always unsatisfactory, for there are many canons of choice, many sieves for the sifting, by means of which such a selection can be made. Donne preached his sermons of course for the purpose of exhorta- tion and religious edification ; while there is much in his theology and controversial preaching which is now out of date, he nevertheless stated the main doctrines of the English Church with such moderation and such learning, that a selection of passages from his sermons might make a useful volume of Anglican apologetics ; and it was indeed with this object in view that they were reprinted eighty years ago by an Anglican divine, Henry Alford (afterwards Dean of Canterbury), in whose opinion they were ' one of the earliest and best expositions of the

Introduction. xxiii

divinity of our English Church ' — * a genuine body of orthodox divinity (in the best sense of the words) not to be found, perhaps, in any other English theologian '.^ Then, too, as a preacher Donne was a moralist, and from his denunciations of evil and his exhortations to repentance might be made a handbook of edification which could have its use and value.^ Or again, taking Donne as a representa- tive mind of his period, one might use his sermons for illustrating the history of human thought, and by selecting typical pages from them give a picture, not only of the theological conceptions of the time, but of the philosophy then current, and the main ideas that were accepted by the cultivated men of that period. The recent and learned volume of Miss Ramsay, Les Doctrines medievales chez Donne^ le Poete metaphysicien de VAngleterre,^ with its copious citations from Donne's sermons, has shown how great would be the historical interest of such a selec- tion, and what a treasure-house can be found in Donne's writings of passages illustrating the thought and specula- tion of the early seventeenth century in England.

The purpose underlying this selection is not, however, theological, didactic, nor even historical. It is concerned with Donne as a man, as an artist and writer, with his personal accent and speaking voice ; first of all with the man himself, and only in the second place with the doctrines he expounded and the age he Hved in. When

» The Works of John Donne, D.D. With a Memoir of his Life, by Henry Alford, M.A., 1839, vol. i, pp. v, xxi.

' Such a selection of edifying passages. Selections from the Works oj John Donne, D.D., was published, with no editor's name, by D. A. Tal- boys, at Oxford, 1840.

* Oxford University Press, 1917.

xxiv Introduction.

Donne took orders in the English Church the doctrines and apologetics and controversial positions of that Church were so to speak imposed upon him ; he accepted them without demur, and as Professor Grierson says,

* In Donne's scholastic, ultra-logical treatment, the rigid skeleton of seventeenth century theology is, at times, presented in all its sternness and unattractiveness. From the extremest deductions, he is saved by the moderation which was the key-note of his church, and by his own good sense and deep sympathy with human nature. But Donne is most eloquent when, escaping from dogmatic minutiae and controversial " points ", he appeals directly to the heart and conscience. A reader may care little for the details of seventeenth century theology and yet enjoy without qualification Donne's fervid and original thinking, and the figurative richness, and splendid harmonies of his prose in passages of argu- ment, of exhortation and of exalted meditation. It is Donne the poet who transcends every disadvantage of theme and method, and an outworn fashion in wit and learning. There are sentences in the sermons which, in beauty of imagery and cadence, are not surpassed by anything he wrote in verse, or by any prose of the century from Hooker's to Sir Thomas Browne's.' ^

It is these passages which Professor Grierson so well describes, passages which illustrate what he calls * the unique quality, the weight, fervour and wealth, of Donne's eloquence ', that I have first of all chosen, and any one who may be inclined to think this praise of Donne's prose exaggerated should read — and above all, read aloud — some of the following pages, the description for instance of God's bounty,^ which Professor Saintsbury has

^ Cambridge History of Literature, iv. 220-1

• p. 139.

Introduction. xxv

called unsurpassed, perhaps never equalled for the beauty of its rhythm and the Shakespearean magnificence of its diction ; or the great peroration on * falling out of the hands of God \ in which Donne sums up in a sombre and terrible sentence — one of the longest and most splendid sentences in the EngHsh language — the horror of the deprivation of God's love, and of eternal banish- ment from His presence.^

The preachers of this, as of other periods, inherited certain set subjects and splendid commonplaces which it was their practice to repeat and elaborate and adorn. The Mercy of God, the Sinfulness of Man, the vanity of this world and the sorrows of the wicked, the sinner's death-bed, the Day of Judgement, the eternal torments of Hell, and the glory and blessedness of the saints in Heaven — these great themes formed the culminating points in their sermons, and were subjects which called for all their powers. Donne's own temperament and experience, his melancholy cast of thought and his mystical sense of another world, enabled him to treat many of these themes and religious pieces with a vividness of feeling which removes them far from the region of the conventional and commonplace.

The great subject of Sin especially preoccupied him ; his poet's sensibiUty and sensuous nature — and Donne is the most sensual of all the great EngUsh poets — made the allurements of the flesh very real to him ; he knew all about temptation and the weakness of man's moral nature ; Hke St. Augustine, with whom he has been more than once compared, the memory of his own transgres-

» pp. 2o8-IO.

xxvi Introduction.

sions and of the excesses of his youth was always with him ; and his treatment of the psychology of sin, his descriptions of the * various and vagabond heart of the sinner ', are written with a modern subtlety of analysis, a frankness of self-confession, a curious mingling of asceticism and regret, which we find nowhere else except perhaps in the writings of St. Augustine, and which must hold the attention of the least theological reader ; while his denunciations of judgements on sin, and his accounts of the sinner's death-bed, ' the clangour of the angels' trumpets and the horrour of the ringing bell ', are inspired by the feeUngs of one to whom these judgements and these terrors are very real and very dreadful.

Another of his special themes is the great theme of Death. Donne's mind was in many ways essentially medieval, and in no way more so than in his medieval sense of death's horror. Even in his profane and secular poetry we note a preoccupation with this thought ; and when as a preacher it was his duty to treat of Death in his sermons he spared his hearers none of the most macabre of his imaginations about it. There was an almost morbid love of ugliness in his curious temperament, a delight like that of Swift in what is repulsive and even loathsome, and in his sermons on death lie could freely indulge his taste for the grotesque and the disgusting, for dreadful details of the grave's horrors, for decay and putrefaction, and — ^what was almost an hallucination with him — the activities of the loathsome worm. Unpleasant in their details as are most of these great passages, there is a kind of splendid horror about them which has made me include many — I hope not too many

Introduction. xxvii

—of them in this selection ; they are very characteristic of Donne, and indeed his last great sermon, ' Death's Duell ', preached in his final illness not long before he died, is one unrelieved threnody on the horror and majesty of Death and the universal dominion of the worm.

Donne's third great theme was God, his omnipotence, his mercy, his wrath, and his terrible justice ; and so real and vivid was his sense of God and the glory of the beatific vision, that unlike other preachers of the time he felt no need to terrify his congregations with the flames and physical horrors of Hell — to his religious mind the deprivation of God's love was in itself Hell, and no fires and tortures could add to that punishment. Save, therefore, as an eternal banishment from God's presence, Donne does not speak of Hell ; but the description of Heaven, the glory of Heaven, was a theme that called forth his highest powers of eloquence and impassioned imagination.

Although Donne had studied the * new philosophy ', and was aware of the discoveries of Copernicus, and could, for the purposes of metaphor and fancy, make a literary use of these conceptions, his mind still had its habitation in the smaller, earth-centred Ptolemaic creation ; the full realization of these new discoveries, the sense of the im- mensity of space and the unimportance of this earth in its unmeasured vastness, was a more modern way of feel- ing in which Donne had no share — ^which belongs later on in the seventeenth century to the time of Pascal. But contrasted with his imperfect realization of the infinity of space, his sense of the infinity of time was extremely vivid;

xxviii Introduction.

the contrast between eternity and the brietness of human hfe he felt and described with sombre and ecstatic impres- siveness. Eternity, the eternity of God and Heaven, is a theme to which he continually recurs, and which sheds a strange, still atmosphere over his descriptions of the timeless existence of the Blessed in their heavenly abodes.

The circumstances of Donne's early Hfe, the strong Roman Catholic traditions of his family, and the atmo- sphere of Roman Catholic devotion in which he was educated, were no hindrance, but rather a help to him as an Anglican preacher ; and although, as duty and perhaps conviction compelled him, he denounced what he considered the corruptions of Roman CathoHcism as vigorously as his fellow divines, yet in his heart there Hngered a certain love of the older faith, of stately ceremonial and ancient rites and personal cults and devotions, which gives a warmth, an unction, an un- protestant glow of eloquence to his preaching.

As a poet Donne seems to have adopted a certain harsh and crabbed way of writing, in revolt against the melH- fluence of the EHzabethan taste; his poems show here and there that he could, if he wished, touch those harp- strings of sweet music; but they also show, only too abundantly, that in this soft harmony he could not find the medium for the personal expression he desired. This crabbedness shows itself, too, in his letters and his earher prose writing, and also in the uninspired portions of his sermons. But when he was most in earnest, when he came to treat with passionate seriousness some great theme of faith or morals, his wilfulness of language fell from him ; and in his attempt to bring his message home to the

Introduction. xxix

hearts of his congregation he availed himself without stint of his own gifts as a poet, and all the music and splendour of the great contemporary speech.

Donne, indeed, often makes use of musical metaphors when he speaks of preaching ; the preacher, he says, is a watchman, placed on a high tower to sound a trumpet ; his preaching was the trumpet's voice, it was thunder, it was the beating of a drum, the tolling of a bell of warn- ing, it was * a lovely song, sung to an instrument * ; the preacher should not speak with ' uncircumcised Hps or an extemporal or irreverent or over-homely and vulgar language ' ; his style should be modelled on that of the Holy Ghost, whose style was * a dilligent, and an artificial style ', and who in penning the Scriptures ' delights himself, not only with a propriety, but with a dehcacy, and harmony, and melody of language ; with height of Metaphors, and other figures, which may work greater impressions upon the Readers \^ In addition to this august model, the style of the Church Fathers formed Donne's other model in his preaching, and he more than once calls attention to their ' elegant phrases \ their * cadences and allusions and assimilations ', to Jerome's epistles * full of heavenly meditation and curious expres- tions ', to Augustine's study to * make his language sweet and harmonious ', and St. Bernard's effort to exalt ' devotion from the melodious fall of words '.

Coleridge, in his curious notes on Donne's sermons, remarks on the patristic leaven, the rhetorical extra- vagance, the taste for forced and fantastic analogies, which Donne derived from his study of the early Fathers;

* No. 22.

^x Introduction.

and, indeed, the influence of these models, falling in as it did with his natural taste for * wit ' and extrava- gant conceits, resulted often in far-fetched and fantastic passages ; and there are whole sermons built up on one metaphor, on blood or water or tears or kisses, and even on vomit and circumcision, in which one image is turned and twisted and elaborated and swollen out with figurative, moral, and mystical meanings, grotesquely adorned wdth medical analogies and legal jargon and scholastic quibbles and rabbinical speculations, until we share to the full Dean Milman's amazement at the taste of those immense and attentive congregations, and are not surprised to hear that noblemen and gentlemen were taken up for dead, after listening to one of these hour-long conceits and overwhelming metaphors.

But then again this cumbrous style takes fire, this vast edifice of elaborate adornments blazes up into a splendid illumination ; and remote as we are in time and taste from the audiences which stood for hours in the open air at Paul's Cross, or filled the choir of old St. Paul's, we share, if but for a moment, the delight which drew those ancient crowds to hear these products of what one con- temporary called his ' Giant phancie \^ to witness the gleams of what another described as that * awfull fire ' ^ which burned in the clear brain of the great preacher.

But what compels our attention most in these discourses is when Donne * preaches himself ' in them, speaks of his past Hfe, his sins and his remorse for them, of his present temptations, of his fears for his future fate, or his hopes of Heaven. * When I consider what I was in my parents > Poems, i. 379. • Ibid., p. 371.

Introduction. xxxi

loynes ', he begins, * when I consider what I am now, . . . an aged childe, a gray-headed Infant, and but the ghost of mine own youth, When I consider what I shall be at last, by the hand of death, in my grave * ^ — it is in passages Uke this, or in his forecasts of his own death-bed, * when everlasting darknesse shall have an inchoation in the present dimnesse of mine eyes, and the everlasting gnashing in the present chattering of my teeth,' ^ that Donne becomes most impressive, and we are best able to understand the sombre fascination of his preaching.

These personal passages have often for us another interest : we find in them a curious modern note or quality which we find almost nowhere else in the Hterature of that age. For in spite of his medieval cast of thought Donne was in some ways the most modern writer of his period ; in his poems and in his strange, feverish Medita- tions there is a subtlety of self-analysis, an awareness of the workings of his own mind, which seems to belong to the nineteenth rather than to the seventeenth century. We hear him confessing, for instance, in one of his ser- mons, the wanderings of his mind in his strongest devo- tions, and how in the midst of prayer he is distracted by the noise of a fly, the rattling of a coach 3; or how, while he is preaching, he is partly in the pulpit, partly in his library at home ; partly expounding liis text, and partly thinking what his congregation will say to each other of his sermon when it is finished.*

Donne was in the habit of drawing a distinction, in his letters, between the Jack Donne of his earlier hfe

» No. 2. ' No. 126.

• No. 4. * No. 3.

xxxii Introduction .

and Dr. Donne, the Dean and grave divine and preacher. But, as he himself said, men do not change their passions, but only the objects of them ; God does not take men from their calHng, but mends them in it ; He loves renovations, not innovations. Just as each of the authors of the books of Scripture, whether they were courtiers or shepherds or fishermen, kept the idiom and the interests of their profession in their sacred writings, so the regenerate soul, whether amorous, ambitious, or covetous, could find in God *a fit subject, and just occasion to exercise the same affection piously, and rehgiously, which had before so sinfully transported, and possesst it'.^ So Donne retained his old passions and ways of thought ; but whereas he had formerly, as he himself says of St. Augustine, made sonnets of his sins, he now made sermons of them. Dr. Donne was still Jack Donne, though sanctified and transformed, and those who have learned to know the secular poet will find in the writer of rehgious prose the same character- istics, the subtle, modern self-analytic mind moving in a world of medieval thought, the abstract, frigid scholastic intellect and the quickest senses, the forced conceits and passionate sincerity, the harsh utterance and the snatches of angel's music — ^in fact all that has attracted or perhaps repelled them in the author of the * love-songs and satiric weeds *, the sensual elegies and rugged verse-letters of his earlier period. They will also often find the man of the world beneath the surplice, vvdth his appreciation of worldly values, rank and circumstance and office, and that * inward joy and outward reverence and dignity that

' No. 21.

Introduction. xxxiii

accompanies riches ' ^ ; the courtier who had the courtier's desire for the favour of great persons, and who pictured Heaven as a royal court, and God as a king in his palace; who described earthly kings as metaphorical gods, and pious courts as copies of the Communion of the Saints.

In the sermons also they will find that broad humanity, that sympathy with all kinds of people, that good com- mon sense, which made Donne a reasonable human being, and moved him often to declare that religion was a serious but not a sullen thing, and a merry heart and a cheerful countenance a better way to God than dejection of spirit, and all the * sad remorses of the world '.^

A preacher or moralist often betrays himself indirectly, for he is apt to see his own faults in others, and to dwell, in his exhortations, on the temptations and weaknesses to which he is especially exposed. It is characteristic of Donne that he should so frequently inveigh against the sins of the senses, and especially of the eye, which he said was *the devil's doore, before the ear '2; and charac- teristic also his frequent recurrence to the danger of remembering past sins — * the sinfull remembrance of former sins, which is a dangerous rumination, and an unwholesome chawing of the cud '. * Another sin to which Donne frequently recurs is the sin of curiosity, the sin of the curious and subtle intellect, which, dissatis- fied vrith the * solid and f undamentall ' doctrines necessary to salvation, longed for * birds of Paradise, unrevealed mysteries out of Gods own bosom '.^ His reprobation

» ii, p. 416. ■ iii, p. 318. ' i» p. 228.

« ii, p. 159' * i| P- 308-

?o25'3 C

xxxiv Introduction.

of this unchastened curiosity, this presumption of men who ' being but worms will look into Heaven \^ was partly, no doubt, an attack on the rising tide of Puritan and schismatic speculation ; but it was also an indirect confession of the attraction, for his boundless intellectual curiosity, of the high and inexplicable problems of Christian metaphysics. Donne echoes Luther's denuncia- tion of the ' hatefull, damnable Monosyllable, How ' ^ • again and again he warns his congregation against inquiries which were * forc'd dishes of hot brains, and not sound meat ', * spirituall zoantonnesses, and unlawful and dangerous dallyings with mysteries of Divinity ' ^ ; and yet again and again we find his own thoughts losing their way among mysteries above the reach of reason, the nature of the Trinity, Predestination, Election, Original Sin, many strange scholastic questions about the Angels, the Devil, and the possibiHty of his ultimate salvation, and such high, insoluble problems as for instance whether the Serpent, as many of the Fathers believed, had feet and walked upright before the Fall.

Such was Donne as he reveals himself in his sermons, essentially in mind and temperament the same person as the poet, but turning his native gifts, and even his acquired stock of conceits and images, to new and sanctified uses. The mood resulting from this transformation has been well described by Professor Saintsbury as * a mood in which the memory of bygone earthly delights blends inextricably with the present fervour of devotion, and which to a fancy resembUng his owti might suggest a temple of Aphrodite or Dionysus turned into a Christian * iii, P- 77. ' i. p. 301' ' 'i. P- 36.

Introduction. xxxv

church, and served by the same priest as of old, with complete loyalty to his new faith, but with undying consciousness of the past '.^

Thus one tries to explain Donne's sermons and account for them in a satisfactory manner. And yet in these, as in his poems, there remains something baffling which still eludes our last analysis. Reading these old hortatory and dogmatic pages, the thought suggests itself that Donne is often saying something else, something poignant and personal, and yet, in the end, incom- municable to us. It sometimes seems as if he were using the time-honoured phrases of the accepted faith, its hope of heaven, and its terror of the grave, to express a vision of his own — a vision of life and death, of evil and horror and ecstasy — very different from that of other preachers ; and we are troubled as well as fascinated by the strange music which he blows through the sacred trumpets.

From the sermons themselves we can gather some impression of the eifect in his own age of Donne's preach- ing, either at court, where he often preached before James I or Charles I,^ or at Lincoln's Inn, or at his parish church of St. Dunstan's, or in the open air at Paul's Cross, and above all before his * great and curious audi- tories ' at St. Paul's, when the choir was so crowded that

* Professor Saintsbury in English Prose Selections, edited by Henry Craik, 1894, ii, p. 85.

* It would appear that the court sermons, preached ' to the Nobility ' and the king, were sometimes open-air sermons. See C. and T. Jos. /, u. 386 : * the king came hither the 5th of this present, and the next day, being Palm Sunday, the lord archbishop preached at court, in the open- preaching place '.

C 2

xxxvi Introduction.

many of the poorer sort could not have seats, but must * stand and thrust ', and where long murmurs of approval sometimes, he said, swallowed up one-quarter of his hour's sermon.^

We have other and outside evidence, too,of his influence as a preacher, and his manner and appearance in the pulpit. A member of the Dutch embassy in England, Constantine Huyghens, writes of the ' wealth of his unequalled wit, and yet more incomparable eloquence in the pulpit * ^ ; we read of the great concourse of noblemen and gentle- men at one of his sermons at Lincoln's Inn * whereof two or three were endangered and taken up dead for the time, with the extreme press and thronging ',^ of another sermon preached in the open air at Paul's Cross, which was Hstened to by * the Lords of the Council and other honourable persons ' including the Archbishop of Canterbury, Bacon, the Lord Keeper, Sir Julius Caesar, the Master of the Rolls, Lord Arundel, Lord Southampton, and * divers other great men '.*

Izaak Walton has described for us his manner in the pulpit,

' preaching the Word so, as shewed his own heart was possest with those very thoughts, and joyes that he labored to distill into others : A Preacher in earnest, weeping sometimes for his Auditory, sometimes with them : alwayes preaching to himself, Uke an Angel from a cloud, but in none ; carrying some, as St. Paul was, to Heaven in holy raptures, and inticing others by a sacred Art and Courtship to amend their lives ; here picturing a vice so as to make it ugly to those that

» No. 17. • Quoted in Poems, ii, p. IxxviL

' See note to No. 70. * bee note to No. 29.

Introduction. xxxvii

practised it ; and a vertue so, as to make it beloved even by those that lov'd it not ; and, all this with a most particular grace and an unexpressible addition of comeh- ness.' ^

There are other evidences of the manner and effect of his preaching in the commendatory verses written at his death, in which mention is made of his * speaking action ', * pale looks, faint breath, and melting phrases'.

Mee thinkes I see him in the pulpit standing.

Not eares, or eyes, but all mens hearts commanding,

Where wee that heard him, to our selves did faine

Golden Chrysostome was alive againe ;

And never were we weari'd, till we saw

His houre (and but an houre) to end did draw.

How did he shame the doctrine-men,^

one poet writes, and another :

thy one houre did treate The thousand mazes of the hearts deceipt ; Thou didst pursue our lov'd and subtill sinne, Through all the foldings wee had wrapt it in.^

While another poet gives in Latin verses an even more vivid picture of his preaching :

* Whenever the orator stood in St. Paul's I have seen and heard with amazement the wonderful power v^th which he held men, as they lifted up their hearts and eyes, whilst he poured forth the wise eloquence of a Nestor, sv/eeter than honey. Now he holds them thunderstruck whilst he preaches the mystery of holy things never before granted to the people and not yet understood ; they ponder his words with admiration, and

> Walton's Lives, 1670 ; Donne, p. 38.

• Poems, i, p. 386. * Ibid., i, p, 393,

C %

xxxviii Introduction.

stand with outstretched ears. Presently his manner and form of speaking are changed, and he treats of sad things — ^fate and the mournful hour of death, and the body returning to its primal ashes : then you might have seen all groan and grieve, and one here and there unable to restrain his tears.' ^

From these contemporary glimpses, and from the ser- mons themselves we can form some notion of the power, the grace, the eloquence which made Donne the most famous preacher of the time, and one of his great sermons an important event for his contemporaries. As we read these sermons, amid much that is remote and meaning- less to us, we seem now and then to hear the timbre of a living voice, and then for a moment the past returns ; and in the vast, dim-lit cathedral of old St. Paul's we seem to see that awe-struck congregation as they gaze up at the courtly, spectral figure standing with his hour- glass in the pulpit, and pouring forth in impassioned eloquence his inmost thoughts of remorse and ecstasy, tus poignant sense of the grave's unspeakable horror, and

» Vidi,

Audivi & stupui quoties orator in JEde Paulina stetit, & mira gravitate levantes Corda, oculosc^viros tenuit : dum Nestoris ille Fudit verba (omni quanto mage dulcia melle ?) Nunc habet attonitos, pandit mysteria plebi Non concessa prius nondum intellecta : revolvuat Mirantes, tacitique arrectis auribus astant. Mutatis mox ille mode, forma(^ loquendi Tristia pertractat : fatumcp& flebile mortis Tempus, & in cineres redeunt quod corpora primes. Tunc gemitum cunctos dare, tunc lugere videres, Forsitan k lachrymis aliquis non temperat. — Ibid, i, p. 391.

Introduction. xxxix

Heaven's unutterable glory ; and this image is added to those many deeply coloured pictures which, hung in the chamber of the historic imagination, form for us our vision of that illustrious and varied period of English history.

We look back at this early period of the seventeenth century in England, not only through the windows which history opens for us ; we see it even more clearly, though diversely tinctured, through the minds and imaginations of certain writers of the time ; fresh in the morning light of Milton's early poems, calm in the sabbath sunshine of George Herbert's Temple, or dusky with the twilight of Sir Thomas Browne's meditations. It is the purpose of the present book to draw aside at least one corner of the heavy curtain which hides from us another casement of that age's imagination, a sombre, deep-emblazoned gothic window, through which nevertheless the sunlight of to-day sometimes seems to strike, as it Hghts up the ascetic, enigmatic figure which it frames.

Donne's ecclesiastic career has been so adequately recounted by his biographers. Dr. Jessopp and Mr. Gosse, that only the briefest recapitulation is necessary here. John Donne was born in 1573 ; he was the elder son of a rich London ironmonger, who died in 1576 leaving him a considerable fortune. His mother, who was descended from a sister of Sir Thomas More, came of a famous Roman CathoHc family ; she had two brothers who were Jesuits, and numbered among her relatives many prisoners and exiles for the sake of the Roman faith. She remained a devout Roman Catholic

xl Introduction.

till the end of her life, and her son's earliest years were spent in an atmosphere of Roman CathoHc devotion. At the early age of eleven Donne went to Oxford, and afterwards to Cambridge ; in 1590 we find him in London again, and in 1592 he was admitted to Lincoln's Inn. A young man of brilliant intellect, the master of a con- siderable fortune, he now found himself, as a Roman CathoHc, shut out from the usual paths of honourable ambition, and faced with the problem whether he should remain in the old faith, and so sacrifice his worldly prospects, or should join the English Church and take his share in the life and interests of his country. Before coming to any conclusion he first surveyed and digested, he tells us, ' the whole body of divinity, controverted between ours and the Roman Church ' ; and if his final decision coincided with his interests, and if ten years later we find Donne a convinced opponent of Roman- ism, though we can hardly regard his change of faith as due to a genuine conversion to AngHcanism, or to any belief that it was alone the true church, it does not appear on the other hand to have been a mere apostasy prompted by political considerations. Donne was genuinely convinced that there was truth in each form of Christian religion, and that it was wisest and best for each man to accept the faith of his own country.

When after his somewhat stormy and spendthrift youth Donne made his rash marriage in 1601, and found himself desperately poor in consequence, half in disgrace, and with small prospects of worldly advancement, he resumed his theological studies ; and in 1605 we find him assisting Dr. Thomas Morton, afterwards Bishop of

Introduction. xli

Durham, in his controversies with the Roman Catholic writers. During the next few years he wrote three books, the Pseudo-Martyr, Ignatius his Conclave, and the BiathanatoSy all of which were, as Mr. Gosse says, written more as a lawyer than a divine, though each was on the borderland of theology. In spite of his theological occupations, Donne, as his letters show, was still ambitious of worldly preferment, and when his patron. Dr. Morton, became Dean of Gloucester in 1607, and offered to resign a living to him if he would take orders, Donne refused the offer. Walton tells us that this refusal was due to a sense of his own unworthiness, and the fear that the irregularities of his past life might bring dishonour on the sacred calhng, but it is more likely, as his letters of the time suggest, that he had not yet abandoned the hope of some court advancement. But this hope was repeatedly disappointed : Donne was poor, burdened with a large family, and forced to live in humiliating dependence on the bounty of rich friends ; and in 161 2 we find him writing to the new court favourite, Rochester, that he had resolved to take orders. Rochester, however, seems to have discouraged this resolution, and it was not till three years later, and after further disappointments, that Donne, yielding to the persuasions of King James himself, finally determined to enter the Church. In January 161 5 he was ordained, and in the same year he became one of the king's chaplains and was made a Doctor of Divinity by the University of Cambridge. Donne's earliest court sermon which has come down to us, and perhaps the first sermon which he preached as chaplain to the king, is dated April 21, 161 6. Though

xlii Introduction.

much was expected of him, Izaak Walton tells us, his preaching exceeded all expectation ; and indeed, if we recall the circumstances of the time, when the Over- bury murder, one of the greatest scandals of EngHsh history, had just been made pubHc in all its dreadful details ; when the once omnipotent favourite of the king, the Earl of Somerset, stood pubHcly accused of com- plicity in this crime, and his guilty wife was imprisoned in the Tower, Donne's analysis of the beginning and growth of evil in the sinner's heart, and his sombre and terrible denunciations of God's judgements on the wicked, must have produced an astonishing effect on his auditory, * God is the Lord of Hosts ', he proclaimed to them, ' and he can proceed by Martial Law : he can hang thee upon the next tree ; ... he can sink down the Stage and the Player, the bed of wantonness, and the wanton actor, into the jaws of the earth, into the mouth of hell.' * Thou canst not lack Examples, that he hath done so upon others,' he continues, with a reference that must have been obvious to all, * and will no proof serve thee, but a speedy judgement upon thyself ? ' ^

In this year, 1616, Donne was presented to two country livings, and appointed Divinity Reader to the Benchers of Lincoln's Inn. This important and lucrative post, which involved, it has been calculated, the preparation of not fewer than fifty sermons a year, he held till he became Dean of St. Paul's, about six years later.

In March 161 7 Donne was appointed to preach in the famous open-air pulpit of London at Paul's Cross, » See Nos. 87, 105, 108.

Introduction. xliii

before the Lords of the Council and the City Magistrates. These sermons at Paul's Cross, which were preached by the most distinguished divines of England, had an official character of high importance, and were one of the great events of contemporary London. Donne on his first appearance in this open-air pulpit preached a sermon of enormous length, which, if dehvered as printed, must have kept his audience standing for at least two hours. It was, however, in contemporary opinion ' a dainty sermon ', and was ' exceedingly well liked * especially for the praise he gave to Queen EHzabeth.^

In this year Donne lost the dearly-loved wife whom he had married in such romantic circumstances, and in his grief at this irreparable loss he seems to have taken his final * step to the altar ', and to have undergone a real conversion ; his mind was now more wholly set on heavenly things ; and to his intellectual interest in theology and dogma was added a passionate devotion which increased as the years went by, till he became almost absorbed in that life of asceticism and spiritual exaltation which is reflected in his religious poetry, his meditations, and his great sermons. The chief events of his remaining years can be briefly recounted.

In 1619 he was appointed to go as King's Chaplain with his friend, Lord Doncaster, on a mission to Germany. His farewell sermon to the Benchers of Lincoln's Inn has been preserved,^ also one of the two sermons he preached before the Electress Palatine, afterwards the Queen of Bohemia, at Heidelberg,^ and a sermon he preached at The Hague. This last he afterwards enlarged into two » See No. 29 and note. ' No. 26. * No. 124.

xHv Introduction.

sermons of considerable length, which are chiefly re- markable for the wealth of sustained nautical metaphors which pervade them. Donne, who in his youth had sailed with Essex on two long voyages, is remarkable as a poet, among the somewhat inland English writers of his time, for his frequent use of nautical terms and his references to seafaring life and the ways of ships. He carried this breath of the sea with him into the pulpit ; his sermons abound in nautical terms and images, and now he preached to this seafaring nation on the Apostles as fishers of men, taken from their nets * weather-beaten with North and South winds, and rough-cast with foame, and mud ' ^ ; and elaborated a giant simile of the world as a sea, in which all the inhabitants are fishes to be caught in the net of the Gospel and served up at the great marriage feast in Heaven, where, he added characteristically — and we must think surprisingly to the Dutch — ^whoever is a dish is a guest also, and whoever is served at the table sits at it.^ After his return to England he was appointed, towards the end of 162 1, to the Deanery of St. Paul's. His first sermon preached in that cathedral w^as on Christmas Day, 1 62 1. This sermon is a closely reasoned one, less adorned with those elaborate allusions and quotations and conceits of which he was so fond, but containing a clear statement of the relation between reason and faith which was the basis of his religious philosophy.^ Donne's Christmas sermons preached at St. Paul's for all the

> i, p. 720.

2 No. 44. For other extracts from this sermon, see Nos. 86 and 112.

* No. 58.

Introduction. xlv

subsequent years of his life except the last have been preserved, also the great sermons he was accustomed to preach there on Easter Day and Whitsunday, and a number of the sermons which he also preached as Prebend of the Cathedral, besides others delivered at various dates in the same pulpit. Next to these in number are the sermons preached at court, sometimes at St. James's, but for the most part at Whitehall. In 1624 he was presented to the living of St. Dunstan's in the West, then a fashionable church, in which as parish vicar he was able to come into closer personal relations with his congregation than he could with his great audiences at St. Paul's ; and in his first sermon there he described in the elaborate metaphor of a marriage between the Minister and his Congregation what he felt should be his relation to his parishioners.^ A number of other sermons preached in this pulpit have been pre- served.

Before this date, however, he preached two sermons of some importance. The first of these was to the Virginia Company, which was then trying to collect sub- scriptions for the earliest English colony in America, and to renew popular interest in this settlement. Donne took the point of view, which has become since so popular, that English conquest and colonization was, or should be, carried on for the purpose of religious propaganda, to furnish salvation to the benighted heathen ; and he preached, on this occasion, what has been called the first English mis- sionary sermon.2 Later in this year, 1622, a more unpleasant task was imposed on him, and he was ordered » No. 37. • No. 31.

xlvi Introduction.

by James I, who was then engaged in his negotiations for the Spanish Match, to preach at Paul's Cross in defence of the instructions th e king had issued forbidding the polemical preaching of Protestant doctrines. There was an immense crowd at the sermon ; but a con- temporary tells us that he gave no satisfaction, speaking indeed, some thought, as if he were by no means satisfied himself.^ In the autumn of the next year he was struck down by that severe illness which he so vividly describes in his Devotions^ published in 1624.

His next sermon of public importance was preached in St. James's Palace a few days after the death of his old master James I. James died on March 27, 1625, at Theobald's ; the new king, Charles I, had shut himself up in St. James's Palace, but on Sunday the 3rd of April he sent for Donne to preach to him in the palace chapel. From a few scraps of old paper preserved by chance, we are able to make for ourselves a more than usually vivid picture of this Sunday afternoon nearly three hundred years ago. Donne, who had been seriously ill, was plainly thrown into great agitation by the royal command to preach before the inscrutable prince who was now beginning his fateful reign. He writes to a friend at court begging that on his arrival at the palace he may hide himself in an out-chamber or closet till the time for the sermon. He must preach fasting, he says, refusing an invitation to dinner, and after the sermon would steal

* See note to No. 37. This sermon, preached on the text about the stars fighting against Sisera, was printed in 1622 with a dedication to the new favourite, the Marquis of Buckingham. It was not included in the three folios, but was reprinted by Alford, vi pp. 191-222.

Introduction. xlvii

into his coach and return home. Another letter of a con- temporary witness describes the very pale face and deep mourning of the young king as he went to the chapel, draped in a plain black cloak that fell to his ankles. Donne began his sermon with a discreet reference to the death of the old king, and then proceeded to preach a controversial sermon against the Roman Catholic and Puritan controversiaUsts of the time ^ ; but three weeks later, preaching at Denmark House, where the embalmed body of James I lay in state, his references to his departed master are more explicit ; and in one splendid passage about the king's dead hand, he keeps repeating, at the end of his intricate clauses, the word * dead ' in a way that makes it ring out Uke the tolUng of a bell, and which in his accomplished delivery must have produced a strange effect of musical and sombre rhetoric.^

In 1625 he was driven out of London by the plague and took refuge with his friend Magdalen Herbert, George Herbert's mother, who was now married to Sir John Danvers, and lived in Danvers House in what was then the village of Chelsea. In 1627 Lady Danvers died and was buried in the parish church of Chelsea, where Donne preached the funeral sermon. In his unregenerate days Donne had written poems to Mrs. Herbert, almost as a lover ; he had immortalized her in those famous Hues,

No Springy nor Summer Beauty hath such grace, As I have seen in one Autumnall face,

and now, after an invocation to this loved ghost to arise from the consecrated dust in which she slept, he

* For this sermon see No, 75 and note. • No. 34.

xlviii Introduction.

proceeds, in a long and noble panegyric to paint a por- trait of her as she lived and as he and her family and friends knew her — a portrait ^ which is one of the most vivid and beautiful we possess of those Elizabethan great ladies who befriended the poets of the time and still live for us immortahzed in their poems.

Izaak Walton tells us that he was present in the church, and saw and heard Donne weep and preach this funeral sermon ; and he repeats Donne's characteristic wish that * all his Body were turn'd unto tongues, that he might declare her just praises to posterity '.

The time was approaching when Donne must preach his own funeral sermon ; his strength gradually declined, twice he was afflicted with severe illness, and in 1630 his health finally gave way, and he retired to the country. But early in the next year he dragged himself up to London to preach his usual Lent sermon to the court — to sing, as one of his panegyrists wrote, Hke a swan, his mournful dirge — ^the great sermon which was pubUshed after his death as * Death's Duell ', and in which his sombre imagination and his morbid and fantastic genius shone forth with unearthly splendour. Walton gives a vivid description of this last dramatic appearance, how when to the amazement of the beholders he appeared in the pulpit * many of them thought he presented himself not to preach mortification by a living voice : but, mortahty by a decayed body, and dying face ',2 and how as they saw his tears and heard his faint and hollow voice, as he preached on his text, * To God the Lord belong the issues from death,' they felt that the text had been prophetically * No. 28. • Walton's Lives, 1670, Donne, p. 71

Introduction. xlix

chosen and that he had preached his own funeral sermon. Donne then retired to the Deanery and began that spectacular preparation for death, that * elaborate pubUc decease *, as Mr. Gosse describes it, * so long-drawn, so solemn, so boldly picturesque ' which so greatly impressed his contemporaries, and which, in the monument designed after the picture he had had painted of himself dressed in a winding sheet, has left in St. PauPs so strange and so beautiful a memorial for the admiration of posterity.

Six of Donne's sermons had been published in his life- time, and he left at his death a large number prepared for the press. His last sermon was printed after his death in 1632, and in 1634 ^^^ more sermons were pub- lished by the Cambridge University Press. In 1640 Donne's son, John Donne, pubUshed the first folio of eighty sermons, all hitherto unpubHshed, and in 1649 he printed the second foUo, Fifty SermonSy containing * Death's Duell ' and the six published in 1634 and forty-three new ones. In 1660 he published the third foUo, entitled XXVI Sermons, although it only contains twenty-four, as two of them were printed twice. In 1839, Henry Alford, afterwards Dean of Canterbury, pubHshed the 154 sermons from the three folios, and three of the six printed in Donne's Ufetime, in an edition which was mtended to be a complete edition of Donne's writings, though this plan was afterwards abandoned, and only the sermons, the Devotims, the poems, and the letters were included in it. Alford so expurgated the poems, and was so careless in his printing of the letters, that this edition of his has been much abused by scholars. He idmits that he bowdlerized a few of the earUer sermons ;

1 Introduction.

but save for this and for the modernization of the spelling, the text of the sermons is accurate, and as the old foHos are now rare (the third is almost unprocurable) Alford's edition is the one which is most accessible to modern readers.^

We possess, therefore, i6o of Donne's sermons, of which all but three were reprinted by Alford, where they fill about three thousand pages. Some of these sermons are of enormous length, and if preached as written must have taken two or three hours to dehver, instead of the hour marked by the running sands in the conspicuous hour-glass, to which Donne was accustomed to confine himself. But there is plenty of evidence to show that we do not now possess the sermons as he preached them. Donne, like other divines of the period, took no fully written manuscript with him into the pulpit ; he preached from notes ; and although when preaching at court or at St. Paul's on great occasions he would no doubt commit much of his sermon to memory, the whole text would be written out from memory afterwards, and subject to many additions and changes in the process of writing.^

» In 1840 Pickering published a beautifully printed volume, Devotions by John Donne, D.D., which contains two of Donne's sermons, * Death's Duell ' and the Chelsea sermon on the death of Lady Danvers.

* In a letter of 1621 Donne promises to write out one of his sermons for a friend 'though in good faith I have half forgot it* {Gosse, ii, p. 151). In 1625, when he had taken refuge at Chelsea from the plague in London, he says, in explaining how he has spent his time there, ' I have revised as many of my sermons as I had kept any note of, and I have written out a great many, and hope to do more. I have already come to the number of eighty, of which my son . . . may hereafter make some use ' {ibid., p. 225). Donne's sermon preached at The Hague is introduced in

Introduction. U

It only remains to say a few words about the plan of this small volume of extracts from Donne's sermons. The arrangement is not chronological, and indeed, since many of the sermons are undated, such an arrangement would be at the best highly uncertain and conjectural. They are placed in a certain sequence according to their subjects, first the more autobiographical passages, the pages or paragraphs where Donne speaks most directly and intimately of himself, his own feelings and moods, his own conception of the preacher's office, his Uterary tastes, and the references, though these are not many, to his own hfe and travels. Next follow the scanty allusions he makes to events of contemporary history, the death of Queen Elizabeth, the accession of James I, the Gun- powder Plot, the new settlements in America, the great plague of 1625, and the death of King James ; after these come passages illustrating the more secular aspects of his thought, his remarks on Hfe and men and women, on poverty and riches, a portrait he gives in a funeral sermon of a rich London merchant of the time, and his reflections on the * new philosophy ' of Copernicus, and on human knowledge in general. Then following the process of his thought, we come to rehgious faith, as founded on, and yet contrasted with, mere human reason, and the revelation of that faith through the Scriptures and the teaching of the Church. Next follow those passages in which he attains the greatest heights of

the first folio, with this note, ' At the Haghe Decemh. 19. 161 9. I Preached upon this Text. Since my sicknesse at Abney-hatche in Essex, 1630. revising my short notes of that Sermon, I digested them into these two.' Two sermons follow on the same text, and there are other sermons which seem to have been expanded and divided in the same way.

lii Introduction.

eloquence — ^passages in wliich the body of that revelation is expressed, our knowledge of God and of man's fall, the inheritance of Original Sin, the corrupt nature of man, the sinful state of the world, the penalty of death with all its horrors, the terrors of the Day of Judgement, the misery of the damned, and the everlasting joy and glory of the blessed souls in Heaven. The book ends with extracts from the sombre and impressive last sermon, in which he made his farewell to the world.

•u^ ^nC^ '*lf^ ^i(«) ^if*^ '^V^ '^^ ''V

,^S^!. JSSC i^,^^ >^S^s, J^^^ J^^^ J^^'

DONNE^S SERMONS

I. 7y^^ Preacher.

N the great Ant-hill of the whole world, I am an Ant ; I have my part in the Creation, I am a Creature ; But there are ignoble Creatures. God comes nearer ; In the great field of clay, of red earth,

that man was made of, & mankind, I am a clod ; I am a man, I have my part in the Humanity ; But Man was worse then annihilated again. When satan in that serpent was come, as Hercules with his club into a potters shop, and had broke all the vessels, destroyed all mankind. And the gracious promise of a Messias to redeeme all mankind, was shed and spread upon all, I had my drop of that dew of Heaven, my sparke of that fire of heaven, in the universall promise, in which I was involved ; But this promise was appropriated after, in a particular Covenant, to one people, to the Jewes, to the seed of Abraham. But for all that I have my portion there ; for all that professe Christ Jesus are by a spirituall engrafting, and transmigration, and transplantation, in and of that stock, and that seed of Abraham ; and I am one of those. But then, of those who doe professe Christ Jesus, some grovell still in the superstitions they 2025.3 B

2 The Preacher.

were fallen into, and some are raised, by Gods good grace, out of them ; and I am one of those ; God hath afforded me my station, in that Church, which is departed from Babylon.

Now, all this while, my soule is in a cheeref ull progresse ; when I consider what God did for Goshen in Egypt, for a little parke in the midst of a forest ; what he did for Jury, in the midst of enemies, as a shire that should stand out against a Kingdome round about it : How many Sancerraes he hath deUvered from famins, how many Genevaes from plots, and machinations against her ; all this while my soule is in a progresse : But I am at home, when I consider Buls of excommunications, and solicitations of Rebellions, and pistols, and poysons, and the discoveries of those ; There is our Nos, We, testimonies that we are in the favour, and care of God ; We, our Nation, we, our Church ; There I am at home ; but I am in my Cabinet at home, when I consider, what God hath done for me, and my soule ; There is the Ego, the particular, the individuall, I.

2. When I consider. jiMOROUS soule, ambitious soule, covetous soule, XX. voluptuous soule, what wouldest thou have in heaven ? What doth thy holy amorousnesse, thy holy covetousnesse, thy holy ambition, and voluptuousnesse most carry thy desire upon ? Call it what thou wilt ; think it what thou canst ; think it something that thou canst not think ; and all this thou shalt have, if thou have any Resurrection unto Hfe ; and yet there

When I consider. 3

is a Better Resurrection. When I consider what I was in my parents loynes (a substance unworthy of a word, unworthy of a thought) when I consider what I am now, (a Volume of diseases bound up together, a dry cynder, if I look for naturall, for radicall moisture, and yet a Spunge, a bottle of overflowing Rheumes, if I consider accidentall ; an aged childe, a gray-headed Infant, and but the ghost of mine own youth) When I consider what I shall be at last, by the hand of death, in my grave, (first, but Putrifaction, and then, not so much as Putri- faction, I shall not be able to send forth so much as an ill ayre, not any ayre at all, but shall be all insipid, tastlesse, savourlesse dust ; for a while, all wormes, and after a while, not so much as wormes, sordid, senslesse, namelesse dust) When I consider the past, and present, and future state of this body, in this world, I am able to conceive, able to expresse the worst that can befall it in nature, and the worst that can be inflicted upon it by man, or fortune ; But the least degree of glory that God hath prepared for that body in heaven, I am not able to expresse, not able to conceive.

3. I am Not all Here.

I AM not all here, I am here now preaching upon this text, and I am at home in my Library considering whether 5. Gregory, or 5. Hierome, have said best of this text, before. I am here speaking to you, and yet I consider by the way, in the same instant, what it is likely you will say to one another, when I have done, you are not all here neither ; you are here now,

B 2

4 I am Not all Here.

hearing me, and yet you are thinking that you have heard a better Sermon somewhere else, of this text before ; you are here, and yet you think you could have heard some other doctrine of down-right Predestination, and Reprobation roundly dehvered somewhere else with more edification to you ; you are here, and you remember your selves that now yee think of it : This had been the fittest time, now, when every body else is at Church, to have made such and such a private visit ; and because you would bee there, you are there.

4. Imperfect Prayers,

BUT when we consider with a religious serious- nesse the manifold weaknesses of the strongest devotions in time of Prayer, it is a sad consideration. I throw my selfe downe in my Chamber, and I call in, and invite God, and his Angels thither, and when they are there, I neglect God and his Angels, for the noise of a Flie, for the ratling of a Coach, for the whining of a doore ; I talke on, in the same posture of praying ; Eyes lifted up ; knees bowed downe ; as though I prayed to God ; and, if God, or his Angels should aske me, when I thought last of God in that prayer, I cannot tell : Sometimes I finde that I had forgot what I was about, but when I began to forget it, I cannot tell. A memory of yesterdays pleasures, a feare of to morrows dangers, a straw under my knee, a noise in mine eare, a light in mine eye, an any thing, a nothing, a fancy, a Chimera in my braine, troubles me in my prayer. So certainely is there nothing, nothing in spiritual! things, perfect in this world.

Powers and Principalities. 5

5. Powers and Principalities.

1 PASSE my time sociably and merrily in cheerful conversation, in musique, in feasting, in Come- dies, in wantonnesse ; and I never heare all this while of any power or principaHty, my Conscience spies no such enemy in all this. And then alone, between God and me at midnight, some beam of his grace shines out upon me, and by that light I see this Prince of darknesse, and then I finde that I have been the subject, the slave of these powers and principahties, when I thought not of them. Well, I see them, and I try then to dispossesse my selfe of them, and I make my recourse to the power- fullest exorcisme that is, I turne to hearty and earnest prayer to God, and I fix my thoughts strongly (as I thinke) upon him, and before I have perfected one petition, one period of my prayer, a power and principaHty is got into me againe. Spiritus soporis, The spirit of slumber Esay 29.10. closes mine eyes, and I pray drousily ; Or spiritus Esa. 19. 14. vertiginisy the spirit of deviation, and vaine repetition, and I pray giddily, and circularly, and returne againe and againe to that I have said before, and perceive not that I do so ; and nescio cujus spiritus sim, (as our Saviour Luk. 9. SS' said, rebuking his Disciples, who were so vehement for the burning of the Samaritans, you know not of what spirit you are) I pray, and know not of what spirit I am, I consider not mine own purpose in prayer ; And by this advantage, this doore of inconsideration, enters spiritus err oris y The seducing spirit, the spirit of error, i Tim. 4. i, and I pray not onely negligently, but erroniously, dangerously, for such things as disconduce to the glory

6 Powers and Principalities.

of God, and my true happinesse, if they were granted. Hosea4.i2. Nay, even the Prophet Hosed' s spiritus fornicationum, enters into me, The spirit of fornication, that is, some remembrance of the wantonnesse of my youth, some mis-interpretation of a word in my prayer, that may beare an ill sense, some unclean spirit, some power or principality hath depraved my prayer, and slackned my zeale.

A^

6. Infecting God, S S. Chrysostome sayes, every man is Spontaneus Satan, a Satan to himselfe, as Satan is a Tempter, every man can tempt himselfe ; so I will be Spontaneus Satan, as Satan is an Accuser, an Adversary, I will accuse my selfe. I consider often that passionate Luk. 5. 8. humiliation of S. Peter, Exi a me Domine, He fell at lesus knees, saying, Depart from me, for 1 am a sinfull man, O Lord ; And I am often ready to say so, and more ; Depart from me, O Lord, for I am sinfull inough to infect thee ; As I may persecute thee in thy Children, so I may infect thee in thine Ordinances ; Depart, in withdrawing thy word from me, for I am corrupt inough to make even thy saving Gospel, the savor of death unto death ; Depart, in withholding thy Sacrament, for I am leprous inough to taint thy flesh, and to make the balme of thy blood, poyson to my soule ; Depart, in withdrawing the protection of thine Angels from me, for I am vicious inough to imprint corruption and rebellion into their nature. And if I be too foule for God himselfe to come neare me, for his Ordinances to worke upon me, I am no companion for my selfe, I must

Infecting God.

not be alone with my selfe ; for I am as apt to take, as to give infection ; I am a reciprocall plague ; passively and actively contagious ; I breath corruption, and breath it upon my selfe ; and I am the Babylon that I must goe out of, or I perish.

7. Forgiveness of Sins.

SO the Spirit of God moves upon the face of these v^aters, the Spirit of life upon the danger of death. Consider the love, more then love, the study, more then study, the diligence of God, he devises meanes, that his banished, those w^hom sins, or death had banished, be not expelled from him. I sinned upon the strength of my youth, and God devised a meanes to reclaime me, an enfeebling sicknesse. I relapsed after my recovery, and God devised a meanes, an irrecoverable, a helpless Consumption to reclaime me ; That affliction grew heavy upon me, and weighed me down even to a diffidence in Gods mercy, and God devised a meanes, the comfort of the Angel of his Church, his Minister, The comfort of the Angel of the great Counsell, the body and blood of his Son Christ Jesus, at my transmigration. Yet he lets his correction proceed to death ; I doe dye of that sicknesse, and God devises a meanes, that I, though banished, banished into the grave, shall not be expelled from him, a glorious Resurrection.

8. Forgive my Sins,

FORGIVE me O Lord^ O Lord forgive me my sinnes, the sinnes of my youth, and my present sinnes, the sinne that my Parents cast upon me, Originall

8 Forgive my Sins.

sinne, and the sinnes that I cast upon my children, in an ill example ; Actuall sinnes, sinnes which are manifest to all the world, and sinnes which I have so laboured to hide from the world, as that now they are hid from mine own conscience, and mine own memory ; Forgive me my crying sins, and my whispering sins, sins of uncharitable hate, and sinnes of unchaste love, sinnes against ^hee and 7hee, against thy Power O Almighty Father, against thy Wisedome, O glorious Sonne, against thy Goodnesse, O blessed Spirit of God ; and sinnes against Him and Him, against Superiours and Equals, and Inferiours ; and sinnes against Me and Me, against mine own soul, and against my body, which I have loved better than my soul ; Forgive me O Lord, 0 Lord in the merits of thy Christ and my Jesus, thine Anointed, and my Saviour ; Forgive me my sinnes, all my sinnes, and I will put Christ to no more cost, nor thee to more trouble, for any reprobation or malediction that lay upon me, otherwise then as a sinner. I ask but an application, not an extention of that Benediction, Blessed are they whose sinnes are forgiven ; Let me be but so blessed, and I shall envy no mans Blessednesse : say thou to my sad soul, ^onne he oj good comfort, thy sinnes are forgiven thee, and I shall never trouble thee with Petitions, to take any other Bill off of the fyle, or to reverse any other Decree, by which I should be accurst, before I was created, or condemned by thee, before thou saw'st me as a sinner.

Let Me Wither.

9. Let Me Wither.

IET me wither and weare out mine age in a dis- ^ comfortable, in an unwholesome, in a penurious prison, and so pay my debts with my bones, and recompence the wastfulnesse of my youth, with the beggery of mine age ; Let me wither in a spittle under sharpe, and foule, and infamous diseases, and so recom- pence the wantonnesse of my youth, with that loath- somnesse in mine age ; yet, if God with-draw not his spirituall blessings, his Grace, his Patience, If I can call my suffering his Doing, my passion his Action, All this that is temporall, is but a caterpiller got into one corner of my garden, but a mill-dew fallen upon one acre of my Corne ; The body of all, the substance of all is safe, as long as the soule is safe. But when I shall trust to that, which wee call a good spirit, and God shall deject, and empoverish, and evacuate that spirit, when I shall rely upon a morall constancy, and God shall shake, and enfeeble, and enervate, destroy and demolish that constancy ; when I shall think to refresh my selfe in the serenity and sweet ayre of a good conscience, and God shall call up the damps and vapours of hell itselfe, and spread a cloud of diffidence, and an impenetrable crust of desperation upon my conscience ; when health shall flie from me, and I shall lay hold upon riches to succour me, and comfort me in my sicknesse, and riches shall flie from me, and I shall snatch after favour, and good opinion, to comfort me in my poverty ; when even this good opinion shall leave me, and calumnies and misinformations shall prevaile against me ; when

10 Let Me Wither.

I shall need peace, because there is none but thou, O Lord, that should stand for me, and then shall finde, that all the wounds that I have, come from thy hand, all the arrowes that stick in me, from thy quiver ; when I shall see, that because I have given my selfe to my corrupt nature, thou hast changed thine ; and because I am all evill towards thee, therefore thou hast given over being good towards me ; When it comes to this height, that the fever is not in the humors, but in the spirits, that mine enemy is not an imaginary enemy, fortune, nor a transitory enemy, malice in great persons, but a reall, and an irresistible, and an inexorable, and an everlasting enemy. The Lord of Hosts himselfe. The Almighty God himselfe, the Almighty God himselfe onely knowes the waight of this affliction, and except hee put in that pondus glorias, that exceeding waight of an eternall glory, with his owne hand, into the other scale, we are waighed downe, we are swallowed up, irreparably, irrevocably, irrecoverably, irremediably.

10. Donne and the Worm,

IF my soule could aske one of those Wormes which my dead body shall produce. Will you change with me ? that worme would say. No ; for you are like to live eternally in torment ; for my part, I can live no longer, then the putrid moisture of your body will give me leave, and therefore I will not change ; nay, would the Devill himselfe change with a damned soule ? I cannot tell.

Preaching Consolation. ii

1 1 . Preaching Consolatioft,

WHO but my selfe can conceive the svveetnesse of that salutation, when the Spirit of God sayes to me in a morning, Go forth to day and preach, and preach consolation, preach peace, preach mercy, And spare my people, spare that people whom I have redeemed with my precious Blood, and be not angry with them for ever ; Do not wound them, doe not grinde them, do not astonish them with the bitternesse, with the heavinesse, vdth the sharpnesse, with the consternation of my judgements. David proposes to himselfe, that he would Sing of mercy, and of judgement ; PsaL ioi«i. but it is of mercy first ; and not of judgement at all, otherwise then it will come into a song, as joy and consolation is compatible with it. It hath falne into disputation, and admitted argument, whether ever God inflicted punishments by his good Angels ; But that the good Angels, the ministeriall Angels of the Church, are properly his instruments, for conveying mercy, peace, consolation, never fell into question, never admitted opposition. . . .

What a Coronation is our taking of Orders, by which God makes us a Royall Priesthood ? And what an inthronization is the comming up into a Pulpit, where God invests his servants with his Ordinance, as with a Cloud, and then presses that Cloud with a Vce si non, woe be unto thee, if thou doe not preach, and then enables him to preach peace, mercy, consolation, to the whole Congregation. That God should appeare in a Cloud, upon the Mercy Seat, as he promises Moses Levit.i5.2.

12 Preaching Consolation.

he will doe, That from so poore a man as stands here, wrapped up in clouds of infirmity, and in clouds of iniquity, God should drop, raine, poure downe his dew, and sweeten that dew with his honey, and crust that honied dew into Manna, and multiply that Manna into Corners, and fill those Gomers every day, and give every particular man his Gomer, give every soule in the Con- gregation, consolation by me ; That when I call to God for grace here, God should give me grace for grace, Grace in a power to derive grace upon others, and that this Oyle, this Balsamum should flow to the hem of the garment, even upon them that stand under me ; That when mine eyes looke up to Heaven, the eyes of all should looke up upon me, and God should open my mouth, to give them meat in due season ; That I should not onely be able to say, as Christ said to that poore soule. Confide fili^ My son be of good comfort, but Fratres iff Patres mei. My Brethren, and my Fathers, nay Domini mei, and Rex mens. My Lords, and my King be of good comfort, your sins are forgiven you ; That God should seale to me that Patent, lie frcedicate omni Creaturcc^ Goe and preach the Gospell to every Creature, be that creature what he will. That if God lead me into a Congregation, as into his Arke, where there are but eight soules, but a few disposed to a sense of his mercies, and all the rest (as in the Arke) ignobler creatures, and of brutall natures and aflFections, That if I finde a licentious Goat, a supplanting Fox, an usurious Wolfe, an ambitious Lion, yet to that creature, to every creature I should preach the Gospel of peace and consolation, and oifer these creatures a Metamorphosis, a transformation,

Preaching Consolation. 13

a new Creation in Christ Jesus, and thereby make my Goat, and my Fox, and my Wolfe, and my Lion, to become Semen Dei, The seed of God, and Filhim Dei, The child of God, and Participem Divines Natures, Partaker of the Divine Nature it selfe ; This is that which Christ is essentially in himselfe, This is that which ministerially and instrumentally he hath committed to me, to shed his consolation upon you, upon you all ; Not as his Almoner to drop his consolation upon one soule, nor as his Treasurer to issue his consolation to a whole Congregation, but as his Ophir, as his Indies, to derive his gold, his precious consolation upon the King himselfe.

12. The Beauty of the Soul.

/NSANIEBAT amatoriam insaniam Paulus, S. P^w/ Theophil. was mad for love ; S. Paul did, and we doe take into our contemplation, the beauty of a Christian soul ; Through the ragged apparell of the afflictions of this life ; through the scarres, and wounds, and palenesse, and morphews of sin, and corruption, we can look upon the soul it self, and there see that incorruptible beauty, that white and red, which the innocency and the blood of Christ hath given it, and we are mad for love of this soul, and ready to doe any act of danger, in the ways of persecution, any act of diminution of our selves in the ways of humiliation, to stand at her doore, and pray, and begge, that she would be reconciled to God,

14 Spiritual Liberality.

13. Spiritual Liberality,

Liberalitas.

2 Part. AS an Hezekias, a losias is a Type of Christ, but yet

Xjl but a Type of Christ ; so this civill Liberality, which we have hitherto spoken of, is a Type, but yet but a Type of our spiritual! Liberality. For, here we doe not onely change termes, the temporall, to spirituall, and to call that, which we called Liberality in the former part. Charity in this part ; nor do we onely make the difference in the proportion & measure, that that which was a Benefit in the other part, should be an Almes in this. But we invest the whole consideration in a meere spiritual! nature ; and so that Liberality, which was, in the former acceptation, but a relieving, but a refreshing, but a repairing of defects, and dilapidations in the body or fortune, is now, in this second part, in this spiritual! acceptation, the raising of a dejected spirit, the redinte- gration of a broken heart, the resuscitation of a buried soule, the re-consolidation of a scattered conscience, not with the glues, and cements of this world, mirth, and musique, and comedies, and conversation, and wine, and women, (miserable comforters are they all) nor with that Meteor, that hangs betweene two worlds, that is, Pliilosophy, and moral! constancy, (which is somewhat above the carnal! man, but yet far below the man truly Christian and religious) But this is the Liberality, of which the Holy Ghost liimselfe is content to be the Steward, of the holy, blessed, and glorious Trinity, and to be notified, and qualified by that distinctive notion, and specification. The Comforter,

To finde a languishing wretch in a sordid corner, not

spiritual Liberality. 15

onely in a penurious fortune, but in an oppressed con- science, His eyes under a diverse suffocation, smothered with smoake, and smothered with teares, His eares estranged from all salutations, and visits, and all sounds, but his owne sighes, and the stormes and thunders and earth- quakes of his owne despaire. To enable this man to open his eyes, and see that Christ Jesus stands before him, and sayes, Behold and see, if ever there were any sorrow, like my sorrow, and my sorrow is overcome, why is not thine ? To open this mans eares, and make him heare that voyce that sayes, / was dead, and am alive, and behold, I live ReveLnS. for evermore. Amen ; and so mayest thou ; To bow downe those Heavens, and bring them into his sad Chamber, To set Christ Jesus before him, to out-sigh him, out-weepe him, out-bleed him, out-dye him. To transferre all the fasts, all the scornes, all the scourges, all the nailes, all the speares of Christ Jesus upon him, and so, making him the Crucified man in the sight of the Father, because all the actions, and passions of the Son, are appropriated to him, and made his so intirely, as if there were never a soule created but his. To enrich this poore soule, to comfort this sad soule so, as that he shall beleeve, and by beleeving finde all Christ to be his, this is that LiberaHty which we speake of now, in dispensing whereof, 7he liberall man deviseth liberall things, and by liberall things shall stand.

14. Eaglets Wings.

FOR as those w^ords are well understood by many of the Ancients, To the Woman were given two wings Revel. 12. of an Eagle, that is, to the Church were given able and ^"^

i6 Eagle's Wings,

sufficient Ministers, to carry and convey her over the Nations : So are those words which are spoken of God Deut. 32. himself, appliable to his Ministers, that first, ^he Eagle '^* stirreth up her nest. The Preacher stirres and moves,

and agitates the holy affections of the Congregation, that they slumber not in a senselesnesse of that which is said, 7he Eagle stirreth up her nest, and then as it is added there, She Jluttereth over her young ; The Preacher makes a holy noise in the conscience of the Congregation, and when hee hath awakened them, by stirring the nest, hee casts some claps of thunder, some intimidations, in denouncing the judgements of God, and he flings open the gates of Heaven, that they may heare, and look up, and see a man sent by God, with power to infuse his feare upon them ; So she Jluttereth over her young ; but then, as it followes there, She spreadeth abroad her wings ; she over-shadowes them, she enwraps them, she armes them with her wings, so as that no other terror, no other fluttering but that which comes from her, can come upon them ; The Preacher doth so infuse the feare of God into his Auditory, that first, they shall feare nothing but God, and then they shall feare God, but so, as he is God ; And God is Mercy ; God is Love ; and his Minister shall so spread his wings over his people, as to defend them from all inordinate feare, from all suspition and jealousie, from all diffidence and distrust in the mercie of God ; which is farther exprest in that clause, which followes in the same place. She taketh them and beareth them upon her wings ; when the Minister hath awakened his flocke by the stirring of the nest, and put them in this holy feare, by this which the Holy Ghost cals a

Eagle's Wings. 17

Fluttering ; and then provided, by spreading his wings, that upon this feare there follow not a desperation ; then he sets them upon the top of his best wings, and shewes them the best treasure that is committed to his Steward- ship, hee shewes them Heaven, and God in Heaven, sanctifying all their crosses in this World, inanimating all their worldly blessings, rayning downe his blood into their emptinesse, and his balme into their wounds, making their bed in all their sicknesse, and preparing their seate, where he stands soliciting their cause, at the right hand of his Father. And so the Minister hath the wings of an Eagle, that every soule in the Congregation may see as much as hee sees, that is, a particular interest in all the mercies of God, and the merits of Christ.

15. J he Hour- Glass.

1HAVE seen Minute-glasses ; Glasses so short-liv'd. If I were to preach upon this Text, to such a glass, it were enough for half the Sermon ; enough to show the worldly man his Treasure, and the Object of his heart (for, where your treasure is, there will your Heart be also) to call his eye to that Minute-glass, and to tell him. There flows, there flies your Treasure, and your Heart with it. But if I had a Secular Glass, a Glass that would run an age ; if the two Hemispheres of the World were composed in the form of such a Glass, and all the World calcin'd and burnt to ashes, and all the ashes, and sands, and atoms of the World put into that Glass, it would not be enough to tell the godly man what his Treasure, and the Object of his Heart is. A Parrot, or a Stare, docile Birds, and of pregnant imitation, will sooner be

2025»3 c

i8 The Hour-Glass.

brought to relate to us the wisdom of a Council Table, then any Ambrose^ or any Chrysostome men that have Gold and Honey in their Names, shall tell us what the Sweetness, what the Treasure of Heaven is, and what that mans peace, that hath set his Heart upon that Treasure.

1 6. Preaching, In conci- "TJECAUSE God cals Preaching foolishnesse, you take '"Sr^i 21 * ^ ^^'^ ^^ ^^^ word, and you thinke Preaching a thing under you. Hence is it, that you take so much liberty in censuring and comparing Preacher and Preacher, nay Sermon and Sermon from the same Preacher ; as though we preached for wagers, and as though coine were to be valued from the inscription meerely, and the image, and the person, and not for the metall. You measure Lam. 4. 16. all by persons ; and yet, Non erubescitis faciem Sacerdotis, Tou respect not the person of the Priest, you give not so much reverence to Gods Ordinance, as he does. In no Church of Christendome but ours, doth the Preacher preach uncovered. And for all this good, and humble, and reverend example, (fit to be continued by us) cannot we keepe you uncovered till the Text be read. All the Sermon is not Gods word, but all the Sermon is Gods Ordinance, and the Text is certainely his word. There is no salvation but by faith, nor faith but by hearing, nor hearing but by preaching ; and they that thinke meanliest of the Keyes of the Church, and speake faintliest of the Absolution of the Church, will yet allow. That those Keyes lock, and unlock in Preaching ; That Absolution is con- ferred, or withheld in Preaching, That the proposing

Preaching. 19

of the promises of the Gospel in preaching, is that binding and loosing on earth, which bindes and looses in heaven. And then, though Christ have bid us, Preach the Go j^W Mar. 16.15 to every creature, yet, in his own great Sermon in the Mount, he hath forbidden us, to give holy things to dogs. Mat. 7 6, or to cast pearle before swine, lest they trample them, and turne and rend us. So that if all those manifold and fearfuU judgements, which swell in every Chapter, and blow in every verse, and thunder in every line of every Booke of the Bible, fall upon all them that come hither, as well, if they turne, and rend, that is, Calumniate us, the person of the Preacher, as if they trample upon the pearles, that is, undervalue the Doctrine, and the Ordinance it selfe ; If his terrible Judgements fall upon every uncharit- able mis-interpretation of that which is said here, and upon every irreverence in this place, and in this action ; Confesse, that though he be the God of your salvation, and doe answer you, yet, by terrible things doth the God of your salvation answer you. And confesse it also, as in manners, and in prayers, and in preaching, so in the holy and blessed Sacrament.

17. Applause, niDONIUS APOLLINARIS, (a Bishop himselfe, ^ but whether then or no, I know not) saith of another Bishop, that hearing even free die ationes repentinas, his extemporall Sermons, raucus plausor audivi, I poured my selfe out in loud acclamations, till I was hoarse : And, to contract this consideration, wee see evidently, that this fashion continued in the Church, even to Saint Bernards time. Neither is it left yet in some places,

c 2

20 Applause.

beyond the Seas, where the people doe yet answer the Preacher, if his questions be applyable to them, and may induce an answer, with these vocall acclamations, Sir, toe willy Sir, we will not. And truely wee come too neare re-inducing this vain glorious fashion, in those often periodicall murmurings, and noises, which you make, when the Preacher concludeth any point ; for those impertinent Interjections swallow up one quarter of his houre, and many that were not within distance of hearing the Sermon, will give a censure upon it, according to the frequencie, or paucitie of these acclamations.

1 8. The Bellman.

HE that will dy with Christ upon Good-Friday, must hear his own bell toll all Lent ; he that will be partaker of his passion at last, must conform himself to his discipline of prayer & fasting before. Is there any man, that in his chamber hears a bell toll for another man, and does not kneel down to pray for that dying man ? and then when his charity breaths out upon another man, does he not also reflect upon himself, and dispose himself as if he were in the state of that dying man ? We begin to hear Christs bell toll now, and is not our bell in the chime ? We must be in his grave, before we come to his resurrection, and we must be in his death-bed before we come to his grave : we must do as he did, fast and pray, before we can say as he said, that In manus tuas, Into thy hands O Lord I commend my Spirit. You would not go into a Medicinal Bath without some pre- paratives ; presume not upon that Bath, the blood of Christ Jesus, in the Sacrament then, without preparatives

The Bellman. 21

neither. Neither say to your selves, we shall have preparatives enough, warnings enough, many more Sermons before it come to that, and so it is too soon yet ; you are not sure you shall have more ; not sure you shall have all this ; not sure you shall be affected with any. If you be, when you are, remember that as in that good Custome in these Cities, you hear cheerful street musick in the winter mornings, but yet there was a sad and doleful bel-man, that wak'd you, and call'd upon you two or three hours before that musick came ; so for all that blessed musick which the servants of God shall present to you in this place, it may be of use, that a poor bell-man waked you before, and though but by his noise, prepared you for their musick.

19. Favourite Scriptures. ALMOST every man hath his Appetite, and his tast Jl\. disposed to some kind of meates rather then others ; He knows what dish he would choose, for his first, and for his second course. We have often the same disposition in our spirituall Diet ; a man may have a particular love towards such or such a book of Scripture, and in such an affection, I acknowledge, that my spirituall appetite carries me still, upon the Psalms of David, for a first course, for the Scriptures of the Old Testament : and upon the Epistles of Saint Paul, for a second course, for the New, and my meditations even for these publike exercises to Gods Church, returne oftnest to these two. For, as a hearty entertainer offers to others, the meat which he loves best himself, so doe I oftnest present to Gods people, in these Congregations, the meditations

22 Favourite Scriptures.

which I feed upon at home, in those two Scriptures. If a man be asked a reason why he loves one meat better then another, where all are equally good, (as the books of Scripture are) he will at least, finde a reason in some good example, that he sees some man of good tast, and temperate withall, so do • And for my Diet, I have Saint Augustines protestation, that he loved the Book of Psalms, and Saint ChrysostomeSy that he loved Saint Pauls Epistles^ with a particular devotion. I may have another more particular reason, because they are Scriptures, written in such forms, as I have been most accustomed to ; Saint Pauls being Letters, and Davids being Poems : for, God gives us, not onely that which is meerly neces- sary, but that which is convenient too ; He does not onely feed us, hut feed us with marrow, and with fatnesse ; he gives us our instruction in cheerfuU forms, not in a sowre, and sullen, and angry, and unacceptable way, but cheerfully, in Psalms, which is also a limited, and a restrained form ; Not in an Oration, not in Prose, but in Psalms ; which is such a form as is both curious, and requires diligence in the making, and then when it is made, can have nothing, no syllable taken from it, nor added to it : Therefore is Gods will dehvered to us in Psalms, that we might have it the more cheerfully, and that we might have it the more certainly, because where all the words are numbred, and measured, and weighed, the whole work is the lesse subject to falsification, either by substraction or addition. God speaks to us in oratione strictd, in a limited, in a diligent form ; Let us (not) speak to him in oratione solutd ; not pray, not preach, not hear, slackly, suddenly, unadvisedly, extemporally, occasionally,

Favourite Scriptures. 23

indillgently ; but let all our speech to him, be weighed, and measured in the weights of the Sanctuary, let us be content to preach, and to hear within the compasse of our Articles, and content to pray in those formes which the Church hath meditated for us, and recom- mended to us.

20. ^he Psalms.

THE Psalmes are the Manna of the Church. As Wisd.16.20. Manna tasted to every man like that that he liked best, so doe the Psalmes minister Instruction, and satis- faction, to every man, in every emergency and occasion. David was not onely a cleare Prophet of Christ himselfe, but a Prophet of every particular Christian ; He foretels what I, what any shall doe, and suffer, and say. And as the whole booke of Psalmes is Oleum e^usum^ (as the Cant. i. 3. Spouse speaks of the name of Christ) an Oyntment powred out upon all sorts of sores, A Searcloth that souples all bruises, A Balme that searches all wounds ; so are there some certaine Psalmes, that are Imperiall Psalmes, that command over all affections, and spread themselves over all occasions, Catholique, universall Psalmes, that apply themselves to all necessities. This is one of those ; for, of those Constitutions which are Constitut. called ApostolicaU, one is. That the Church should ^P°^^°^- meet every day, to sing this Psalme. And accordingly, S. Chrysostome testifies, That it was decreed, and ordained Chrysost. by the Primitive Fathers, that no day should passe without the pubHque singing of this Psalme. Under both these obHgations, (those ancient Constitutions, called the Apostles, and those ancient Decrees made by

24 The Psalms.

the primitive Fathers) belongs to me, who have my part in the service of Gods Church, the especiall meditation, and recommendation of this Psalme. And under a third obHgation too, That it is one of those five psalmes, the daily rehearsing v^^hereof, is injoyned to me, by the Constitutions of this Church, as five other are to every other person of our body. As the whole booke is Manna, so these five Psalmes are my Gomer, which I am to fill and empty every day of this Manna.

21. Sanctified Passions,

y4S the Prophets, and the other Secretaries of the •lIl holy Ghost in penning the books of Scriptures, do for the most part retain, and express in their writings some impressions, and some air of their former professions ; those that had been bred in Courts and Cities, those that had been Shepheards and Heardsmen, those that had been Fishers, and so of the rest ; ever inserting into their writings some phrases, some metaphors, some allusions, taken from that profession which they had exercised before ; so that soul, that hath been transported upon any particular worldly pleasure, when it is entirely turn'd upon God, and the contemplation of his all- sufficiency and abundance, doth find in God fit subject, and just occasion to exercise the same affection piously, and rehgiously, which had before so sinfully transported, and possesst it.

A covetous person, who is now truly converted to God, he will exercise a spiritual covetousness still, he will desire to have him all, he vnVi have good security, the seal and assurance of the holy Ghost ; and he will have

Sanctified Passions. 25

his security often renewed by new testimonies, and increases of those graces in him ; he will have witnesses enough ; he will have the testimonie of aU the world, by his good hfe and conversation ; he will gain every way at Gods hand, he will have wages of God, for he will be his servant ; he will have a portion from God, for he will be his Son ; he will have a reversion, he will be sure that his name is in the book of Hfe ; he will have pawns, the seals of the Sacraments, nay, he will have a present possession ; all that God hath promised, all that Christ hath purchased, all that the Holy Ghost hath the steward- ship and dispensation of, he will have all in present, by the appropriation and investiture of an actual and applying faith ; a covetous person converted will be spiritually covetous still.

So will a voluptuous man, who is turned to God, find plenty and deHciousnes enough in him, to feed his soul, as with marrow, and with fatness, as David expresses it ; and so an angry and passionate man, will find zeal enough in the house of God to eat him up.

All affections which are common to all men, and those to which in particular, particular men have been addicted to, shall not only be justly employed upon God, but also securely employed, because we cannot exceed, nor go too far in imploying them upon him. According to this Rule, St. Paul, who had been so vehement a persecutor, had ever his thoughts exercised upon that ; and thereupon after his conversion, he fulfils the rest of the sufferings of Christ in his flesh, he suffers most, he makes most Col. i. 24. mention of his suffering of any of the Apostles.

And according to this Rule too, Solomon, whose

26 Sanctified Passions.

disposition was amorous, and excessive in the love of v^romen, when he turn'd to God, he departed not utterly from his old phrase and language, but having put a new, and a spiritual tincture, and form and habit in all his thoughts, and words, he conveys all his loving approaches and applications to God, and all Gods gracious answers to his amorous soul, into songs, and Epithalamians, and meditations upon contracts, and marriages between God and his Church, and between God and his soul ; as we see so evidently in all his other writings, and particularly in this text, / love them, &c.

In which words is expressed all that belongs to love, all which, is to desire, and to enjoy ; for to desire without fruition, is a rage, and to enjoy without desire is a stupid- ity : In the first alone we think of nothing, but that which we then would have ; and in the second alone, we are not for that, when we have it ; in the first, we are without it ; in the second, we were as good as we were, for we have no pleasure in it ; nothing then can give us satisfaction, but when those two concurr, amare and fruty to love and to enjoy.

22. Styl^ and Language.

THE Holy Ghost in penning the Scriptures delights himself, not only with a propriety, but with a delicacy, and harmony, and melody of language ; with height of Metaphors, and other figures, which may work greater impressions upon the Readers, and not with barbarous, or triviaU, or market, or homely language : It is true, that when the Grecians, and the Romanes, and S. Augustine himselfe, undervalued and despised the

Style and Language. 27

Scriptures, because of the poore and beggerly phrase, that they seemed to be written in, the Christians could say Httle against it, but turned still upon the other safer way, wee consider the matter, and not the phrase, because for the most part, they had read the Scriptures only in Translations, which could not maintaine the Majesty, nor preserve the elegancies of the Originall.

Their case was somewhat like ours, at the beginning of the Reformation ; when, because most of those men who laboured in that Reformation, came out of the Romane Church, and there had never read the body of the Fathers at large ; but only such ragges and frag- ments of those Fathers, as were patcht together in their Decretat's, and Decretals, and other such Common placers, for their purpose, and to serve their turne, therefore they were loath at first to come to that issue, to try controversies by the Fathers. But as soon as our men that imbraced the Reformation, had had time to reade the Fathers, they were ready enough to joyne with the Adversary in that issue : and still we protest, that we accept that evidence, the testimony of the Fathers, and refuse nothing, which the Fathers unanimly delivered, for matter of faith ; and howsoever at the beginning some men were a httle ombrageous, and startling at the name of the Fathers, yet since the Fathers have been well studied, for more then threescore yeares, we have behaved our selves with more reverence towards the Fathers, and more confidence in the Fathers, then they of the Romane perswasion have done, and been lesse apt to suspect or quarrell their Books, or to reprove their Doctrines, then our Adversaries have been. So, howsoever

28 Style and Language.

the Christians at first were fain to sink a little undei that imputation, that their Scriptures have no Majesty, no eloquence, because these embellishments could not appeare in Translations, nor they then read Originalls, yet now, that a perfect knowledge of those languages hath brought us to see the beauty and the glory of those Books, we are able to reply to them, that there are not in all the world so eloquent Books as the Scriptures ; and that nothing is more demonstrable, then that if we would take all those Figures, and Tropes, which are collected out of secular Poets, and Orators, we may give higher, and HveHer examples, of every one of those Figures, out of the Scriptures, then out of all the Greek and Latine Poets, and Orators ; and they mistake it much, that thinke, that the Holy Ghost hath rather chosen a low, and barbarous, and homely style, then an eloquent, and powerfull manner of expressing himselfe.

23. Style of the Holy Ghost, ExuUatio. ^T^HE Holy Ghost is an eloquent Author, a vehement, A and an abundant Author, but yet not luxuriant ; he is far from a penurious, but as far from a superfluous style too.

24. Compliments,

WE have a word now denizened, and brought into familiar use amongst us. Complement ; and for the most part, in an ill sense ; so it is, when the heart of the speaker doth not answer his tongue ; but God forbid but a true heart, and a faire tongue might very well consist together : As vertue it self receives an addition, hy being in a faire body, so do good intentions

Compliments. 29

of the heart, by being expressed in faire language. That man aggravates his condemnation, that gives me good words, and meanes ill ; but he gives me a rich Jewell, and in a faire Cabinet, he gives me precious wine, and in a clean glasse, that intends well, and expresses his good intentions well too. If I beleeve a faire speaker, I have comfort a little while, though he deceive me, but a froward and peremptory refuser, unsaddles me at first. I remem- ber a vulgar Spanish Author, who writes, the losephina, the life of loseph, the husband of the blessed Virgin Mary, who moving that question, why that Virgin is never called by any style of Majesty, or Honour in the Scriptures, he sayes. That if after the declaring of hei to be the Mother of God, he had added any other Title, the Holy Ghost had not been a good Courtier, (as his very word is) nor exercised in good language, and he thinks that had been a defect in the Holy Ghost in himself. He meanes surely the same that Epifhanius doth. That in naming the Saints of God, and especially the blessed Virgin, we should alwayes give them the best Titles that are applyable to them ; Quis unquam ausus, Epiphan. (sales he) proferre nomen Marice, iff non statim addidit Haeres. 78. virgo ? Who ever durst utter the name of that Mary, without that addition of incomparable honour, ^he Virgin Mary ?

That Spanish Author need not be suspitious of the Holy Ghost in that kinde, that he is no good Courtier so ; for in all the books of the world, you shall never reade so civill language, nor so faire expressions of themselves to one another, as in the Bible : When Abraham shall call himself dust, and ashes, (and indeed if the Son of

30 Compliments.

God were a worme and no man, what was Ahraham F) If God shall call this Abraham, this Dust, this Worme of the dust, ^ he friend oj God, (and all friendship implyes a parity, an equality in something ;) when David shall call himself ajiea, and a dead dog, even in respect of ^aul, and God shall call David, A man according to his own hearty when God shall call us, The Apple oj his own eye, The Seale upon his own right hand, who would go farther for an Example, or farther then that example for a Rule, of faire accesses, of civill approaches, of sweet and honourable entrances into the affections of them with whom they were to deale ?

25. Lying at Aix,

IYING at Aix, at Aquisgrane, a well known Town -i in Germany, and fixing there some time, for the benefit of those Baths, I found my self in a house, which was divided into many families, & indeed so large as it might have been a little Parish, or, at least, a great lim of a great one ; But it was of no Parish : for when I ask'd who lay over my head, they told me a family of Anabaptists ; And who over theirs ? Another family of Anabaptists ; and another family of Anabaptists over theirs, and the whole house, was a nest of these boxes ; several artificers ; all Anabaptists ; I ask'd in what room they met, for the exercise of their ReHgion ; I was told they never met : for, though they were all Anabaptists, yet for some coUaterall differences, they detested one another, and, though many of them, were near in bloud, & alliance to one another, yet the son would excommuni- cate the father, in the room above him, and the Nephew

Lying at Aix. 31

the Uncle. As S. John is said to have quitted that Bath, into which Cerinthus the Heretique came, so did I this house ; I remembred that Hezekiah in his sicknesse, turn'd himself in his bed, to pray towards that wall, that look'd to lerusalem ; And that Daniel in Babylon, when he pray'd in his chamber, opened those windows that look'd towards lerusalem ; for, in the first dedication of the Temple, at lerusalem, there is a promise annext to the prayers made towards the temple : And I began to think, how many roofs, how many floores of separation, were made between God and my prayers in that house. And such is this multipHcity of sins, which we consider to be got over us, as a roof, as an arch, many arches, many roofs : for, though these habitual! sins, be so of kin, as that they grow from one another, and yet for all this kindred excommunicate one another, (for covetous- nesse will not be in the same roome with prodigality) yet it is but going up another stair, and there's the tother Anabaptist ; it is but living a few years, and then the prodigall becomes covetous. All the way, they separate us from God, as a roof, as an arch ; & then, an arch will bear any weight ; An habituall sin got over our head as an arch will stand under any sicknesse, any dishonour, any judgement of God, and never sink towards any humiliation.

26. Farewell on Going to Germany,

NOW to make up a circle, by returning to our first word, remember : As we remember God, so for his sake, let us remember one another. In my long absence, and far distance from hence, remember me, as I shall do

32 Farewell on Going to Germany.

you in the ears of that God, to whom the farthest East, and the farthest West are but as the right and left ear in one of us ; we hear with both at once, and he hears in both at once ; remember me, not my abiUties ; for when I consider my Apostleship that I was sent to you,

I Cor. 15. 9. I am in St. Pauls quorum, quorum ego sum minimus, the least of them that have been sent ; and when I consider my infirmities, I am in his quorum, in another commission,

I Tim.1.15, another way. Quorum ego maximus ; the greatest of them ; but remember my labors, and endeavors, at least my desire, to make sure your salvation. And I shall remember your religious cheerfulness in hearing the word, and your christianly respect towards all them that bring that word unto you, and towards my self in particular far bove my merit. And so as your eyes that stay here, and mine that must be far of, for all that distance shall meet every morning, in looking upon that same Sun, and meet every night, in looking upon the same Moon ; so our hearts may meet morning and evening in that God, which sees and hears every where ; that you may come thither to him with your prayers, that I, (if I may be of use for his glory, and your edification in this place) may be restored to you again ; and may come to him with my prayer, that what Paul soever plant amongst you, or what Apollos soever water, God himself will give the increase : That if I never meet you again till we have all passed the gate of death, yet in the gates of heaven, I may meet you all, and there say to my Saviour and your Saviour, that which he said to his Father and our Father, Of those whom thou hast given me, have I not lost one. Remember me thus, you that stay in this Kingdome

Farewell on Going to Germany. 33

of peace, where no sword is drawn, but the sword of Justice, as I shal remember you in those Kingdomes, where ambition on one side, and a necessary defence from unjust persecution on the other side hath drawn many swords ; and Christ Jesus remember us all in his Kingdome, to which, though we must sail through a sea, it is the sea of his blood, where no soul suffers shipwrack ; though we must be blown with strange winds, with sighs and groans for our sins, yet it is the Spirit of God that blows all this wind, and shall blow away all contrary winds of diffidence or distrust in Gods mercy; where we shall be all Souldiers of one Army, the Lord of Hostes, and children of one Quire, the God of Harmony and consent : where all Clients shall retain but one Counsellor, our Advocate Christ Jesus, not present him any other fee but his own blood, and yet every Client have a Judgment on his side, not only in a not guilty, in the remission of his sins, but in a Venite henedicti, in being called to the participation of an immortal Crown of glory : where there shall be no difference in affection, nor in mind, but we shall agree as fully & perfectly in our Jllelujah, and gloria in excdcis, as God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost agreed in the faciamus hominem at first ; where we shall end, and yet begin but then ; where we shall have continual rest, and yet never grow lazie ; where we shall be stronger to resist, and yet have no enemy ; where we shall live and never die, where we shall meet & never part.

.1025.3

34 The Vicar of St. Dunstan's.

27. ^he Vicar of St. Dunstan^s. Onus, IVT^^ ^^ ^ Matrimoniall state, there is Onus and X^ Honos, a burden to be born, an Honour to be received. The burden of the sinnes of the zvhole world, was a burden onely for Christs shoulders ; but the sinnes of this Parish, will I7 upon my shoulders, if I be silent, or if I be indulgent, and denounce not Gods Judgement upon those sinnes. It will be a burden to us, if we doe not, and God knowes it is a burden to us, when we do denounce those Judgements. Esay felt, and groned under this burden, when he cried Onus Babylonis, Onus Moah, and Onus Damasci, O the burden of Babylon, and the burden of Damascus, and so the other Prophets grone often under this burden, in contemplation of other places : It burdened, it troubled, it grieved the holy Prophets of God, that they must denounce Gods judge- ments, though upon Gods enemies. We reade of a com- passionate Generall, that looking upon his great Army, from a hill, fell into a bitter weeping, upon this considera- tion, that in fiftie or sixtie yeares hence, there will not be a man of these that fight now, alive upon the earth. What Sea could furnish mine eyes with teares enough, to poure out, if I should think, that of all this Congrega- tion, which lookes me in the face now, I should not meet one, at the Resurrection, at the right hand of God ! And for so much as concerns me, it is all one, if none of you be saved, as if none of you be saved by my help, my means, my assistance, my preaching. If I put you upon miraculous wayes, to be saved without hearing, or upon extraordinary wayes to be saved by hearing others^ this

The Vicar of St. Dunstan's. 35

shall aggravate my condemnation, though you be saved : How much more heavy must my burden be, if by my neghgence both I and you perish too ? So then this caUing, this marriage, is a burden every way. When at any midnight I heare a bell toll from this steeple, must not I say to my selfe, what have I done at any time for the instructing or rectifying of that mans Conscience, who lieth there now ready to deliver up his own account, and my account to Almighty God ? If he be not able to make a good account, he and I are in danger, because I have not enabled him ; and though he be for himself able, that delivers not me, if I have been no instrument for the doing of it. Many, many burdens he upon this calling, upon this marriage ; but our recompense is, that marriage is as well an honourable as a painefull calling.

28. Funeral Sermon on Magdalen Herbert^ Lady Danvers^ 1627.

I PROPOSE to my selfe, and to this Congregation, two Workes for this day ; That wee may walke together two miles, in this Sabbath dales journey ; First, Jo instruct the Living, and then Lo commemorate the Dead. Which office, as I ought, so I should have performed sooner, but that this sad occasion surprized me under other Pre-obligations and Pre-contracts, in the services of mine own Profession, which could not be excused, nor avoided. And being come now to this double worke, whether I looke up to the Throne of Heaven, and that Firmament, for my first worke, The Instruction of the Living, or downe to the stones of the Grave, and that

D2

36 Funeral Sermon on

pavement, for 1117 second worke, The commemoration of the Deady I need no other words than these which I have read to you, for both purposes ; For, to assist the Resur- rection of your soules, I say. And to assure the Resurrec- tion of your bodies, she saies, Neverthelesse, we according to his promise looke for new Heavens, and new Earthy wherein dwelleth Righteousnesse. . . .

Close we here this Booke of life, from which we have had OUT first Text, And, Surge, qu^e dormis in pulvere. Arise, thou Booke of Death ; thou, that sleepest in this consecrated dust, and hast beene going into dust, now, almost a Moneth of dayes, almost a Lunarie yeere, and dost deserve such Anniversaries, such quick returnes of Periods, and a Commemoration, in every such yeere, in every Moneth ; Arise thou, and bee another Commentary to us ; and tell us, what this new Heaven, and new Earth is, in which, now, thou dweVst, with that Righteousnesse. But wee doe not invoke thee, as thou art a Saint in Heaven ; Appeare to us, as thou didst appeare to us a moneth agoe ; At least, appeare in thy history ; appeare in our memory ; that when every one of us have lookt upon thee, by his owne glasse, and scene thee in his owne Interest, such, as thou wast to him, That when one shall have scene thee, the best wife. And a larger number, the best mother. And more then they, a whole Towne, the best "Neighbour, and more then a Towne, a large body of noble friends, the best Friend, And more than all they, all the world, the best example, when thou hast received this Testimony from the Militant Church, as thou hast the recompence of all this, in thy Blessed Soule, in the Triumphant, yet, because thy body is still within these Walls, bee still

Magdalen Herbert, Lady Danvers. 37

content, to bee one of this Congregation, and to heare some parts of this 7ext re-applied unto thee.

Our first word, Neverthelesse, puts us first upon this consideration, That she hv'd in a time, wherein this Prophecie of Saint Peter, in this Chaper, was over- abundantly perform'd. That there should bee scoffers, jesters in divine things, and matters appertaining to Gody and his Religion. For, now, in these our dayes, excellency of Wit, Hes in frophanenesse ; he is the good Spirit, that dares abuse God ; And hee good company, that makes his company the worse, or keepes them from goodnesse. This being the Aire, and the Complexion of the Wit of her Times, and her incHnation, and conversation, naturally, cheerfull, and merry, and loving facetiousnesse, and sharpnesse of wit, Neverthelesse, who ever saw her, who ever heard her countenance a prophane speech, how sharpe soever, or take part with wit, to the prejudice of Godlinesse ? From this I testify her holy cheerfulnesse, and Religious alacrity, (one of the best evidences of a good conscience^ That as shee came to this place, God^s house oj Prayer, duly, not onely every Sabbath, when it is the house of other exercises, as well as of Prayer, but even in those weeke-dayes, when it was onely a house of Prayer, as often as these doores were open for a holy Convocation, And, as she ever hastned her family and her company hither, with that cheerfull provocation : For God's sake let's go, for God's sake let's bee there at the Confession : So her selfe, vnth her whole family, (as a Church in that elect Ladie's house, to whom John writ the second Epistle) did, every Sabbath, shut up the day, at night, with a generall, with a cheerfull singing ofPsalmes ; This Act of cheerful-

38 Funeral Sermon on

nesse, was still the last Act of that family, united In it selfe, and with God. God loves a cheerfull giver ; Much more, a cheerfull giver of himselfe. Truly, he that can close his eyes, in a holy cheerfulnesse, every night, shall meet no distemper'd, no inordinate, no irregular sadnesse, then, when God, by the hand of Death, shall close his eyes, at last.

But, returne we againe to our Neverthelesse ; You may remember, that this word in our former part, put us first upon the consideration of Scoffers at the day of judgement, and then, upon the consideration of Terrours, and sad Apprehensions at that day. And for her, some sicknesses, in the decUnation of her yeeres, had opened her to an overflowing of Melancholie ; Not that she ever lay under that water, but yet, had sometimes, some high Tides of it ; and, though this distemper would sometimes cast a cloud, and some halfe damps upon her naturall cheer- fulnesse, and sociablenesse, and sometimes induce darke and sad apprehensions, Neverthelesse, who ever heard, or saw in her, any such effect of Melancholy as to murmure, or repine, or dispute upon any of Gods proceedings, or to lodge a Jealousie, or Suspition of his mercy, and goodnesse towards her, and all hers ? The Wit of our time is Prophanenesse ; Neverthelesse, shee, that lov'd that, hated this ; Occasional! Melancholy had taken some hold in her, Neverthelesse, that never Ecclipst, never interrupted her cheerfull confidence, & assurance in God.

Our second word denotes the person : We, Neverthelesse We ; And, here in this consideration, Neverthelesse shee. This may seeme to promise some picture, some

Magdalen Herbert, Lady Danvers. 39

Character of her person. But shee was no stranger to them that heare me now ; nor scarce to any that may heare of this hereafter, which you heare now, and there- fore, much needes not, to that purpose. Yet, to that purpose, of her person, and personall circumstances, thus much I may remember some, and informe others. That from that Worthy family, whence shee had her original! extraction, and birth, she suckt that love of hospitality, * {hospitality, which hath celebrated that family, in many Generations, successively) which dwelt in her, to her end. But in that ground, her Fathers family, shee grew not many yeeres. Transplanted young from thence, by mariage, into another family of Honour, as a flower t that doubles and multipHes by transplantation, she multipHed into ten Children, Joh^s number ; and Job^s distribution, (as shee, her selfe would very often remem- ber) seven sonnes, and three daughters. And, in this ground, shee grew not many yeeres more, then were necessary, for the producing of so many plants. And being then left to chuse her own ground in her Widow- hood, having at home establisht, and increast the estate, with a faire, & noble Addition, proposing to her selfe, as her principall care, the education of her children, to advance that, shee came with them, and dwelt with them in the Universitie ; and recompenc't to them, the losse of a Father, in giving them two mothers ; her owne

* Daughter of Sir Rich., sister of Sir Fran., Aunt of Sir Richard Neuport, of Arcol.

t Rich. Herbert, of Blachehall, in Monlgomery Esqu. lineally descended from that great Sir Rich. Herbert in Ed, 4. time, and father of Ed. Lord Herbert Baron c/ Castle- Island, late Embassador in France, and new of his majesties Councel of Warre.

40 Funeral Sermon on

personall care, and the advantage of that place ; where shee contracted a friendship, with divers reverend persons, of eminency, and estimation there ; which continued to their ends. And as this was her greatest businesse, so she made this state, a large Period ; for in this state of widowhood, shee continued twelve yeeres. And then, returning to a second marriage, that second marriage turnes us to the consideration of another personall circumstance ; Sir lohn that is, the naturall endowments of her person ; Which were onely such, as that, (though her virtues were his principall

brother to object) jet, even these, her personall, and naturall, endow- o/Danby. ments, had their part, in drawing, and fixing the affections of such a person, as by his birth, and youth, and interest in great favours in Court, and legall proximity to great possessions in the world, might justly have promist him acceptance, in what family soever, or upon what person soever, hee had directed, and plac't his Affections. He plac't them here ; neither diverted then, nor repented since. For, as the well tuning of an Instrument, makes higher and lower strings, of one sound, so the inequality of their yeeres, was thus reduc't to an evennesse, that shee had a cheerfulnesse, agreeable to his youth, and he had a sober staidnesse, conformable to her more yeeres. So that, I would not consider her, at so much more then forty, nor him, at so much lesse than thirty, at that time, but, as their persons were made one, and their fortunes made one, by mariage, so I would put their yeeres into one number, and finding a sixty betweene them, thinke them thirty a peece ; for, as twins of one houre, they liv'd. God, who join'd them, then, having also separated them now, may make their yeres even, this other way

Magdalen Herbert, Lady Danvers. 41

too ; by giving him, as many yeerea after her going out of this World, as he had given her, before his comming into it ; and then, as many more, as God may receive Glory, and the World, Benefit, by that Addition ; That so, as at their first meeting, she was, at their last meeting, he may bee the elder person.

To this consideration of her person then, belongs this, that God gave her such a comelinesse, as, though shee w^ere not proud of it, yet she v^as so content v^ith it, as not to goe about to mend it, by any^r^ And for Yiqi Attire, (which is another personall circumstance), it was never sumptuous, never sordid ; But alwayes agreeable to her quality, and agreeable to her company ; Such as shee might, and such, as others, such as shee was, did weare. For in such things of indifferency in themselves, many times, a singularity may be a little worse, then a fellowship in that, which is not altogether so good. It may be worse, nay, it may be a worse pride, to weare worse things, than others doe. Her rule was mediocrity.

And, as to the consideration of the house, belongs the consideration of the furniture too, so in these personall circumstances, we consider hei fortune, her estate. Which was in a faire, and noble proportion, deriv'd from her first husband, and fairely, and nobly dispenc'd, by herselfe, with the allowance of her second. In which shee was one of God's true Stewards, and Almoners too. There are dispositions, which had rather give presents, than pay debts ; and rather doe good to strangers, than to those, that are neerer to them. But shee alwayes thought the care of her family, a debt, and upon that, for t\iQ provision, for the order, for the proportions, in a good largenesse,

42 Funeral Sermon on

shee plac't her first thoughts, of that kinde. For, for OUT families, we are Gods Stewards ; For those without, we are his Almoners, In which office, shee gave not at some great dayes, or some solemne goings abroad, but, as Gods true Almoners, the Sunne, and Moone, that passe on, in a continuall doing of good, as shee receiv'd her daily bread from God, so, daily, she distributed, and imparted it to others. In which office, though she never turn'd her face from those, who in a strict inquisition, might be call'd idle, and vagrant Beggers, yet shee ever look't first, upon them, who laboured, and whose labours could not overcome the difficulties, nor bring in the necessities of this life ; and to the sweat of their hrowes, shee contri- buted, even her wine, and her oyle, and any thing that was, and any thing, that might be, if it were not, prepar'd for her owne table. And as her house was a Court, in the conversation of the best, and an Almeshouse, in feeding the poore ; so was it also an Hospitall, in ministring releefe to the sicke. And truly, the love of doing good in this kind, of ministring to the sicke, was the bony, that was spread over all her bread ; the Aire, the Perfume, that breath'd over all her house ; The disposition that dwelt in those her children, and those her kindred, which dwelt with her, so bending this way, that the studies and knowledge of one, the hand of another, and purse of all, and a joynt-facility, and opennesse, and accessiblenesse to persons of the meanest quality, con- cur'd in this blessed Act of Charity, to minister releefe to the sicke. Of which, my selfe, who, at that time, had the favour to bee admitted into that family, can, and must testifie this, that when the late heavy visitation tell

Magdalen Herbert, Lady Danvers. 43

hotly upon this Towne, when every doore was shut up, and, lest Death should enter into the house, every house was made a Sepulchre of them that were in it, then, then, in that time of infection, divers persons visited v^rith that infection, had their releefe, and releefe applicable to that very infection, from this house.

Now when I have said thus much, (rather thus little) of her person, as of a house. That the ground upon which it was built, was the family where she was borne, and then, where she was married, and then, the time of her zvidozv- hood, and lastly, her last marriage. And that the house it selfe, was those fair bodily endowments, which God had bestow'd upon her. And the furniture of that house, the fortune, and the use of that fortune, of which God had made her Steward and Almoner, when I shall also have said, that the Inhabitants of this house, (rather the servants, for they did but wait upon Religion in her) were those married couples, of morall virtues. Conversation married with a Retirednesse, Facility married with a Reservednesse, Alacrity married with a Thoughtfulnesse, and Largenesse married with a Providence, I may have leave to depart from this consideration of her person, and personall circumstances, lest by insisting longer upon them, I should seeme to pretend, to say all the good, that might bee said of her ; But that's not in my purpose ; yet, onely therefore, because it is not in my power ; For I would do her all right, and all you that good, if I could, to say all. But, I haste to an end, in consideration of some things, that appertaine more expressly to me, then these personall, or civill, or morall things doe.

In those, the next is, the secundum promissa, that shee

44 Funeral Sermon on

govern'd herself, according to his promises ; his promises, laid downe in his Scriptures. For, as the rule of all her civill Actions, was Religion, so, the rule of her Religion, was the Scripture ; And, her rule, for her particular understanding of the Scripture, was the Church. Shee never diverted towards the Papist, in undervaluing the Scripture ; nor towards the Separatist, in undervaluing the Church. But in the doctrine, and discipline of that Church, in which, God seal'd her, to himselfe, in Baptisme, shee brought up her children, shee assisted her family, she dedicated her soule to God in her Hfe, and surrendered it to him in her death ; And, in that forme of Common Prayer, which is ordain'd by that Church, and to which she had accustom'd her selfe, with her family, twice every day, she joyn'd with that company, which was about her death-bed, in answering to every part thereof, which the Congregation is directed to answer to, with a cleere understanding, with a constant memory, with a distinct voyce, not two hours before she died.

According to this promise, that is, the will of God manifested in the Scriptures, She expected ; Shee expected this, that she hath received ; Gods Physicke, and Gods Musicke ; a Christianly death. For, death, in the old Testament was a Commination ; but in the new Testa- ment, death is a Promise ; When there was a Super-dying, a death upon the death, a Morte upon the Morieris, a Spirituall death after the bodily, then wee died according to Gods threatening ; Now, when by the Gospell, that second death is taken off, though wee die still, yet we die according to his Promise, That's a part of his mercy, and his Promise, which his ApostU gives us from him, That

Magdalen Herbert, Lady Danvers. 45

wee shall all bee changed ; For, after that promise^ that 1C0r.15.st. change, follow's that triumphant Acclamation, O death where is thy sting, O grave where is thy victory P Consider us fallen in Adam, and wee are miserable, that wee must die ; but consider us restored, and redintegrated in Christ, wee were more miserable if we might not die ; Wee lost the earthly Paradise by death then ; but wee get not Heaven, but by death, now. This shee expected till it came, and embrac't it when it came. How may we thinke, shee was joy'd to see that face, that Angels delight to looke upon, the face of her Saviour, that did not abhor the face of his fearfuUest Messenger, Death ? Shee shew'd no feare of his face, in any change of her owne ; but died without any change of countenance, or posture ; without any strugling, any disorder ; but her Death-bed was as quiet, as her Grave. To another Magdalen, Christ said upon earth, Touch me not, for I am not ascended. Being ascended now, to his glory, and she being gone up to him, after shee had awaited his leisure, so many yeeres, as that more, would soone have growne to bee vexation, and sorrow, as her last words here, were, / submit my will to the will of God ; so wee doubt not, but the first word which she heard there, was that Euge, from her Saviour , Well done good and faithfull servant; enter into thy masters joy.

Shee expected that ; dissolution of body, and soule ; and rest in both, from the incumbrances, and tentations of this world. But yet, shee is in expectation still ; StiU a Reversionarie ; and a Reversionary upon a long life ; the whole world must die, before she come to a possession of this Reversion ; which is a Glorified body in the Resur-

46 Funeral Sermon on

rection. In which expectation, she return's to her former charity ; shee will not have that, till all wee, shall have it, as well as shee ; She eat not her morsels alone, in her life,

Job 31. 17. (as 'J oh speakes) She lookes not for the glory of the Resur- rection alone, after her death. But when all wee, shall have been mellowd in the earth, many yeeres, or chang'd in the Aire, in the twinkling of an eye, {God, knowes which) That hody upon which you tread now. That hody which now, whilst I speake, is mouldering, and crumbling into lesse, and lesse dust, and so hath some ^notion, though no lije, That hody, which was the ^aher- nacle of a holy Soule, and a Temple of the holy Ghost, That hody that was eyes to the blinde, and hands, and feet to the lame, whilst it hv'd, and being dead, is so still, by having beene so lively an example, to teach others, to be so. That hody at last, shall have her last expectation satisfied, and dwell hodily, with that Righteousnesse, in these new Heavens, and new Earth, for ever, and ever, and ever, and infinite, and super-infinite evers. Wee end all, with the valediction of the Spouse to Christ : His

Cact. 8. 3. left hand is under my head, and his right emhraces mee, was the Spouses valediction, and good night to Christ then, when she laid her selfe down to sleep in the strength of his Mandrakes, and in the power of his Spices, as it is exprest there ; that is, in the infiuence of his mercies. Beloved, every good Soule is the spouse of Christ. And this good Soule, being thus laid downe to sleepe in his peace, His left hand under her head, gathering, and composing, and preserving her dust for future Glory ; His right hand emhracing her, assuming, and estabHshing her soule in present Glory, in his name, and in her hehalfe,

Magdalen Herbert, Lady Danvers. 47

I say that, to all you, which Christ sayes there, in the behalfe of that Spouse, Adjuro vos, I adjure you, I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, that yee wake her not, till she please. The words are directed to the daughters, rather than to the sons of Jerusalem, because for the most part, the aspersions that women receive, either in Morall or Religious actions, proceed from women them- selves. Therefore, Adjuro vos, I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, wake her not. Wake hei not, with any halfe calumnies, with any whisperings ; But if you wil wake her, wake her, and keepe her awake with an active imitation, of her Morall, and her Holy virtues. That so her example working upon you, and the number of Gods Saints, being, the sooner, by this blessed example, fulfiPd, wee may all meet, and meet quickly in that kingdome, which hers, and our Saviour, hath purchac't for us all, with the inestimable price, of his incorruptible bloud. To which glorious Sonne of God, &c.

29. Death of Elizabeth and Accession of James 7.

GODS hand hath been abundant towards us, in raising Ministers of State, so qualified, and so endowed ; and such Princes as have fastned their friendships, and conferred their favors upon such persons. We celebrate, seasonably, opportunely, the thankful acknowledgement of these mercies, this day : This day, which God made for us, according to the pattern of hi^ first days in the Creation ; where, Vesper i^ mane dies unus, the evening first, and then the morning made up the day ; for, here the saddest night, and the joyfuUest morning, that ever the daughters of this Island saw, made up this day.

48 Death of Elizabeth and

Consider the tears of Richmond this night, and the joys of London^ at this place, at this time, in the morning ; and we shall find Prophecy even in that saying of the Poet, Nocte pluit tota, showers of rain all night, of weeping for our Sovereign ; and we would not be comforted. Matt a. 18. because she was not : And yet, redeunt spectacula mane, the same hearts, the same eyes, the same hands were all directed upon recognitions, and acclamations of her successor in the morning : And when every one of you in the City, were running up and down like Ants with their eggs bigger then themselves, every man with his bags, to seek where to hide them safely, Almighty God shed down his Spirit of Unity, dindi recollecting, and reposedness, and acquiescence upon you all. In the death of that Queen, unmatchable, inimitable in her sex ; that Queen, worthy, I will not say of Nestors years, I will not say of Methusalems, but worthy of Adams years, if Adam had never fain ; in her death we were all under one common flood, and depth of tears. But the Spirit of God moved upon the face of that depth ; and God said. Let there be light, and there was light, and God saw that that light was good, God took pleasure, and found a savor of rest, in our peaceful chearfulness, and in our joyful and confident apprehension of blessed days in his Govern- ment, whom he had prepared at first, and preserved so often for us.

As the Rule is true. Cum de Mala principe posteri tacent,

Plinius ad manifestum est vilem facere prcesentem, when men dare

Trajan. ^^^ speak of the vices of a Prince that is dead, it is

certain that the Prince that is alive proceeds in the same

vices ; so the inversion of the Rule is true too, Cum de

Accession of James I. 49

bono principe loquuntur, when men may speak freely

of the virtues of a dead Prince, it is an evident argument,

that the present Prince practises the same virtues ; for,

if he did not, he vi^ould not love to hear of them. Of her,

we may say (that which was well said, and therefore it

were pity it should not be once truly said, for, so it was

not, when it was first said to the Emperor Juliari) Nihil

humile, aut abjectum cogitavit, quia novit de se semper

loquendum ; she knew the world would talk of her after

her death, and therefore she did such things all her life

were worthy to be talked of. Of her glorious successor,

and our gracious Soveraign, we may say ; Onerosum est

succedere bono Principi, It would have troubled any king Ibid.

but him, to have come in succession, and in comparison

with such a Queen, And in them both we may observe

the unsearchableness of the ways of God ; of them both,

we may say, Dominus fecit, It is the Lord that hath done it,

and it is wonderful in our eyes : First, that a woman Psalm na

and a maid should have all the wars of Christendom in ^^"

her contemplation, and govern and ballance them all ;

And then, that a King, born and bred in a warlike Nation,

and so accustomed to the sword, as that it had been

directed upon his own person, in the strength of his age,

and in his Infancy, in his Cradle, in his mothers belly,

should yet have the blessed spirit of peace so abundantly

in him, as that by his Councils, and his authority, he

should sheath all the swords of Christendom again.

aoa5«3

50 The Gunpowder Plot.

30. ^he Gunpowder Plot. Psal 2. 1. ffiUARE jremuerunt. Why did these men rage, and <=^ imagine a vaine thing ? What they did historically, we know ; They made that house, which is the hive of the Kingdome, from whence all her honey comes ; that house where 'Justice herself is conceived, in their preparing of Laws^ and inanimated, and quickned and borne by the Royall Assent, there given ; they made that whole house one Murdring peece^ and charged that peece with Peers, with People, with Princes, with the King, and meant to discharge it upward at the face of heaven, to shoot God at the face of God, Him, of whom God hath said, Dii estis, You are Gods, at the face of God, that had said so, as though they would have reproached the God of heaven, and not have been beholden to him for such a King, but shoot him up to him, and bid him take his King again, with a nolumus hunc regnare, we will not have this King to reign over us,

31. Preached to the Honourable Company of the Virginian Plantation, 1622.

BELOVED in him, whose kingdome, and Ghospell you seeke to advance, in this Plantation, our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus^ if you seeke to establish a temporall kingdome there, you are not rectified, if you seeke to bee Kings in either acceptation of the word ; To be a King signifies Libertie and independency, and Supremacie, to bee under no man, and to be a King signifies Abundance, and Omnisufficiencie, to neede no man. If those that governe there, would estabHsh such

The Virginian Plantation. 51

a government, as should not depend upon this, or if those that goe thither, propose to themselves an exemp- tion from Lawes, to live at their hbertie, this is to be Kings, to devest Allegeance, to bee under no man : and if those that adventure thither, propose to themselves present benefit, and profit, a sodaine way to bee rich, and an aboundance of all desirable commodities from thence, this is to be suflicient of themselves, and to need no man : and to bee under no man and to need no man, are the two acceptations of being Kings. Whom Hberty drawes to goe, or present profit drawes to adventure, are not yet in the right way. O, if you could once bring a Catechisme to bee as good ware amongst them as a Bugle, as a knife, as a hatchet : O, if you would be ss ready to hearken at the returne of a Ship, how many Indians were converted to Christ Jesus, as what Trees, or druggs, or Dyes that Ship had brought, then you were in your right way, and not till then ; Liber tie and Abundance, are Characters of kingdomes, and a kingdome is excluded in the ^ext ; the Apostles were not to looke for it, in their employment, nor you in this your Planta- tion. . . .

God ment from the first howre, to people the whole earth ; and God could have made men of clay, as fast as they made Brickes of Clay in Egypt-, but he began upon two, and when they had been multiplying and re- plenishing the Earth One thousand sixe hundred yeares, the Flood washed all that away, and God was almost to begin againe upon eight persons ; and they have serv'd to people Earth and Heaven too ; Be not you discouraged, if the Promises which you have made to

E 7

52 The Virginian Plantation.

your selves, or to others, be not so soone discharged ; though you see not your money, though you see not your men, though a Flood, a Flood of bloud have broken in upon them, be not discouraged. Great Creatures ly long in the wombe ; Lyons are litter'd perfit, but Beare whelps lick'd unto their shape ; actions which Kings undertake, are cast in a mould ; they have their perfection quickly ; actions of private men, and private purses, require more hammering, and more filing to their perfection. . . .

God sayes to you. No Kingdome, not ease, not abundance-, nay nothing at all yet ; the Plantation shall not discharge the Charges, not defray it selfe yet ; but yet already, now at first, it shall conduce to great uses ; It shall redeeme many a wretch from the Jawes of death, from the hands of the Executioner, upon whom, perchaunce a small fault, or perchance a first fault, or perchance a fault heartily and sincerely repented, perchance no fault, but malice, had othervvdse cast a present, and ignominious death. It shall sweep your streets, and wash your dores, from idle persons, and the children of idle persons, and imploy them : and truely, if the whole Countrey were but such a Bridewell, to force idle persons to work, it had a good use. But it is already, not onely a Spleene, to draine the ill humours of the body, but a Liver, to breed good bloud ; already the imployment breeds Marriners ; already the place gives essayes, nay Fraytes of Marchantable commodities ; already it is a marke for the Envy, and for the ambition of our Enemies ; I speake but of our Doctrinall, not Nationall Enemies ; as they are Papists, they are sory we have this Couiitrey ;

The Virginian Plantation. 53

and surely, twenty Lectures in matter of Controversie, doe not so much vexe them, as one Ship that goes, & strengthens that Plantation. Neither can I recommend it to you by any better Retorique, then their maHce. They would gladly have it, and therefore let us bee glad to hold it. . . .

Those of our profession that goe, you, that send them who goe, do all an Afostolicall function. What action soever, hath in the first intention thereof, a purpose to propagate the Gospell of Christ Jesus, that is an Apostolic all action. Before the ende of the world come, before this mortahty shall put on immortahtie, before the Creature shall be delivered of the bondage of corrup- tion under which it groanes, before the Martyrs under Rom. 8. the Altar shall be silenc'd, before all things shall be subdued to Christ, his kingdome, perfected, & the last Enemy Death destroied, the Gospell must be preached to those men to whom ye send ; to all men ; furder and hasten you this blessed, this joyfull, this glorious consum- mation of all, and happie reunion of all bodies to their Soules, by preaching the Gospell to those men. Preach to them Doctrinally, preach to them Practically ; Enamore them with your Justice, and (as farre as may consist with your security), your Civilitie ; but inflame them with your godlinesse, and your Religion. Bring them to love and Reverence the name of that King, that sends men to teach them the wayes of Civilitie in this world, but to feare and adore the Name of that King of Kings, that sends men to teach them the waies of ReHgion, for the next world. Those amongst you, that are old now, shall passe out of this world with this great comfort, that

54 The Virginian Plantation.

you contributed to the beginning of that Common Wealth, and of that Church, though they live not to see the groath thereof to perfection : Apollos watred, but I Cor. 3. 6. Paul planted ; hee that begun the worke, was the greater man. And you that are young now, may live to see the Enemy as much empeach'd by that place, and your friends, yea Children, as well accommodated in that place, as any other. You shall have made this Hand, which is but as the Suburbs of the old world, a Bridge, a Gallery to the new ; to joyne all to that world that shall never grow old, the Kingdome of heaven. You shall add persons to this Kingdome, and to the Kingdome of heaven, and adde names to the Bookes of our Chronicles, and to the Booke of Life.

To end all, as the Orators which declaimd in the presence of the Roman Emperors, in their Panegyriques, tooke that way to make those Emperours see, what they were bound to doe, to say in those publique Orations, that those Emporors had done so (for that increased the love of the Subject to the Prince, to bee so tolde, that hee had done those great things, and then it convayd a Counsell into the Prince to do them after.) As their way was to procure things to bee done, by saying they were done, so beloved I have taken a contrary way : for when I, by way of exhortation, all this while have seem'd to tell you what should be done by you, I have, indeed, but told the Congregation, what hath beene done already : neither do I speake to move a wheele that stood still, but to keepe the wheele in due motion ; nor persuade you to begin, but to continue a good worke ; nor propose foreigne, but your own Examples, to do still.

The Virginian Plantation. 55

as you have done hitherto. For, for that, that which is especially in my contemplation, the conversion of the people, as I have received, so I can give this Testimony, that of those persons, who have sent in moneys, and conceal'd their names, the greatest part, almost all, have limited their devotion, and contribution upon that point, the propagation of Rehgion, and the conversion of the people ; for the building and beautifying of the house of God, and for the instruction and education of their young Children. Christ Jesus himself is yesterday, and to day, and the same for ever. In the advancing of his glory, be you so to, yesterday, and to day, and the same for ever, here ; and hereafter, when time shall be no more, no more yesterday, no more to day, yet for ever and ever, you shall enjoy that joy, and that glorie, which no ill accident can attaine to diminish, or Eclipse it.

32. The Mission of England.

CHRIST came ^er mundam in mundum, by a clean woman into an unclean world. And he came in a purpose, (as we do piously beHeve) to manifest himself in the Christian Rehgion to all the nations of the world ; and therefore, Lcstentur Insula, saies David, The Lord reigneth let the Islands rejoice the Islands who by reason of their situation, provision and trading, have most means of conveying Christ Jesus over the world. He hath carried us up to heaven, & set us at the right hand of God, & shal not we endeavour to carry him to those nations, who have not yet heard of his name \ shall we still brag that we have brought our clothes, and our hatchets, and our knives, and bread to this and this

56 The Mission of England.

value and estimation amongst those poor ignorant Souls, and shall we never glory that we have brought the name, and Religion of Christ Jesus in estimation amongst them ? shall we stay till other nations have planted a fals Christ among them ? and then either continue in our sloth, or take more pains in rooting out a false Christ then would have planted the true ? Christ is come into the world ; we will do little, if we will not ferry him over, and propagate his name, as well as our own to other Nations.

33. James 1.

WE say sometimes in scorn to a man, God. help you, and God send you wit ; and therein, though it have the sound of a prayer, wee call him foole. So wee have seen of late, some in obscure Conventicles, institute certain prayers, That God would keep the King, and the Prince in the true Religion ; The prayer is always good, always usefull ; but when that prayer is accompanied with circumstances, as though the King and the Prince were declining from that Religion, then even the prayer it selfe is Hbellous, and seditious ; Saint Paul, in that former place, apparels a Subjects prayer well, when hee sayes, Let prayers bee given with thanks ; Let our prayers bee for continuance of the blessings, which wee have, and let our acknowledgement of present blessings, bee an inducement for future : pray, and praise together ; pray thankfully, pray not suspiciously ; for, beloved in the bowels of Christ Jesus, before whose face I stand now, and before whose face, I shall not be able to stand amongst the righteous, at the last day, if I lie now, and

James I. 57

make this Pulpit my Shop, to vent sophisticate Wares, In the presence of you, a holy part, I hope, of the MiUtant Church, of which I am, In the presence of the whole Triumphant Church, of which, by him, by whom I am that I am, I hope to bee. In the presence of the Head of the whole Church, who is All in all, I, {and I thinke I have the Spirit of God,) (I am sure, I have not resisted it in this i Cor.7. point) I, (and I may bee allowed to know something in Civill affaires) (I am sure I have not been stupefied in this point) doe dehver that, which upon the truth of a Morall man, and a Christian man, and a Church man, beleeve to be true. That hee, who is the Breath of our nostrils, is in his heart, as farre from submitting us to that Idolatry, and superstition, which did hereto- fore oppresse us, as his immediate Predecessor, whose memory is justly precious to you, was : Their wayes may bee divers, and yet their end the same, that is. The glory of God ; And to a higher Comparison, then to her, I know not how to carry it.

34. Death of James I.

WHEN you shall find that hand that had signed to one of you a Patent for Title, to another for Pension, to another for Pardon, to another for Dispensa- tion, Dead : That hand that settled Possessions by his Seale, in the Keeper, and rectified Honours by the sword, in his Marshall, and distributed rehef to the Poore, in his Almoner, and Health to the Diseased, by his immediate Touch, Dead : That Hand that ballanced his own three Kingdomes so equally, as that none of them complained of one another, nor of him, and carried the Keyes of all

58 Death of James I.

the Christian world, and locked up, and let out Armies in their due season, Dead ; how poore, how faint, how pale, how momentany, how transitory, how empty, how frivolous, how Dead things, must you necessarily thinke TitleSy and Possessions, and Favours, and all, when you see that Hand, which was the hand oJDestinie, of Christian Destinie, of the Almighty God, lie dead ? It was not so hard a hand when we touched it last, nor so cold a hand when we kissed it last : That hand which was wont to wipe all te ares from all our eyes, doth now but presse and squeaze us as so many spunges, filled one with one, another with another cause of teares. Teares that can have no other banke to bound them, but the declared and manifested will of God : For, till our teares flow to that heighth, that they might be called a murmuring against the declared will of God, it is against our Allegiance, it is Disloyaliie, to give our teares any stop, any termina- tion, any measure.

35. The Plague y 1625.

BELOVED, as God empayl'd a Goshen in Egypt, a place for the righteous amongst the wicked ; so there is an Egypt in every Goshen, neasts of Snakes in the fairest Gardens, and even in this City (which in the sense of the Gospel, we may call, The holy City ; as Christ called Jerusalem, though she had multiplied transgressions. The Holy City, because she had not cast away his Law, though she had disobeyed it : So howso- ever your sins have provoked God, yet as you retain a zealous profession of the truth of his ReHgion, I may in his name, and do in the bowels of his mercy, call you.

The Plague, 1625. 59

The Holy City) even in this City, no doubt but the hand of God fell upon thousands in this deadly infection, who were no more affected with it, than those Egyptians, to cry out, Omnes Moriemur, We can but die, and we must die : And, Edamus, iff bibamus, eras moriemur. Let us eat and drink, and take our pleasure, and make our profits, for to-morrow we shall die, and so were cut off by the hand of God, some even in their robberies, in half-empty houses ; and in their drunkenness in voluptuous and riotous houses ; and in their lusts and wantonness in licentious houses ; and so took in infection and death, Uke Judas^s sop, death dipt and soaked in sin. Men whose lust carried them into the jaws of infection in lewd houses, and seeking one sore perished with another ; men whose rapine and covetousness broke into houses, and seeking the Wardrobes of others, found their own winding-sheet, in the infection of that house where they stole their own death ; men who sought no other way to divert sadness, but strong drink in riotous houses, and there drank up Davids cup of Malediction, the cup of Condemned men, of death, in the infection of that place. For these men that died in their sins, that sinned in their dying, that sought and hunted after death so sinfully, we have Httle comfort of such men, in the phrase of this Text, They were dead ; for they are dead still : As Moses said of the Egyptians, I am afraid we may say of these men. We shall see them no more for ever.

But God will give us the comfort of this phrase in the next House ; This next House is Domus nostra, our DwelHng-House, our Habitation, our Family ; and there. They were dead ; they were, but by Gods goodness

6o The Plague, 1625.

they are not. If this savor of death have been the savor of life unto us ; if this heavy weight of Gods hand upon us have awakened us to a narrower survey, and a better discharge of our duties towards all the parts of our Families, we may say, to our comforts and his glory. There was a son dead in disobedience and murmuring ; there was a daughter dead in a dangerous easiness of conversation ; there was a servant dead in the practice of deceit and falsifying ; there was, but the Lord hath breath'd a new Hfe into us, the Lord hath made even his tempest a refreshing, and putrefaction a perfume unto us. The same measure of wind that blows out a candle, kindles a fire ; this correction that hath hardned some, hath entendred and mollified us ; and howsoever there were dead sons, and dead daughters, and dead servants, this holy sense of Gods Judgements shall not only preserve for the future, that we shall admit no more such dead limbs into our Family, but even give to them who were (in these kindes) formerly dead, a new life, a blessed resurrection from all their sinful habits, by the power of his grace, though reached to them with a bloody hand, and in a bitter cup, in this heavy calamity ; and as Christ said of himself, they shall say in him, / was dead, but am alive ; and by that grace of God, I am that I am. . . .

Lastly, in this fourth house, the house where we stand now, the house of God, and of his Saints, God affords us a fair beam of this consolation, in the phrase of this Text also. They were dead. How appHable to you, in this place, is that which God said to Moses, Put of thy shoes, for thou treadest on holy ground ; put off all confidence,

The Plague, 1625. 61

all standing, all relying upon worldly assurances, and consider upon what ground you tread ; upon ground so holy, as that all the ground is made of the bodies of Christians, and therein hath received a second consecra- tion. Every puff of wind within these walls, may blow the father into the sons eys, or the vnfe into her husbands, or his into hers, or both into their childrens, or their childrens into both. Every grain of dust that flies here, is a piece of a Christian ; you need not distinguish your Pews by figures ; you need not say, I sit within so many of such a neighbour, but I sit within so many inches of my husbands, or wives, or childes, or friendes grave. Ambitious men never made more shift for places in Court, then dead men for graves in Churches ; and as in our later times, we have seen two and two almost in every Place and Office, so almost every Grave is oppressed with twins ; and as at Christs resurrection some of the dead arose out of their graves, that were buried again ; so in this lamentable calamity, the dead were buried, and thrown up again before they were resolved to dust, to make room for more.

36. Difficult ^imes. ^S in the Arke there were Lions, but the Lion shut -LJl his mouth, and cHncht his paw, (the Lion hurt nothing in the Arke) and in the Arke there were Vipers and Scorpions, but the Viper shewed no teeth, nor the Scorpion no taile, (the Viper bit none, the Scorpion stung none in the Arke) (for, if they had occasioned any disorder there, their escape could have been but into the Sea, into irreparable mine) so, in every State, (though

62 Difficult Times.

that State be an Arke of peace, and preservation) there will be some kind of oppression in some Lions, some that will abuse their power ; but Vce si scandalizemur, woe unto us if we be scandalized with that, and seditiously lay aspersions upon the State and Government, because there are some such in every Church, (though that Church bee an Arke, for integrity and sincerity) there will bee some Vipers, Vipers that will gnaw at their Mothers belly, men that will shake the articles of Religion ; But Fa si scandalizemur^ woe if we be so scandaHzed at that, as to defame that Church, or separate our selves from that Church which hath given us our Baptism, for that. It is the chafing of the Lion, and the stirring of the Viper, that aggravates the danger ; The first blow makes the wrong, but the second makes the fray ; and they that will endure no kind of abuse in State or Church, are many times more dangerous then that abuse w*^'^ they oppose. It was only Christ Jesus himself that could say Mar. 4. 39. to the Tempest, 7ace^ ohmuiesce, peace, be still, not a blast, not a sob more ; onely he could becalm a Tempest at once. It is well with us, if we can ride out a storm at anchour ; that is, He still and expect, and surrender our selves to God, and anchor in that confidence, till the storm blow over. It is well for us if we can beat out a storm at sea, with boarding to and again ; that is, maintain and preserve our present condition in Church, and State, though we encrease not, that though we gain no way, yet wee lose no way whilst the storm lasts. It is well for us, if, though we be put to take in our sayls, and to take down our masts, yet we can hull it out ; that is, if in storms of contradiction, or persecution.

Difficult Times. 63

the Church, or State, though they be put to accept worse conditions then before, and to depart with some of their outward splendor, be yet able to subsist and swimme above water, and reserve it selfe for Gods farther glory, after the storme is past ; onely Christ could becalm the storme ; He is a good Christian that can ride out, or board out, or hull out a storme, that by industry, as long as he can, and by patience, when he can do no more, over-lives a storm, and does not forsake his ship for it, that is not scandaHzed with that State, nor that Church, of which he is a member, for those abuses that are in it. The Arke is peace, peace is good dispositions to one another, good intepretations of one another ; for, if our impatience put us from our peace, and so out of the Arke, all without the Arke is sea ; The bottomlesse and boundlesse Sea of Rome, will hope to swallow us, if we dis-unite our selves, in uncharitable mis-interpretations of one another.

37. Polemical Preaching.

THERE was a time but lately, when he who was in his desire and intension, the Peace-maker of all the Christian world, as he had a desire to have slumbred all Field-drums, so had he also to have slumbred all Pulpit-drums, so far, as to passe over all impertinent handhng of Controversies, meerly and professedly as Controversies, though never by way of positive main- tenance of Orthodoxall and fundamentall Truths ; That so there might be no slackning in the defence of the truth of our Religion, and yet there might bee a discreet and temperate forbearing of personall, and especially of

64 Polemical Preaching.

Nationall exasperations. And as this way had piety, and peace in the worke it selfe, so was it then occasionally exalted, by a great necessity ; He, who was then our hope, and is now the breath of our nostrils, and the Anointed of the Lord, being then taken in their pits, and, in that great respect, such exasperations the fitter to be forborne, especially since that course might well bee held, without any prevarication, or cooling the zeale of the positive maintenance of the religion of our Church. But things standing now in another state, and all peace, both Ecclesiasticall and Civill, with these men, being by themselves removed, and taken away, and hee whom we feared, returned in all kinde of safety, safe in body, and safe in soule too, whom though their Church could not, their Court hath chatechised in their religion, that is, brought him to a cleere understanding of their Ambi- tion, (for Ambition is their Rehgion, and S. Peters Ship must saile in their Fleets, and with their winds, or it must sink, and the Catholique and MiHtant Church must march in their Armies, though those Armies march against Rome it selfe, as heretofore they have done, to the sacking of that Towne, to the holding of the Pope himselfe in so sordid a prison, for sixe moneths, as that some of his nearest servants about him died of the plague, to the treading under foot Priests, and Bishops, and Cardinals, to the dishonouring of Matrons, and the ravishing of professed Virgins, and committing such insolencies, Catholiques upon Catholiques, as they would call us Heretiques for beleeving them, but that they are their owne Catholique Authors that have written them) Things being now, I say, in this state, with these men,

Polemical Preaching, 65

since wee heare that Drums beat in every field abroad, it becomes us also to returne to the biasing and beating of our Drums in the Pulpit too, that so, as Adam did not onely dresse Paradise, but keepe Paradise ; and as the children of God, did not onely build, but build with one hand, and fight with another ; so wee also may employ some of our Meditations upon supplanting, and subverting of error, as well as upon the planting, and watering of the Truth.

38. The World Decays,

A^ the world is the whole frame of the world, God Mundus XjL hath put into it a reproofe, a rebuke, lest it should ^^^S''"-^* seem eternall, which is, a sensible decay and age in the whole frame of the world, and every piece thereof. The seasons of the yeare irregular and distempered ; the Sun fainter, and languishing ; men lesse in stature, and shorter- lived. No addition, but only every yeare, new sorts, new species of wormes, and flies, and sicknesses, which argue more and more putrefaction of which they are engendred. And the Angels of heaven, which did so famiharly converse with men in the beginning of the world, though they may not be doubted to perform to us still their ministeriall assistances, yet they seem so far to have deserted this world, as that they do not appeare to us, as they did to those our Fathers. S. Cyprian observed CyprhQ. this in his time, when writing to Demetrianus, who im- puted all those calamities which afflicted the world then, to the impiety of the Christians who would not joyne with them in the worship of their gods, Cyprian went no farther for the cause of these calamities, but Ad

2025*3 F

66 The World Decays.

senescentem mundurtiy To the age and impotency of the whole world ; And therefore, sayes he, Imputent senes Christianis, quod minus valeant in senectutem ; Old men were best accuse Christians, that they are more sickly in their age, then they were in their youth ; Is the fault in our religion, or in their decay \ Canos in pueris videmus, nee (Etas in senectute desinit, sed incipit a senectute ; We see gray haires in children, and we do not die old, and yet we are borne old. Lest the world (as the world signifies the whole frame of the world) should glorifie it selfe, or flatter, and abuse us with an opinion of eternity, we may admit usefully (though we do not conclude peremp- torily) this observation to be true, that there is a reproofe, a rebuke born in it, a sensible decay and mortality of the whole world.

39. Imperfection, a. Part. X NEED not call in new Philosophy, that denies X a settlednesse, an acquiescence in the very body of the Earth, but makes the Earth to move in that place, where we thought the Sunne had moved ; I need not that helpe, that the Earth it selfe is in Motion, to prove this. That nothing upon Earth is permanent ; The Assertion will stand of it selfe, till some man assigne me some instance, something that a man may relie upon, and find permanent. Consider the greatest Bodies upon Earth, The Monarchies ; Objects, which one would thinke. Destiny might stand and stare at, but not shake ; Consider the smallest bodies upon Earth, The haires of our head. Objects, which one would chinke. Destiny would not observe, or could not discerne ; And yet,

Imperfection. 67

Destiny, (to speak to a naturall man) And God, (to speake to a Christian) is no more troubled to make a Monarchy ruinous, then to make a haire gray. Nay, nothing needs be done to either, by God, or Destiny ; A Monarchy will ruine, as a haire will grow gray, of it selfe. In the Elements themselves, of which all sub-elementary things are composed, there is no acquiescence, but a vicissitudinary transmutation into one another ; Ayre condensed becomes water, a more solid body, And Ayre rarified becomes fire, a body more disputable, and in- apparant. It is so in the Conditions of men too ; A Merchant condensed, kneaded and packed up in a great estate, becomes a Lord ; And a Marchant rarified, blown up by a perfidious Factor, or by a riotous Sonne, evaporates into ayre, into nothing, and is not seen. And if there were any thing permanent and durable in this world, yet we got nothing by it, because howsoever that might last in it selfe, yet we could not last to enjoy it ; If our goods were not amongst Moveables, yet we our selves are ; if they could stay with us, yet we cannot stay with them ; which is another Consideration in this part.

The world is a great Volume, and man the Index oi Corpus that Booke ; Even in the body of man, you may turne *^'"^«^'* to the whole world ; This body is an Illustration of all Nature ; Gods recapitulation of all that he had said before, in his Fiat lux, and Fiat Jirm amentum, and in all the rest, said or done, in all the six dayes. Propose this body to thy consideration in the highest exaltation thereof ; as it is the I'emple of the Holy Ghost : Nay, not in a Metaphor, or comparison of a Temple, or any

F 2

68 Imperfection.

other similitudinary thing, but as it was really and truly the very body of God, in the person of Christ, and yet this body must wither, must decay, must languish, must perish. When Goliah had armed and fortified this body. And lezahel had painted and perfumed this body. And Dives had pampered and larded this body. As God said to Ezekid, when he brought him to the dry bones^ Fill hominisy Sonne of Man, doest thou thinke these bones can live P They said in their hearts to all the world, Can these bodies die ? And they are dead. lezabels dust is not Ambar, nor Goliahs dust Terra sigillata, Medicinall ; nor does the Serpent, whose meat they are both, finde any better rellish in Dives dust, then in Lazarus.

40. Man,

Illis, qui 01 /f^^ ^^) sayes the Prophet Esay, Quasi stilla situlce,

nihil UVJL As a drop upon the bucket. Man is not all that,

Esay.40.15. 1^1 -, 1.11

not so much as that, as a drop upon the bucket, but

quasi, something, some little thing towards it ; and what

is a drop upon the bucket, to a river, to a sea, to the waters

above the firmament ? Man to God ? Man is, sayes the

same Prophet in the same place. Quasi momentum staterce ;

we translate it, As small dust ufon the balance : Man is

not all that, not that small graine of dust ; but quasi,

some Uttle thing towards it : And what can a graine of

dust work in governing the balance ? What is man that

God should be mindfull of him ? Vanity seemes to be

the lightest thing, that the Holy Ghost could name ;

and when he had named that, he sayes, and sayes, and

sayes, often, very, very often. All is vanity. But when he

Man. 69

comes to waigh man with vanity it selfe, he findes man Hghter then vanity : Take, sayes he, great men, and Ps. 62. 9. meane men altogether, and altogether they are lighter then vanity. When that great Apostle sayes of himselfe, that he was in nothing hehinde the very chiefest of the 2C0r.12.11 Apostles, and yet, for all that, sayes he was nothing ; who can think himselfe any thing, for being a Giant in pro- portion, a Magistrate in power, a Rabbi in learning, an Oracle in Counsell ? Let man be something ; how poore, and inconsiderable a ragge of this world, is man ? Man, whom Paracelsus would have undertaken to have L. i. de made, in a Limbeck, in a Furnace : Man, who, if they ^Zmtiom. were altogether, all the men, that ever were, and are, and shall be, would not have the power of one Angel in them all, whereas all the Angels, (who, in the Schoole are conceived to be more in number, then, not onely all the Species, but all the individualls of this lower world) have not in them all, the power of one finger of Gods hand : Man, of whom when David had said, (as the lowest diminution that he could put upon him) I am a worme Ps. 22. 6. and no man. He might have gone lower, and said, I am a man and no worm ; for man is so much lesse then a worm, as that wormes of his own production, shall feed upon his dead body in the grave, and an immortall worm gnaw his conscience in the torments of hell.

41. Afflictions,

ALL our life is a continual! burden, yet we must not - groane ; A continual! squeasing, yet we must not pant ; And as in the tendernesse of our childhood, we

70 Afflictions.

suffer, and yet are whipt if we cry, so we are complained of, if we complaine, and made delinquents if we call the times ill. And that which addes waight to waight, and multiplies the sadnesse of this consideration, is this, That still the best men have had most laid upon them. As soone as I heare God say, that he hath found an upright matiy that feares God, and eschews evill, in the next lines I finde a Commission to Satan, to bring in Sabeans and Chaldeans upon his cattell, and servants, and fire and tempest upon his children, and loathsome diseases upon himselfe. As soone as I heare God say. That he hath found a man according to his own heart, I see his sonnes ravish his daughters, and then murder one another, and then rebell against the Father, and put him into straites for his life. As soone as I heare God testifie of Christ at Mat. 3, 17. his Baptisme, This is my beloved Sonne in whom I am well Matt. 4. 1, pleased, I finde that Sonne of his led up by the Spirit, to he tempted of the Devill. And after I heare God ratifie Matt. 17.5. the same testimony againe, at his Transfiguration, {This is my beloved Sonne, in whom I am well pleased) I finde that beloved Sonne of his, deserted, abandoned, and given over to Scribes, and Pharisees, and Pubhcans, and Herodians, and Priests, and Souldiers, and people, and Judges, and witnesses, and executioners, and he that was called the beloved Sonne of God, and made partaker of the glory of heaven, in this world, in his Transfigura- tion, is made now the Sewer of all the corruption, of all the sinnes of this world, as no Sonne of God, but a meere man, as no man, but a contemptible worme. As though the greatest weaknesse in this world, were man, and the greatest fault in man were to be good, man is more

Afflictions. 71

miserable then other creatures, and good men more miserable then any other men.

But then there is Pondus Glorice, An exceeding waight oj AJJjidio eternall glory, and that turnes the scale ; for as it makes ^^^^^ ^° all worldly prosperity as dung, so it makes all worldly adversity as feathers.

42. Discontent,

EVERY man is under that complicated disease, and that ridling distemper, not to be content with the most, and yet to be proud of the least thing hee hath ; that when he lookes upon men, he dispises them, because he is some kind of Officer, and when he looks upon God, hee murmures at him, because he made him not a King.

43. ^he World a House,

LET the whole world be in thy consideration as one i house ; and then consider in that, in the peacefull harmony of creatures, in the peacefull succession, and connexion of causes, and effects, the peace of Nature. Let this Kingdome, where God hath blessed thee with a being, be the Gallery, the best roome of that house, and consider in the two walls of that Gallery, the Church and the State, the peace of a royall, and a religious Wisedome ; Let thine owne family be a Cabinet in this Gallery, and finde in all the boxes thereof, in the severall duties of Wife, and Children, and servants, the peace of vertue, and of the father and mother of all vertues, active discretion, passive obedience ; and then lastly, let thine owne bosome be the secret box, and reserve in this Cabinet, and then the best Jewell in the best Cabinet,

Mare.

72 The World a House.

and that in the best Gallery of the best house that can be had, peace with the Creature, peace in the Church, peace in the State, peace in thy house, peace in thy heart, is a faire Model], and a lovely designe even of the heavenly Jerusalem v^^hich is Fisio pads, where there in no object but peace.

44. Mundus Mare. Mundus ' I ^HE world is a Sea in many respects and assimilations. JL It is a Sea, as it is subject to stormes, and tempests ; Every man (and every man is a world) feels that. And then, it is never the shallower for the calmnesse, The Sea is as deepe, there is as much water in the Sea, in a calme, as in a storme ; we may be drowned in a calme and flattering fortune, in prosperity, as irrecoverably, as in a wrought Sea, in adversity ; So the world is a Sea. It is a Sea, as it is bottomlesse to any Une, which we can sound it with, and endlesse to any discovery that we can make of it. The purposes of the world, the wayes of the world, exceed our consideration ; But yet we are sure the Sea hath a bottome, and sure that it hath limits, that it cannot overpasse ; The power of the greatest in the world, the life of the happiest in the world, cannot exceed those bounds, which God hath placed for them ; So the world is a Sea. It is a Sea, as it hath ebbs and floods, and no man knowes the true reason of those floods and those ebbs. All men have changes and vicis- situdes in their bodies, (they fall sick) And in their estates, (they grow poore) And in their minds, (they become sad) at which changes, (sicknesse, poverty, sadnesse) themselves wonder, and the cause is wrapped

Mundus Mare. 73

up in the purpose and judgement of God onely, and hid even from them that have them ; and so the w^orld is a Sea. It is a Sea, as the Sea affords vi^ater enough for all the world to drinke, but such water as will not quench the thirst. The world affords conveniences enow to satisfie Nature, but these encrease our thirst with drink- ing, and our desire growes and enlarges it selfe with our abundance, and though we sayle in a full Sea, yet we lacke water ; So the world is a Sea. It is a Sea, if we consider the Inhabitants. In the Sea, the greater fish devoure the lesse ; and so doe the men of this world too. And as fish, when they mud themselves, have no hands to make themselves cleane, but the current of the waters must worke that ; So have the men of this world no means to cleanse themselves from those sinnes which they have contracted in the world, of themselves, till a new flood, waters of repentance, drawne up, and sanctified by the Holy Ghost, worke that blessed effect in them.

All these wayes the world is a Sea, but especially it is a Sea in this respect, that the Sea is no place of habitation, but a passage to our habitations. So the Apostle expresses the world, Here we have no continuing City, but we seeke Heb.13.14. one to come ; we seeke it not here, but we seeke it whilest we are here, els we shall never finde it. Those are the two great works which we are to doe in this world ; first to know, that this world is not our home, and then to provide us another home, whilest we are in this world. Therefore the Prophet sayes, Arise, and, depart, for this is Mic. 2. 10. not your rest. Worldly men, that have no farther pros- pect, promise themselves some rest in this world, (Soule, Luk. i2.ig.

74 Mundus Mare.

thou hast much goods laid up for many yeares, take thine ease, eate, drinke, and he merry, sayes the rich man) but this is not your rest ; indeed no rest ; at least not yours. You must depart, depart by death, before yee come to that rest ; but then you must arise, before you depart ; for except yee have a resurrection to grace here, before you depart, you shall have no resurrection to glory in the hfe to come, v^^hen you are departed. Status Now^, in this Sea, every ship that sayles must necessarily

"ivum.^^' ^^^^ ^o^^ P^^^ ^^ ^^^ ^^^P ^i^^^r water ; Every man that lives in this world, must necessarily have some of his Hfe, some of his thoughts, some of his labours spent upon this world ; but that part of the ship, by which he sayls, is above water ; Those meditations, and those endevours which must bring us to heaven, are removed from this world, and fixed entirely upon God. And in this Sea, are we made fishers of men ; Of men in generall ; not of rich men, to profit by them, nor of poore men, to pierce them the more sharply, because affliction hath opened a v»^ay into them ; Not of learned men, to be over-glad of their approbation of our labours. Nor of ignorant men, to affect them with an astonishment, or admiration of our gifts ; But we are fishers of men, of all men, of that which makes them men, their soules. And for this fishing in this Sea, this Gospel is our net. Reu Euan- Eloquence is not our net ; Traditions of men are not gf um. ^^j. j^^^g . onely the Gospel is. The Devill angles with hooks and bayts ; he deceives, and he wounds in the catching ; for every sin hath his sting. The Gospel of Christ Jesus is a net ; It hath leads and corks ;

143. The Joy of Heaven

144. Little Stars

145. Heirs of Heaven .

146. Seeing God

147. The Sight of God

148. The State of Glory ,

149. Justice

150. Knovi^ledge in Heaven

151. Eternity .

152. Eternity .

153. Eternity .

154. Joy in Heaven .

155. Donne's Last Sermon .

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