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John Donne'S Defense Of The Church Of England

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John Donne'S Defense Of The Church Of England

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Content 71-7713
HENRICKSEN, Bruce Conley, 1941-
JOHN DONNE'S DEFENSE OF THE CHURCH OF
ENGLAND.
University of Southern California, Ph.D., 1970
Language and Literature, general
University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan
Copyright by
BRUCE co ley ueoriceoe:;
1971
THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED
JOHN DONNE'S DEFENSE OF THE
CHURCH OF ENGLAND
> y
Bruce Conley Henrickeen
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(English)
August 1970
UNIVERSITY O F SO U T H E R N CALIFORNIA
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY PARK
LOS A N O JLES. CALIFORNIA 9 0 0 0 7
This dissertation, written by
Bruce Conley Henricksen
under the direction oj / / . i s . . . Dissertation C o m
mittee, and a p p ro ved by all its members, has
been presented to and accepted by The Oradu-
ate School, in partial fulfillment oj require
ments of the de/jree of
D O C T O R O F P H I L O S O P H Y
Dean
Date.Mmst .19.70
DISSERTATIO N C O M M IT T E K
Chairman
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
PREFACE................................................ 1
Chapter
I. DONNE'S CALLING: THE ROLE OF THE SERMON IN
CONTROVERSY ................................. 6
II. THE ORDINARY WAY: THE CHURCH VS. THE
SEPARATISTS.............................. 22
III. MEANS OF SALVATION: SACRAMENTS AND CEREMONIES 4 2
IV. THE HISTORICAL CONTINUITY OF THE CHURCH . . . 72
V. THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH ........................... 100
VI. REASON AND FAITH .............................113
VII. CONCLUSION 146
BI13IL0GRA PHY .......................................... 154
ii
PREFACE
The purpose of this study Is to examine in John
Donne's sermons his defense of the Church of England
against rival religious groups and rival ideas. Donne
did not write a single, extended defense and analysis of
the beliefs and practices of the Church of England. That
task had been undertaken with consummate skill by Richard
Hooker, and Donne's interests turned mainly to serving
the devotional needs of his congregations. But from
numerous passages in Donne's sermons, one can piece
together Donne's version of the laws governing ecclesi
astical polity. As one might expect, Donne's defense
of the Church of England corresponds with Hooker's in
many ways. In this study I shall try to outline the
main perimeters of this defense.
My own defense of this study is simply that it has
not been done before. Many studies of Donne touch upon
or suggest this topic, and these have been extremely
helpful. Itrat-Husain1s book, The Dogmatic and Mystical
Theology of John Donne, contains important material on
Donne's beliefs concerning the sacraments and ceremonies
of the Church. This book has also been useful in that it
presents an opinion with which I disagree. In fact, my
1
2
conviction that Donne Is not a mystic was the starting
point for this study. Similarly, Louis I. Bredvold,
"The Religious Thought of Donne in Relation to Medieval
and Later Traditions," and Michael Francis Moloney, John
Donne, His Flight From Medlaevallsm, have suggested that
Donne's habits of thought are typically "modern." I think
this appellation is not appropriate to the way Donne struc
tures his defense of the Church, and the arguments of
Bredvold and Moloney have helped me to formulate my own
opinions. William R. Mueller's John Donne: Preacher has
given me some useful analyses of specific passages from
the sermons, but Mueller's focus is primarily on Donne's
style. Finally, the modern edition of Donne's sermons,
edited by George R. Potter and Evelyn M. Simpson, contains
introductory material that is invaluable in helping one
to read the sermons in light of the political and religious
events of Donne's time. It is in this light that I hope
to view Donne's defense of the Church of England.
Of the hundreds of sermons that Donne must have
preached during his sixteen years as a minister in the
Church of England, only one hundred and sixty have sur
vived. But we can be quite sure that these exist in a
form that Donne approved. In a letter to Sir Thomas Roe,1
1Edmund Gosse, The Life and Letters of John Donne
(London, 1899), II, 222-225.
Donne speaks of spending his summer at Chelsea during the
plague of 1625 revising and rewriting many of his sermons,
and Walton quotes a letter he received from Henry King
saying that three days before his death Donne delivered
his sermons Into the hands of Henry King, telling King
2
that they were ready for the press. Such evidence makes
It clear that the sermons we read are not precisely those
that were heard by the congregations at Lincoln's Inn,
Whitehall, St. Paul's, St. Dunstan's and elsewhere. That
Donne's revisions generally lengthened his sermons is
attested to by the fact that few of those handed to Henry
King could be read aloud in the hour usually allotted for
3
sermons in Donne's churches.
Although a handful of the sermons were printed in
Donne's lifetime, most were printed only after his death
by his son, who gained possession of the manuscripts that
were delivered to Henry King. These manuscripts Donne's
2The letter, dated 1664, is prefaced to the 1675
edition of Izaak Walton's Lives (London, 1675), PP. 1-7.
3
Donne himself speaks of the one-hour sermon. In
one sermon he divides his subject into four quarter-hour
segments. "... These foure steps, these foure passages,
these foure transitions will be our quarter Clock, for this
houres exercise" (Sermon 2, Vol. VI, p. 64). All refer
ences to sermons are to Evelyn M. Simpson and George R.
Potter, eds., The Sermons of John Donne (Berkeley, 1953-
1 9 6 2), 10 vols,
4
hand no longer survive. Today the reader of Donne's works
can study the sermons in what is certainly the finest
scholarly edition possible, the ten-volume edition of the
complete sermons edited by Professors Potter and Simpson.
In undertaking this study of Donne's defense of the
Church of England, I have read all of the one hundred and
sixty sermons in the Potter and Simpson edition and have
quoted from well over half of them. It is on the shoulders
of the Potter and Simpson edition that the present study
rests.
In addition to the scholars mentioned above, and
others named in the notes and bibliography, I wish to
offer a special thanks to Professor Virginia Tufte for
her thorough reading of this work as it was taking shape
and for her pertinent criticisms and encouragement.
I shall conclude this introduction as Donne concludes
his in the sermons, with a dlvlslo. Chapter One will deal
with Donne's attitudes toward his calling and toward the
role of the sermon in religious controversy. Chapter Two
will deal with Donne's attitudes toward separatist and
"private" forms of worship. Chapter Three will look at
Donne's defense of the sacraments and ceremonies of the
Church of England. Chapter Pour will examine Donne's
contention that the Church of England is the true heir
of the Patristic Church and will analyze Donne's attacks
on Rome in the light of contemporary political events.
Chapter Five will then take up Donne's dream of an end
to theological controversy and the dawning of the Universal
Church. Finally, the last chapter will find Donne engag
ing not an opponent of another religious persuasion, but
the secular philosopher whose powerful tools of thought
threatened the Church in the most insidious way of all,
by simply ignoring it.
CHAPTER I
DONNE'S CALLING: THE ROLL OP THE
SERMON IN CONTROVERSY
The Church of England in the early seventeenth cen
tury was inextricably engaged in a battle with its critics,
and its doctrines and practices stand as one side of a
theological debate with critics inside the Church, the
Puritans, and with those outside the Church, mainly the
Roman Catholics. In this respect the Church of England
was in a situation analogous to that of the early Christian
Church, whose doctrines and practices developed as defenses
against the criticisms of Jev;s, divisive Christian sects,
and the pagans or gentiles, as they were called. This
analogy is suggested by John Donne himself, and it is
part of the logical framework of his defense of the Church
of England against the attacks of Catholics, Puritans, and
other opponents.
Often Donne reminds his auditors that the Church of
England is confronting circumstances like those faced by
the Primitive Church. In an undated sermon "Preached Upon
the Penitentiall Psalmes," Donne develops this analogy at
length. The sermon takes the form of a history lesson in
which Donne places the Church of England in a historical
perspective that makes it appear as the Primitive Church
resurrected. The text of the sermon Is Psalm 32.7--"Thou
art my hiding place; Thou shalt preserve mee from trouble;
Thou shalt compasse me about with songs of deliverance."
Just as God preserved the Primitive Church from the troubles
wrought by princes, heretics, and satirists, so, with the
emergence of the Church of England, God has preserved the
Reformed Church against the troubles of internal division
and external assault from Rome (Sermon 15, Vol. IX, pp.
334-3^9).
Many other sermons come back to this same analogy.
In a sermon "Preached on the Conversion of S. Paul. 16 2 9,"
we hear that "The world is full of Sadduces, and Pharisees,
and the true Church of God arraigned by Both." The Phar
isees are either of the Roman Catholic variety or of the
separatist variety that follows "private Expositions. . .
with a contempt of all Antiquity," and the Sadduce is the
"carnall Atheist" (Sermon 6, Vol. IX, pp. 168-170).
But although Donne often engages in verbal combat
with these enemies of the Church of England, the seventeenth
century Pharisees and Sadduces, he just as often asserts
that he does not think it is his responsibility as a preach
er to enter into current theological controversies. While
attacking the opponents of the Church, Donne can also claim
that a sermon is not a harangue directed at opponents; it is
a devotional aid offered to a congregation that accepts the
basic tenets of the Church. Introducing a sermon on
8
I Corinthians 16.22, Donne says,
By most of those, who, from the perversenesse of
Heretlques, have taken occasion to prove the Deity
of Christ, this text hath been cited; and therefore
I take it now, when in my course proposed, I am to
speak of the second Person in the Trinity; but, (as
I said of the first Person, the Father) not as in
the Schoole, but in the Church, not in a Chaire, but
in a Pulpit, not in a Congregation that required
proofe, in a thing doubted, but edification, upon a
foundation received; not as though any of us would
dispute, whether Jesus Christ were the Lord, but
that all of us would joyne in that Excommunication,
If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ ....
(Sermon 14, Vol. Ill, pp. 292-293) . 1
The sermon on the Father, to which this passage alludes,
contains a similar rejection of "subtile disputation" (see
Sermon 12, Vol. Ill, p. 257). And elsewhere Donne describes
a difference between Sermons and Lectures, that a
Sermon intends Exhortation principally and Edifica
tion, and a hoiy stirring of religious affections,
and then matters of Doctrine, and points of Divinity,
occasionally, secondarily, as the words of the text
may invite them; but Lectures Intend principally
Doctrinall points. . ~ (Sermon 3, Vol. VIII, p. 95).
And finally, concerning a "doctrinall point" that Donne con
siders unimportant, in this case the question of whether or
not each person has a guardian angel, he suggests that we
should "think in that point so as you shall find your devo
tion most exalted, by thinking that it is, or is not so
. . ." (Sermon 5> Vol. Ill, p. 15^0- In another sermon he
says:
Content thy selfe with reading those parts of
Scriptures, which are cleare, and edifle, and
perplex not thy selfe with Prophesies not yet
1Italics will be Donne's unless otherwise stated.
performed. . . and run not after those Men, who
pretend to know those things, which God hath not
revealed to his Church.(Sermon 1, Vol. V, p. 40).
But to attack the errors of religious enemies is not
quite the same thing, to Donne, as to engage in "subtile
disputation." So, although the main purpose of most of
Donne's sermons is devotional, not controversial, woven
into the fabric of devotion is a secondary and occasional
thread of apologetic that is never entirely lost from view
and that serves to define and heighten the devotional mes
sage of the sermons. Seemingly, for Donne, the devotional
and apologetic themes are really inseparable. The biblical
injunction to love thine enemy "does not binde us to
favour, or further a publique enemy ..." (Sermon 18, Vol.
Ill, p. 380), and occasionally it is necessary to attack
the errors of that enemy in order to fortify the spiritual
2
strength of the congregation.
The whole Congregation is, oftentimes, in common
entendment, conformable, and well setled in all
matters of Doctrine, and all matters of Discipline.
And yet God directs us sometimes to extend our
discourse (perchance with a zeale and a vehemence,
which may seem unnecessary, and impertinent,
because all in the Church are presumed to be of
one minde) in the proofe of our doctrine against
Papists, or of our discipline against Non
conform! tans. (Sermon 13> Vol. VII, p. 328).
The apparent contradiction between Donne's attacks
on religious opponents and his claim that a sermon should
not be controversial will be discussed further in Chapter
Five, "The Universal Church."
10
Perhaps Donne Is merely trying to rationalize an
inconsistency in his attitude toward controversy in the
pulpit. But it might be useful to borrow a distinction
from one of Donne's opponents. St. Ignatius Loyola (d.
1556) distinguished between "scholastic" and "positive"
theology.
To praise positive and Scholastic theology, for as
it is particularly proper for the positive Doctors,
such as St. Jerome, St. Augustine, St. Gregory, and
others to excite the affections and lead men to love
and to serve God, our Saviour with all their strength,
so the principal goal of the Scholastics, such as
St. Thomas, St. Bona venture, the Master of the
Sentences, and those who have followed them, is to
define and explain, according to the needs of modem
times, the things necessary for eternal salvation,
to attack and point out clearly all the errors and
false reasonings of the Church's enemies.3
These categories are obviously not mutually exclusive.
Although Donne's primary purpose is that of Loyola's
positive theologian, "to excite the affections and lead
men to love and to serve God," we shall be more concerned
with examining the extent to which Donne is also a scho
lastic theologian in his sermons.
The sermons, then, deal not only with personal, devo
tional themes. A Christian is a member of God's Church and
a participant in the discipline of that Church. And in a
time of religious divisiveness and strife, the Christian
^This is from Rule XI of the Rule of Orthodoxy added
by Loyola to the end of his Exercises--quoted by Yves M. J.
Congar, A History of Theology (Garden City, New York,
1968), p. 171.
11
must choose and defend the temporal church that most nearly
reflects the divine will. For Donne, this Church is, of
course, the Church of England, so its defense is one of the
functions of Donne's sermons.
Behind Donne's emphasis on the need for choice and
involvement in the Church is his own personal search for
identity. The following passage from a letter to Sir Henry
Goodyer clearly shows that this theme of involvement, found
in Donne's sermons, had its origin in his own personal
needs and experiences.
I would fain do something, but that I cannot tell
what is no wonder. For to choose is to do; but to
be no part of any body is to be nothing. At most,
the greatest persons are but great wens and excres-
censes; men of wit and delightful conversation but
as moles for ornament, except they be so incorporated
into the body of the world that they contribute
something to the sustentation of the whole.
This letter was apparently written before Donne's ordina
tion, in 1608, if Gosse is right. Nine years later, in one
of his first sermons, Donne repeats this theme.
Since even the Angeles, which are all Spirit, be
yet admlnlstrlng Spirits, and execute the Commissions
and Ambassages of God, and communicate with men;
should man, who is not all soul, but a composed
creature of body and soul, exempt himself from doing
the offices of mutual society, and upholding that
frame in which God is pleased to be glorified?
Since God himself, who so many millions of ages
contented himself with himself in Heaven, yet at
last made this World for his glory; shall any man
live so in it as to contribute nothing towards it?
4
Quoted by Potter and Simpson, Introduction to Vol.
I of the Sermons, p. 128.
12
Hath God made this World his Theatre, ut exhlbeatur
ludus deorum, that man may represent God In his
conversation; and wilt thou play no part? But think
that thou only wast made to pass thy time merrily,
and to be the only spectator upon this Theatre?
Is the world a great and harmonious Organ, where
all parts are play'd, and all play parts; and must
thou only sit idle and hear It? Is every body else
made to be a Member, and to do some real office for
the sustentation of this great Body, this World;
and wilt thou only be no member of this Body?
Thlnkest thou wast made to be Cos Amorls, a Mole In
the Pace for Ornament, a Man of delight In the World?
Because thy wit, thy fashion, and some such nothing
as that, hath made thee a delightful and acceptable
companion, wilt thou therefore pass in jeast, and
be nothing? If thou wilt be no link in God's Chain,
thou must have no part In the Influence and providence,
derived by that, successively to us.(Sermon 3, Vol.
I, pp. 207-208).
The body to which Donne urges his auditors to attach them
selves is, of course, the Church of England.
Walton gives an interesting account of how King James
persuaded Donne that the Church of England was the body to
which Donne should attach himself. The King had just read
Pseudo-Martyr, published in 1610, in which Donne attacked
the Jesuits who were urging English Roman Catholics to deny
the authority of the King on the grounds that he was a here
tic (grounds established by the rash excommunication of
Queen Elizabeth in 1870 by Pope Pius V). If death were to
result as a punishment, the Jesuits promised martyrdom as a
reward. But Donne argued that Princes have received a power
from God that the Pope can not deny--a death resulting from
opposing this power is merely suicidal, not true martyrdom.
"When the King had read and considered that booke," Walton
writes,
1
he perswaded Mr. Donne to enter Into the Ministry;
to which at that time he was and appeared very
unwilling, apprehending it (such was his mistaking
modesty) to be too weighty for his abilities; and
though his Majesty had promised him a favour, and
many persons of worth mediated with his Majesty for
some secular employment for him, to which his
education had apted him, and particularly the Earle
of Somerset, when in his height of favour, being
then at Theobalds with the King, where one of the
Clerks of the Council died that night, the Earle
having sent immediately for Mr. Donne to come to him,
said, Mr. Donne, To testlfle the reality of my
affection, and my purpose to prefer you, stay in
this garden till I go up to the King, and bring you
word that you are Clerk of the Council. The King
gave a positive denial to all requests; and having
a discerning spirit, replied, I know Mr. Donne is a
learned man, has the abilities of a learned Divine,
and will prove a powerful Preacher, and my desire
is to prefer him that way. After that, as he pro-
fesseth, the King descended almost to a solicitation
of him to enter into sacred Orders: which, though he^
then denied not, yet he deferred it for three years.^
The King was well aware that Donne would be a poli
tically safe clergyman, and this indeed was the case. The
sincerity of Donne's conversion from the Roman Catholic
Church and of his acceptance of Anglican Orders is no
longer seriously questioned, as it was some years ago by
Edmund Gosse, Hugh I'Anson Pausset, and Louis I. Bredvold,
to name just three.^ Donne was loyal to the Church of
^Izzak Walton, The Life of John Donne (London, 1 6 5 8),
pp. 38-40.
^Edmund Gosse, The Life and Letters of John Donne
(London, 1899), II> PP^ 109-110. Louis I. Bredvold, ^he
Religious Thought of Donne in Relation to Medieval and Later
Traditions,'' Studies in Shakespeare, Milton, and Donne (New
York, 1925)> p. 213. Hugh I'Anson Fausset, John Donne, A
Study in Discord (New York, 1924), pp. 241-242.
14
England, believing It to be the true descendant of the
Church created by Christ. In his sermons he carefully
steers the Church along a via media between Roman Cathol
icism and the various forms of nonconformity that are
usually included under the term "Puritanism." As the his
torian Owen Chadwick says, Donne's sermons "were the best
examples of 'Laudian' preaching.in one of these sermons
Donne himself comments on insincere conversion.
Truly I have been sorry to see some persons
converted from the Roman Church, to ours;
because I have known, that onely temporail
respects have moved them, and they have lived
after rather in a nullity, or lndlfferency to
either religion, then in a true, and established
zeale. (Sermon 7, Vol. X, p. l6l).
In fact, as William R. Mueller has shown, Donne took
very seriously the Judeo-Christlan concept of "calling" or
vocation, and his hesitancy to accept orders may best be
seen as a desire to be sure of what his true calling really
O
was. It should be remembered in this regard that Luther
had persuasively argued that the religious calling was not
necessarily favored in God's eyes over other vocations.
Donne, in turn, believed that the world order was best
maintained by each man doing what he is best able to do.
In a passage very similar in language to one quoted earlier
7 Owen Chadwick, The Reformation (Baltimore, 1964),
p. 229.
Q
William R. Mueller, John Donne; Preacher (Princeton,
1962), pp. 35-^0.
15
in this chapter (pp. 11-12 above), Donne discusses the im
portance of one's calling.
He that undertakes no course, no vocation, he is
no part, no member, no limbe of the body of this
world; no eye, to give light to others; no eare
to receive profit Dy others. If he think it
enough to be excrementall nayles, to scratch and
gripe others by his lazy usury, and extortion,
or excrementall hayre, made onely for ornament,
or delight of others, by his wit, or mirth, or
dellghtfull conversation, these men have not yet
felt this third citation, by which they are called
to glorifie God, and so to wltnesse for him, in
such publique actions, as Gods cause for the present
requires, and comports with their calling.(Sermon
5, Vol. IV, p. 160).
In the passage of similar language quoted earlier,
Donne used some of the most common Renaissance images of
order--the world as a theatre and as a body and the order
of the universe as musical harmony and as a great chain.
That passage also deals, in a sense, with "calling," and
these Images suggest the relation Donne saw between world
order and vocation. If men ignore their proper place or
degree or calling, as Shakespeare's Ulysees said, "hark
what discord follows."
Although the King predicted, and apparently with ac
curacy, that Donne's proper calling was the Anglican min
istry? neither the King nor all his men could foresee the
future at the time of Donne's ordination on January 23,
1615. While historians today might cite the "Addled
Parliament" of 1614 as the start of the alliance between
Parliament and the Puritans in opposition to the King and
the bishops, yet at the time Parliament's frustrations were
a bit of a Joke, as the label "Addled" suggests. To Donne
in 1615, and to most other royalists and Laudlans, the
visible enemy of the Crown and the Church of England was
the Roman Catholic Church. As Potter and Simpson write in
the Introduction to Vol. I of the Sermons,
Turning over the pages of controversial and other
pamphlets published from about 1610 to 1625 leaves
a reader with a very different impression from that
which he gains upon similarly surveying the pamphlets
in the later 1630's and the 1640's. Again and again
in the earlier pamphlets the tone rises to shrill
or hoarse notes of hatred and fear toward the Pope,
the Roman church, the Jesuits, and Spain; far less
often do these notes sound on either side of contro
versies between the bishops' party and the Puritans,
or among the different factions of the Puritans.
In contrast, a decade later nearly all the pamphlets
are vehemently on one side or another in relation
to Puritanism. Donne, along with his fellow Anglo-
Cathollcs, disliked the Puritans, and disagreed
sharply with many of their doctrines and opinions.
In his sermons, however--especially in the earlier
ones,--he shows far less concern with these differ
ences than with the struggle between the English
and Roman churches. In this relative emphasis he
was by both instinct and conscious strategy follow
ing the tastes and the popular expectation of his
time.(Vol. I, p. 113).
Such a focus in Donne's sermons is understandable.
In the decades following the Council of Trent (1545-1563)*
the Roman Catholic Church had, through argumentative publi
cations, missionary work, the reforming of its own structure
and teachings, and even through the arts, conducted a suc
cessful "Counter-Reformation" against heretics and schis
matics. The most powerful instrument of this Counter-
Reformation was the Society of Jesus, founded in Paris by
17
Ignatius Loyola at about the same time the Council of Trent
was convening. Although the Jesuits must be credited with
the advancement of education and scholarship, to the Church
of England their activities were characterized by events
such as the Gunpowder Plot and by their advocacy of the
form of treason that Donne attacked in Pseudo-Martyr. Thus,
although Donne's own uncle, Jasper Heywood, had been im
prisoned and mistreated for being a Jesuit even before the
Gunpowder Plot, the Jesuits come in for some of Donne's
most savage attacks.
The Puritans were not attacked as vehemently, before
the death of James (1625), because they were still a part
of the Church of England, which was made up of the Laudians,
the Puritans, and the "Latitude men." William Laud was
appointed chaplain to the King in l6ll and later became
Archbishop of Canterbury. To him, and to Donne in turn,
the Church of England was a via media between Rome and
Geneva. He proclaimed that
The Catholic Church of Christ Is neither Rome nor
a conventicle. Out of that there is no salvation,
I easily confess it. But out of Rome there is,
and out of conventicle too; salvation is not shut
up into such a narrow conclave.9
^Quoted from A Relation of the Conference between
William Laud and Mr. Fisher the Jesuit by Austin Warren,
Richard Crashaw, A Study in Baroque Sensibility (New
Orleans, 1939)> p. 5. The first chapter of Warren's book
is an excellent introduction to the Laudlan movement.
18
But while the Puritans looked to Geneva for inspiration,
the Laudians looked cautiously to the one Church of the
pre-Refomation past.
Thus the Laudlan attacks are aimed more or less at
the Catholic Church of the recent past, for it is this
Church that is guilty of breaking with the traditions of
the Patristic Church, thus creating the need for the
Reformation. Such attacks in Donne's sermons are numerous,
as even a cursory reading will reveal. In a review of the
Potter and Simpson edition of the sermons, J. B. Leishman
has said that
In many of these attacks there is a kind of Miltonic
savagery, and it must be admitted that Donne some
times chooses very low ground and employs very
dubious weapons. He will often introduce some
long digression simply in order to lead up to such
an attack, and, for one who has learnt by experience
to know what is coming, it is amusing to watch both
the build-up and Donne's obvious enjoyment. . . .
Here, I repeat, (for it seems worth insisting upon,
in view of all we have been told about the great
differences between them) Donne's affinity is with
the polemical Milton.1^
J. B. Leishman, Untitled Review, Review of English
Studies, VIII (Nov. 1957), p. 44l. Leishman has made a list
of Donne's attacks on the Roman Church in volumes II and
VII of the Sermons: Vol. II— pp. 100, 103, 160, 300, 302,
327, 360; Vol. VII— pp. 104, 120, 122-124, 129-132, 157,
158, 1 61, 166-1 68, 183-1 8 7, 191, 294-2 9 6, 309, 332-333, 377,
3 8 2, 3 8 7, 401-403, 448. For a list of Donne's references
to the Council of Trent and for a categorization of the
various Roman Catholic doctrines and practices that he
attacks (drawn from the entire ten volumes), see Chapter
Four of this study.
Despite Donne's unmistakable hostility to the Roman
Catholics, he does not Ignore the Puritans, as we shall
have ample opportunity to see. It would be difficult to
demonstrate that Donne's hostilities shifted from Rome to
Geneva during his career in the pulpit (1615-1531), although
the possibility of such a shift Is suggested by the survey
Potter and Simpson make of the trends of religious contro-
11
versy during this time. Because only a small percentage
of Donne's sermons survive, and because nearly one in five
of these cannot be dated accurately, any shift in Donne's
attitudes that might have occurred is no longer apparent.
To the modern reader, Donne's attitudes toward Rome, Geneva,
and the practices of the Church of England do not appear to
change. Certain themes are reiterated in sermon after
sermon, finding their way into the early sermons, the late
sermons, and the undated sermons. It is these themes that
the following chapters will take up.
In developing this picture of Donne's defense of the
Church of England against Roman Catholic and Puritan
critics, we shall not always, or even primarily, be looking
at passages in the sermons where Donne makes overt refer
ences to these critics. Overt references are numerous, but
often, too, Donne alludes to the opponent only by implica
tion (a fact that could make Leishman's list, cited in note
■^See their analysis of the shifting grounds of reli
gious controversy cited on page 16 of this chapter.
20
ten, much longer). For Instance, when he assures his con
gregation that the Church of England offers all that is
necessary for salvation, the listeners are obviously sup
posed to formulate a comparison with the Roman Catholic
Church, which demands a more elaborate system of worship.
On the other hand, when Donne defends a certain degree of
ritual in the Church of England, the Puritans are clearly
assumed to be lurking in the shadows.
Donne will be given ample opportunity to speak for
himself in the pages that follow, and the reader will find
that his words are sometimes golden and sometimes drab. I
shall not be directly concerned with the literary qualities
of Donne's sermons--questions of style, rhetoric, imagery,
rhythm, tone, sentence structure, etc. Such matters have
been discussed by Potter and Simpson in the Introduction
to volume one of the sermons and by William R. Mueller in
his fine study, John Donne; Preacher. My focus will be
firmly on the controversial content of the sermons. Perhaps
Donne himself would approve of this emphasis of content over
style. To Donne, the role of the sermon is not to be con
fused with the role of art, and he reproves the man who
"heares but the Logique, or the Retorlque, or the Ethique,
or the poetry of the Sermon," rather than the "Sermon of the
Sermon. . ." (Sermon 11, Vol. VII, p. 293). And elsewhere
he says that
21
Language must waite upon matter, and words upon
things. . . . The matter, that Is, the doctrine
that we preach, Is the forme, that Is, the Soule,
the Essence; the language and words wee preach in,
is but the Body, but the existence.(Sermon 4, Vol.
X, p. 112).
Chapter II
THE "ORDINARY WAY":
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND VS. THE SEPARATISTS
In one of his first sermons (quoted on pages
Donne tells his congregation that those who have had the
opportunity to become members of God's Church and have
refused are "nothing." For the people to whom the Church
is available, the most essential activity necessary for
salvation is belief and participation in the worship and
ceremonies of the Church. . .he hath established a
Church, and therein, visible meanes of salvation ..."
(Sermon 1, Vol. V, p. 44). No other single idea recurs
so often in Donne's sermons as this one. "So then, to the
resurrection of the body, there is an ordinary way, The
grave; To the resurrection of the soule, there is an
ordinary way too, The Church" (Sermon 2, Vol. VI, p. 72).
But this is not to say that Donne feels only members
of the Church of England, or only Christians for that mat
ter, can be saved. This is not the case. Quoting John
10:16; "Other sheep have I, which are not of this fold,"
Donne concludes that "nothing hinders our own salvation
more, then to deny salvation, to all but our selves"
(Sermon 7, Vol. VI, p. 1 6 3). And concerning the heathen,
Donne says, "and how this name of Jesus is notified to
22
Q '9
c ..
them, amongst whom there Is no Gospel preached, no Church
established, I am not curious In Inquiring" (Sermon 2, Vol.
IV, pp. 78-79). In another sermon he dissuades the Chris
tian from affirming that God could not afford mercy to
people outside of the Church (Sermon 7, Vol. X, p. 170).
In another he promises the Christian that he will find
gentiles and heathens In heaven (Sermon 12, Vol. II, p.
293). And In still another sermon he argues that just as
some men can educate themselves outside of the universi
ties, some can be saved outside of the Church (Sermon 9,
Vol. VIII, p. 226). In a time when religious bigotry and
persecution were the norms, the liberality of such state
ments Is remarkable. And yet the Church is the necessary
way for those to whom it has been made available.
The Importance of the Church as a means to salvation
is the theme of a sermon on the text of Matthew 21:44;
"Whosoever shall fall on this stone, shall be broken; but
on whomsoever it shall fall, It will grinde him to powder."
The stone is Christ, who is found in the Church. The
Christian who is faithful to the Church is not free from
sin, but his fall will be broken by the stone--he "fals
not so desperately, as that he feeles nothing between hell
and him ..." (Sermon 8, Vol. II, p. 190). But the sinner
who does not fall within the Church will In turn be fallen
upon by the stone and be forever denied that peace that is
24
reached through Christ in his Church.1
Remembering Donne's belief that a sermon must from
time to time attack the errors of enemies of the Church,
one should not be surprised to find Donne attacking separ
atists who would deny the "ordinary way" to salvation,
through the Church. In fact, Donne sets his face strongly
against any who would advocate a private form of worship
that Ignores the sacraments, traditions, and ceremonies
of God's established Church. Furthermore, Donne sees the
relationship between private worship and mysticism. The
Implication of this statement is that the assumption that
Donne was a mystic is false.
Edmund Gosse takes Donne's mysticism for granted
when he discusses the importance of Donne's influence on
Crashaw, "the greatest of English mystics." Gosse rather
vaguely attempts to suggest affinities between Donne, St.
p
John of the Cross, and St. Teresa. Louis I. Bredvold's
argument is based on the numerous allusions to St. Augus
tine in Donne's sermons. Ignoring the fact that the ser
mons are filled with allusions to all of the Church
Fathers, Bredvold says,
^This sermon is discussed by William R. Mueller,
John Donne: Preacher (Princeton, 1 9 6 2), pp. 53*5^.
2Edmund Gosse, The Life and Letters of John Donne
(London, 1899), II, pp. 347-348.
25
To this tradition Donne belongs as a religious
teacher and mystic; true to this tradition, he
was dissatisfied with the impersonal and intel
lectual conception of God, desiring a personal
God in which his heart, not his mind, might find
rest. 3
Similarly, Mary Paton Ramsay writes,
Nous voyons que Donne comme theologien semble
plutSt se defier de cette extase mystique. Ce
qui'il comprend et ce qui lui semble legitime et
blen-faisant a l'Sme, c'est comme nous allons ^
voir, l'£lan mystique que St. Augustin decrit.
Itrat Husain says that Donne's use of the "erotic symbol
ism" of marriage places him in the tradition of St.
Bernard, the mystic who used such imagery to describe the
5
union of the soul with God. And finally, George William
son tells us that "Donne's closest disciples are awakened
in a profounder way by what we may call the trinity of his
genius, his mysticism, logic, and passionate intensity."^
The problem is that these writers do not seem to
base their arguments on an accurate definition of the term
"mysticism." The weaknesses in these various arguments
^Louls I. Bredvold, "The Religious Thought of John
Donne in Relation to Medieval and Later Traditions,"
Studies in Shakespeare, Milton, and Donne (New York, 1925)*
p. ££2.
^Mary Paton Ramsay, Les doctrines medlevales chez
Donna, le poete metaphysiciende l'Angleterre 15?3~lfc>31.
Deuxieme edition (London, 1924), p. 235.
^Itrat Husain, The Dogmatic and Mystical Theology of
John Donne (New York, 193&), pp. 13B-139.
^George Williamson, The Donne Tradition (Cambridge,
1930), p. 235.
26
are discussed by Michael Francis Moloney, who concludes
that Donne is not a mystic by the definition that his own
7
age would have understood. And Evelyn M. Simpson, revis
ing an earlier opinion of hers, writes in the second edi
tion of A Study of the Prose Works of John Donne,
Donne has often been described as a mystic, and
it is clear from his secular poems, especially
The Ecstasle and Elegy V 'His Picture', that he
was acquainted with mystical writings, and could
use language proper to the mystical experience.
This does not, however, necessarily prove him to
have been a mystic, and in the Semons and Devo
tions there is little which can be galled mystical
in the technical sense of the tem.
Mysticism, properly understood, affirms a belief
in one's ability to achieve, by passing through stages of
contemplation and illumination, a direct union with God.
The number of stages and their different characteristics
may vary from one mystic to the next, but the concept of
union is the all Important constant. Mysticism tends to
minimize the importance of the mediating rituals and prac
tices of "orthodox" churches, because these do not help
generate the mystical experience. Although, as St. John
of the Cross suggests in Dark Night of the Soul, an
Individual's past religious discipline may have a prepara
tive function, the mystical experience itself is "given,"
^Michael Francis Moloney, John Donne, His Flight
from Medlaevallsm(Urbana, 1944), pp. 165-195.
^Evelyn Simpson, A Study of the Prose Works of John
Donne (Oxford, 1948), pp. 91-92.
27
It cannot be willed or induced. Neither does mysticism
necessarily involve the seeing of visions. In fact, some
mystics held visions to be the devil's work--Philip Neri is
said to have told a follower to spit in the eye of the
Virgin the next time she saw fit to appear.^
W. R. Inge (a twentieth-century Dean of St. Paul's)
writes that "the essence of mysticism is the experience of
coming into lmmedlate relation with the higher Powers."10
This is done usually by advancing through nonratlonal
stages of contemplation in "the attempt to realize the
11
essence of the living God in the soul and in nature." But
there is little in Donne's sermons, or anywhere else in
his writings, to suggest that he had had such an exper
ience. On the contrary, in his sermons Donne repeatedly
stresses the importance of the mediating powers of the
Church, its sacraments, ceremonies and prayers. And yet
Inge tells us that the early mystics of the Primitive
12
Church despised the sacraments and rituals of the Church.
Thus, to suggest that a true Laudian preacher could be a
mystic seems to be a contradiction in terms.
9W. H. Auden, "Introduction," The Protestant Mystics,
ed. Anne Fremantle (New York, 1965)1 p. 19.
10W. R. Inge, Christian Mysticism (Cleveland, 1965)1
p. v.
11— r -
Inge, p. 5.
12Inge, p. 1 39.
2S
Donne, a Laudlan, speaks out against those who
undervalue, not onely all rltuall, and all
ceremonial! assistances of devotion, which
the wlsdome, and the piety of the Church hath
Induced, but even the Sacraments themselves
.... (Sermon 7, Vol. X, pi 162).
Donne is speaking of "Puritans" here, but the affinities
between the Puritans and the early mystics were very real
to one who labored to defend the established Church against
threatening doctrines. In this regard it is worth noting
that Inge stresses the extent to which the radical sects
of the Reformation continued notions first advanced by the
early mystics. Speaking of the early mystics, he says,
"There have been hardly any religious leaders, if we
accept George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, who have
valued ceremonies so little."1^ Owen Chadwick has also
commented on the mystical elements in the left wing of the
14
Reformation.
It seems reasonable, then, to expect in Donne, a_
priori, an anti-mystical message. Taking a closer look at
some of Donne's own statements, one finds this expectation
fulfilled. Here, for example, is Donne using Husain's
"erotic" imagery to talk about the "mystical" subject of
union with God.
1^Inge, p. 72.
■^Owen Chadwick, The Reformation (Baltimore, 1964),
pp. 241-244.
The union of Christ to the whole Church is not
expressed by any metaphore, ly any figure, so
oft in the Scripture, as by this of Mariage:
and there in that union with Christ to' the whole
Church, neither husband, nor wife can ever die;
Christ is immortal1 as hee is himselfe, and
Immortal 1, as hee is the head of the 'Church, the
Husband of that wife: for that wife, the Church
is immortall too; for as a Prince is the same
Prince, when hee fights a hattaile, and when hee
triumphs after victory: so the militant, and
the triumphant Church is the same Church. (Sermon
3, Vol. VI, p. 32).
In another sermon Donne says,
That which is our end, salvation,we use to
expresse in Schooles by these two terms, we
call it vislonem Dei, the sight of God, and we
call it unionem, an union with God; we shall see
God, and we shall be united to God. . . . SucE
an union, as that the Church of which we are
parts, is his spouse, and that's Eadem caro,
the same body with him. . . . So united, as
that by being sowed in the visible Church,
we are Semen Del, the seed of God, and by
growing up there in godlinesse, and holinesse,
we are particlpes Divinae naturae, partakers
of the divine Nature it selfe. Now these two
unions, which represent our eternal union with
God (that is, the union of the Church to him,
and the union of every good soule in the Church
to him) is the subjeer of this Song of songs,
this heavenly Poeme, of Solomons; and our baptisme,
at our entrance into this world, is a Seale of
this union; our marlage, in the passage of this
world, is a Sacrament of this union; and that
which seems to be our dissolution, (our death) is
the strongest band of this union, when we are so
united, as nothing can disunite us more. (Sermon 8,
Vol. V, pp. 168-169).
In these passages there is a rather unmystical em
phasis on the importance of the Church--Christ is married
to the Church, and only to us by proxy. Furthermore, Donne
here revises the usual interpretations given by the ancient
mystical commentaries on the Song of Solomon by saying
that this poem deals with Christ's marriage to the Church
rather than to the individual soul. Thus Donne stresses
the importance of baptism as the individual's entrance into
the Church. Finally, Donne directly contradicts 3trict
mystical teaching by saying that only after death can one
achieve actual union with God--thls in fact goes a long way
toward explaining the importance of the theme of death in
Donne's sermons. Evelyn Simpson sums up Donne's attitudes
toward union with God when she says, "He views the spirit
ual marriage as sacramental rather than mystical . . . ."
(Sermons, Introduction to Vol. Ill, p. 23).
Husain is wrong to say that Donne uses "erotic"
imagery in the manner of St. Bernard or St. John of the
Cross to describe the ecstasy of the soul leaving the body
IB
to find a union with God. J It seems more reasonable to
say that Donne uses marriage as simply a convenient and
traditional figure of speech--note the beginning of the
first passage above. Donne's figures of speech are almost
IB
vIn chapter six I will discuss Donne's thoughts on
the relation between reason and faith. There I will argue
that Donne is in a tradition of theologians who stress the
importance of reason in the religious life. This tradition
is characterized by such figures as Abelard and St. Thomas,
the latter of whom clearly asserted "the scientific worth
lessness to theology of a purely mystical interpretation
of the Scriptures," according to Yves M. J. Congar, £
History of Theology, trans. Hunter Guthrie, S. J. (New York
196b), p. 75. For a discussion of the hostility of St.
Bernard (with whom Husain compares Donne) to this tradition
see Congar, pp. 7^-75.
31
Invariably chosen with the audience's experiences in mind
(thus the Lincoln's Inn sermons abound in legal and econ
omic metaphors), and everyone knows about marriage.
It is true that Donne's sermons cannot be read as
a single, logically consistent piece of systematic theol
ogy, and some passages can be found that suggest a mystical
quality to Donne's religious experience. For Instance,
Donne's interest in the conversions of Paul and Augustine
have been interpreted as showing mystical inclinations.
Without getting into the relations between conversion and
the mystical experience, we can simply notice what Donne
himself says about the limitations of the conversion exper
ience .
For though 3. Augustine 3ay, That to convert a man
from sin, is as great a miracle, as Creation, yet
S. Augustine speaks that of a mans first conversion,
in which the man himself does nothing, but God all;
Then he is made of nothing; out after God hath
renewed him, and proposed ordinary meanes in the
Church still to worke upon him, he must not looke
for miraculous working, but make Gods ordinary
meanes. ordinary to him. (Sermon 11, Vol. VI,
pp. 264-265).
It is also true that some of Donne's poems, as Evelyn
M. Simpson suggests, show his acquaintance with the language
of mystical experience. She mentions "The Ecstasle,"
although the union depicted there is between two mortal
souls (it might be Interesting to study the relations be
tween mysticism and neoplatonic notions of love). Actually,
the sonnet "Batter My Heart" is closer to the tradition of
Christian mystici3m--it is a plea for deliverance from sin
through a special effort on the part of God, as opposed to
the "ordinary" means, and it concludes with sexual imagery
or language to suggest union in the manner of the poetry of
St. John of the Cross. The poem can be said to reveal a
longing for a mystical experience, but even if we commit the
biographical fallacy, it must be recognized that the poem
does not state that such an experience has actually been
granted to the poet or the speaker. On the other hand, the
sonnet "Show Us Thy Bride" relies on the premise that Christ
is married to the Church and not to the Individual soul.
In the sermons, some of Donne's most inspired passages
concern the workings of the Holy Ghost upon the soul of man.
But the emphasis is always firmly on the ordinances of the
Church as the necessary media between man and God.
When a winde brings the River to any low part
of the banke, instantly it overflowes the whole
Meadow; when that winde which blowes where he
will, The Holy Ghost, leads an humble soule to
the Article of the Church, to lay hold upon God,
as God hath exhibited himselfe in his Ordinances,
instantly he is surrounded under the blood of
Christ Jesus, and all the benefits thereof; The
communion of saints, the remission of sins, the
resurrection of the oody, and the life everlasting,
are poured out upon him.(Sermon 13, Vol. V, p. 250).
Not only does Donne unquestionably affirm the need
for the Church to act as mediator between God and man, but
he also specifically denies the mystical idea of the
"divine spark" -- the belief that man's soul itself
33
possesses a bit of divinity. This doctrine found its way
into Christian mysticism through Plotinus and was used to
explain how a union between God and man could be logically
possible since the two apparently have such radically dif
ferent natures.Donne says that although the soul pos
sesses an "image" of God, it is
Not Immediately so, as that the soule of man is
part of the Essence of God; for so essentially,
Christ onely is the Image of God. Saint Augustine
at first thought so .... I tooke thee, 0 God,
(says that Father) to be a globe of fire, and my
soule a spark of that fire; thee to be a body of
light, and my soule to be a beame of that light.
But Saint Augustine does not onely retract that in
himselfe, but dispute against it, in the Manichees.
(Sermon 2, Vol. IX, pp. 79-80).
Louis I. Bredvold and Mary Paton Ramsay have cited Donne's
numerous references to Augustine as evidence that Donne was
a mystic. But they fail to notice that Donne approves of
Augustine's repudiation of his formerly held mystical
doctrines.
Mysticism, as Augustine came to realize in his day,
is a threat to orthodox religious institutions, to the
established Church. To Donne, mysticism and schism are
nearly synonymous. The following passages, taken from dif
ferent sermons delivered at different stages in Donne's
■^For a discussion of the "divine spark" see Evelyn
Underhill, Mysticism (New York, 1955), PP. 54 seq., 74, 100,
108, 145, 230, 259, 274, 304, 366, 390, 396, 402, 445. This
concept in Eckhart, as inherited from Plotinus and Augus
tine, is discussed by Inge, Christian Mysticism, pp. 155-
159.
34
preaching career, reveal him repeatedly speaking out against
schismatic, personal, and mystical attitudes toward worship.
If we trust to a private spirit, and call that the
holy Ghost, without Scriptures, or to the Scriptures
without the holy Ghost, that is, without him, there,
where he hath promised to be, in his Ordinance, in
his Church, we have not the seale of the Promise,
the holy Ghost. (Sermon 11, Vol. VIII, p. 268).
But yet, if thou wilt think thy selfe a little
Church, a Church to thy selfe, because thou hast
heard it said, That thou art a little world, a
world in thy selfe, that figurative, that metaphor-
icall representation shall not save thee. (Sermon
8, Vol. VII, p. 232).
. . . so neither are we to look, that God should
speak to us mouth to mouth, spirit to spirit, by
Inspiration, by Revelation, for it is a large mercy,
that he hath constituted an Office, and established
a Church, in which we should heare him. (Sermon 14,
Vol. VI, p. 281).
The Holy Ghost is sent to Teach; he teaches by speak
ing; he speaks by his Ordinance, and Institution in
his Church. All knowledge, and all zeale, that is
not kindled by him, by the Holy Ghost, and kindled
here, at first is all smoke, and then all flame.
. . . (Sermon 11, Vol. VIII, p. 26l).
. . . Take heed therefore of going on with thine
owne inventions, thine own Imaginations ....
(Sermon 14, Vol. II, p. 299).
. . . God is best seen by us, when we confesse that
he cannot be seen of us. (Sermon 13, Vol. VII, p. 343).
. . . No voice is understood by man, but the voice of
man . . . /Sermon 6, Vol. VI, p. 145).
. . . wee can come to Christs Church, but wee cannot
come to him. . . .(Sermon 13, Vol. V, p. 251).
So it has been shown that, in addition to repudiating
the mystical doctrine of the "divine spark," Donne denies
the notion that one can achieve union or communion with God
through private forms of contemplation or through inspir
ation. Such mystical notions were present in the more
"radical" sects of the Reformation (George Fox's "inner
light" was perhaps a descendant of the medieval "divine
spark"), and Donne recognizes the threat they present to
the established Church.
Often the enemies of the Church are described in
short, satirical sketches in the sermons. In one of these
Donne renders quite an accurate picture of a mystic.
And there is a Pharisee that dreames of such an
union, such an identification with God in this
life, as that he understands all things, not by
benefit of the senses, and impressions in the
fancy and imagination, or by discourse and
ratiocination, as we poore soules doe, but by
immediate, and continuall infusions and inspir
ations from God himself; That he loves God, not
by participation of his successive Grace, more
and more, as he receives more and more grace,
but by a communication of God himselfe to him,
intirely and Irrevocably. . . .(Sermon 6, Vol.
IX, p. 169).
Donne realizes that this error of mysticism can be found
in the Puritan movement as well as in the Roman Catholic
Church, and so he ends an attack on Puritans by commenting
on the "puritans" in the Roman Church, mentioning the
mystic Philip Neri by name.
They have a third state of Puritanes above these,
in the Romane Church; where they say that a man
may come to such a state of purity in this life,
as that he shall be abstracted, not onely
a passlonlbus, from all inordlnatenesse of af
fections and passions, but a phantasmatlbus, from
apprehending any thing by those lazy degrees
of the senses. . . but they shall come to such
■6
familiarity with God, as that they shall know all
by immediate Revelation; They meane. . . that a
man come to that purity in this life, as that in
this life, hee shall bee in possession of that
very Beatificall vision, which is the state of
glory in heaven; In which purity, they say also,
that a man may not onely be empty of all sin,
but he may be too full of Gods presence, over-
fraighted with his grace, so farre, that (as they
make Philip Nerius, the Founder of their last
Order, their example^ they shall be put to that
exclamation, Recede a me Domlne, 0 Lord depart
farther from me, and withdraw some of this grace,
which thou pourest upon me. (Sermon 13> Vol. VII,
P. 33^).
Doubtless Donne derived a certain pleasure from pointing
out, or asserting, that Puritans and Roman Catholics have
shared a similar error.^
Against this error the Church of England was firmly
set. Donne, as a loyal preacher in the bishops' party,
was a royalist and conservative, aware of the excesses
to which private, anti-establishmentarian religious
orientations had led, not only among English Roman
Catholics, but also among many of those who identified
themselves with the Reformation. That is, the threat of
religious schism was also a threat to the civil order, as
recent history had clearly demonstrated. For instance,
popular opinion in Donne's time held the unorthodox
17
'The passage quoted above shows how Donne defined the
term "Puritan. " A Puritan was not, to Donne, one who
wanted to further purify the Church of England of Roman
practices (the non-pejoratlve definition historians use
today); he was, instead, one who was all too convinced of
his own purity. Of course, Donne's purposes are not the
same as those of the objective historian.
37
evangelizing of Thomas Munzer responsible for the Peasant
Uprising in Germany in 1524. And many still remembered
with horror Bernard Rothman, the Munster revolutionary
whose interpretation of the Old Testament allowed him the
pleasure of nine wives. Like so many sinners, he advocated
the annihilation of the ungodly (i.e., those who disagreed
with him). He actually managed to start a revolution in
which several people were killed. Of course all this had
happened before Donne was born, but, as Owen Chadwick says,
"For a hundred years and more the ill-omened name of
Munster was enough to destroy the arguments in favour of
religious toleration.
Munster was an extreme case, and nowhere does Donne
refer to it. But it was a reality of recent history, and
it could not help but remind a conservative preacher of
the political dangers of allowing worshipers to "trust to
a private spirit." Anyway, Donne had a more recent example
of trouble stemming from religions nonconformity, one that
was sure to touch the emotions of his audiences. The Gun
powder Plot is referred to more than once in the sermons,
and an entire sermon is preached on its anniversary (Sermon
9, Vol. IV, pp. 235-263). Of course the Gunpowder Plot
involved extreme Catholics, while the Peasant Uprising and
Munster were the work of extreme Protestants, and none of
n Q
Owen Chadwick, The Reformation, p. 191.
-8
these events involved mysticism as strictly defined. But
they did involve people following unorthodox or unsanc
tioned religious beliefs, and they suggest why Donne is
careful to persuade his congregations to rest secure in
the "ordinary" means of salvation, those of the Church of
England.
This Church, itself newly separated from the Roman
Catholic Church, was in a situation (as Donne himself liked
to point out) not unlike that of the Primitive Church,
which had separated from Jewish and gentile traditions.
The Church of England saw the threat of further separation
and schism that could result from the sanctioning of an
overly personal religious experience. This is the same
threat that the early Church leaders felt from the mystics
of the desert monastic movement of the second, third, and
fourth centuries. Henry Chadwick says of these mystics
that
their withdrawal unquestionably weakened the
ordinary congregations, and was regarded by many
bishops with a misgiving that individual extrav
agance could do much to justify. Throughout
the fourth century the monastic movement was
straining to overcome the deep distrust of many
bishops. Its spirit seemed too Individualistic
and separatist.
Donne is in the position of these early bishops,
defending his Church against all separatist tendencies,
"^Henry Chadwick, The Early Church (Baltimore, 1967),
pp. 176-177.
39
mystical or otherwise. Indeed, while the mystical contem
plation of God is utterly private and ineffable, Donne,
following Augustine's attack on the separatist aspects of
mysticism, does not believe one should even compose one's
own prayers.
It must be mine own prayer, and no prayer is
so truly, or so properly mine, as that that the
Church hath delivered and recommended to me . . . .
In that African Councell, in which S. Augustine
was present, to remedy the abuse of various formes
of Prayers, which divers Churches assumed, it was
decreed that no prayers should be received in the
Church, but such as were composed, or approved by
the Councell. We have proceeded so too; No prayers
received for publique use, but those that are deliv
ered by publique authority; and so, they become My
prayers. As the Law of the Land is my Law, and I
have an inheritance in it, so the prayers of the
Church are my prayers, and I have an interest in
them, because I am a Son of that family. (Sermon
9, Vol. IX, pp. 218-219).
Donne's advocacy of publicly sanctioned prayers
grows, as it did with Augustine, from a concern for the
stability of the Church as an institution. It is a posi
tion first spelled out in Donne's Church by Hooker in
20
Book V of the Laws. As the passage above indicates, the
laws of the Church were closely related to the laws of the
land. Elsewhere Donne is more direct in stating his
religio-political conservativism.
Those that determine Allegiance, and civil obedience
onely by their own religion, and think themselves
20Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical
Polity, Bk. V, Ch. xxiv, in Works, ed3 John Keble (Oxford,
1888), II, p. 121.
40
bound to obey none, that la of another perswasion,
they oppose the Nolumus hunc. We will not have this
man to reign over us; and so, make their relations,
and fix their dependencies upon foreln hopes,
Nolumus hunc. Those that fix a super-Soveraignty
in the people, or in a Presbytery, they oppose the
Nolumus sic, we would not have things carried thus;
They pretend to know the happlnesse of living under
that form, A Kingdome, and to acknowledge the person
of the King, but they would be governed every man
according to his own minde. (Sermon 17, Vol. VII,
p. 427-428).
Thus concern for the Church is also concern for the State.
Donne also glve3 to the Church the power on earth to
Judge sinners,
. . . God refers causes to the Church, to be pre
pared, and mature there, before the great Hearing;
and 30, hath given the Church a Power to judge,
before the day of Judgment. (Sermon 18, Vol. VII,
p. 444).
In defending the authority of the Church of England
against private and schismatic forms of worship, Donne is
following in the tradition of Hooker. In Book V of the
Laws, Hooker writes:
Now where the word of God leaveth the Church to
make choice of her ordinances, if against those
things which have been received with great reason,
or against that which the ancient practice of the
Church hath continued time out of mind, or against
such ordinances as the power and authority of that
Church under which we live hath Itself devised for
the public good, or against the discretion of the
Church in mitigating sometimes with favourable
equity that rigour which otherwise the literal
generality of ecclesiastical laws hath judged to
be more convenient and meet; if against all this
it should be free for men to reprove, to disgrace,
to reject at their own liberty what they see done
and practiced according to order set down; if in
so great variety of ways as the wit of man is easily
able to find out towards any purpose, and in so
41
great liking as all men especially have unto
those inventions whereby some one shall seem to
have been more enlightened from above than many
thousands, the Church did give every man license
to follow what himself imagineth that 'God's Spirit
doth reveal' unto him, or what he supposeth that
God is likely to have revealed to some special
person whose virtues deserve to be highly esteemed:
what other effect could hereupon ensue, but the
utter confusion of his Church under pretence^of
being taught, led, and guided by his Spirit?
So Donne is following Hooker when he states that the
forms of worship offered by the Church are necessary means
of salvation for those bom into the Church. As a
corollary to this proposition, we have seen that Donne
attacks separatist and individualistic notions, among them
some of the basic tenets of Christian mysticism--the idea
of the "divine spark" in the human soul, the idea that one
can achieve direct union with God on this side of the
grave without the mediating offices of the Church, and the
idea that private prayers and contemplation might provide
closer communion with God than do the prayers sanctioned
by the Church. I have suggested a political dimension to
these attacks, and will discuss this topic further in
Chapter Four, "The Historical Continuity of the Church."
Attacks on the enemies of the Church form only a part
of Donne's defense of the Church, albeit an Important part.
In the next chapter we shall overhear Donne in a more
positive mood, explaining for his congregations not what
21Laws, Bk. V, Works, II, p. 41.
they must reject but rather what beliefs the Church
insists are essential to salvation and what ceremonies
the Church offers as aids to devotion.
CHAPTER III
MEANS OF SALVATION: SACRAMENTS AND
CEREMONIES
In the last chapter I discussed Donne's warning to
his congregations to turn deaf ears on those who advocate
a "private" form of worship outside the walls of the Church
of England. What Donne chooses to emphasize in this warn
ing is not the political undesirability of having rival
religious factions in the country, although such consider
ations must certainly have been in the mind of a loyal
Laudian of Donne's prominence. With the exception of his
references to Roman Catholic intrigues, Donne is not often
overtly political; rather, he speaks to the individuals
In his congregations, warning them of the devotional
uncertainty and error to be encountered when one embraces
a mystical and schismatic, as opposed to an orthodox and
established, mode of worship. By speaking out against
the movements toward private worship in his own time,
Donne, as he himself likes to suggest, is in a position
like that of the bishops of the Primitive Church who were
troubled by the unorthodoxy of the mystics of that period.
In addition to attacking unorthodoxy, Donne's sermons
repeatedly seek to define the orthodoxy of the Church of
43
A4
England by explaining what beliefs and sacraments are
necessary for salvation and by defending certain non-
sacramental ceremonies sanctioned by the Church.
According to Donne, the practices required by the
Church are not many or complex. In fact, "they are but
a few things which are necessary to salvation, and there
fore be not loath to heare them often" (Sermon 1, Vol. V,
p. 56). And yet, inevitably, the Church of England was in
a position that required defense of its version of what
these necessities were. To the Roman Catholics, the Church
of England insisted on too little in the way of ritualized
religious activity; to the Puritans, the Laudians insisted
on too much and were probably in league with the Pope.
The via media preached by Donne requires acceptance of
the Scriptures, the Apostles' Creed, the Articles of Faith,
and the sacraments of baptism and holy communion. In a
sermon on the subject of faith, Donne sees the essence of
Scriptures in the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments.
. . . God hath established meanes of salvation,
being Inter credenda, one of those things which
he is bound to beleeve, (for hee beleeveth not
this, shall be damned) Man hath thus much evi
dence of this in nature, that by naturall reason
we know, that that God which must be worshipped,
hath surely declared how he will be worshipped,
and so we are led to seeke his revealed and
manifested will, and that is no where to bee
found but In his Scriptures. So that when all
is done, the Ten Commandements, which is the sum
of all that we are to doe, the Lords Prayer, which
45
is the summe of all that we are to ask.; and
the Apostles Creed, which is the summe of all
that we are to beleeve, are but declaratory,
not introductory things. . . . (Sermon 13,
Vol. V, pp. 247-248).
Accepting the Apostles' Creed, Donne points out,
involves further belief in the "holy Catholique Church,"
which, of course, is best represented by the Church of
England for which Donne speaks. "For till I come . . .
to beleeve the Catholique Church, I have not the savour
of life. . ." (Sermon 13, Vol. V, p. 249). In this sermon,
he goes on to discuss the other beliefs required by the
Apostles' Creed— belief in the Holy Ghost, the Communion
of Saints, the Remission of Sin, the Resurrection of the
Body, and the Life Everlasting.
Belief in the Holy Catholic Church of England, as
Donne explains elsewhere, entails the further acceptance
of the Thirty-nine Articles of Faith, which are necessary
assaults upon "the Heresies of the Manlchees, of the
Arrians, of the Nestorlans, of the Papistes, and others"
(Sermon 7, Vol. IV, p. 206). It was by means of the
Articles of Faith, together with the two Catechisms and
the two Books of Homilies, that "Papistry was driven out.
and Puritanism kept out, and wee delivered from the Super
stition of the Papist, and the madness of the Anabap
tists. . ." (Sermon 7, Vol. IV, p. 202).
46
The Sacraments
The most serious superstition and madness of these
extremists is to be found in their beliefs concerning the
essential sacraments of baptism and communion. Concerning
these two sacraments, Donne invokes the biblical warning,
". . .He that does not beleeve . . . shall be damned"
(Sermon 13, Vol. V, p. 265). And yet, although these
sacraments are essential activities, they have been badly
abused.
The Sacraments have fallen into the hands of
flatterers and robbers. Some have attributed
too much to them, some detracted. Some have
painted them, some have withdrawn their naturall
complexion. (Sermon 12, Vol. V, p. 232).
The Puritans are the "robbers" who have undervalued
the sacraments, and concerning this grave error Donne
1
tells the story of his visit to a dying man.
With what sorrow, with what holy indignation did
I heare the Sonne of my friend, who brought me
to that place, to minister the Sacrament to him,
then, upon his death-bed, and almost at his last
gaspe, when my service was offered him in that
kinde, answer his Father, Father, I thanke God,
I nave not lived so in the~sight of my God, as
that 1 need a Sacrament. I name a few of these,
because our times abound with such persons as
undervalue, not onely all ritual!, and ceremonial1
assistances of devotion, which the wisedome, and
the piety of the Church hath induced, but even the
Sacraments themselves. . . .(Sermon 7, Vol. X, p. 162).
William R. Mueller discusse the use of dramatic
scenes as one of the characteristics of Donne's pulpit
style. See John Donne; Preacher (Princeton, 1962),
pp. 111-113.
47
In another sermon Donne employs good debating technique
against people of such purity when he points out that
Calvin himself was careful to respect the sacraments,
always speaking of them "with a holy warinesse, and dis
cretion" (Sermon 5, Vol. X, p. 128).
The Catholics of Rome, on the other hand, are the
"flatterers," guilty of the opposite extreme of "adoring"
the sacrament of communion.
It is a complaint often made, and often to be
repeated, that one of the greatest illusions,
and impostures of the Romane Church, is, That
the Book-Doctrine, of their learned men, and
the ordinary practice of their people agree
not. They know the people doe commit Idolatry,
in their manner of adoring the Bread in the
Sacrament, and they never preach against this
error of the people, nor tell them wherein that
Idolatry lies. . . .(Sermon 13, Vol. VII, pp. 332-
333).
And in another sermon Donne proclaims against other Roman
abuses of both baptism and communion.
For, in the Sacrament of Baptlsme, they had
troubled the water, with additions of Oile, and
salt, and spittle, and exorcismes; But in the
other Sacrament they came Ad obturationem, to a
stopping, to an intercision, to an interruption
of the water, the water of life, Aquae quletudlnum,
the water of rest to our souls, and peace to our
consciences, in withholding the Cup of salvation,
the bloud of Christ Jesus from us." (Sermon 6,
Vol. X, p. 153).
Those who abuse the sacraments, through either rob
bery or flattery, fail to appreciate the essential utility
of them. Baptism is essential as that act that joins the
48
individual with God by admitting him to the Church through
whose ordinances God speaks. Just as "the childe Jesus
was first presented to God in the Temple," it is necessary
that we all direct our children through baptism
first upon God, and God in the Temple, that is,
God manifested in the Church, before you assigne
them, or determine them upon any other worldly
course. . . (Sermon 11, Vol. VII, p. 283).
Donne is awed by the power of this act, which allows
the child to put on Christ.
That which the Apostle takes to be that which is
granted on all sides, and which none can deny,
is this, that to be baptized is to put on Christ:
And this putting on of Christ, doth so far carry
us to that Inflnitlssimum, to God himself, that
we are thereby made Semen Del, the seed of God;
The field is the world, and the good seed are the
Children of the kingdome; And we are translated
even into the nature of God, By his pretious
promise we are made partakers of the Divine nature;
yea, we are discharged of all bodily, and earthly
incombrances, and we are made all spirit, yea the
spirit of God himself, He that is joyned to the
Lord, is one spirit with him. All this we have,
if we doe put on Christ: and we doe put on Christ,
if we be baptized into him. (Sermon J, Vol. V,
P. 153).
The powers of the sacraments are that they unite the indi
vidual with God. As was argued in the previous chapter,
Donne views the union with God in sacramental rather than
mystical terms. This is similar to the attitude taken by
Hooker in Book V of the Laws.
The use of Sacraments is but only in this life,
yet so that here they concern a far better life
than this, and are for that cause accompanied
with 'grace that worketh Salvation.' Sacraments
4 9
are the powerful instruments of God to eternal
life. For as our natural life consisteth in the
union of the body with the soul; so our life
supernatural in the union of the soul with God.
And forasmuch as there is no union of God with
man without that mean between both which is both,
it seemeth requisite that we first consider how
God is in Christ, then how Christ is in us, and
how the sacraments do serve to make us partakers
of Christ.2
The mystics also saw the logical necessity of a "mean
between both which is both"--to them it was the divine
spark in the soul (see Chapter Two of this study).
Since it is desirable that a person enter the Church
as early as possible, Donne rejects the Anabaptists' argu
ments in favor of adult baptism. His reasons are based
on biblical precedent. This is an example of how Donne,
who had once been a student of law at Lincoln's Inn,
bases his religious arguments on a "legal" precedent
and on a line of reasoning assumed to be accepted by
3
the opposition.
. . . Christ took this Sacrament, his Baptisme,
before he did any other thing; and he took this,
three yeares before the institution of the other
Sacrament of his body and blood: So that the
Anabaptists obtrude a false necessity upon us,
that we may not take the first Sacrament, Bap
tisme, till we be capable of the other Sacrament
too; for, first in nature, Prlus nasclmur, quam
pasclmur, we are borne before we are fed; and so,
O
Richard Hooker, Laws, Bk. V, Works, ed. John Keble
(Oxford, 1888), II, p. 220.
'For Donne's argument that God himself governs by
precedent, see Sermon 18, Vol. V, p. 3^5.
in Religion, we are first borne into the Church,
(which is done by Baptisme) before we are ready
for that other food, which is not indeed milk
for babes, but solid meat for stronger diges
tions. (Sermon 6, Vol. VI, p. 136).
Here again, Donne is following Hooker, who attacked the
4
Anabaptists on this point in his preface to the Laws.
Unlike the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of
England does not consider confirmation to be a sacrament.
Our Church acknowledges the true use of this Con
firmation; for, in the first Collect in the office
of Confirmation, it confesses, that that child is
already regenerated by water and the holy Ghost;
and prayes onely for farther strength: And having
like a good mother, taught us the right use of it,
then our Church, like a supreme Commander too,
enjoyns expresly, that none be admitted to the
Communion, till they have received their Confirma
tion. (Sermon 1, Vol. V, p. $2).
Although confirmation is a non-sacramental requirement of
Donne's Church, it is baptism alone that
makes us Christians; this denominates us, both
Civilly, and Spiritually; there we receive our
particular names, which distinguish us from one
another, and there we receive that name, which
shall distinguish us from the Nations, in the
next World; at Baptisme wee receive the name
of Christians, and there we receive our Christian
names. (Sermon 6, Vol. VI, p. 137).
And, like the Anabaptists with their adult baptism, the
Roman Catholics err in their practice of death-bed bap
tism. Donne preaches an entire sermon against this prac
tice and against the doctrine of purgatory (Sermon 7,
Vol. VII, pp. 190-214).
4
Works, I, p. 186.
D1
Although baptism admits us to God's Church, . rant in;
us the name of Christian, it is communion that grants us
a manifestation of Christ and of our salvation. In a
sermon delivered following the Christmas Day communion,
Donne says,
. . . it belongs to the through celebration of
the day, and to the dignity of that mysterious
act, and to the blessednesse of worthy, and the
danger of unworthy Receivers, to presse that
evidence in your behalf, and to enable you to
farther examination of your selves, to depart
in peace, because your eyes have seen salvation.
(Sermon 11, Vol. VII, p. 230).
Donne goes on in this sermon to suggest that one should
not worry about the fine points of the controversy over
the nature of the Eucharist.
A peremptory prejudice upon other mens opinions,
that no opinion but thine can be true, in the
doctrine of the Sacrament, and an uncharitable
condemning of other men, or other Churches that
may be of another perswasion then thou art, in
the matter of the Sacrament, may frustrate and
disappoint thee of all that benefit, which thou
mightest have, by an humble receiving thereof,
if thou wouldest exercise thy faith onely, here,
and leave thy passion at home, and referre thy
reason, and disputation to the Schoole. (Sermon
11, Vol. VII, p. 291).
To the modern reader, the liberality of this state
ment is admirable. But Donne is frustrating; he does not
always practice what he preaches, and this sermon provides
ample warning to the reader not to expect thorough con
sistency in Donne's sermons. For here, just a few pages
later in the same sermon, the reader finds that passion
92
has charity on the run as the absurdity of the Roman Cath
olic doctrine of transubstantiation becomes the topic of
disputation.
There cannot be a deeper Atheisms, then to impute
contradictions to God; neither doth any one thing
so overcharge God with contradictions, as the
Transubstantlation of the Roman Church. There
must be a Body there, and yet no where; In no
place, and yet in every place, where there is a
consecration. . . . Almost 600. years agoe, the
Romane Church made Berengarlus sweare . . . the
body of Christ was sensibly handled, broken, and
chewed. They are ashamed of that now, and have
mollified it with many modifications; and God
knows whether 100. yeares hence they will not
bee as much ashamed of their Transubstantlation,
and see as much unnaturall absurdity in their
Trent Canon, or Lateran Canon, as they doe in
Berengarlus oath. (Sermon 11, Vol. VII, pp. 294-
295T.
An aspect of Donne's argumentative strategy is found in
lines not quoted from this long passage. In these lines
Donne cites Luther's authority in denying transubstanti-
ation. Although most of Donne's authorities are the
Fathers of the early Church, Donne adds the authority of
the Reformation leaders in passages designed to separate
the doctrine of the Church of England from that of the
Roman Church and in passages designed to stifle Puritan
opposition.
But any reference chosen at random to Donne's atti
tudes toward communion might reveal him in the less argu
mentative mood with which he began this sermon. For in
another sermon Donne tells the communicants to "Make sure
thine own Reall Presence" and not to worry about Christ's
(Sermon 4, Vol. VII, p. 140). The Church of England
seems to have offered a rather flexible doctrine of the
"presence," as compared with the strictly defined positions
5
of the Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists. Donne states
the position of his Church when he says that the
Bread which thou seest after the Consecration,
is not the same bread, which was presented
before; not that it is Transubstantiated to
another substance, for it is bread still,
(which is the hereticall Riddle of the Roman
Church, and Satans sophistry, to dishonour
miracles, by the assiduity and frequency, and
multiplicity of them) but that it is severed,
and appropriated by God, in that Ordinance to
another use; It is other Bread, so, as a Judge
is another man, upon the bench, then he is at
home, in his owne house. (Sermon 11, Vol. VII,
P. 294).
Hooker also denies the doctrine of transubstanti-
at ion, but his tone is more moderate than Donne's. In
fact, it is from Hooker that Donne receives the attitudes
of tolerance that he is not always able to sustain. Con
cerning transubstantlation Hooker says,
A thing which no way can efther further or
hinder us howsoever it stand, because our
participation of Christ in this sacrament
^For a comparison of Luther's belief in the literal
presence with Zwingli's belief in a symbolic presence, see
Owen Chadwick, The Reformation (Baltimore, 1964), pp. 78-
79. On page 121 Chadwick quotes from the 15% and the
1552 Prayer Books, showing that the latter version was
worded vaguely enough to accommodate the Swiss belief in
the symbolic nature of the sacrament.
34
dependeth on the co-operation of his omnipotent
power which maketh it his body and blood to us,
whether with change or without alteration of
the element such as they imagine we need not
greatly to care or inquire.6
Thus far, then, Jt has been seen that Donne defends
the sacraments of baptism and holy communion as being
essential for salvation, while specifically attacking the
Anabaptists' doctrine of adult baptism, the Roman Catholic
practice of death-bed baptism, the Catholic practice of
withholding the cup from the laity, and the Catholic doc
trine of transubstantlation. Donne also believes in
auricular confession, again following the authority of
Hooker, but confession is not often mentioned in Donne's
sermons and it does not seem to occupy the status of a
sacrament, as it did in the Roman Catholic Church and
7
even with Luther. The Roman Catholic sacraments, as
affirmed at the Council of Trent, were seven--Baptism,
Confirmation, Penance, Holy Orders, Marriage, the Euchar
ist, and Extreme Unction. Luther had reduced the number
to three--baptism, communion, and confession. It would
seem that the Church of England, in emphasizing the
^Laws, Bk. V, Works, II, p. 353.
7
For Donne's view see Sermon 6, Vol. II, pp. 144-
163. For Hooker's statement see Laws, Bk. VI, Works,
III, pp. 148-149. This book of the Laws wa3 not pub-
lished until after Donne's death.
importance of only baptism and communion, was quite thor
oughly "purified." And yet such Puritans as William Prynne
were scandalized by the retention of confession, whether
as a sacrament or not, seeing it as a dangerous vestige
8
of Roman Catholicism.
Ceremonies
Although the reduction of the numoer of sacraments
from seven to two indicates a certain degree of austerity,
on the subject of ceremonies the Church of England was
much less radical than most other Reformed churches.
Describing the typical Calvinist's attitude toward worship,
Owen Chadwick writes,
The Swiss principle demanded Scriptural author
ity for all things in ecclesiastical polity and
the worship of the Church. Simplicity was godly,
all else was distraction. The medieval church
seemed to the Reformed like an over-furnished
clutter, a shop of antique junk, where the wor
shipper could not apprehend true holiness be
cause his vision was screened by trinkets, side
altars, statues, coloured windows, pomp, vest
ments, and ceremonies, as though the listening
ears of prayer were deafened by the clangour
of ritual and noise.9
The Calvinist preferred extempore prayer to the or
thodox prayers sanctioned by tradition and the Church
o
For further discussion of Donne and the sacraments,
see Itrat Husain, The Dogmatic and Mystical Theology of
John Donne (New York', I9 3 8J, pp. 26-35.
^The Reformation, pp. 184-185.
l j6
proper, preferred ordinary rather than unleavened bread
in the sacrament, discarded the ring in marriage and the
sign of the cross in baptism, would not have the clergy
distinguished by their garb either in church or out, dis
allowed hymns as being unscrlptural, refused to kneel at
the sacrament, and rejected all forms of religious art
in the churches.
Donne, as a true Laudian, was opposed to such ex
tremes of reform. The Laudians reintroduced art into the
churches— stained glass windows, crosses, and even cruci
fixes. Organs were also restored, and church music was
encouraged. Statues were painted, altars erected, and
10
clerical garb was formalized. In general, the atmos
phere encouraged by Laud was one of taste, tradition,
ritual, and elegance. To the Puritans, such things
amounted to treason, and at his trial, as Austin Warren
notes, Laud was indicted for approving the placement of
an image of the Virgin Mary over the new baroque porch
These aspects of Laud's rule of the Church are
discussed by Owen Chadwick, p. 228. Such information
can help us avoid the error of Michael Francis Moloney,
who said that Donne's poem "The Crosse" "abounds in
lines which breathe the intransigeance /sic7 of the
most ardent Catholic Recusant — " See John~Donne: His
Flight From Medlaevallsm (Illinois, 1944], p. 37. Real
izing that crucifixes were sanctioned by Laud takes
some of the revolutionary edge from this poem.
57
11
of St. Mary's at Oxford. Laud was executed in 1645.
Donne died In 1631, two years before Laud was made
Archbishop, but the supremacy of Laud's power In the Church
had been clearly established for many years before Donne's
death. Of course Donne had no way to foresee the strength
that the Puritan opposition was to assume In the 1640's,
but 1645 provides a certain perspective from which to view
Donne's defense of ceremony and tradition In the worship
of the Church.
. . . Love the body, and love the garments too,
that is, The Order, the Discipline, the Decency,
the Unity of the Church; Love even the hem of
the garment, that that almost touches the ground;
that is, Such Ceremonies, as had a good use in
their first institution, for raising devotion,
and are freed and purged from that superstition,
which, as a rust, was growne upon them, though
they may seeme to touch the earth, that is, to
have been induced by earthly men, and not imme
diate institutions from God, yet love that hem
of that garment, those outward assistances of
devotion in the Church. (Sermon 17, Vol. V,
PP. 343-344).
It is Donne's strategy to defend these garments,
these ceremonies and assistances, by using the authorities
and assumptions accepted by the more extreme reformers.
He quotes Calvin's Institutes, for instance, to show that
Calvin himself respected ceremonies as "helps to be very
behoovefull" for the people (Sermon 3, Vol. X, p. 91), and
11Austin Warren, Richard Crashaw, A Study in
Baroque Sensibility (New Orleans, 1939), P* 9*
38
elsewhere he defends ceremonies by citing Calvin's will
ingness to be flexible about unessential things (Sermon 7,
Vol. X, p. 173). But primarily Donne Is concerned to show
that ceremonies have the sanction of scriptural authority,
since for the Puritan scriptural authority was the test
of admissibility for any religious practice.
In this regard both the Anglican and the Puritan
agreed in rejecting what they felt was the Roman Catholic
practice of allowing ceremonies based only on human tradi
tions but lacking biblical authority. In the view of the
Reformed churches, the Council of Trent was responsible
for the error of elevating human traditions to a level
of equal authority with the scriptures, although Owen
Chadwick does not think that this was a fair interpreta-
12
tion of the Council's intentions. According to Donne,
"in the Roman Church, they have not found a better way
to justify their blasphemy of the insufficiency of the
Scriptures, then by making contemptible writings, as
sufficient as Scriptures, equall to Scripture" (Sermon 16,
Vol. VII, p. 403). And In another sermon he says,
These two sorts of Excesses doe note these
two kindes of treading down the grasse, which
12
The Reformation, p. 276. For a detailed discussion
of the Council of Trent from a Catholic point of view, see
Henri Daniel-Rops, The Catholic Reformation, trans. John
Warrington (New York, 1962), I, pp. 99-211.
59
we intend; of which one is, the mingling of
too much humane ornament, and secular learning
in preaching. ! ! The other is of mingling
humane Traditions, as of equal value, and obli
gation, with the Commandements of God.
(Sermon 6, Vol. X, p. 147).
Thus, in the following passage, Donne argues that the
ceremonies of the Church of .England are an extension of
the scriptural commandment to honor the sabbath.
How very great a part of the Law of God was
ceremoniall? and how very heavy punishments
were ordained for the breakers even of those
Ceremonies? The Sabbaths themselves, S. Paul
puts amongst Ceremonies: And that man, wKo
assisted the Reformation of Religion, with as
much learning, and modesty, as any, defines the
Commandment of the Sabbath well, to be Morale
praeceptum, de Ceremoniall, That though the
Commandment be morall, and blnde all men for
ever, yet that which is commanded in that morall
Commandment, is in it selfe Ceremoniall; for,
Indeed, all that which we call by the general
name of Religion, as it is the outward worship
of God, is Ceremoniall, and there is nothing
more morall, then that some ceremoniall things
there must be. (Sermon 12, Vol. IV, p. 315).
"That man" referred to is Melancthon, as Donne tells us in
a marginal note. Melancthon, of course, is an authority
much more appropriate to the argumentative purpose here
than would be one of the Fathers of the Patristic Church
to whom Donne freely alludes in other contexts.
In the next passage Donne argues that an abused
ceremony does not have to be abolished; instead the abuse
can be corrected or reformed. Using his favorite analogy
that the Church of England is like the Primitive Church,
Donne points out that Christ himself, in founding the
60
Primitive Church, adopted ceremonies that already existed.
Again, granting the criterion of his Puritan antagonist,
Donne, always the good lawyer, establishes a biblical prec
edent for the retention of "foreign" traditions in the
Church of England. This is the beginning of a sermon
preached on Candlemas Day.
The Church, which is the Daughter of God, and
Spouse of Christ, celebrates this day, the
Purification of the blessed Virgin, the Mother
of God: And she celebrates this day by the name,
vulgarly, of Candlemas Day. It is dies lumlnarlum,
the day of lights; 'The Church took occasion of
doing so, from the Gentiles; At this time of
yeare, about the beginning of February, they
celebrated the feast of Februus, which is their
Pluto; And, because that was the God of darkness,
they solemnized it, with a multiplicity of Lights.
The Church of God, in the outward and ceremoniall
part of his worship, did not disdain the ceremonies
of the Gentiles; Men who are so severe, as to
condemne, and to remove from the Church, whatso
ever was in use amongst the Gentiles before, may,
before they are aware, become Surveyors, and Con
trollers upon Christ himself, in the institution
of his greatest seales; for Baptisme, which is
the Sacrament of purification by washing in water,
and the very Sacrament of the Supper it self,
religious eating, and drinking in the Temple, were
in use amongst the Gentiles too. It is a perverse
way, rather to abolish Things and Names, (for ve
hement zeale will work upon Names as well as
Things) because they have been abused, then to
reduce them to their right use. . . . Those cere
monies, which himself /Christ/ had Instituted in
the first Church of the Jews, and the Gentiles
had purloined, and prophaned, and corrupted after,
he returned to good use againe. And so did we
in the Reformation, in some ceremonies which had
been of use in the Primitive Church, and depraved
and corrupted in the Romane. (Sermon 13, Vol. VII,
PP. 325-326.)
61
But In order to accept Donne's argument that the
Bible establishes a precedent for the acceptance of foreign
rituals, one must of course accept Donne's interpretation
of the Bible. Thus Donne denies the Calvinistic ideal of
autonomous Bible study when he says tha^ "no Scripture is
of private interpretation" (Sermon 9, Vol. Ill, p. 210).
Donne is certainly correct in realizing that it is naive
to assume that all men who can read will automatically
agree on what the Bible "says."
So, although rituals may be retained from the Roman
Church, according to the official interpretation of scrip
tures, the abuses of these ceremonies must be corrected.
Commenting on Rome's abuse of ceremonies, Donne says:
These ceremonies are not the institutions of
God immediately, but they are a kind of light
earth, that hath under it good and usefull sig
nifications. . . . And this is the Iniquity that
we complain of in the Roman Church, that when we
accuse them of multiplying impertinent, and in
supportable ceremonies, they tell us, of some
mysterious and pious signification, in the
institution thereof at first. . . But neither
in Preaching nor practise, doe they scatter this
earth to their own sheep. . . . We deny not that
there are Traditions, nor that there must be
ceremonies, but that maters of faith should
depend of these, or be made of these, that we
deny; and that they should be made equall to
Scriptures. . . .
This passage goes on to assert that "The Fathers abound
in this opposing of Traditions, when out of these tradi
tions, our adversaries argue an insufficiency in the
Scriptures" (Sermon 6, Vol. X, pp. 150-152).
62
Such specific rituals as the lighting of candles on
Candlemas Day are not to be abolished because of their
origin, in this case in a pre-Christian culture, or because
of their abuses in Rome (Donne says the Roman Catholic
laity came to the superstitious belief that the candle was
a gift of light to God rather than a symbol of God's gift
of light to man). In an early Lincoln's Inn sermon, Donne
presents similar arguments for kneeling at the sacrament
of communion, for retaining references to the saints, and
for retaining replicas of the cross (Sermon J, Vol. Ill,
P. 175).
If one begins by attacking such specific rituals,
where will the reforming end? Donne seems to fear that
all that is meaningful in religion might ultimately be
reformed away, and he is hopeful of establishing the
boundaries of reformation. Thus he urges the churchgoer
love the outward acts of Religion, though an
Hypocrite, and though a naturall man may doe
them. Certainly he that loves not the Mili
tant Church, hath but a faint faith in His*-
interest in the Triumphant. He that cares
not though the material! Church fall, I am
afraid is falling from the splrltuall. For,
can a man be sure to have his money, or his
plate, if his house be burnt? or to preserve
his faith, if the outward exercises of Religion
falle? He that undervalues outward things, in
the religious service of God, though he begin
at ceremoniall and rituall things, will come
quickly to call Sacraments but outward things,
63
and Sermons, and publique prayers, but outward
things, in contempt. As some Platonlque Philos
ophers, did so over-refine Religion, and devotion,
as to say, that nothing but the first thoughts
and ebullitions of a devout heart, were fit to
serve God in. (Sermon 17, Vol. Ill, p. 368).
In the last chapter I referred to Donne's advocacy
of public prayers, as opposed to the extempore form of
prayer advocated by many Calvinist reformers. Donne's
sermons also contain elaborations on the topic of sermon
ising. Donne defends the tradition of the prepared sermon,
as opposed to the growing fad of extempore preaching. He
says of the preacher, "let him not think that he can preach
as often as he can speake" (Sermon 6, Vol. I, p. 26l).
And elsewhere Donne says,
But if I come to pray or to preach without this
kind of Idea, if I come to extemporall prayer,
and extemporall preaching, I shall come to an
extemporall faith, and extemporall religion;
and then I must looke for an extemporall Heaven,
a Heaven to be made for me; for to that Heaven
which belongs to the Catholique Church, I shall
never come, except I go by the way of the Cath
olique Church, by former Idea's, former examples,
former patterns, To believe according to ancient
beliefes, to pray according to ancient formes,
to preach according to former meditations.
(Sermon 1, Vol. VII, p. 6l ).
Another traditional or ceremonial aspect of worship
that Donne defends is the practice of kneeling in church.
Owen Chadwick says that many Independent minded Protestants
in England refused to kneel, particularly during the
64
13
reception of holy communion. Although Donne agrees that
the Roman Church erred in encouraging "adoration'' of the
sacrament (see pp. 43-44 of this study), he staunchly
defended the tradition of kneeling. And his argumentative
strategy is the same. This tradition, too, can be de
fended by reference to biblical precedent.
VJhy then will such men, as in all actions of
Divine Service, pretend to limit every thing
precisely to the patterne of Christ himself,
to doe just as he did, and no otherwise, why
will they admit any other position of the body,
in preaching, then sitting, since, ut plurlmum,
at least, for the most part, Christ did preach
sitting? Or if Christ did both sit, and stand,
why will they not acknowledge, that all positions
of the body, that are reverent, are indifferent
in themselves, in the service of God; and being
so, why will they not admit that position of the
body, which being indifferent in it selfe, is
by just command of lawfull authority, made
necessary to them, that is, kneeling at the
Sacrament? (Sermon 13, Vol. VII, pp. 331-332).
Donne is following Hooker in the contention that some thing
things, according to biblical precedent, are "indiffer-
14
ent." Concerning such things as are Indifferent by
biblical authority, one is obliged to obey the lawful
authority of the Church-State. As Hooker says, "for
ceremonies and external discipline the Church hath power
15
to make laws. . . ."
^ T he Reformation, p. 203.
l4See Laws, Bk. II, Works, I, pp. 294-299.
1^Laws, Bk. Ill, Works, I, p. 404.
65
In another sermon Donne rebukes members of his own
congregation for refusing to kneel.
. . . there come some persons to this Church,
and personp of example to many that come with
them, of whom . . . I never saw Master nor
servant kneele, at his comming into this Church,
or at any part of divine service. . . . As our
comming to Church is a testification, a profes
sion of our religion, to testifie our fall in
Adam, the Church appoints us to fall upon our
knees; and to testifie our Resurrection in
Christ Jesus, the Church hath appointed certaine
times, to stand: But no man is left so to his
liberty, as never to kneele. Genuflexlo est pec-
catorum, kneeling is the sinners posture; if thou
come hither in the quality of a sinner . . . put
thy selfe into the posture of a sinner, kneele.
(Sermon 5, Vol. IX, pp. 152-153).
Donne's strategy seems to slip a little here--certainly
the Latin in this passage would only serve to confirm the
suspicions of the obstinate Puritan with whom Donne is
trying to reason.
Evelyn M. Simpson assumes that passages such as this
are simply evidence of the lack of true religiosity on
the part of many of the seventeenth-century churchgoers.1^
It is true that attendance was required by law and that
the church often functioned as a sort of public meeting
place, and these factors doubtlessly made impossible the
kind of devotional atmosphere to which later generations
have become accustomed. But it is quite probable that
those who refused to kneel did so from puritanical
1 f \
Introduction, Vol. VII of Sermons, p. 28.
66
convictions such as those that Owen Chadwick describes.
We know that John Smyth in 1608 baptized himself because
there was no church pure enough to do it, and George Fox's
devotional zeal would not allow him to remove his hat in
church. Donne even has a word on this--"you come as
Ambassadors, covered in his presence, as though ye come
from as great a Prince as he" (Sermon 12, Vol. VII,
P. 318).
Another traditional aspect of worship that Donne
defends is church music. Walton tells us that "A Hymne
to God the Father" was caused by Donne "to be set to a
most grave and solemn tune, and to be often sung to the
Organ by the Choristers of that Church. . ." (St. Paul's)}^
It will be remembered that Luther, too, was a great com
poser of hymns, although music in church was frowned upon
by the Puritans. But Donne is not so austere as the
Puritans, and music provides one of his favorite sources
of imagery in the sermons. Of particular interest is a
sermon dealing with the duties of the minister, a sermon
that is organized around a recurring motif of music and
harmony. The text of the sermon is Ezek. 33.32, "And lo,
thou art unto them as a lovely song, of one that hath a
pleasant voyce, and can play well on an Instrument; for
17
Izaak Walton, The Life of John Donne (London,
1658), pp. 77-78.
67
they hear thy words, but they doe them not." The preacher,
Donne says, is
a Trumpet, to awaken with terror. But then,
he shall become Carmen musicum, a musical and
harmonious charmer, to settleand compose the
soul again in a reposed confidence, and in a
delight in God: he shall be muslcum carmen,
musick, harmony to the soul in his matter;
he shall preach harmonious peace to the con
science: and he shall be musicum carmen,
musick and harmony in his manner. . . .
(Sermon 7, Vol. II, pp. 166-167).
Donne also believes in the tradition of the church
year, whereby certain biblical texts were held to be appro
priate to certain religious days and seasons--Christmas,
18
Candlemas, fiaster, Pentecost, etc.
It hath been the custome of the Christian Church
to appropriate certaine Scriptures to certaine
Dayes, for the celebrating of certaine Mysteries
of God, or the commemorating of certaine bene
fits from God . . . ,.in the pure times of the
Church, without any question, and in the cor
rupter times of the Church, without any infection,
and in the Reformed times of the Church, without
any suspition of back-sliding, this custome hath
beene retained, which our Church hath retained. . . .
(Sermon 6, Vol. VI, pp. 132-133).
Donne's alliance with tradition also causes him to
oppose puritanical frugality in the upkeep of churches.
In accordance with the Laudlan program of church building
and beautification, Donne praises King James, who, in the
®See William Gifford, "John Donne1 ^ Sermons on the
Grand Days," Huntington Library Quarterly, XXIX (May 1966),
235-244.
68
eighteenth year of his reign, "visited this church /St,
Paul's/7* and these wals, and meditated, and perswaded the
reparation thereof" (Sermon 9, Vol. IV, p. 247). This
passage occurs in the sermon preached on the anniversary
of the Gunpowder Plot, and the creativeness of King James
is obviously being contrasted with the destructiveness of
Catholic recusants. Thus in Donne's rhetoric the Puritans
who oppose church building find themselves, by rather
vague implications, joined with the Catholics. Earlier
in his career, at Lincoln's Inn, Donne had preached an
entire sermon on the subject of fund raising for a new
chapel (Sermon 10, Vol. II, pp. 213-234). In this sermon
Donne accepts the Puritan contention that God can be wor
shipped in any place. Donne refers to the biblical ex
amples that prove the contention— Jonah found his Church
in a whale, Jeremiah found his in a dungeon, and the
repentant thief found his upon a cross. But the ordinary
place to find God is where he has promised to be--in his
Church. Donne then goes on to discuss the rich tradition
of Church life and the admirable custom of building
churches to the glory of God.
Donne, then, was a true Laudian in his attitudes
toward the necessities of salvation and toward the cere
monial and traditional aspects of worship. While
criticizing the Roman Church for abusing and "adoring" the
sacraments and for elevating human traditions to a level
of equality with scriptural commandments, Donne at the
same time defends the absolute value of baptism and holy
communion and the retention of those rituals, ceremonies,
and traditions that are meaningful aids to devotion.
With his Calvinist antagonists in mind, Donne bases his
defense of these ceremonies and traditions on scriptural
precedent, even quoting Calvin's own cautious approval of
"behooveful" ceremonies.
But whatever his public statements, Donne's fondness
for ritual was probably formed first of all in his poetic
temperament. The rituals of the Church are, for Donne,
wonderful symbols of God's decree and God's promise to
man. The candles of Candlemas Day symbolize the light
brought to earth by Christ, circumcision is important to
19
Donne as a symbolic purification, baptism into the Church
Militant is a symbol of resurrection in the Church Trium
phant, and the marriage of man and woman on earth is a
symbol of the union of the soul with God in heaven. And,
19
Mueller suggests that this rite interests Donne
because of his guilt feelings over past indiscretions.
See John Donne; Preacher, 128-129. Donne preaches an
entire sermon on the subject of circumcision. The point
of the sermon is found in the unfortunate expression,
"Circumcise the foreskin of your heart" (Sermon 9, Vol. VI,
P. 193).
70
although Stephen F.gerton could speak of abolishing the
20
foolish ritual of ring-giving in marriage, Donne's
imagination is fired by the symbol of the ring.
Early in the sermon "Preached at a Mariage" (the
marriage of Mistress Margaret Washington at the church of
St. Clement Danes, May 30, 1621), Donne says we can see
"a kind of eternity, a kind of circle without beginning,
without end, even in this secular mariage" (Sermon 11,
Vol. Ill, p. 247). And of the other marriage, which this
one symbolizes--
. . . When I consider Christ to have been from
before all beginnings, and to be still the Image
of the Father, the same stamp upon the same
metall, and my self a peece of rusty cooper,
in which those lines of the Image of God which
were imprinted in me in my Creation are defaced
and worn, and washed and burnt, and ground away,
by my many, and many, and many sins: When I
consider Christ in his Circle, in glory with his
Father, before he came into this world, estab
lishing a glorious Church when he was in this
world, and glorifying that Church with that
glory which himself had before, when he went
out of this world; and then consider my self
in my circle, I came into this world washed in
mine own tears, and either out of compunction
for my self or compassion for others, I passe
through this world as through a valley of tears,
where tears settle and swell, and when I passe
out of this world I leave their eyes whose hands
close mine, full of tears too, can these persons,
this Image of God, this God himself, this glorious
God, and this vessell of earth, this earth it
self, this inglorious worm of the earth, meet
without disparagement?
^See Introduction to Vol. IV of the Sermons,
P. 15.
They doe meet and make a mariage; becaus
I am not a body onely, but a body and soul,
there is a mariage, and Christ maries me.
(Sermon 11, Vol. Ill, pp. 250-2^1).
CHAPTER IV
THE HISTORICAL CONTINUITY OF THE CHURCH
We have seen that Donne is not interested in reject
ing the ceremonies inherited from the Roman Catholic Church,
as were many of the more extreme reformers of his day.
Instead, Donne defends the principle of accepting tradi
tions that were established even in a "foreign" churchy
correcting, of course, any "abuses" of those traditions
that that church might have fallen into. This respect
for tradition indicates a profound difference between
the Church of England and the more radical sects of the
Reformation. Although the radical reformers spoke of
breaking completely with the Roman Catholic Church, the
Church of England sought to affirm its ties with the
early Catholic Church.
Answering Roman Catholic charges of heresy and
schism, Donne argues that his Church is not heretical
because, as we have seen, it offers all that is necessary
for salvation. It is not schismatic because _it is the
tr-ue descendant of the Church established by the Apostles
and the early Church Fathers. It is, in fact, the Roman
Church that is guilty of schism--of departing from or
72
78
corrupting the ceremonies and teachings of the Patristic
Church.
Thus one of the most frequent themes in Donne's
attacks on the Roman Catholic Church is the changeable
ness of that church (a fault shared with the Puritans),
for "new terms in Divinity were ever suspicious in the
Church of God. . ." (Sermon 6, Vol. I, p. 255).
The word of the man of Sinne, the God of Rome,
is a ly; Pope Stephen abrogates all the Decrees
of Pope Formosus, and so gives that ly to him:
Next yeere Pope Romanus abrogates all his, and
so gives that ly to him; and within seven yeers,
Servius all his; and where was fldells sermo,
the faithful 1 word all this while? When they
send forth Bulls and Dispensations to take
effect occasionally, and upon emergencies . . .
where is this fldells sermo, this faithfull word
amongst them? If for the space of 1500 yeers,
the twelve Articles of the Apostles Creed might
have sav'd any man, but since as many more,
Trent Articles must be as necessary; still where
is that fldells sermo, that faithfull word which
we may rely upon? ("Sermon 8, Vol. I, p. 297).
As this passage suggests, the salient example, to Donne,
of the changeableness of the Roman Catholic Church is the
Council of Trent. Donne refers to it often in his sermon,
and to the "new" requirements of faith the Council spelled
out in answer to the doctrinal challenges of the Protes-
1
tants.
There follows a partial list of Donne's overt refer
ences to Council of Trent in his sermons. It is not com
plete, but it will suggest the frequency of Donne's concern
with the new doctrines and pronouncements of the Council,
and this in sermons that Donne would claim are not contro
versial: Sermon 8, Vol. I, p. 297; Sermon 4, Vol. Ill,
74
. . . Compare Creeds to Creeds, and the new
Creed of the Trent Council, is greater by
many Articles then the Apostles Creed is.
Compare Oathes to Oathes; and Berengarlus old
Oath in the Roman Church, that he must sweare
to the Frangltur & terltur, that he broke the
flesh of Christ with his teeth, and ground it
with his jawes; and the new Oath of the Council
of Trent, that he must sweare that all those
subtlll School-polnts, determined there, in
which a man might have believed the contrary
a few dayes before, and yet have been a good
Roman Catholick too, are true, and true de fide;
so true, as that he cannot be saved now, except
he believe them. . . . (Sermon 9, Vol. Ill,
P. 211).
Of course one could argue that the Church of England, with
its Thirty-nine Articles of Faith, was as guilty as the
Roman Church of adding "new" requirements of faith. I am
not concerned here with defending or refuting Donne's
reasoning (for Donne's defense of the Thirty-nine Articles,
see the beginning of Chapter Three of this study). It Is
true that Donne, for better or for worse, found himself
traveling in a nebula of charges and counter-chaitres such
as those recently satirized by Luis Bunuel's film "The
Milky Way."
And then, as stars doe not beget stars, Articles
of faith doe not beget Articles of faith; so,
as that the Counclll of Trent should be brought
p. 132; Sermon 7, Vol. Ill, p. 176; Sermon 9, Vol. Ill,
p. 209; Sermon 9, Vol. Ill, pp. 211-212; Sermon 15,
Vol. Ill, p. 316; Sermon 17, Vol. Ill, p. 369; Sermon 4,
Vol. IV, pp. 139 and 144; Sermon 7, Vol. IV, pp. 205-206;
Sermon 9, Vol. IV, p. 237; Sermon 12, Vol. VI, p. 249;
Sermon 16, Vol. VII, p. 403; and Sermon 16, Vol. IX,
p. 361.
to bed a new Creed, not conceived before by the
holy Ghost In the"Scriptures, and, (which Is a
monstrous birth) the child greater than the
Father, as soon as It Is borne, the new Creed
of the Council of Trent to containe more Ar
ticles ,—therTThe—oTd—Creed of the Apostles did.
(Sermon 17, Vol. Ill, p. 369).
And elsewhere Donne gives us a satirical scene that Bunuel
might have used had he known of It. Donne describes the
unfortunate Roman Catholic who, on his deathbed, must hur
riedly send forth a messenger to learn if there are any
new beliefs required for salvation.
In all of Donne's criticisms of the Council of Trent,
he refers only to the dogmatic pronouncements of the Coun
cil. But redefining the dogma of the Church in view of
the Protestant challenge was only half of the work of
that Council. The other half was the disciplinary reform
of the priesthood, but Donne fails to credit the Council
2
with any meaningful reform.
The Roman Church, then, like the characters Donne
portrays in poems such as "The Indifferent" and "Womans
Constancy," is changeable and fickle, and the Council of
Trent provides the most recent evidence of that fact. The
Church of England, on the other hand, is the faithful heir
of the Patristic Church.
2
These two aspects of the Council of Trent are dis
cussed by Henri Daniel-Rops, The Catholic Reformation,
trans. John Warrington (New York, 1964), I, pp. 99-211.
76
This belief fashions the very fabric and style of
Donne's sermons--his use of traditional Latin and his
numerous (and sometimes tiresome) references to the early
Fathers— Jerome, Augustine, Orlgen, and Chrysostom, to name
2
only a few of the most frequently revered saints. Both
these aspects of style provide a running proof that the
Church of England is following in the tradition of the
early Church. Thus Donne defends the "naming" of saints,
while attacking the Roman perversion of praying to them.
"Why," he asks, "should I pray to Saint Nicolas for a
faire passage at Sea, when he that rebuked the storme, is
nearer me then S. Nicolas?" (Sermon 12, Vol. IV, p. 311).
And yet it should not happen that "when because they pray
to Saints, we will reproach the Saints, or not name the
Saints. . ." (Sermon 7, Vol. Ill, p. 175).
In addition to prayers to saints, Donne refers to a
host of other Roman Catholic corruptions, most of them
unrelated to the Council of Trent. In fact, Donne is
never very specific about what these "new Creeds" insisted
on by the Council were; although we have seen that he
believed the Council had been guilty of the error of
elevating human traditions to a level of equal authority
3
William Mueller discusses the great extent to which
Donne's use of authorities controls the structure of his
sermons. See John Donne; Preacher (Princeton, 1962),
PP. 95-98.
77
with scriptures (see Chapter Three). Perhaps he was more
specific about the other abuses of the Council of Trent
in a series of sermons he preached for the sole purpose
of refuting Roman errors. But these sermons have been
lost, and we know of them only from a passing reference
in one of the sermons we do have:
. . . as heretofore I found it a useful1 and
acceptable labour, to employ our Evening exer
cises, upon the vindicating of some such places
of Scripture, as our adversaries of the Roman
Church had detorted. . . . (Sermon 16, Vol. II,
P. 325).
Since these sermons have not survived, we are left to
piece together Donne's version of Rome's faults from
4
occasional references in the other sermons.
4
We have already seen Donne's objections to Rome in
the areas of sacraments and ceremonies. The following is
a list of other corruptions that have crept into the
Roman Church: Prayers to saints--Sermon 12, Vol. IV,
p. 311; Sermon 7, Vol. Ill, p. 175; Sermon 14, Vol. IX,
pp. 321-323; Sermon 14, Vol. VIII, p. 329: Prayers for
the dead— Sermon 13, Vol. IV, p. 332; Sermon 6, Vol. VII,
throughout; Sermon 5, Vol. VIII, p. 153: Prayers to
statues— Sermon 14, Vol. IX, p. 322: Hoarding of rlches--
Sermon 18, Vol. Ill, p. 384; Sermon 15, Vol. IX, p. 337:
The Crusades--Sermon 8, Vol. IX, p. 209; Sermon 16, Vol.Ill,
p. 332; Supererogation--Sermon 6, Vol. IX, p. 170; Sermon
14, Vol. II, p. 300; Sermon 4, Vol. Ill, pp. 127-128;
Sermon 17, Vol. Ill, pp. 373-374; The doctrine of venial
sin--Sermon 6, Vol. II, p. 160; Sermon 3, Vol. II, p. 100:
Indulgences--Sermon 4, Vol. Ill, p. 128; Sermon 6, Vol. VII,
throughout: Purgatory--Sermon 6, Vol. VII, throughout;
Sermon 7, Vol. VII, p. 192: Celibacy--Sermon 4, Vol. Ill,
p. 131; Sermon 3, Vol. VI, p. 83; Sermon 17, Vol. II,
p. 340 (Here Laud was closer to Rome than Donne; Laud
was a celibate and announced his intentions to prefer
celibate before married clergymen): Flagellation--
Sermon 13, Vol. VI, p. 271: Worship of Mary--Sermon 8,
78
One of the main reasons, as Donne sees It, for the
changeableness of the Catholic faith is its involvement
in civil affairs. To the English, the Jesuits, who were
held responsible for the Gunpowder Plot, were the instru
ment of this involvement. Even though his own uncle had
suffered for being a Jesuit, Donne is at his Agnewian
worst in his attacks on that Order: "When I see a Jesuit
solicite the chastity of a daughter. . ." (Sermon 5,
Vol. IV, p. 1^5); or "they come to that name, the name
of Father, a little too literally. . ." (Sermon 7, Vol. VII,
p. 205). Donne's jibes at the Pope's "fatherhood" are
not quite so nasty. Donne calls the Pope that Father who
"begets his children, not upon the true mother, the Church,
but upon the Court, and so produces articles of faith,
according as State business, and civill occasions invite
him. . ." (Sermon 3, Vol. II, p. 103). This is "Almanack
Divinity, that changes with the season, with the time, and
Meridionall Divinity, calculated to the height of such a
Vol. VI, p. 183; Sermon 5* Vol. Ill, pp. 146-147: The
Inquisition--Sermon 12, Vol. VI, p. 247: Monasticism—
Sermon 1, Vol. VI, p. 47: Itinerant preaching--Sermon 13,
Vol. V, p. 255: The Jesuits--Sermon 4, Vol. IV, p. 139;
Sermon 7, Vol. II, p. 178; Sermon 5, Vol. IV, p. 155;
Sermon 7, Vol. VII, p. 205: Intrusion of Pope into civil
affairs— Sermon 16, Vol. II, p. 327; Sermon 13, Vol. Ill,
pp. 289-290; Sermon 3, Vol. Ill, p. 95; Sermon 14, Vol. II,
pp. 302-303: Making apocryphal books equal to scripture—
Sermon 15, Vol. VII, p. 385.
79
place, and Lunary Divinity, that ebbes and flowes, and
State Divinity. . ." (Sermon 14, Vol. IV, p. 349). The
Church of England has neatly eliminated the problem of the
Church intruding into State affairs by making the King the
head of both Church and State. Of course the interests
of the two estates were not really made to coincide in
England, either, as indicated by the fact that the King
saw the need to issue his "Directions" to his preachers
5
in a time of political crisis. Furthermore, the estate
of the Church was divided within itself, and this division
was to alter the political future of England. Laud’s
execution by the Puritans for treason in 1645 can be taken
as symbolic of England's failure to avoid "State Divinity."
All of Donne's attacks on the errors of Rome, from
the Crusades to the Inquisition, can be seen as a part of
the justification for Donne's claim that the Church of
England is the true heir of the original Christian Church,
which has only been abused and corrupted in Rome. Donne
presents this argument directly in his statements concern
ing the Anglican ministry. Acting somewhat as a lawyer,
Donne seeks to validate the authority of the Anglican
clergy, under the King, as opposed to the claims of the
Roman Catholic clergy, under the Pope.
5
Donne preached a sermon defending these "Directions,"
Sermon 7, Vol. IV, pp. 178-209. For further discussion
see p. 95, below.
80
Donne argues that the true Church is a kind of ab
stract reality that becomes embodied to a greater or lesser
degree in the temporal churches. In one century one tem
poral church might best represent the true Church, in
another time another temporal church might best represent
this ideal. Thus reason is satisfied that the true Church
could now be found in a "new" temporal church such as the
Church of England--reason is satisfied that a "new" church
can be the old Church. Commenting on the pillar that God
revealed to Moses, Donne says,
To us, the Church is that Pillar; in that, God
shewes us our way. For strength It is a Pillar,
and a Pillar for firmnesse and fixation: But
yet the Church is neither an equall Pillar,
alwaies fire, but sometimes cloud too; The Church
is more and less visible, sometimes in splendor,
sometimes in an eclipse; neither is it so a fixt
Pillar, as that it is not in divers places. The
Church is not so fixed to Rome, as that it is
not communicated to other Nations, nor so limited
in it selfe, as that it may not admit changes,
in those things that appertain to Order, and
Discipline. Our way, that God teaches us, is
the Church; That is a Pillar; Fixed, for Fundamen-
tall things, but yet a moveable Pillar, for things
Indifferent, and arbitrary. (Sermon 16, Vol. IX,
pp. 362-363).
And in another place Donne argues that
For, for the Church, the peace of the Church,
the plenty of the Church, the ceremonies of the
Church, they are sua, but not ilia, they are
hers, but they are not she. And these things,
riches and ceremonies, they may be washed off
with one tide, and cast on with another, dis
continued in one Age, and re-assumed in another,
devested in one Church, and invested in another,
and yet the Church is, she in her fundamentall
Doctrines, never touched. (Sermon 14, Vol. IX,
P. 332).
81
This argument is expanded in a sermon referred to in
the first chapter of this dissertation, a sermon that one
must read in its entirety to appreciate the care with which
Donne develops his case. The sermon takes the form of a
history lesson preached on the text, "Thou Art My Hiding
Place; Thou Shalt Preserve Mee Prom Trouble; Thou Shalt
Compasse Me About With Songs of Deliverance" (Sermon 18,
Vol. IX, pp. 33^-3^9). Twice God has hid the Church
against her enemies, the sermon asserts.
. . . Though I were in danger, it was thou that
didst hide me from them. This the Church hath
had occasion to say more then once; Once in the
Primitive plantation thereof, and againe in her
Reformation: At both times God showed mercy
to her that way, in hiding her.
First then God hid the Primitive Church from
the eye of envy, by keeping her poore. . . .
(Vol. IX, p. 336).
But then the Roman rulers made this hiding place
to be the most conspicuous, the most glorious,
the most eminent, the richest and most abundant
places of the World . . . when they were come for
their huge opulency to that height, that they
were formidable to those States that harboured
them . . . when they were come to that over
valuation of their Religious Orders, as to say,
That a Monke, a Fryer merited more in his very
sleep, or meales, then any secular man. . . Their
revenew, their number, their dignity being come
to this, And then their viciousnesse, their sensu
ality, their bestiality, to as great a height and
exaltation, as that; yet in the midst of all these,
Tu absconsio mea, may the Reformed Church say, The
Lord was their hiding place, that mourned for this,
when they could not helpe, and at all times, and
by all meanes that God afforded them, endeavored
to advance a Reformation. (Sermon 15, Vol. IX,
PP. 337-338).
82
This Reformed Church emerged, and, although it was not
without division, it was the true heir of the Primitive
Church, accepting the teachings of the early Fathers and
the doctrines of the early Councils.
If they say, we are perplexed with differences
of opinions amongst our selves, let this satisfie
them, that we doe agree all, in all fundamentall
things: And that in things much nearer the
foundations, then those in which our differences
lie, they differ amongst themselves, with more
acrimony and bitternesse, then we doe. If they
thinke to perplex us with the Fathers, we are
ready to joyne that issue with them; where the
Fathers speak unanimously, dogmatically, in
matters of faith, we are content to be tried
by the Fathers. If they thinke to perplex us
with Councels, we will goe as farre as they in
the old ones, and as farre as they for meeting
in new Councels, if they be fully, that is Roy
ally. Imperially called. . . .(Vol. IX, pp. 343-
344).
In another sermon, Donne says,
Our Adversaries of Rome charge us, that we have
but a negative Religion; If that were true, it
were a heavy charge, if we did onely deny, and
establish nothing; But we deny all their new
additions, so that we affirme all the old foun
dations. (Sermon 18, Vol. IX, p. 405).
In these passages Donne is not speaking only of the
Church of England when he talks about the Reformed Church.
He invisions a healing of the "differences" among the
Protestant religions, a healing that would ultimately
include even Rome and would result in a single, Univer
sal Church.
But first, the validity of the Church of England,
around which this new Universal Church would form, must
83
be established. Donne begins this specific defense of
the Church of England by defending the legality of Anglican
Orders. Holy Orders (along with marriage, confirmation,
and confession) is a ceremony of the Church of England;
although it does not have the status of a sacrament as
in the Homan Catholic Church. Nonetheless, Donne is care
ful to explain that the Church of England has an orderly
derivation of power and a proper rite of Ordination.
When our adversaries do so violently, so impet
uously cry out, that we have no Church, no
Sacrament, no Priesthood, because none are sent,
that is, none have a right calling, for Internail
calling, who are called by the Spirit of God,
they can be no Judges, and for External! calling,
we admit them for Judges, and are content to be
tried by their own Canons, and their own evidences,
for our Mission and vocation, our sending and our
calling to the Ministry. If they require a neces
sity of lawfull Ministers to the constitution of
a Church, we require it with as much earnestnesse
as they; Ecclesia non est quae non habet sacerdotem,
we professe with Saint Hlerome, It is no Church
that hath no Priest. If they "require, that this
spiritual power be received from them, who have
the same power in themselves, we professe it too,
Nemo dat quod non habet, no man can confer other
power upon another, then he hath himself. If
they require Imposition of hands, in conferring
Orders, we joyn hands with them. . . . Whatsoever
their own authors, their own Schools, their own
Canons doe require to be essential and necessarily
requisite in this Mission in this function, we,
for our parts, and as much as concerns our Church
of England, admit it too, and professe to have it.
And whatsoever they can say for their Church, that
from their first Conversion, they have had an
orderly derivation of power from one to another,
we can as justly and truly say of our Church, that
ever since her first being of such a Church, to
this day, she hath conserved the same order, and
84
ever hath had, and hath now, those Ambassadours
sent, with the same Commission, and by the same
means, that they pretend to have in their Church.
(Sermon 5. , Vol. X, pp. 128-129).
In the last chapter we saw Donne defend the cere
monies of the Church of England against Puritan opponents
by using the criterion of biblical precedent accepted by
them. Now Donne defends the legality of Anglican Orders
against Catholic opposition by a similar technique of
accommodation, admitting the Catholic criteria for the
lawful conferring of Orders.
Elsewhere Donne speaks of the awesome power and
responsibility of the priest.
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 Vae si non, woe be unto thee,
if thou doe not preach, and then enables him to
preach peace, mercy, consolation, to the whole
Congregation. (Sermon 4, Vol. VII, p. 134).
Although the Church of England follows the Patristic
Church by accepting the teachings of the Fathers and the
early Councils, and although it has an orderly derivation
of power and proper rites of Ordination, there remains the
troublesome problem of the Roman Catholic doctrine of
Apostolic Succession. According to this doctrine, the
Pope is the legal successor of St. Peter and thus the
sole rightful head of the Christian Church. Obviously,
this doctrine must be refuted if the claims of the Church
of England are to stand.
This doctrine originally served somewhat the same
purposes that Donne is now serving in denying it. That
is, the Roman Church in its early days faced the same
problem now faced by the Church of England, that of estab
lishing its authority. According to Henry Chadwick, the
doctrine developed as a weapon in the conflicts with the
Gnostics.
Against any heretical claim to possess secret
traditions of what Jesus had told the apostles
in the forty days after the resurrection, there
was the clear argument that the apostles Peter
and Paul could not have failed to impart such
doctrines to those whom they had set over the
churches, . . .6
By establishing an Infallible contemporary authority (the
doctrine of Papal Infallibility is a logical extension of
Apostolic Succession), the Roman Church sought to enforce
unity and conformity. Donne's contention that the Anglican
Church has a properly ordained clergy, together with his
denial of Apostolic Succession, serves somewhat the same
purpose for his Church in his century. In one of the
Lincoln's Inn sermons Donne takes up the question of Papal
authority and Apostolic Succession.
The Apostleship, as it was the fruitfullest,
so it was the barrennest vocation; They were
to catch all the world; there is their fecundity;
^Henry Chadwick, The Early Church (Middlesex, 1967),
p. 42.
86
but the Apostles were to have no Successors,
as Apostles; there Is their barrennesse. The
Apostleship was not intended for a function
to raise houses and families; The function
ended in their persons; after the first, there
were no more Apostles.
And therefore it is an usurpation, an impos
ture, an illusion, it is a forgery, when the
Bishop of Rome will proceed by Apostolicall
authority, and with Apostolicall dignity, and
Apostolicall jurisdiction; If he be S. Peters
Successor in the Bishopricke of Rome, he may
proceed with Episcopall authority in his Dioces.
If he be; for, though we doe not deny that S.
Peter was at Rome, and Bishop of Rome . . . yet
out of Scriptures (which is a necessary proofe
in Article of faith) they can never prove that
S. Peter was Bishop of Rome, or ever at Rome. . . .
So doe they deceive themselves and others, that
pretend in the Bishop of Rome an Apostolicall
jurisdiction, a jurisdiction over all the world,
whereas howsoever he may be S. Peters Successor,
as Bishop of Rome, yet he is no Successor to
S. Peter as an Apostle; upon which onely the
universall power can be grounded, and without
which that universall power fals to the ground:
The Apostolicall faith remaines spread over all
the world, but Apostolicall jurisdiction is
expired with their persons. (Sermon 14, Vol. II,
pp. 302-304).
Here, rather than attempting to accommodate the Catholic
opponent by accepting his basic assumptions, Donne clearly
asserts the Protestant criterion of clear scriptural au
thority. And yet it seems a bit weak for Donne to admit
that Peter was in Rome, but to tell the Catholics they
have no case since they cannot prove Peter's presence in
Rome from scripture. Certainly a clear scriptural refer
ence to Peter’s having been in Rome would not render Apos
tolic Succession an unassailable doctrine.
87
By denying the Roman Catholic doctrine of Apostolic
Succession, Donne creates the possibility of asserting
that all Christian churches are Apostolic, not just the
Roman Catholic Church.
. . . Every Church is a supreme Church, and
every Church is an Apostolicall Church, dum
omnes unam probant unltatem, as long as they
agree in the unity of that doctrine which the
Apostles taught, and adhere to the supreme head
of the whole Church, Christ Jesus. (Sermon 8,
Vol. Ill, p. 138).
In disputing Apostolic Succession, Donne is again
following Hooker, who, in Book Three, Chapter xi, of the
Laws sought to demonstrate that Christ did not set down
a body of rules for the Church to follow that was so
specific as to preclude change or reformation. On the
other hand, Hooker asserts that the hierarchical structure
that is characteristic of both the Roman and the English
churches, but opposed by Presbyterian reformers, is neces
sary :
Again, forasmuch as where the clergy are any
great multitude, order doth necessarily require
that by degrees they be distinguished; we hold
there have ever been and ever ought to be in
such case at leastwise two sorts of ecclesias
tical persons, the one subordinate unto the
other; as to Apostles in the beginning, and to
the Bishops always since, we find plainly both
in Scripture and in all ecclesiastical records,
other ministers of the word and sacraments have
been.7
^Richard Hooker, Laws, Bk. Ill, Works, ed. John
Keble (Oxford, 1888), rTpT 413.
88
Donne's defense of this structure has already been
implied in his affirmation of a proper derivation of power
and proper rites of Ordination in his Church. And in a
dedicatory epistle to a sermon preached "To the Master
of the Bench, and the rest of the Honourable Societie
of Lincolnes Inne," Donne says his purpose is to oppose
"one pestilent calumny of theirs, that wee have cast off
all distinction of places. . ." (Sermon 15, Vol. IV,
p. 362). The Church of England cannot be accused of
being democratic.
Although Donne's Church keeps a proper "distinction
of places," it substitutes the King for the Pope. The
final stage in Donne's case, then, involves establishing
the validity of the King's authority to head both Church
and State. This is done through the doctrine of the
"divine right of Kings." Simply stated, this doctrine
held that a king derived his power or authority directly
from God (as opposed, for instance, to a "social contract"
theory, which locates the source of power in the will of
the people). As Donne says, "Princes are Gods Trumpet,
and the Church is Gods Organ. . . . When he speaks in the
Prince, when he speaks in the Church, there we are bound
to heare, and happy if we doe hear" (Sermon 10, Vol. VI,
P. 217).
■ 3 9
This doctrine of the divine right of kings served
the same function in the Church of England as the doctrine
of Apostolic Succession served in the Roman Catholic
Church. That is, it legitimatized the authority of the
leader by linking him with the source of all power as
construed by popular mythology or belief. In the follow
ing passage Donne clearly rejects the social contract
theory in favor of the divine right theory and clearly
asserts the necessity of the union of Church and State.
First then, the sin directed against the Father,
whom wee consider to be the roote and center of
all power, is, when as some men have thought the
soule of man to be nothing but a resultance of
the temperament and constitution of the body of
man, and no infusion from God, so they thinke
that power, by which the world is governed, is
but a resultance of the consent, and the tacite
voice of the people, who are content, for their
ease to bee so governed, and no particular Or
dinance of God: It is an undervaluing, a false
conception, a misapprehension of those beames of
power, which God from himself sheds upon those,
whom himselfe cals Gods in this World. We sin
then against the Father, when we undervalue God
in his Priest. God hath made no step in that
perverse way of the Roman Church, to prefer,
as they doe, the Priest before the King; yet,
speaking in two severall places, of the dignity
of his people, first, as Jews, then as Christians,
he says in one place, They shall be a Kingdom,
and a Kingdom of Priests; and he sayes in the
other, They shall be Sacerdotium, and Regale
Sacerdotlum, Priests, and royall Priests: In
one place, the King, in the other, the~~Friest
mentioned first, and in both places, both in
volved in one another. . . .(Sermon 13, Vol. Ill,
P. 289).
Elsewhere Donne is more specific about the powers of the
King, as granted by God.
oo
The Kings of the earth are faire and glorious
resemblances of the King of heaven; they are
beames of that Sun, Tapers of that Torch, they
are like gods, they are gods: The Lord kllleth
and maketh alive, He bringeth down to the grave,
and bringeth up: This is the Lord of heaven;
The Lords anointed, Kings of the earth do so too;
They have the dispensation of judgement, and of
mercy, they execute, and they pardon. . . .
(Sermon 3, Vol. V, p. 83).
Thus the duty of the citizen is obedience to the
King. "Obedience to Superlours, and charity to others . . .
are the Naturall mans, the Civill mans, the Morall mans
Old and New Testament" (Sermon 16, Vol. VII, p. 403).
Those therefore that allow but a condltionall
Soveraignty in a Kingdome, an arbitrary, a
temporary Soveralgnty, that may be transferred
at the pleasure of another, they oppose the
Nolumus hoc, we would not have, we would not
live under this form of Government, not under
a temporall Monarchy, Nolumus hoc. Those that
determine Allegiance, and civil obedience onely
by their own religion, and think themselves bound
to obey none, that is of another perswasion, they
oppose the Nolumus hunc, We will not have this man
to reign over us; and so, make their relations,
and fix tneir dependencies upon forein hopes,
Nolumus hunc. Those that fix a super-Soveralgnty
in the people, or in a Presbytery, they oppose
the Nolumus sic, we would not have things carried
thusl ! . .(Sermon 17, Vol. VII, p. 427).
Presbyterian government in the Church and democratic gov
ernment in the State are denied in favor of a hierarchical
structure that Donne pictures as a great chain of order.
. . . the totall summe of this Ceremoniall debt
to Superiors, is, that due respect be given to
every man, in his place; for when young men
thinke it the onely argument for a good spirit,
to behave themselves fellowly, and frowardly to
great persons, those greater persons in time,
91
take away their respect from Princes, and at
last, (for in the chain of order, every link
depends upon one another) God loses the respect
and honour due to him; private men lessen their
respect of Magistrates, and Magistrates of
Princes, and Princes and all, of God. (Sermon 12,
Vol. IV, p. 316).
This belief in the union of Church and State and the
proper authority of the King provided Donne with his argu
ment in Pseudo-Martyr, that for a Catholic recusant to
deny the authority of the King in matters civil or relig
ious is not heroic, it is simply unlawful. The political
threat of Catholicism is obviously still very much on
Donne's mind in the sermons, and probably if it were not
for this political side of the controversy, the devotional
errors of Catholicism would have gone unnoticed by Donne.
The most immediate threat to order, civil and ecclesias
tical, was "Treason in pretence of religion ..."
(Sermon 6, Vol. I, p. 260). In the following passage
Donne uses the concept of the absolute power of the King
to oppose the treasonous activities of Catholics in England.
Whether the Mission of the Church of Rome of
Priests and Jesuites hither, be sufficient to
satisfie their consciences who are so sent, and
sent (in intendment of the Law) to inevitable
losse of life here, hath been laboriously enough
debated, and safely enough concluded, that such
a Mission cannot satisfie a rectified conscience.
What are they sent for? To defend the Immunities
of the Church: that is, to take away the inherent
right of the Crown, the supremacy of the King:
What seconds them? what assures them? That which
is their generail Tenent, that into what place so
ever the Pope may send Priests, he may send Armies
92
for the security of those Priests; and (as
another expresses it) in all Cases, where the
Pope may Injoyne any thing, he may lawfully
proceed by way of Warre against any that hinder
the execution thereof. That these Missions from
the Bishop of Rome are nnlawfull, is safely enough
concluded, A priori, in the very nature of the
commandement and Mission. For, it is to a place,
in which he that sends hath no power, for it is
into the Dominions of another absolute King. . . .
(Sermon 5, Vol. IV, pp. 156-157).
Donne is not merely being inflammatory here. With the
defeat of the Elector Palatine, brother-in-law of King
James and head of the "Evangelical Union" of Protestant
states, the fear of armed invasion in England was not
unfounded. Donne's familiarity with the state of affairs
on the continent was aided by his diplomatic journey as
the Viscount Doncaster's companion in 1619.
In another sermon Donne attributes the threat of
invasion to Catholic greed.
No doubt but the Church of Rome hungers still
for the money of this land, upon which they
fed so luxuriantly heretofore: and no doubt
but those men, whom they shall at any time
animate, will thirst for the blood of this land,
which they have sought before. . . .(Sermon 18,
Vol. Ill, p. 384).
And following the lines mapped out by Pseudo-Martyr,
Donne's sermons even contain denials of the validity of
contemporary martyrdom.
In which act of his, which was a direct and
evident opposing and affronting of the State,
though I dare not joyne with them, who absolutely
and peremptorily condemne this act of Daniel . . .
yet dare I much lesse draw this act of Daniels
into consequence, and propose it for an Example
and precedent to private men, least of all,
to animate seditious men, who upon pretence
of a necessity, that God must be served In
this, and this, and no other manner, provoke
and exasperate the Magistrate. . . .(Sermon 14,
Vol. V, pp. 290-291).
For one seriously concerned, as Donne was, with the
maintenance of order and stability in both Church and
State, and for the protection of Church and State from
the destruction planned by the cold war enemy, there must
have been moments of private frustration with the leader
ship of England's "faire and glorious resemblance" of God,
King James I. James was not entirely suited to handle the
crises of his time. While public opinion swung toward
giving military support to the Elector, James, having
sunk too far in debt to wage war, pursued the policy of
the "Spanish Match."
This diplomatic fiasco was based on the assumption
that if Prince Charles could be married to the Spanish
Infanta, English influence would be great enough with
the Catholic League to restore the Elector peaceably.
Against the nearly unanimous protests of his countrymen,
Prince Charles crept off in melodramatic disguise to
Spain, but returned disappointed and eager to wage war.
Four years of war ensued, for which England was ill pre
pared and ill financed. But then in 1625 Charles, by now
the King, married Henrietta Maria of France, daughter of
one Catholic monarch and the sister of another.
94
Against these farcical vacillations it must have
been difficult for Donne to steer a steady course in his
defense of the Church of England. Despite Donne's rhet
oric, his own King appeared as changeable as the Pope,
as willing to let faith wait upon state business, and his
own King had done far more to deplete the wealth of the
land than the greedy Catholics Donne depicts in the pulpit.
Donne had captured the King's attention with his anti-
Catholic work, Pseudo-Martyr, and had become a true be
liever. Now the King was seeking a rapprochement with
Spain, and restrictions against Catholic recusants were
being eased.
Donne's irritation with these events is reflected
in the sermons of the early 1620's. In one, he urges his
listeners not to rush out to a Catholic mass, even out of
mere curiosity, lest the confidence of the Catholics be
unnecessarily bolstered (Sermon 5, Vol. IV, p. 157).
And in another sermon, Donne's fears concerning the future
of the Church of England are reflected in the words, "Wo
be unto us, if we deliver not over our religion to our
posterity, in the same sincerity, and the same totality
in which our Fathers have delivered it us. . ." (Sermon 4,
Vol. Ill, p. 129). Donne's irritation with the King's
policies is further suggested by the fact that the sermon
delivered on the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot,
95
October 13, 1622, Is strongly anti-Catholic, even though
It was preached only a month after the sermon explaining
the King's "Directions" to preachers not to discuss con
troversial matters (i.e., the Spanish match).
And yet Donne was certainly not in open rebellion
against the King. The sermon, preached at James' command,
explaining the "Directions" (Sermon 7, Vol. IV) was warmly
appreciated by James, who caused it to be published (it is
the first of Donne's sermons to be published). And at
other times in the early 1620's we find Donne urging his
listeners to have patience with royal policies.
Whatever Donne thought of the Spanish match, he was
not the kind of man who is eager for war. There is that
man, Donne says, who will not
give Princes, and States time to consider,
whether it may not be fit for them to come to
leagues, and alliances, and declarations for
the assistance of the Cause of Religion next
year, though not this. But continuo scandal-
izatur, as soon as a Cathollque army hath given
a blow, and got a victory of any of our forces,
or friends, or as soon as a crafty Jesuit hath
forged a Relation, that that Army hath given
such a blow, or that such an Army there is
(for many times they intimidate weake men,
when they shoote nothing but Paper, when they
are onely Paper-Armies, and Pamphlet-Victories,
and no such truth) lITlco scandallzatur, yet
with these forged rumours, presently hee is
scandalized. . . .(Sermon 7, Vol. Ill, p. 179)•
The instability of the political situation in England is
suggested in the fact that Donne saw fit to try to create
a false sense of security among his listeners by implying
9 6
that reports of the very real Catholic military successes
in Europe were only forgeries. Even the text of this
sermon is a melancholy one--"Wo unto the world because of
offences." Towards the end of the sermon the tone of
melancholy rises in Donne's own words as he urges his au
dience not to forsake the Church or State merely because
they have had to "depart with some of their outward
splendor."
Not to mourn under the sense of evils, that may
fall upon us, is a stony disposition; Nay, the
hardest stone, marble, will weep towards foul
weather. But, to make all Possible things Neces
sary, (this may fall upon us, therefore it must
fall upon us) and to make contingent, and acci
dental! things, to be the effects of counsels,
(this is fallen upon us, therefore it is fallen
by their practise that have government in their
hands) this is a vexation of spirit in our selves,
and a defacing, a casting of durt in the face of
Gods image, of that representation, and resemblance
of God, which he hath imprinted in them, of whom
hee hath sayd, They are Gods. In divine matters
there is principally exercise of our faith, That
which we understand not, we beleeve. In civill
affairs, that are above us, matters of State,
there is exercise of our Hope; Those ways which
we see not, wee hope are directed to good ends.
In Civill actions amongst our selves, there is
exercise of our Charity, Those hearts which we
see not, let us charitably beleeve to bee dis
posed to Gods service. . . . 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 perse
cution, 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 storm is past; onely Christ could becalm the
storme; He is a good Christian that can ride out,
97
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-llves a storm,
and does not forsake his ship for it, that is
not scandalized with that State, nor that Church,
of which he is a member, for those abuses that
are in it.° (Sermon 7, Vol. Ill, pp. 183-183).
Here the divine right of kings notion is used as a weapon
against dissent.
When all of King James' hopes of a rapprochement
with Catholic powers had vanished, we sense in Donne's
words a release of harnassed energy. In the following
passage, which apparently alludes to Charles' experiences
in Spain, Donne proclaims the inauguration of a new season
of antl-Catholic oratory.
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 catechised in their religion,
that is, brought him to a cleere understanding
of their Ambition. . . Things being now, I
say, in this state, with these men, since wee
heare that Drums beat in every field abroad,
it becomes us also to returne to the brasing
and beating of our Drums in the Pulpit too. . . .
(Sermon 6, Vol. VII, pp. 166-167).
In a note on this passage Potter and Simpson say
that "to hull is to lie a-hull or drift to the wind with
sails furled, and to board is to tack, to sail athwart
the wind on alternate sides." Readers of Donne's poetry
are familiar with the image of the storm at sea; nautical
imagery is found frequently in the sermons, often to de
scribe the journey of the soul through life and death.
For a discussion of sea imagery in the sermons see
Mueller, pp. 139-145.
Donne labored hard to defend the Church of England.
As we have seen In earlier chapters, he speaks out against
private modes of worship and he defends the sacraments and
ceremonies of his Church. Furthermore, he advances an
argument that the Church of England Is the legitimate
descendant of the Patristic Church, having a properly-
ordained clergy that accepts the teachings of the Fathers
of the Church. On the other hand, he attacks the change
ableness of Catholic doctrine, as evidenced by the Council
of Trent, and the illegality (on scriptural grounds) of
the Catholic doctrine of Apostolic Succession. Denying
the doctrine of Apostolic Succession paves the way for
asserting the Anglican counterpart to it— the doctrine
of the divine right of kings.
And yet the advancing of these arguments was, for
Donne, a labor tinged with melancholy and doubt. Regard
less of how guilty the Catholics were of confusing the
affairs of heaven with those of the court, the Church of
England was all too clearly enmeshed in a similar ambiva
lence. And what was worse, this ambivalence involved a
weather vane policy on the part of the king toward these
very enemies of the Church of England, the Roman Catholics.
The tone of stoic melancholy with which Donne, a royalist
and conservative, refers to the stormy fate of the
Protestant cause on the continent and to the shifting
policies of his own King suggests the chaos into which
English institutions were rapidly plunging.
CHAPTER V
THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH
To be fully understood, the tone of melancholy with
which Donne refers to contemporary political and religious
events in the sermons of the early 1620's must be placed
in juxtaposition with his version of the ideal state of
affairs. Donne's ideal was the union of all Christian
Churches into a single Church--"this universall Quire,
1
That Church in triumph." But instead of a universal
choir, everywhere he looked Donne saw disharmony and
schism degenerating further into hatred and war. Donne's
ideal of universal reconciliation was perhaps greater than
the kind of private and political interests that motivated
many reformers, but, because of the distance between his
ideal and reality, his disappointment was great as well.
The sadness and frustration generated by current
events is expressed in one of Donne's most misunderstood
poems, the Holy Sonnet XVIII.
^From Donne's poem "The LItanie," stanza XIV.
Donne's Poetical Works, ed. H. J. C. Grierson (London,
1912;, I, p. 343.
100
101
Show me deare Christ, thy spouse, so bright and
clear.
WhatJ is it She, which on the other shore
Goes richly painted? or which rob'd and tore
Laments and mournes in Germany and here?
Sleepes she a thousand, then peepes up one yeare?
Is she selfe truth and errs? now new, now outwore?
Doth she, and did she, and shall she evermore
On one, on seaven, or on no hill appeare?
Dwells she with us, or like adventuring knights
First travalle we to seeke and then make Love?
Betray kind husband thy spouse to our sights,
And let myne amorous soule court thy mild Dove,
Who is most trew, and pleasing to thee, then
When she'is embrac'd and open to most men.2
In her edition of Donne's Divine Poems, Helen Gardner dates
3
this poem in the winter of 1620. If she is right, then
the Church "rob'd and tore" certainly refers to the defeat
of the Elector Palatine, the same event that precipitated
the political crisis referred to in many of the sermons
of this period.
But the despair reflected in this poem has, to many
readers, provided proof of Donne's lack of complete satis
faction with the Church of England. Louis I. Bredvold
says that after his ordination Donne "was still searching,
now no longer in 'controverted theology,' but in prayer,
for a church to which he could give undivided, uncritical
2
Donne's Poetical Works, ed. Grierson, I, p. 330.
3
^Helen Gardner, ed. Divine Poems of John Donne
(Oxford, 1952), pp. 124-125^
102
4
attention." Edmund Gosse and Michael Francis Moloney
both view this sonnet as betraying Roman Catholic sympa-
5
thles on Donne's part.
These critics have failed to grasp the distinction
Donne makes between the visible Church, or churches, and
the one Ideal Church, which these visible churches attempt
to embody or represent. It will be remembered from Chap
ter Four of this study that this distinction allowed Donne
to argue that the Reformed Church is the "same" as the
Patristic Church— both were legitimate representations
of the ideal Church. But no Church Militant _is the Church
Triumphant.
In Holy Sonnet XVIII, the questions Donne asks con
cerning which is the true Church are therefore meant to
be read as rhetorical questions. No earthly church, as
long as there is division and strife, _ls the ideal Church,
the true spouse of Christ--not the richly painted Catholic
Church nor the tattered and torn Protestant Church--for
the ideal Church is universal and is at peace. To say it
^Louis I. Bredvold, "The Religious Thought of Donne
in Relation to Medieval and Later Traditions," Studies in
Shakespeare, Milton, and Donne (New York, 1925)1 p. 213.
5
Edmund Gosse, The Life and Letters of John Donne
(London, 1899)> II, ppl 109-110. Michael Francis Moloney,
John Donne, His Flight From Mediaevallsm (Urbana, 1944),
P. 43.
103
another way, the questions in the poem are rhetorical
because one is supposed to see that the ideal Church is
above the sort of strife and controversy that might gen
erate the questions. One might say that the speaker of
the poem is the typical layman of Donne's day, confused
because he does not see beyond or through the controver
sies that darken the air all around him. In reality, "the
Church is such a Hill, as may be seene every where"
(Sermon 13, Vol. V, p. 251). In another sermon it is
"as a City upon a hill . . . ," visible to everyone
(Sermon 16, Vol. VII, p. 396).
Yet Donne's belief in this ideal, transcendent
Church as a hope for the future does not compromise his
allegiance to the Church of England as the most worthy
of the temporal churches. Rather, Holy Sonnet XVIII
expresses Donne's longing for the end of division and
war and for the commencement of the reign of the one,
harmonious Church. The same mood is found in "Satire
6
III," beginning at line 43.
According to Itrat Husain, "Donne's ideal was not a
self-sufficient national Church like that of Calvin or
Luther, but a super-national and universal Catholic Church,
^Grierson, ed. Donne's Poetical Works, I, p. 156.
104
agreeing as far as fundamental doctrines were concerned."
This Ideal is voiced often In the sermons.
The Church loves the name of Catholique, and
It Is a glorious, and an harmonious name; Love
thou those things wherein she Is Catholique,
and wherein she is harmonious, that Is Quod ublque,
quod semper, Those universall, and fundamental1
doctrines, which in all ages, and in all Christian
Churches, have beene agreed by all to be neces
sary to salvation; and then thou art a true
Catholique. Otherwise, that is, without rela
tion to this Catholique and universall doctrine,
to calD a particular Church Catholique, (that she
should be Catholique, that is. universall in
dominion, but not in doctrine) is such a sole-
clsme, as to speak of a white blacknesse, or a
great littlenesse; A particular Church to be
universall, Implies such a contradiction.
(Sermon 13, Vol. II, p. 280).
It is the Catholic ideal for which Donne is speaking
when he urges his congregations to abandon unnecessary
controversy in religious matters, for it is controversy
that creates the multiplicity of churches that Donne
laments in Holy Sonnet XVIII. And, what is even more
disheartening for Donne, it is controversy over trivial
and unessential matters of doctrine that has clouded the
air. "They are but a few things which are necessary for
salvation. . ." (Sermon 1, Vol. V, p. 56); concerning
the other things, the subtle questions of the schools,
Donne says to "Think in that point so as you shall find
your devotion most exalted. . ." (Sermon 5* Vol. Ill,
Itrat Husain, The Dogmatic and Mystical Theology of
John Donne (New York, 1938)7 P* 12^
105
p. 154). If Christians could only learn to recognize
their essential area of agreement and learn to accept
unimportant differences, peace would follow.
For, as for the maintenance of publlque peace,
States, and Churches, may think dlversly in
points of Religion, that are not fundamentall,
and yet both be true and Orthodoxall Churches;
so for the exaltation of private devotion in
points that are not fundamentall, divers men
may think dlversly, and both be equally good
Christians. (Sermon 13, Vol. IV, p. 332).
This desire to dismiss unessential disputation makes
its way into many of Donne’s poems. In the sonnet begin
ning "This is my play's last scene," we find these lines
on the subject of what follows death:
My Body and soul, and I shall sleep a space;
Or presently (I know not) see that face,
Whose fear already shakes my very joint.
Hugh I'Anson Fausset sees the parenthetical comment in
these lines as evidence of Donne's "agnosticism" and "scep-
„3
ticism. But certainly it is more appropriate to see in
these lines the same impatience with "subtil disputation"
that Donne voices in the pulpit. It is not essential to
salvation, Donne would say, to decide whether you think
you will see God's face immediately after death or only
after some interval of time--one has much the same fears
3
Hugh I'Anson Fausset, John Donne, A Study in Discord
(New York, 1924), p. 242. Fausset does not bother to use
Grieson's edition (1912), in which the line in question
reads, "But my'ever-waking part shall see that face."
Grieson believes his version is Donne's final intention.
106
9
before death regardless of which belief he opts for.
But to hear Donne speak of the unity of Christendom,
to be achieved through toleration and the avoidance of
controversy, seems to bring us up against a glaring hypoc
risy. For almost in the same breath with these noble
sentiments, Donne can launch into his most vitriolic
attacks on Puritans, Popes, and the insidious guerrillas
of Rome, the Jesuits. Apparently Donne does not see a
contradiction here. Although it is true that Donne is
not entirely consistent in his expressed views on any
number of topics, I think in such an important area as
this he would have a ready answer for anyone who might
accuse him of violating his own principles.
The answer would be that it is these enemies of the
Church who create controversy over nonessential things--it
is the Puritan who Insists that certain ceremonies must
be abolished, the Pope who insists certain doctrines must
be accepted, and the Jesuit who is ready to kill and destroy
to implement the Pope's pronouncements. Donne would dis
claim being controversial himself; he is simply concerned
9In a more secular poem, "A Valediction: Forbidding
Mourning," is found the same habit of mind. It does not
matter to the poem whether one believes the souls of two
lovers become one or remain separate souls. The poem
offers a metaphor for either belief--the hammered gold
or the compass--the reader can take his choice, and the
point of the poem is made in either case.
107
with denouncing the Puritans and Catholics for creating
controversies over nonessential things and thus making
impossible the reconciliation that is Donne's ideal. As
he says, "almost all the controversies, between Rome, and
the rest of the Christian world, are matters of profit to
them. . ." (Sermon 7, Vol. Ill, p. 191). The ideal,
harmonious Church is symbolised by a circle, but the
Roman Catholics and the Puritans are guilty of "Corner
10
Divinity." Of the schismatic who breaks the circle,
Donne says we may "heare him in his Pampnlets, heare him
in his Disciples, but hardly surprize him at his exer
cise" (Sermon 16, Vol. VII, p. 397). This corner divinity
can be avoided by heeding Christ's instruction to teach
no more than Christ himself taught.
All that you receive from me, you must deliver
to my people; therefore, Take heed what you hear;
forget none of it. But then you must deliver
no more then that; and therefore in that respect
also, Take heed what you hear; adde nothing to
that, and that is the other obligation which
Christ laies here upon his Apostles. (Sermon 16,
Vol. VII, p. 398).
So if Christendom is every going to lay down its
arms, then someone must speak out against the creators
of unessential controversy and of discord.
10In another sermon Donne likens the Church to one
of the heavenly spheres (Sermon 17, Vol. Ill, p. 369).
108
. . . we must not too jealously suspect, not
too bitterly condemne, not too peremptorily
conclude, that what soever Is not done, as wee
would have It done, or as wee have seene It
done In former times, is not well done: for
there is a large Latitude, and, by necessitie
of Circumstances, much may be admitted, and yet
no Foundations destroyed; and till Foundations
bee destroyed, the righteous should bee quiet.
(Sermon 12, Vol. VI, p. 243).
Speaking in this tone, Donne sees himself as the voice of
reason, the liberal who is intolerant of intolerance.
Donne would probably answer his critic in this man
ner, perhaps with a twinge of conscience over those times
when, in the thick of battle, his own discourse seemed to
sink below the level of calm and honest reasoning and to
delight in the beating of the drum and in attack for its
own sake. Donne's tolerance and reason find one of their
most felicitous moments of expression not in a sermon but
in a personal letter to his good friend, Sir Henry Good
year.
You know I nevere fettered nor imprisoned the
word Religion; not straightening it friarly,
ad Rellgiones factitols (as the Romans call
well their orders of Religion), nor immuring
it in a Rome or a Wittenberg or a Geneva; they
are all virtual beames of one sun, and where
soever they find clay hearts, they harden them
and moulder them into dust; and they entender
and mollify waxen. They are not so contrary as
the North and South Poles, and that /TJ they are
co-natural pieces of one circle. Religion is
Christianity, which being too spiritual to be
seen by us, doth therefore take an apparent
body of good life and works, so salvation
requires an honest Christian.il
UGosse, Life and Letters, I, p. 226.
109
Changing his metaphor, and his tone, Donne denounces
from the pulpit the division of Christianity into rival
religions and sects.
Sects are not bodies, they are but rotten boughes,
gangrened limraes, fragmentary chips, blowne off
by their owne spirit of turbulency, fallen off
by the walght of their owne pride, or hewen off
by the Excommunications and censures of the
Church. Sects are no bodies, for there is Nihil
nostrum, nothing in common amongst them, nothing
that goes through them all; all is singular, all
is me urn and tuum, my spirit and thy spirit, my
opinion and thy opinion, my God and thy God; no
such apprehension, no such worship of God, as the
whole Church hath evermore been acquainted withal,
and contented with. (Sermon 2, Vol. Ill, pp. 87-
88) •
Opinions are accursed when they become the storms that
wash people from the mainland, making them islands.
. . . He infuses faith, and faith infused cannot
be withdrawne; but, as there is a Law of faith,
and a practise of faith, a Rule of faith, and
an example of faith, apply thy selfe to both;
Regulate thy faith by the Rule, that is, the
Word, and by Example, that is, Beleeve those
things which the Saints of God have constanty
and unanimely beleeved to be necessary to sal
vation: The Word is the Law, and the Rule, The
Church is the Practise, and the Precedent that
regulates thy faith; And if thou make imaginary
revelations, and inspirations thy Law, or the
practise of Sectaries thy Precedent, thou doest
but call Fancie and Imagination, by the name of
Reason and Understanding, and Opinion by the name
of Faith, and Singularity, and Schisme, by the
name of Communion of Saints. The Law of thy
faith is, That that that /sic/ thou beleevest,
be Universall, Catholique, beleeved by all; And
then, that the Application be particular, To
beleeve, that as Christ dyed sufficiently for
all, so he dyed effectually for thee. (Sermon 10,
Vol. VII, p. 263 ).
110
The vision of the Universal Church Is one example
of the concern for unity that Is central to Donne's work
as a whole, not merely to his sermons. Unity versus
multiplicity is the conflict that seems to inform many
of the secular poems: those that satirize lives full of
many "loves"--"Now that thou hast lov'd me one whole
„12
day," --and those that celebrate the creative power of
a single, unifying love--
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I -.o
Love so alike, that none doe slacken, none can die.
This concern for creative unity entered Donne’s religious
thought even before his ordination. In Essays in Divinity
Donne writes;
and though to all my thanksgiving to God, I
ever humbly acknowledge as one of his greatest
mercies to me, that he gave me my pasture in
his park, and my milk from the breast of this
Church, yet of a fervent and, I hope, not inor
dinate affection, even to such an unity, I do
zealously wish, that the whole Catholic Church
were reduced to such unity and agreement in
the form and profession established in any of
these Churches (though ours were principally
to be wished) which have not by any additions
destroyed the foundation and possibility in
Christ Jesus; that their Church discharged of
disputations, and misapprehensions, and this
defensive war, might contemplate Christ clearly
and uniformly.14
12
"Womans Constancy," line 1. Grierson, I, p. g.
1 " 5
"The Good-Morrow," lines 20-21. Grierson, I, p. 8.
14
Quoted by Husain, The Dogmatic and Mystical Theol
ogy , P. 19-
Ill
In addition to the Images of the hill and the circle,
mentioned earlier, Donne often uses architectural images
to represent this united Catholic Church. Sometimes the
Church is an ark, open to all souls (Sermon 7, Vol. VI,
p. 155); in another sermon it is "a Pillar; Fixed, for
Fundamentall things, but yet a moveable Pillar, for things
indifferent, and arbitrary" (Sermon 16, Vol. IX, p. 363);
and in still another sermon Donne says "the whole Church
of God is one household. . ." made up of individual church
es that "agree in the unity of that doctrine which the
Apostles taught, and adhere to the supreme head of the
15
whole Church, Jesus Christ" (Sermon 5j Vol. Ill, p. 138).
In the first chapter of this dissertation, we heard
Donne speaking of the need for the individual to become
Involved in some body, such as the Church, if he is to
exist in a meaningful way. The notion of involvement is
complemented by the ideal of the single, Universal Church.
Each man must be involved in a body, and that body must
be a single, harmonious organism, or household. Thus,
in a religious context, is found the completion of a
typically Renaissance model of order and harmony.
The next chapter will follow this concern for order
into another area threatened by division, and we will hear
IS
^A number of Donne’s metaphors and images for the
Church are discussed by William Mueller, John Donne,
Preacher (Princeton, 1962), pp. 49-52.
112
Donne attempting to re-assert the old, harmonious rapport
between the now apparently contradictory facullties of
reason and faith.
CHAPTER VI
REASON AND FAITH
Although most of Donne's defenses of the Church of
England are erected against the rival religious groups
of the time, the Puritans and the Roman Catholics, the
greatest threat of all to organized religion came not
from particular religious groups or factions, but from
man's changing habits of mind and his changing view of
reality. By the time of the Reformation, the educated
man was no longer likely to be a monk In a cloister; more
and more, he was becoming a man to whom the disciplines
and doctrines of religion were not of overriding impor
tance. His prototype is the scientific or Baconian
philosopher, enlightened and sceptical.
"The Enlightenment" and the "Age of Reason" are
labels usually applied to the eighteenth century, for by
this time certain post-medieval assumptions about man and
his reality had become established in the popular culture.
But the actual revolution in thought, to the extent that
such things can be dated at all, must be said to have
occurred well before the eighteenth century. In fact,
Donne himself lived in the midst of the scientific
113
114
revolution. Copernicus (1473-1543) was Its forerunner,
and after Copernicus many of the most important figures
associated with the scientific revolution were living
during Donne's lifetime (1573-1631). Among them are
Brahe (1546-1601), Bacon (1561-1626), Galileo (1564-1642),
Kepler (1571-1630), Harvey (1578-1657)* Descartes (1596-
1650), Pascal (1623-1662), and Boyle (1627-1691). Of the
great scientific Intellects of this period, only Locke
(1632-1704), Newton (1642-1727), and Leibnitz (1646-1716)
were born after Donne's death.
It is difficult, and often impossible, to determine
the future importance of events occurring in one's own
lifetime, and perhaps Donne could not have predicted
anything like deism, "philosophical optimism," and the
decline of religion that were to follow the work of these
scientists and thinkers. But it is the premise of this
chapter that such trends of thought were in the air in
Donne's day, along with Puritan criticisms, Catholic
machinations, and the plague, and that Donne can be seen
reacting to the "new philosophy" in his sermons.
This reaction is defensive while not being entirely
hostile to new systems of thought--to the extent that it
can be made consistent with orthodox Anglicanism, Donne
attempts to accommodate those who preach a newly found
faith in man's reason. Louis I. Bredvold argues that
115
Donne, by accepting the dichotomy between reason and
faith, preaches a theology that is in the tradition of
Renaissance scepticism and naturalism. In "The Religious
Thought of Donne," Bredvold places Donne in a tradition
of Pyrrhonism along with such figures as Montaigne and
1
Pascal. To Bredvold, Donne is definitely not a Thomist.
In this regard, Michael Francis Moloney has a similar
thesis; to him, Donne is "the first of the moderns in
2
the world of letters. ..." Both scholars set their
views of Donne in opposition to that of Mary Paton Ramsay
in Les doctrines medlevales chez Donne.
1 tend to agree more with Miss Ramsay. Confronting
the intellectual problems of his own day, Donne, It is
true, discusses the question of the dichotomy between
reason and faith, but he does it in a manner that tries
to re-assert the old Thomist interdependence of the two.
Reason is our Soules left hand, Faith her right,
By these we reach divinity.
Bredvold quotes these lines from a verse letter to the
3
Countess of Bedford as evidence of Donne's Nominalism.
■'"Louis I. Bredvold, "The Religious Thought of Donne
in Relation to Medieval and Later Traditions, Studies in
Shakespeare, Milton, and Donne (New York, 1925), PP. 200-
2 o r :
2
Michael Francis Moloney, John Donne, His Flight
From Medlaevallsm (Urbana, 1944)^ p. 47\
3
"The Religious Thought of Donne," p. 214.
116
But It seems more accurate to say that these lines assert
that reason and faith are nearly equal, organically united,
and complementary faculties. This is precisely the view
of reason and faith presented by Aquinas in Summa contra
Gentiles.
The famous phrase from "The First Anniversarie"--
"And new Philosophy calls all in doubt11--suggests Donne's
affinity with an older philosophy, but the tone of despair
found in the poem is less evident in the sections of the
sermons that address this problem. In affirming the inter
dependence of faith and reason, the sermons attempt to
reconcile the new philosophy with the old.
The new philosophy can be characterized as a change
in the kind of questions man chose to ask about his world.
The scholastic thinkers of the Middle Ages asked "why"--
why does fire rise? The answer was found in a system of
thought that combined Aristotle and Christian theology--
God has endowed all things with a desire to move away
from their contraries, thus fire rises. In the Renais
sance men began to ask "how"--how does fire rise? The
answer was sought in a newly evolving system of "mechan
ical" assumptions— temperature is a measure of the motion
of the particles of a substance; the rapidly moving par
ticles of the burning substance expand and escape upwards
like a bubble in water.
117
The second kind of answer increased man's power, his
ability to predict phenomena and to manipulate his envi
ronment. However, being more concerned with immediate
causes (such as the motion of particles in a gas) than
with ultimate causes (such as God's will), the new philos
ophy found it could exist Independent of theology, an
emancipation "science" had not enjoyed in the Middle Ages.
Not that the scientific thinkers of the seventeenth century
were consciously trying to destroy theology. On the con
trary, most of them continued to assert their beliefs in
conventional Christianity--but in practice they were re
jecting the system of thought and the world view that had
4
been the support of Christianity for so long. The sci
entist treated the theologian respectfully, but any real
unity of purpose between the two was rapidly disinte
grating.
Hobbes, in the generation after Donne's death, is a
good example of the radically "progressive" intellectual.
While not a scientist, he often seems more hostile to
4
Descartes is perhaps the first philosopher to try
to find a "modern" foundation for belief in God. Starting
by doubting everything, Descartes decides that God's ex
istence is the second certainty we possess (the first
being that we ourselves exist)--see part four of Dlscours
de la methode (1637). But Descartes' mathematically
abstract God probably, in the long run, told against
theology, too.
113
theology than the scientists themselves. And yet his
writing is properly garnished with pious If vague remarks
that seem designed to suggest that some sort of theism
underlies his thinking. But the main course is his
assault on old habits of thought. In Leviathan (1651)
Hobbes writes:
If you desire to know why some kind of bodies
sink naturally downwards toward the earth, and
others go naturally from it, the schools will
tell you out of Aristotle, that the bodies that
sink downwards are ‘heavy,’ and that this heavi
ness is it that causes them to descend. But if
you ask what they mean by 'heaviness' they will
define it to be an endeavour to go to the centre
of the earth. So that the cause why things sink
downward, is an endeavour to be below; which is
as much as to say, that bodies descend, or ascend,
because they do. . . .
And in many occasions they put for cause of
natural events their own ignorance, but disguised
in other words:. . . as when they attribute many
effects to 'occult qualities'; that Is, to qual
ities not known to them; and therefore also, as
they think, to no man else. And to 'sympathy,'
'antipathy,' 1antiperistasis,' 'special qualities,1
and other like terms, which signify neither the
agent that produceth them, or the operation by
which they are produced.5
Bacon had said much the same thing during Donne's
lifetime--the following passage is not aimed at current
day dissertations.
Surely, like as many substances in nature which
are solid do putrefy and corrupt into worms; so
it is the property of good and sound knowledge
to putrefy and dissolve into a number of subtile,
^ 3
Leviathan, ch. xlvi. Quoted by Basil Wiley,
The Seventeenth Century Background (New York, 1953),
p. 105.
119
idle, unwholesome, and (as I may term them)
vermiculate questions, which have indeed a
kind of quickness and life of spirit, but no
soundness of matter or goodness of quality.
This kind of degenerate learning did chiefly
reign among schoolmen; who, having sharp and
strong wits, and abundance of leisure, and
small variety of reading, but their wits being
shut up in the cells of a few authors (chiefly
Aristotle their dictator) as their persons
were shut up in the cells of monasteries and
colleges; and knowing little history, either of
nature or time; did out of no great quantity of
matter, and infinite agitation of wit, spin out
unto us those laborious webs of learning which
are extant in their books. For the wit and
mind of man, if it work upon matter, which is
the contemplation of the creatures of God,
worketh according to the stuff, and is limited
thereby; but if it work upon itself, as the
spider worketh his web, then it is endless,
and brings forth Indeed cobwebs of learning,
admirable for the fineness of thread and work,
but of no substance or profit.6
To Bacon, then, the proper object of thought is not
God directly, but rather the matter and creatures created
by God.
Those, therefore, who determine not to conjec
ture and guess, but to find out and know; not
to invent fables and romances of worlds, but
to look into, and dissect the nature of this
real world, must consult only things them
selves.7
Basil Willey, in The Seventeenth Century Background,
points out that in order for Bacon, in a theological age,
Sir Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning. The
Works of Francis Bacon, ed. James Spedding, Robert Leslie
Ellis, and Douglas Denon Heath (London, 1857-1875)> HI,
pp. 285-286. Quoted by Willey on p. 33.
^De Augmentis, quoted by Willey, p. 33.
120
to promote the study of things themselves, it Is neces
sary for him to argue that nature is divine, not satanic.
Thus Bacon accommodates the theologian by saying that the
scientist is studying God by studying his works; in fact,
such a study is a duty we owe the Maker. Bacon makes use
of the old idea that God reveals himself in two ways,
through the scriptures and also through nature. This
traditional Christian argument was first expressed in
Chapter One of Paul's Epistle to the Romans— it was sup
posed to leave the athiest without reasons, because proof
of an Almighty Creator is found in the created universe
and can be observed by all men. For Bacon, then, the
scientist complements the theologian by studying this
second source of revelation. Bacon says that scriptures
are verified by nature:
. . . The later is a key unto the former; not
only opening our understanding to conceive the
true sense of the Scriptures, by the general
notions of reason and rules of speech; but
chiefly opening our belief, in drawing us
into a due meditation of the omnipotency of
God, which is chiefly signed and engraven
upon his work.8
But, as Willey suggests in Chapter Two of The Seventeenth
Century Background, Bacon's arguments in reality allow
the scientist to go about his work undisturbed by
Q
The Advancement of Learning (1605), The Works of
Francis Bacon, III, p. 301.
121
the theologian.
It Is at this point that Donne and Bacon face each
other in an Interesting way. Donne, too, accepts the
traditional idea of the two "books" in which God reveals
himself, the "book of creatures" and scriptures. But
while Bacon is prompting the cause of science in what is
still a religious age, Donne is defending religion against
the encroachments of science.
What was this former wisedome of God, that
that could not save man? it was two-fold; First,
God in his wisedome manifests a way to man, to
know the Creator by the creature, That the in
visible things of him might be seene by tlie
visible"! And this gracious and wise purpose of
God tooke not effect, because man being brought
to the contemplation of the creature, rested
and dwelt upon the beauty and dignity of that,
and did not passe by the creature to the Creator;
and then, Gods wisedome was farther expressed,
in a second way, when God manifested himselfe
to man by his Word. . . .(Sermon 13, Vol. V,
P. 256).
Clearly, Donne is turning the Baconian argument to his own
purposes, saying that perhaps ideally God could be found
through nature, but in fact God tried that form of revela
tion and it did not work. The scientist, Donne is saying,
c -^For a comparison of Aquinas and St. Bonaventure
on the question of the relation of "creature knowledge"
to theology, see Yves M. J. Congar, The History of The
ology, trans. Hunter Guthrie (New York"! I968), pp. I19-
122. Congar makes it clear that this was not a new ques
tion in the seventeenth century, and Donne is nof .^ces-
sari]y a "modern" for dealing with it.
122
will spend all his time studying nature and will forget
about God--the means will subvert the end. Donne places
this In the past--in some hypothetical yesterday this sub
version occurred, thus explaining why God resorted to a
second form of revelation, the Word. This Is slmll.ur to
Hooker's argument in Book I of the Laws that the ’natural"
means of attaining the good have been perverted, thus
accounting for the need for scriptures.- * -0 Ca;>/in, too,
accepts this concept, attributing man's fai?are to use
natural means to his diminished powers as a result of the
11
fall. So the theologians were more or .less in agreement
that the problem with the "book of creatures" is not that
it does not embody revelation; the problem is that man
fails to study the book properly.
Donne argues, more specificuily, that the scriptures
are superior to the book of creatures by giving us a
clearer understand■>no UJL' one trinity.
There 1 _ > an elder booke in the World then the
Scriptures; It is not well said, in the World,
for It is the World it selfe, the whole booke
of creatures. . . And therefore, though the
J‘°Richard Hooker, Laws, Bk. I, Hooker's Works,
ed John Keble (Oxford, 1888), I, p. 264.
11
Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book I,
chapter vi, section 1.
123
Scriptures onely deliver us the doctrine of
the Trinity, clearely, yet there are some
Impressions, som^ obumbrations of it, In
Nature too. . . .
But because God Is seene Per creaturas, ut
per speculum, per verbum ut per lucem) In the
creature, and In nature, but by reflection, In
the Word, and In the Scriptures, directly, we
rest In the knowledge which we have of the
plurality of the person, in the Scriptures. . . .
(Sermon 12, Vol. Ill, p. 264).
In the following passage a third form of revelation
is introduced, miracles. But the inferior status of the
book of creatures is clearly stated again.
We consider two other wayes of imprinting the
knowledge of God in man; first in a darke and
weake way, the way of Nature, and in the book
of Creatures; and secondly, in that powerfull
way, the way of Miracles. But these, and all
between these, are uneffectuall without the
Word. (Sermon 6, Vol. VI, p. 142).
Donne does not accept the doctrine of the complete
depravity of nature. But although Donne's nature has a
faint image of divinity in it, Donne is careful to estab
lish the superiority of scriptural study to the study of
nature and the danger of studying nature without scrip
tures.
The voyce of the Creature alone, is but a faint
voyce, a low voyce; nor any voyce, till the voyce
of the Word inanimate it; for then when the Word
of God hath taught us any mystery of Religion,
then the booke of Creatures illustrates, and
establishes, and cherishes that which we have
received by faith, in hearing the Word: As a
stick bears up, and succours a vine, or any
plant, more precious then it selfe, but yet
124
gave it not life at first, nor gives any nour
ishment to the root now: so the assistance of
reason, and the voyce of the Creature, in the
preaching of Nature, works upon our faith, but
the roote, and the life is in the faith it
selfe; The light of nature gives a glimmering
before, and it gives a reflexion after faith,
but the meridianall noone is in faith.
(Sermon 6, Vol. VI, p. 143).
The scientist is no equal partner with the theologian, as
Bacon had hoped to suggest, he is rather someone who has
unwisely chosen to look for God in a less certain place.
But this does not mean, as Moloney and Bredvold believe,
that Donne's theology involves a sceptical separation of
reason and faith.
The scientist campaigned for this separation. He
needed to clear the way for the unobstructed use of
"reason." If "faith" could be Isolated as that faculty
with which one approaches scriptures, then reason would be
free to roam in the book of creatures. Faith, along with
the scriptures, would be prompted upstairs and out of the
way. This is not to accuse all the seventeenth century
scientists of overt cynicism in their handling cf the
issue of reason and faith--Bacon»s tone of piety seems
convincing enough and was probably seriously intended.
But what in fact was happening was the undermining of
theology by the scientists, of scriptures as the book
most worthy of study and of faith as the highest form
of reason.
123
The irony of Hume, coming a century after Donne and
Bacon, is unmistakable.
Our most holy religion is founded on faith,
not on reason; and it is a sure method of
exposing it to put it to such a trial as it
is by no means fitted to endure. So that upon
the whole, we may conclude that the Christian
Religion not only was at first attended by
miracles, but even at this day cannot be
believed by any reasonable person without
one.12
Such attitudes were the wave of the future in Donne's day,
but Bredvold is mistaken if he means to suggest that Donne
is one of those who helped begin it. Donne's sympathies
lie instead with Aquinas. Willey aptly describes the
relative positions of faith and reason in the Thomist
system.
In scholasticism faith is indeed above reason,
but not contrary to it; and the chief aim of
this teaching is to show that reason, when
exercising Itself upon its proper object,
must necessarily lead towards faith, or confirm
its dogmas. And the "proper object" of intel
ligence is Being; the proper study of mankind
is God.13
This is precisely the position that Donne takes. To
put it briefly, Donne argues that reason leads us to study
scriptures (its proper object), which in turn require our
faith. Donne accepts a distinction between reason and
faith, as he accepted the doctrine of the two "books,"
12Quoted by Willey, pp. 121-122.
13
Seventeenth Century Background, p. 23* Willey's
italics.
126
but once again he points out the error in the scientist's
handling of the distinction. It is not a distinction of
opposites. The use of reason is to gain faith, not exclude
it. Reason is thus a necessary part of religion, whatever
the place of faith in science. Commenting on the text,
"Be not as the horse, or the mule, who have no understand
ing," Donne says,
. . . because they have no understanding . . .
it is impossible that ever they should have
faith; And so it is a reason proportioned to our
Reason; Do not so, for it will vitiate, it will
annihilate your understanding, your reason, and
then what are you, for supernaturall, or for
naturall knowledge? (Sermon 17, Vol. IX,
PP. 371-372).
Donne's sermons themselves put into practice this
belief in the role of reason in religion. Potter and
Simpson believe this is especially true of the earlier
sermons, which appeal more to the logic and reason of
14
the audience than to the emotions.
Reason, Donne says, leads us to know that there is
a God, that he is one God, and that he created the earth.
It also leads us to know that there must be a place, the
scriptures, where God has manifested his will.
The reason therefore of Man, must first be
satisfied; but the way of such satisfaction
must be this, to make him see, That this World,
a frame of so much harmony, so much cone innitie
and conveniencie, and such a correspondence,
14
See the discussion on pp. 119-122 of the Intro
duction to Vol. I of the Sermons.
127
and subordination in the parts thereof, must
necessarily have had a workeman, for nothing:
can make it selfe: That no such workeman
would deliver over a frame, and worke, of so
much Majestic, to be governed by Fortune,
casually, but would still retain the Adminis-
tration thereof in his owne hands: That if he
doe so, if he made the World, and sustalne it
still by his watchfull Providence, there be-
longeth a worship and service to him, for doing
so: That therefore he hath certainly revealed
to man, what kinde of worship, and service,
shall be acceptable to him: That this manifes
tation of his Will, must be permanent, it must
be written, there must be a Scripture, which is
his Word and his Will: And that therefore, from
that Scripture, from that Word of God, all Ar
ticles of our Beliefe are to bee drawne. (Sermon
17, Vol. Ill, p. 358).
Although "natural" reason is sufficient to lead us
to the scriptures, the scriptures themselves are necessary
to teach man the doctrine of the trinity.
. . . The principall use and office of my knowl
edge, is to know the Trinity; for, to know an
unity in the Godhead, that there is but one God,
naturall reason serves our turn; and to know a
creation of the world of nothing, reason serves
us too; we know by reason, that either neither
of them is infinite, if there be two Gods, (and
then neither of them can be God) or booh be
infinite, (which is an impossibility) one of
them is superfluous, because whatsoever is in
finite, can alone extend to all. So also we
can collect Infallibly, that if the world were
not made of nothing, yet that of which the
world shall be pretended to have been made of,
must have been made of nothing, or else it must
be something eternall. and uncreated; and what
soever is so, must be God it self. To be sure
of those two, an unity in the Godhead, and a
creation of the world, I need no Scriptures;
but to know this distinction of Persons, That
the son is in the Father, I need the Scriptures.
. . . For, if this knowledge might be had with
out Scriptures, why should not the heathen
123
beleeve the Trinity, as well as I, since they
lack no naturall faculties which Christians
have? (Sermon 10, Vol. IX, pp. 245-246).
Comparing the multiplicity of pagan gods to the
reasonable doctrine of the trinity, Donne says that
it involved so many, so evident, so ridiculous
absurdities, as not onely those few Fathers soon
disputed them, but some of themselves, such as
Lucian, soon laughed them out of it; and so reason
prevailed soon for the unity of the Godhead, that
there is but one God, and that question was not
long in suspence, nor agitation. And for the
other, three persons in this one God, the Trinity,
though we cannot so immediately prove that by
Reason, nor so intlrely, altogether, yet, by
these steppes we can; first, that there is
nothing in the doctrine of the Trinity against
Reason; the doctrine of the Trinity implies no
contradiction; It may be so; and then, that it
is so, if we have the word of God, for it,
Reason it selfe will conclude, that we have
Reason on our side. . . .(Sermon 4, Vol. IX,
P. 114).
Reason leads one to the scriptures and the scriptures
in turn teach belief in the trinity. They also teach other
beliefs, and these are listed in the Apostles' Creed and
the Thirty-nine Articles of Faith.
And truly it is very well worthy of a serious
consideration, that whereas all the Articles
of our Creed, are objects of faith, so, as that
we are bound to receive them de fide, as matters
of faith, yet God hath left that, out of which,
all these Articles are to be deduced, and proved,
(that is, the Scripture) to humane arguments;
It Is not an Article of the Creed, to beleeve
these, and these Books, to be, or not to be
Canonicall Scripture; but our arguments for
the Scripture are humane arguments, propor
tioned to the reason of a naturall man.
(Sermon 14, Vol. IV, pp. 350-351).
129
Concerning this passage, Coleridge said that it "proves
that Donne was at least possessed by that truth which I
have always laboured to enforce, namely, that faith is
the apotheosis of reason. This, of course, is the
argument that runs throughout Hooker's Laws. In Book III
Hooker says,
A number there are, who think they cannot
admire as they ought the power and authority
of the Word of God, if in things divine they
should attribute any force to man's reason.
For which cause they never use reason so
willingly as to disgrace reason.16
The question of the relation between reason and
faith was one of the fundamental theological questions
of the middle ages, and Donne, by taking up this question,
is placing himself in a tradition of religious dialogue
that extended from Augustine, through Anselm and Abelard,
to Aquinas, and then to Duns Scotus, Ockham, and the
Nominalists. By affirming that religious arguments are
"humane arguments, proportioned to the reasons of a
natural man," Donne is placing himself on the side of the
extreme ratlonalists--on the side of Aquinas, for whom
theology
appears to us as a rational and scientific con
sideration of the revealed datum, striving to
procure for the believing human spirit a certain
1^Notes on the English Divines, I, p. 112. Quoted
by Potter and Simpson, Introduction to Vol. IV, p. 40.
l6Works, I, p. 365.
130
understanding of the datum. It is, If you will,
a scientifically elaborated copy of the faith.
What objects of simple adherence the faith de
livers, theology develops in a line of humanly
constructed knowledge, seeking the reason for
facts; in short, reconstructing and elaborating
in the forms of human science the data received
by faith. . . . Thus through his spirit directed
by faith, man arrives at a strictly human under
standing of the mysteries, utilizing their connec
tion or their harmony with his world of natural
knowledge.17
Therefore Bredvold hardly seems justified in saying
that Donne's "spiritual life was beyond the power of
.,18
reason. . . . And even less justified is Moloney's
assertion that Donne is to be seen as a forerunner to the
sceptic Hobbes (John Donne, p. 109). Of course Moloney
is concerned mainly with Donne the poet, and it could be
argued that the young poet was quite a different person
from the mature preacher. But Moloney does not urge this
distinction, and he does refer occasionally to the sermons
in building his case.
Not only do the sermons repeatedly assert the central
role of reason in the religious life, but Donne is in ac
cord with one of Aquinas' seventeenth-century commentators
when he says that reason and faith unite to form a "new
faculty of Reason. . ." (Sermon 17, Vol. Ill, p. 359).
This interpretation of Aquinas, re-asserting the importance
^Congar, A History of Theology, pp. 102-103.
l8iiThe Religious Thought of Donne," p. 224.
of reason in Roman Catholic theology, was put forth by
19
John of Saint-Thomas (d. 1644).
But without faith, Donne says, reason can be pervert
ed and abused.
So this eternall, and this supernaturall light,
Christ and faith, enlightens, warmes, purges,
and does all the profitable offices of fire, and
light, if we keep it in the right spheare, in the
proper place, (that is, if wee consist in points
necessary to salvation, and revealed in the
Scripture) but when wee bring this light to the
common light of reason, to our inferences, and
consequences, it may be in danger to vanish it
selfe, and perchance extinguish our reason too;
we may search so far, and reason so long of
faith and grace, as that we may lose not onely
them, but even our reason too, and sooner be mad
then good. (Sermon 17, Vol. Ill, p. 357)*
Wrong reason is reason turned against faith rather than
reason used in the support of it. It is reason enslaved
by the "enemie," as in "Batter My Heart"; although Fausset,
in attempting to build a case for Donne's scepticism, says
20
that it is reason which does the enslaving in this poem.
But the poem quite clearly says that reason is God's vice
roy and is enslaved by a usurper.
That the misuse or usurpation of reason is important
to Donne is attested in the fact that he preached two entire
sermons on the topic of people who sin for "reasons"
19
See Congar, A History of Theology, p. 159.
20
Hugh I'Anson Fausset, John Donne, A Study in
Discord (New York, 1924), p. 244.
132
(Sermons 2 and 4 In Vol. I). And Donne Is aware of the
absurdity of religion when examined with a reason that is
not supplemented or completed by faith.
Who but God himselfe, would have drawn the world
to a Religion so contrary to flesh and blood?. 7 .
That this body should be eaten by fishes in the
sea, and then those fishes eaten by other men, or
that one man should be eaten by another man, and
so become both one man, and then that for all this
assimilation, and union, there should arise two
men, at the resurrection . . . this recurrection
is an incredible thing. . . . That all the world
should so soone believe a thing so Incredible, is
more incredible, then the thing it self'e.
(Sermon 7, VolV VI, p. 136)';
Donne is saying that there must be a God to lead man’s
reason to accept such incredible things, and he is saying
this without any of the irony we noted earlier in Hume’s
similar observation. For Donne, reason must exist united
to faith.
Thus Donne does not deny, but rather affirms, the
role of "natural" reason in religion. But where the
Baconian waxes enthusiastic about the potential power
of man's mind to harness nature and elevate the estate
of man, Donne steps in to remind him of the foolishness
of divorcing reason from faith and knowledge from piety.
In a sermon preached on the text, "He was not that light,
but was sent to bear witness of that light," Donne surveys
the uses of reason--the secular uses, good and bad, and
then the spiritual use. The sermon is a rhetorical master
piece built around the image of light.
1 o
- J
Divers men may walke by the Sea side, and the
same beames of the Sunne giving light to them
all, one gathereth by the benefit of that light
pebles, or speckled shells, for curious vanltie,
and another gathers precious Pearle, or medicinall
Ambar, by the same light. So the common light
of reason illumins us all; but one Imployes this
light upon the searching of impertinent vanities,
another by a better use of the same light, finds
the Mysteries of Religion.
The passage goes on to describe the beneficial uses of
reason in the secular world, among which were the inven
tion of the printing press and the invention of artillery,
"by which warres come to quicker ends then heretofore.
. . ." But others "by the benefit of this light have
searched and found the secret corners of gaine, and profit,
wheresoever they lie."
By the benefit of this light, men see through
the darkest, and most impervious places, that
are, that is, Courts of Princes, and the great-
est Officers in Courts; and can submit themselves
to second, and to advance the humours of men in
great place, and so make a profit of the weak
nesses which they have discovered in these men.
All the wayes, both of Wisedome, and of Craft
lie open to this light, this light of naturall
reason: But when they have gone all these wayes
by the benefit of this light, they have got no
further, then to have walked by a tempestuous
Sea, and to have gathered pebles, and speckled
cockle shells.
Then, in the sort of panoramic passage that Donne handles
so well, the listeners are taken on a journey from the
manger to the glory of heaven, aided by the light of
reason.
But, if thou canst take this light of reason
that is in thee, this poore snuffe, that is al
most out in thee, thy faint and dimme knowledge
of God, that riseth out of this light of nature,
if thou canst in those embers, those cold ashes,
finde out one small coale, and wilt take the
pains to kneell downe, and blow that coale with
thy devout Prayers, and light thee a little candle
(a desire to reade that Booke, which they call the
Scriptures, and the Gospell, and the Word of God;)
If with that little candle thou canst creep humbly
into low and poore places, if thou canst finde
thy Saviour in a Manger . . . if with this poore
light, these first degrees of Knowledge and Faith,
thou canst follow him into the Garden, and gather
up some of the droppes of his precious Bloud and
sweat, which he shed for thy soule, if thou canst
follow him to Jerusalem, and pick up some of those
teares, which he shed upon that City, and upon thy
soule; if thou canst follow him to the place of
his scourging, and to his crucifying, and provide
thee some of that balme, which must cure thy soule
if after all this, thou canst turne this little
light inward, and canst thereby discerne where
thy diseases, and thy wounds, and thy corruptions
are, and canst apply those teares, and bloud and
balme to them . . . thou shalt never envy the
lustre and glory of the great lights of worldly
men, which are great by the infirmity of others,
or by their own opinion . . . yet thou shalt see,
that thou by thy small light hast gathered Pearle
and Amber, and they by their great lights nothing
but shels and pebles; they have determined the
light of nature, upon the booke of nature, this
world, and thou hast carried the light of nature
higher, thy naturall reason, and even humane ar
guments, have brought thee to reade the Scriptures
and to that love, God hath set to the seale of
faith. Their light shall set at noone . . . but
as thy light of reason is exalted by faith here,
so thy light of faith shall be exalted into the
light of glory, and fruition in the Kingdom of
heaven. (Sermon 17, Vol. Ill, pp. 359-362).
This sermon should be read in conjunction with the
Easter sermon of 1628 (Sermon 9, Vol. VIII), in which
Donne traces the four lights through which God reveals
133
himself. The idea of illumination has been a recurrent
theological concept since the time of the early Church,
and light is one of the most frequent images in Donne's
21
sermons. Often it is a metaphor for reason, and in this
regard can be contrasted with the mystic notion of the
dtvine spark, which, as we saw in the second chapter of
this study, Donne repudiates. And yet Itrat Husain, in
talking of Donne's concept of illumination, insists that
22
it is evidence of Donne's mysticism.
Donne, in his refusal to separate "science" or knowl
edge from its moral value, is following Augustine. In
fact, Augustine was probably Donne's model In the attempt
to bridge the gap between theology and science. It will
be recalled how Augustine, in The Confessions, emphasized
the role played by his philosophical pursuits in preparing
him for his conversion. Augustine continued to stress
the importance of reason and knowledge in the religious
life after his conversion. Hunter Guthrie, the trans
lator of Congar's History of Theology, notes that "In
his De doctrlna Christiana and in the second part of the
De Trlnltate we find his^/TTugustine's/first acknowledgment
PI
See William Mueller, John Donnej Preacher (Prince
ton, 1962), pp. 133-139.
22
Itrat Husain, The Dogmatic and Mystical Theology
of John Donne (New Yorlc^ l$3o), pp. 134-13?.
of scientia as a possible research aid in the development
23
of saplentla." Of De Trlnltate, Congar writes,
What we find interesting here is the use, first,
of sensible similitudes and, then, of all the
resources of the sciences and arts and, this,
mind you, by the soul in its search for an
understanding of the mysteries. It is this
aspect of theology which Augustine qualifies
as scientific, because it is directly concerned
with the use of created things as a help to
comprehension of the divine. Moreover, he claims
that faith, that is, salvlfic faith which leads
to beatitude, is engendered, nourished, defended,
and reenforced by these lowly truths.24
And in De doctrlna Christiana, Augustine lists knowledge
of languages, dialectics, eloquence, mathematics, history,
and law among those accomplishments that can be of assist-
23
ance in the study of Scriptures.
In all of this, Donne seems to agree quite closely
with Augustine. But Donne is also of his own age, and
this accounts for his repeated warnings that these lower
uses of reason must not become ends in themselves.
Implied also in many of Donne’s references to
"naturall" reason is a defense of faith against the
secular humanist who might argue, using pagan examples,
that one can live decently without Christianity.
^ History of Theology, trans. note, p. 46.
24
History of Theology, p. 47.
23
History of Theology, p. 49.
137
There are many Infidels that refuse to bee made
Christians, because they are so good already;
Slbl sufflclunt de sua bona vita; They are the
worse for being so good, and they think they
need no faith, but are rich enough in their
morall honesty. (Sermon 17, Vol. IX, p. 384).
The problem of the moral pagan is, of course, not a new
one. It had been confronted by Dante when he placed the
pagan philosophers in the most comfortable suburb of hell.
But with the revival of classical learning in the Renais
sance, the problem was still bothersome. Donne's ap
proach, once again, is one of accommodation. He does
not attack the pagans, instead he admits to the remarkable
degree of virtue achieved by some of them through natural
reason alone, without the aid of faith. Sermon 14 in
Vol. VIII contains the largest number of classical refer
ences of any of Donne's sermons. Here he cites Virgil,
Zeno, Theocritus, Juvenal, Polybius, Cicero, Hesod,
Chrysippus, and Dio Cassius, shewing how their natural
reason led them to believe in God or gods and in divine
justice. He praises Plato and Socrates, and elsewhere
compares Socrates with Paul (Sermon 9, Vol. I), but Donne
doubts that many men could be naturally as good as they.
Thus they are not examples to be followed.
To the secular humanist, Donne simply argues that
the Christian is more fortunate than the "natural philos
opher." The Christian can supplement or complete his
1 . • 7
reason with faith, and thus possesses a superior oppor
tunity for salvation. Actually, Donne is more accommo
dating than Dante was--remembering Christ's saying, "Other
sheep have I, which are not of this fold," Donne does not
deny the possibility that the moral pagans might dwell in
heaven itself (see the opening of Chapter Two of this
study). And yet Donne warns that
. . . To know a better state, and desire it,
is not pride; for pride is onely in taking wrong
wayes to it. So that, to think we can come to
this by our own strength, without Gods inward
working a beliefe, or to think that we can
believe out of Plato, where we may find a God,
but without Christ, or to be good men out of
Plutarch or Seneca, without a Church and Sacra
ments, to pursue the truth it selfe by any other
way then he hath laid open to us, this is pride,
and the pride of the Angels. (Sermon 17, Vol. IX,
P. 379).
The old error that the natural humanist fell into
was polytheism, but a more serious error in Donne's time
is that of atheism.
Poor intricated soule! Riddling, perplexed,
labyrinthlcall soule- Thou couldest not say,
that thou beleevest not in God, if there were
no God; Thou couldest not beleeve in God, if
there were no God; If there were no God, thou
couldest not speake, thou couldest not thinke,
not a word, not a thought, no not against God;
. . . For, all thy faculties, how ever depraved,
and perverted by thee, are from him; and except
thou canst seriously beleeve, that thou art
nothing, thou canst not beleeve that there is
no God. . . . If I should ask thee at a Sermon
. . . Is there a God now? If thou couldest
answer me, No, These are but inventions of State,
to souple and regulate Congregations, and keep
people in order, and I beleeve a God never the
more for this. . . . (Sermon 14, Vol. VIII,
P. 332).
139
Perhaps Donne had in mind a passage from Machiavelli;
speaking of religion, Machiavelli said,
These principles seem to me to have made men
feeble, and caused them to become an easy prey
to evil-minded men, who can control them more
securely, seeing that the great body of men,
for the sake of gaining paradise, are more
disposed to endure injuries than to avenge
them.26
Donne concludes his passage on atheism with a scene lifted
straight out of Marlowe's Dr. Faustus--one of a number of
passages in the sermons that suggest that this play had
27
moved Donne profoundly.
I respit thee not till the day of thine own
death, when thou shalt have evidence enough,
that there is a God, though no other evidence,
but to finde a Devill, and evidence enough, that
there is a Heaven, though no other evidence,
but to feele Hell; To aske thee then, Is there
a God now? I respite thee but a few houres, but
six houres, but till midnight. Wake then; and
then darke, and alone, Heare God aske thee then,
remember that I asked thee now, Is there a God?
and if thou darest, say No. (Sermon 14, Vol. VIII,
P. 333).
This sermon concludes by discussing the atheist who be
lieves in God but not in Christ, and finally the "atheist"
who believes in God and Christ but not in the ordinances
of his Church. Thus Donne manipulates the term so as to
close on the conventional note of the all-important role
^ Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livlus,
trans. C. E. Detmold (Boston, 1891), ITT) p. 22.
2^See also p. 81, Vol. VIII: "... and whatsoever
is not Hell, shall bee Heaven."
UO
of the Church in the Christian life.
The Christian, then, has spiritual advantages that
the pagan humanist did not have. To deny these advantages,
having been offered them, is a grave error.
. . . what punishment soever God reserves for
them, who never heard the Name of his Son Christ
Jesus at all, or for them who have pretended to
receive him, but have done it Idolatrously,
superstitiously; we that have heard him, we that
have had the Scriptures preached and applied to
us sincerely, shall certainly have the heavier
condemnation, for having had that which they
wanted. . . If we doe not doe that which we
heare. (Sermon 7, Vol. II, p. 177).
So we have seen how Donne accepts the scientist's,
and also the secular humanist's, belief in the efficacy
of man's "natural faculties," although at the same time
Donne warns against the folly of elevating reason over
faith--the scientist over the theologian, or the secular
humanist over the Christian. In this regard, as in some
encountered in earlier chapters of this study, Donne's
defense of the Church is characterized by a strategy of
accommodation--he allows the validity of the opponents'
view _if it is placed in its proper perspective, the per
spective of the conservative and scholastic. In fact,
in extending a hand to the scientist and to the secular
humanist, Donne is employing a strategy used by the Fathers
of the early Christian Church. According to Congar, the
theology of these early Fathers was formed in categories
141
23
"homogeneous to those of pagan culture." He quotes
Clement, who wrote that "Greek philosophy purifies the
soul and prepares it to receive the faith on which truth
29
constructs knowledge." ' And St. Jerome, in a famous
letter, justified the use of pagan literature in the
Christian education.^ The Fathers of the Primitive
Church attempted to make room for what v.'as good in clas
sical culture, and Donne, with his eye on the secular
humanist and scientific philosopher of the Renaissance,
follows the strategy of the Fathers.
But although Donne is accommodating, he is definitely
a Thomist, arguing for faith founded on reason and for
reason completed by faith--arguing in fact for a "new
faculty" compounded of reason and faith. But the word
"new" is not intended in a literal historical sense; this
faculty may be new to some of the more secularized souls
of Donne's day, but it is really the old union of faith
and reason defined by Aquinas.
This "new" faculty imposes a way of understanding
nature and natural events that is opposed to the methods
and assumptions of the scientist. Donne would not have
28
History of Theology, p. 39.
29
History of Theology, p. 40.
- JQKlstory of Theology, p. 44.
l>-\ 2
us study the book of creatures to discern natural laws
that would help us control our environment, but rather
we should look In this book for the hand and judgments of
God. So, for instance, Donne teaches that sins are the
true cause of bodily disease (Sermon 2, Vol. X, p. 79)>
and he speaks of the "disobedience" of those who do not
beleeve present judgments to be judgments, be
cause he can make shift to call them by a milder
name, accidents, and not judgments, and can
assigne some naturall, or morall, or casuall
reason for them. (Sermon 10, Vol. VIII, p. 309).
Despite Bredvold and Moloney, such statements are more
medieval than modern.
Never thinke it a weakenesse, to call that a
judgement of God, which others determine in
Nature. . . . Certainely, we were better call
twenty naturall accidents judgements of God,
then frustrate Gods purpose in any of his power-
full deliverances, by calling it a naturall ac
cident, and suffer the thing to vanish so, and
God be left unglorlfied in it, or his Church
unedified by it. (Sermon 10, Vol. VI, p. 219).
Even political events reveal the workings of God's judg-
ments--"0nce in an Invasion, once in a Powder-treason.
. . ." (Sermon 10, Vol. VI, p. 220).
And yet Donne is very much aware of the theories
and achievements of the scientists of his own time, and
it is this awareness that gives Donne his aura of modern
ity. Bredvold observes that in Blathanatos, written prob
ably in 1608, Donne refers to Kepler's De Stella Nove in
Pede Serpentarii, published in l6o6. And in Conclave
143
Ignatii (l6ll) Donne reveals a knowledge of the works of
Copernicus and Tycho Brahe and of the publications of
Galileo and Kepler as recent as that year and the preced-
31
Ing year.' Such scientific learning also occurs in the
sermons, but in the sermons it is clear that the truth of
a particular scientific concept is not so important to
Donne as is the rhetorical use he can make of the concept
in presenting whatever devotional topic is at hand.
Donne, like any poet, exercises the right to allude to
a body of knowledge without committing himself to a com
plete acceptance of It.
Some Cosmographers have said, That there is
no land so placed in the world, but that from
that land, a man may see other land. 1 dispute
it not, I defend it not; I accept it, and I
apply it. . . . (Sermon 17, Vol. VII, p. 415).
In the following passage, Donne uses the new philos
ophy rhetorically for the purpose of attacking the Roman
Catholic doctrine of purgatory.
Against the popular opinion of the Spheare,
or Element of Fire, some new philosophers have
made this an argument, that it is improbable,
and impertinent, to admit an Element that pro-'
duceth no Creatures. . . All the other three
Elements, Earth, and Water, and Ayre abound
with inhabitants proper to each of them, onely
Fire produces nothing. Here is the fire that
recompences that defect; The fire of the Roman
Purgatory hath produced Indulgences, and Indul
gences are multiplied to such number, as that
no heards of Cattell upon earth can equall them,
3lnThe Religious Though1 - of Donne," p„ 202.
144
when they meet by millions at a Jubile, no
shoales, no spawne of fish at Sea, can equall
them, when they are transported in whole Tuns
to the West Indies, where of late yeares their
best Market hath beene; No flocks, no flights
of birds in the Ayre can equall them. . . .
(Sermon 6, Vol. VII, p. 184).
And, in another tone, the new philosophy is used to sug
gest the brevity of man's estate.
I need not call in new Philosophy, tnat denies 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. . . .(Sermon 10, Vol. VII,
P. 271).
The "old" philosophy is used in the sermons just as readily
as a source of imagery. Faith, we find, is "the Intelli
gence of that spheare, the Christian Church. . ."
(Sermon 17, Vol. Ill, p. 369); and elsewhere, our salva
tion is like the music of the spheres, not to be experi
enced on earth (Sermon 7, Vol. II, p. 170).
The mere rhetorical use of scientific thought, old
or new, might seem to indicate a rather casual attitude
toward this kind of "truth." It is clear that Donne did
"believe" the new astronomical theories, but the truth of
such theories is not of great importance when they are
placed beside the devotional truths of God's Church.
So Donne, like Milton in Paradise Lost, can make use of
either the old or the new ideas, depending on which ones
best suit his purpose at any given turn. When we realize
w
that the secular "truths" are being used In the service
of the only Truth worthy of the name, then Donne's casual
ness concerning mere facts becomes understandable. Just
as the book of creatures is a less certain source of reve
lation than scriptures, and reason is incomplete without
faith, so information is subservient to devotion. In all
this, despite his keeping abreast of contemporary learn-
ing, Donne's roots are thoroughly medieval.'
And if I must get Heaven by a Syllogism, my
Major is Credo in Deum Patrem, I believe in
God the Father; for Pater major, the Father is
greater then all: And my Minor shall be, Credo
in Deum Flllum, I believe in God the Son, Qul
exlvlt de patre, he came' from God; And my Con
clusion, wnich must proceed from Major & Minor,
shall be Credo in Splrltum Sanctum, I believe
in the Holy Ghost, who proceeds Irom Father and
Son: And this Syllogisme brought me into the
Militant Church in my Baptisme, and this will
carry me into the Triumphant, in my Transmigra
tion; for, doctrine of Salvation is matter with
out controversie. (Sermon 9, Vol. Ill, pp. 209-
210) .
■20
This chapter has reached some of the same conclu
sions reached by Irving Lowe, "John Donne: The Middle
Way. The Reason-Faith Equation in Donne's Sermons,"
Journal of the History of Ideas, XXII, (July-Sept., 1961),
389-397.
CONCLUSION
To Donne the primary role of the preacher is to
assist the devotion of his congregation. The pulpit is
not the place for debating subtle issues of theological
doctrine or for fanning the flames of controversy between
rival religious sects. That such controversies exist,
and that rival sects exist at all, is repeatedly lamented
by Donne in his sermons. Donne's ideal is a single, uni
fied Church that tolerates regional differences in unes
sential matters of doctrine and practice.
But rivals do exist, and they pose a threat to the
Church of England--the Church that most nearly represents
the ideal Church instituted by Christ and the Apostles.
Therefore, although the fact of controversy is to be
lamented, it is necessary to defend the beliefs and
practices of the Church of England.
One of the main lines of this defense is Donne's
repeated assertion that the "ordinary way" to salvation,
the way offered by the Church of England, is essential
for those people who have had the benefit of the teach
ings of that Church. Thus Donne attacks all "private"
forms of worship, particularly the worship of the mystic
146
who would undervalue the sacraments and rituals of the
Church. To Donne, there Is no union with God outside of
the ordinary practices of the Church, and he attacks the
mystical notions of the "divine spark" and private Inspir
ation, going so far as to advocate use of only those
prayers written cr approved by the Church. Extempore
preaching is also seen by Donne as a threat to the estab
lished way of the Church of England.
The specific aspects of this established mode of
worship that Donne defends are the sacraments of baptism
and communion and the various rituals and ceremonies in
herited from the early Church. Donne, however, is care
ful to demonstrate that there is a biblical precedent for
the retention of these ceremonies, thus answering, the
objections of Puritans who might see these ceremonies as
Roman corruptions that must be removed.
The ceremonies of the early Church are retained
because the Church of England in fact claims to be the
true heir of the early Church. Here Donne, and the
bishops' party, are in direct disagreement ;vith the
Puritans, who would sever all ties with the Roman Church,
early or late. But to Donne it is only the recent Roman
Catholic Church that is being abandoned by the Reforma-
tion--the Roman Church as symbolized by the Council of
Trent. It is this Church, with its additions of so many
hi 3
unessential doctrines and practices and with its corrupt
ing envolvement in civil affairs, that has broken with the
tradition of the Patristic Church.
These actions of the Church of Rome, together with
the refusal of other Protestant sects to unify with the
Church of England, keep in darkness the true bride of
Christ, the Universal Church.
In addition to defending the sacraments and cere
monies of the Church of England and attacking the errors
of rival religious groups, Donne defends his Church against
the habits of thought encouraged by the new scientist and
by the secular humanist. In this regard, Donne argues
that reason and faith are not separate faculties, or
should not be. One cannot find salvation by contemplating
God's works without the aid of scriptures, and reason
exercised without faith is corrupting. Donne's affinities
are clearly with the medieval past, as he attempts to re
assert the old synthesis of reason and faith.
In 1617 Donne lost his wife, Anne. This loss is
expressed in one of Donne's most moving poems--a love
poem, an elegy, and a poem of devotion.
i4 g
"Holy Sonnet XVII"
Since she whom I lov'd hath payd her last debt
To Nature, and to hers, and my good Is dead,
And her Soule early Into heaven ravished,
Wholly on heavenly things my mind is sett.
Here the admyring her mind did whett
To seeke thee God; so streames do shew their head;
But though I have found thee, and thou my thirst
hath fed,
A holy thirsty dropsy melts mee yett.
But why should I begg more Love, when as thou
Dost wooe my soule for hers- offering all thine:
And dost not only feare lef I allow
My Love to Saints and Angc_ things divine,
But in they tender jealosy dost doubt ^
Least the World, Fleshe, yea Devill putt thee out.
This is not the bookish, if eloquent, Platonism of Spen
ser's Four Hymns. Nor do we find the neat and rather
simple choice between the earthly and the heavenly with
which Book I of The Faerie Queene concludes. Donne has
passed from earthly love to heavenly love, but not in
the abstract way of the student or scholar who chooses
experiences from books. For Donne, it was a hard and
real passage, one not willingly embarked upon--we do not
choose such experiences. Donne, in this sonnet, finds
himself alone with his God, but without having willed it,
without the intellectualized rejection of earthly love
found in Spenser and in the sonnets by Sidney and Shakes
peare on this theme.
^H. J. C. Grierson, ed. Donne's Poetical Works
(Oxford, 1912), I, p. 330.
ipO
This sonnet on the loss of his wife is followed by
the sonnet beginning, ''Show me deare Christ, thy spouse,
so bright and clear." The juxtaposition may not have been
planned by Donne, but it suggests the Intensely personal
nature of Donne's religious experience and of his concern
for the Church, wherein the love of God is communicated.
It has been the purpose of this study to reveal the spe
cific forms that this concern takes in Donne's sermons.
But to examine the perimeters of Donne's defense of
the Church of England as an institution without some under
standing of what is inside those perimeters is, as Donne
would say, to miss the "Sermon of the Sermon." The two
Holy Sonnets help to suggest what is Inside. The most
frequent devotional theme in Donne's sermons is the theme
of lov°--God's love for man and the reciprocal act of
love tnat man owes to God. This love between God and man,
which occurs within the Church, is the subject of a sermon
preached on the text, "I love them that love me, and they
that seek me early shall find me." This sermon was preach
ed to Queene Anne four months after the death of Donne's
wife, Anne.
. . . consider how early he sought thee; It is
a great mercy that he staies so long for thee;
It was more to seek thee so early: Dost thou
not feele that he seeks thee now, in offering
his love and desiring thine? Canst not thou
remember that he sought thee yesterday, that is,
that some tt-ntations besieged thee then, and he
sought thee out by his Grace, and preserved thee?
and hath he not sought thee so, so early, as
from the beginning of thy life? nay, dost
thou not remember that after thou hadst com
mitted that sin, he sought thee by imprint--
some remorse, some apprehension of his judgments,
and so . . . by a miraculous and powerful work
ing of his Spirit, he threatned thee, when he
comforted thee, he lov'd thee when he chid thee,
he sought thee when he drove thee from him?
He hath sought thee amongst the infinite numbers
of false and fashionall Christians, that he might
bring thee out from the hypocrite, to serve him
in earnest, and in holyness, and in righteous
ness; he sought thee before that amongst the Herd
of the nations and Gentiles, who had no Church,
to bring thee into his inclosures and pastures,
his visible Church, and to feed thee with his
word and sacraments; he sought thee before that,
in the catalogue of all his Creatures, where he
might have left thee a stone, or a plant, or a
beast; and then he gave thee an immortal! Soul,
capable of all his future blessings; yea, before
this he soup;ht thee, when thou wast no where,
nothing, he brought thee then, the greatest
step of all, from being nothing, to be a Creature;
how early did he seek thee, when he sought thee in
Adam1s confused loynes, and out of that leavened
and sowre loaf in which v/e were all kneaded up,
out of that massa damnata, that refuse and con
demned lump of dough, he sought and sever'd out
that grain which thou shouldst be; yea millions
of millions of generations before all this he
sought thee in his own eternal Decree; And in
that first Scripture of his, which is as old as
himself, in the book of life he wrote thy name
in the blood of that Lamb which was slain for
thee, not only from the beginning of the world,
but from the writing of that eternal Decree of
thy Salvation. Thus early had he sought thee
in the Church amongst hypocrites; out of the
Church amongst the Heathen; In his Creatures
amongst creatures of an ignoble nature, and in
the first vacuity, when thou wast nothing he
sought thee so early as in Adam, so early as in
the book of life, and when wilt thou think it a
fit time to seek him? (Sermon 5, Vol. I,
pp. 248-249).
rj>2
The Holy Sonnet on the death of Anne suggests an
other theme found often in Donne's sermons--the theme of
death. Donne does not preach God's love without looking
at the realities of the fate God has ordained for man--
the "last debt" of the sonnet.
. . . who knows the revolutions of dust? Dust
upon the Kings high-way, and dust upon the Kings
grave, are both, or neither, Dust Royall, and
may change places; who knows the revolutions of
dust? (Sermon 3, Vol. Ill, pp. 105-106).
The ashes of an Oak in the Chimney, are no
Epitaph of that Oak, to tell me how high or
how large that was; It tels me not what flocks
it sheltered while it stood, nor what men it
hurt when it fell. The dust of great persons
graves is speechlesse too, it sayes nothing,
it distinguishes nothing . . . and when a whirle-
winde hath blowne the dust of the Church-yard
into the Church, and the man sweeps out the dust
of the Church into the Church-yard, who will
undertake to sift those dusts again. . .?
(Sermon 1, Vol. IV, p. 53).
But these questions have answers. God knows the
revolutions of dust and will sift the dust again. Even
in the imagery of revolution the truth is prefigured,
for life is not a broken line and the dust turns into
life again. And "of all formes, a Circle is perfectest,
and art thou loath to make up that Circle, with returning
to the earth again?" (Sermon 1, Vol. IV, pp. 51-52).
If thou hadst seen the bodies of men rise out
of the grave, at Christs Resurrection, could
that be a stranger thing to thee, then, (if
thou hadst never seen, nor hard, nor imagined
it before) to see an Oake that spreads so farre,
rise out of an Akorne? Or if Churchyards did
1 .
vent themselves every spring, and that there
were such a Resurrection of bodies every yeare,
when thou hadst seen as many Resurrections as
years, the Resurrection would be no stranger to
thee, then the spring Is. (Sermon 3* Vol. Ill,
P. 97).
Donne's Imagination grasps the profound unity of
creation and destruction, "All other things are preserved,
and continued by dying. . ." (Sermon 3, Vol. Ill, p. 98),
and the power of love. It is In the Church, which Donne
defends so often in his sermons, that the paradox of
birth and death is resolved for man through the means
of salvation that God offers. Through God's love, in
the Church, our circle is made complete.
In 1608 the Annunciation and the Passion fell upon
the same day, suggesting to Donne this completion. In the
poem on this occasion, Donne writes,
This Church, by letting these dales joyne,
hath shown Death and conception in mankinde is
one; 2
This oneness is the true subject of divinity. As Donne
says in another poem,
all Divinity
Is love or wonder.^
2"The Annuntiation and Passion," 11. 33-34.
Donne's Poetical Works, I, p. 308.
8"A Valediction: of the booke," 11. 28-29.
Donne's Poetical Works, I, p. 28.
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Creator Henricksen, Bruce Conley (author)

Core Title John Donne'S Defense Of The Church Of England

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program English

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

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Advisor Tufte, Virginia James (committee chair), [illegible] (committee member), Armato, Rosario P. (committee member)

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