Psalm LXVIII.20 ‘And unto God the Lord belongs the issues of death’ (i.e. from death).
This sermon
was the last sermon preached by John Donne, the Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral.
It was delivered in front of King Charles I at Whitehall on 25 February 1631.
It was a month before Donne died on 31 March and it has been described ‘his own
funeral sermon.’
Buildings stand
by the benefit of their foundation that sustain and support them, and of their
buttresses that comprehend and embrace them, and of their contignations that
knit and unite them. The foundations suffer them not to sink, the buttresses
suffer them not to swerve, and the contignation and knitting suffers them not
to cleave. The body of our building is in the former part of this verse. It is
this: He that is our God is the God of salvation, ad salutes, of
salvations in the plural, so it is in the original; the God that gives us
spiritual and temporal salvation too. But of this building, the foundation, the
buttresses, the contignations, are in this part of the verse which constitute
our text, and in the three divers acceptations of the words amongst our
expositors: Unto God the Lord belong the issues from death, for, first,
the foundations of this building (that our God is the God of all salvation) is
laid in this, that unto this God the Lord belong the issues from
death; that is it is in his power to give us an issue and deliverance, even
then when we are brought to the jaws and teeth of death, and to the lips of
that whirlpool, the grave. And so in this acceptation, this exitus mortis, this
issue of death is liberatio à morte, a deliverance from death, and this is the
most obvious ordinary acceptation of these words, and that upon which our
translation lays hold, the issues from death. And then, secondly, the
buttresses that comprehend and settle this building, that is he that is our God
is the God of all salvation, are thus raised; unto God the Lord being the
issues of death, that is, the disposition and manner of our death; what kind of
issue and transmigration we shall have out of this world, whether prepared or
sudden, whether violent or natural, whether in our perfect senses or shaken and
disordered by sickness, there is no condemnation to be argued out of that, for,
howsoever they die, precious in his sight is the death of his saints,
and with him are the issues of death, the ways of our departing out of this
life are in his hands. And so in this sense of the words, this exitus
mortis, the issues of death, is liberatio in morte, a deliverance in
death; not that God will deliver us from dying, but that he will have a care of
us in the hour of death, of what soever our passage be. And in this sense and
acceptation of the words, the natural frame and contexture doth well and
pregnantly administer unto us. And then, lastly, the contignation and knitting
of this building, that he that is our God is the God of all salvations,
consists in this, Unto this God the Lord belong the issues of death;
that is, that this God the Lord having both united and knit both natures in
one, and being God having also come into this world in our flesh, he could have
no other means to save us, he could have no other issue out of this world, nor
return to his former glory, but by death. And so in this sense, this exitus
mortis, the issue of death, is liberatio per mortem, a deliverance
by death, by the death of this God, our Lord Jesus Christ. And this is Saint Augustine’s
acceptation of the words, and those many and great persons that have adhered to
him. In all these three lines, then, we shall look upon those words, first, as
the God of power, the Almighty Father rescues his servants from the jaws of
death; and then as the God of mercy, the glorious Son rescued us by taking upon
himself this issue of death; and then, between these two, as the God of
comfort, the Holy Ghost rescues us from all discomfort by his blessed
impression beforehand, that what manner of death soever be ordained for us, yet
this exitus mortis shall be introitus in vitam, our issue in
death shall be an entrance into everlasting life. And these three
considerations: our deliverance à morte, in morte, per mortem,
from death, in death, and by death, will abundantly do all the offices of the
foundations, of the buttresses, of the contignations, of this our building,
that he that is our God is the God of all salvation, because unto this God
the Lord belong the issues of death.
First, then, we
consider this exitus mortis to be a liberation à morte, that with
God the Lord are the issues of death; and therefore in all our death,
and deadly calamities of this life, we may justly hope of a good issue from
him. In all our periods and transitions in this life, are so many passages from
death to death; our very birth and entrance into this life is exitus à morte,
an issue from death, for in our mother’s womb we are dead, so as that we do not
know we live, not so much as we do in our sleep, neither is there any grave so
close or putrid a prison, as the womb would unto us if we stayed in it beyond
our time, or died there before our time. In the grave the worms do not kill us;
we breed, and feed, and then kill those worms which we ourselves produced. In
the womb the dead child kills the mother that conceived it, and is a murderer,
nay, a parricide, even after it is dead. And if we be not dead so in the womb,
so as that being dead we kill her that gave us our first life, our life of
vegetation, yet we are dead so as David’s idols are dead. In the womb we have eyes
and see not, ears and hear not. There in the womb we are fitted for works
of darkness, all the while deprived of light; and there in the womb we are
taught cruelty, by being fed with blood, and may be damned, though we be never
born. Of our very making in the womb, David says, I am wonderfully and
fearfully made, and such knowledge is too excellent for me.[i] for even that is the
Lord’s doing, and it is wonderful in our eyes[ii];
ipse fecit nos, it is he that made us, and not we ourselves,[iii] nor our parents neither.
Thy hands have made and fashioned me round about, saith Job, and
(as the original word is) thou hast taken pains about me, and yet (he
says) thou dost destroy me. Though I be the masterpiece of the greatest
master (man is so), yet if thou do no more for me, if thou leave me where thou
madest me, destruction will follow. The womb, which should be the house of
life, becomes death itself if God leaves us there. That which God threatens so
often, the shutting of a womb, is not so heavy nor so discomfortable a curse in
the first as in the latter shutting of barrenness as in the shutting of
weakness, when children are come to the birth, and no strength to bring
forth.[iv]
It is the
exaltation of misery to fall from a near hope of happiness. And in that
vehement imprecation, the prophet expresses the highest of God’s anger, Give
them, O Lord, what will thou give them? Give them a miscarrying womb. Therefore
as soon as we are men (that is, inanimated, quickened in the womb), though we
cannot ourselves, our parents have to say in our behalf, Wretched man that
he is, who shall deliver him from this body of death? [v] if there be no deliverer.
It must be he that saith to Jeremiah, Before I formed thee, and before thou
camest out of the womb I sanctified thee. We are not sure that there was no
kind of ship nor boat to fish in, nor to pass by, til God prescribed Noah that
absolute form of an ark.[vi] That word which the Holy
Ghost, by Moses, useth for the ark, is common to all kind of boats, thebah,
and is the same word that Moses useth for the boat that he was exposed in, that
hos mother laid him in an ark of bulrushes. But we are sure that Eve had no
midwife when she was delivered of Cain, therefore she might well say, Possedi
virum à Domino[vii],
I have gotten a man from the Lord, wholly, entirely from the Lord, it is the Lord
that enabled me to conceive, the Lord that infused a quickening soul into that
inception, The Lord that brought into the world that which himself had
quickened; without all this might Eve say, my body had been but the house of
death, and Domini Domini sunt exitus mortis, To God the Lord the issues of
death. But then this exitus à morte is but introitus in mortem;
this issue, this deliverance, from that death, the death of the womb, is an
entrance, a delivering over to another death, the manifold deaths of this
world; we have a winding-sheet in our mother’s womb which grows with us from
our inception, and we come into the world wound up in that winding-sheet, for
we come to seek a grave. And as prisoners discharged of actions may lie for
fees, so when the womb hath discharged us, yet we are bound to it by cords of
hestae, by such a string as that we cannot go hence, nor stay there, we
celebrate our own funerals with cries even at our birth; as out threescore and
ten years’ life were spent in our mother’s labour, and our circle made up in
the first point thereof; we beg our baptism with another sacrament, with tears;
and we come into a world that lasts many ages, but we last not. In domo
Patris, says our Saviour, speaking of heaven, multae mansiones,
divers and durable; so that if a man cannot possess a martyr’s house (he hath
shed no blood for Christ), yet he may have a confessor’s, he hath been ready to
glorify God in the shedding of his blood. And if a woman cannot possess a
virgin’s house (she hath embraced the holy state of marriage), yet she may have
a matron’s house, she hath brought forth and brought up children in the fear of
God. In domo Patris, in my Father’s house, in heaven, there are many
mansions;[viii]
but here, upon earth, the Son of man hath
not where to lay his head, [ix]saith he himself. Nonne
terram dedit filis hominum? How then
hath God given this earth to the sons of men? He hath given them earth for
their materials to be made of earth, and he hath given them earth for their
grave and sepulchre, to return and resolve to earth, but not for their
possession. Here we have no continuing city, [x] nay, no cottage that
continues, nay, no persons, no bodies, that continue. Whatsoever moved Saint
Jerome to call the journeys of the Israelites in the wilderness,[xi] mansions; the word (the
word is nasang) signifies but a journey, but a peregrination. Even the
Israel of God hath no mansions, but journeys, pilgrimages in this life. By what
measure did Jacob measure his life to Pharaoh? The days of my pilgrimage.[xii] And though the apostle
would not say morimur, that whilst we are in the body we are dead, yet
he says, perigrinamur, whilst we are in the body we are in but a
pilgrimage, and we are absent from the Lord: [xiii] he might have said
dead, for this whole world is but an universal churchyard, but our common
grave, and the life and motion that the greatest persons have in it is but as
the shaking of buried bodies in the grave, by an earthquake. That which we call
life is but hebdomada mortium, a week of death, seven days, seven
periods of our life spent in dying, a dying seven times over, and there is no
end. Our birth dies in infancy, and our infancy dies in youth, and youth and
the rest die in age, and age also dies and determines all. Nor do all these,
youth out of infancy, or age out of youth, arise so, as the phoenix out of the
ashes of another phoenix formerly dead, but as a wasp or serpent out of a
carrion, or as a snake out of dung. Our youth is worse than our infancy, and
our age worse than our youth. Our youth is hungry and thirsty after those sins
which our infancy knew not; and our age is sorry and angry, that it cannot pursue those sins
which our youth did, and besides, all the way, so many deaths, that is, so many
deadly calamities accompany every condition and every period of life, as that
death itself would be an ease to them that suffer them. Upon this sense doth
Job wish that God had not given him an issue from the first death, from the
womb, Wherefore thou hast brought me forth out of the womb? Oh that I had
given up the ghost, and no eye seen me! I should have been as though I had not
been born.[xiv] And not only the
impatient Israelites in their murmuring (would to God we had died by the hand
of the Lord in the land of Egypt),[xv] but Elijah himself, when
he fled from Jezebel, and went for his life, as that text says, under the
juniper tree, requested that he might die, and said, It is enough now; Lord,
take away my life.[xvi] So Jonah justifies his
impatience, nay, his anger towards God himself: Now, O Lord, take, I beseech
thee, my life from me, for it is better to die than to live.[xvii] And when God
asked him, Dost thou well to be angry for this? he replies, I do well
to be angry, even unto death. How much worse a death than death is this
life, which so good men would so often change for death! But if my case be as
Saint Paul’s case, quotidiè morior, that I die daily, that something
heavier than death fall upon me every day, something heavier than death fall
upon me; though that be true of me, Conceptus in peccatis, I was shapen in
iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me (there I died a death);
though that be true of me, Natus filius irae, I was born not only the
child of sin, but the child of wrath, of the wrath of God for sin, which is a
heavier death; yet Domini Domini sunt exitus mortis, with God the Lord are
the issues of death; and after a Job, and a Joseph, and a Jeremiah, and a
Daniel, I cannot doubt of a deliverance. And if no other deliverance conduce
more to his glory and my good, yet he hath the keys of death,[xviii] and he can let out at
that door, that is, deliver me from the manifold deaths of this world, the omni
die, and the tota die, the every day’s death and every hour’s death,
by that one death, the final dissolution of body and soul, the end of all. But
then is that the end of all? Is that dissolution of body and soul the last
death that the body shall suffer (for of spiritual death we speak not now). It
is not, though this be exitus à morte; it is introitus in mortem;
though it be an issue from manifold deaths of this world, yet it is an entrance
into the death of corruption and putrefaction, and vermiculation, and
incineration, and dispersion in and from the grave, in which every dead man
dies over again. It was a prerogative peculiar to Christ, not to die this
death, not to see corruption. What gave him this privilege? Not Joseph’s great
proportion of gums and spices, that might have preserved his body from
corruption and incineration longer than he needed it, longer than three days,
but it would not have done it for ever. What preserved him then? Did his
exemption and freedom from original sin preserve him from this corruption and
incineration? It is true that original
sin hath induced this corruption and incineration upon us; if we had not sinned
in Adam, mortality had not put on immortality,[xix] (as the apostle speaks),
nor corruption had not put on incorruption, but we had had our
transmigration from this to the other world without any mortality, any
corruption at all. But yet since Christ took sin upon him, so far as made him
mortal, he had it so far too as might have made him see this corruption and
incineration, though he had no original sin in himself; what preserved him
then? Did the hypostatical union of both natures, God and man, preserve him
from this corruption and incineration? It is true that this was a most powerful
embalming, to be embalmed with the Divine Nature itself, to be embalmed with
eternity, was able to preserve him from corruption and incineration for ever.
And he was embalmed so, embalmed with the Divine Nature itself, even in his
body as well as in his soul; for the Godhead, the Divine Nature, did not
depart, but remained still united to his dead body in the grave; but yet for
all this powerful embalming, his hypostatical union of both natures, we see
Christ did die; and for all his union which made him God and man, he became no
man (for the union of the body and soul makes the man, and he whose soul and
body are separated by death as long as that state lasts, is properly no man).
And therefore as in him the dissolution of body and soul was no dissolution of
the hypostatical union, so there is nothing that constrains us to say, that
though the flesh of Christ had seen corruption and incineration in the grave,
this had not been any dissolution of the hypostatical union, for the Divine
nature, the Godhead, might have remained with all the elements and principles
of Christ’s body, as well as it did with the two constitutive parts of his
person, his body and his soul. This incorruption then was not in Joseph’s gums
and spices, nor was it in Christ’s innocency, and exemption from original sin,
nor was it (that is, it is not necessary to say it was) in the hypostatical
union. But this incorruptibleness of his flesh is most conveniently placed in
that; Non dabis, thou wilt not suffer thy Holy One to see corruption;
we look no further for causes or reasons in the mysteries of religion, but to
the will and pleasure of God; Christ himself limited his inquisition in that ita
est, even so, Father, for it seemeth good in thy sight. Christ’s
body did not see corruption, therefore, because God had decreed it should not.
The humble soul (and only the humble soul is the religious soul) rests himself
upon God’s purposes and the decrees of God which he hath declared and
manifested, not such as are conceived and imagined in ourselves, though upon
some probability, some verisimilitude; so in our present case Peter proceeds in
his sermon at Jerusalem, and so Paul in his at Antioch. [xx]They preached Christ to
have been risen without seeing corruption, not only because God had decreed it,
but because he had manifested that decree in his prophet, therefore doth Saint
Paul cite by special number the second Psalm for that decree, and therefore
both Saint Peter and Saint Paul cite for it that place in the sixteenth Psalm; [xxi] for when God declares
his decree and purpose in the express words of his prophet, or when he declares
it in the real execution of the decree, then he makes it ours, then he
manifests it to us. And therefore, as the mysteries of our religion are not the
objects of our reason, but by faith we rest on God’s decrees and purpose – (it
is so, O God because it is thy word it should be so) – so God’s decrees are
ever to be considered in the manifestation thereof. All manifestation is either
in the word of God, or in the execution of the decree; and when these two
concur and meet it is the strongest demonstration that can be; when thereof I
find those marks of adoption and spiritual filiation which are delivered in the
word of God to be upon me; when I find that real execution of his good purpose
upon me, as that actually I do live under the obedience and under the
conditions which are evidences of adoption and spiritual filiation; then, so
long as I see those marks and live so, I may safely comfort myself in a holy
certitude and a modest infallibility of my adoption. Christ determines himself
in that, the purpose of God was manifest to him; Saint Peter and Saint Paul
determine themselves in these two ways of knowing the purpose of God, the word
of God before the execution of the decree in the fulness of time. It was
prophesied before, said they, and it performed now, Christ is risen without
seeing corruption. Now, this which is so singularly peculiar to him, that his
flesh should not see corruption, at his second coming, his coming judgement,
shall extend to all that are then alive; their hestae shall not see corruption,
because, as the apostle says, and says as a secret, as a mystery, Behold I
shew you a mystery, we shall not all sleep (that is, not continue in the
state of the dead in the grave), but we shall all be changed in an instant,
we shall have a dissolution, and in the same instant a redintegration, a
recompacting of body and soul, and that shall be truly a death and truly a
resurrection, but no sleeping in corruption, but for us that die now and sleep
in the state of the dead, we must all pass this posthume death, this death
after death, nay, this death after burial, this dissolution after dissolution,
this death of corruption and putrefaction, of vermiculation and incineration,
of dissolution and dispersion in and from the grave, when those bodies that
have been children of royal parents, and the parents of royal children, must
say with Job, Corruption, thou art my father, and to the worm, Thou are my
mother and my sister. Miserable riddle, when the same worm must be my
mother, and my sister and myself! Miserable incest, when I must be married to
my mother and my sister, and be both father and mother to my own mother and
sister, beget and bear that worm which is all that miserable penury, when my
mouth shall be filled with dust, and the worm shall feed, and feed sweetly
[xxii] upon me; when the
ambitious shall have no satisfaction, if the poorest alive tread upon him, nor
the poorest receive any contentment in being made equal to princes, for they
shall be equal but in dust. One dieth at his full strength, being wholly at
ease and in quiet; and another dies in the bitterness of his soul, and never
eats with pleasure; but they lie down alike in the dust, and the worm covers
them.[xxiii]
In Job and in Isaiah,[xxiv] it covers them and is
spread under them, the worm is spread under thee, and the worm covers thee.
They are the mats and carpets that lie under, and there are the slate and the
canopy that hang over the greatest of the sons of men. Even those bodies that
were the temples of the Holy Ghost come to this dilapidation, to ruin,
to rubbish, to dust, even the Israel of the Lord, and Jacob himself, hath no
other specification, no other denomination, but that vermis Jacob, thou
worm of Jacob. Truly the consideration of this posthume death, this death after
burial, that after God (with whom are the issues of death) hath delivered me
from the death of the womb, by bringing me into the world, and from the
manifold deaths of the world, by laying me in the grave, I must die again in an
incineration of this flesh, and in a dispersion of that dust. That that
monarch, who spread over many nations alive, must in his dust lie in a corner
of that sheet of lead, and there but so long as that lead will last; and that
private and retired man, that thought himself his own for ever, and never came
forth, must in his dust of the grave be published, and (such are the
revolutions of the grave) be mingled with the dust of every highway and of
every dunghill, and swallowed in every puddle and pond. This is the most
inglorious and contemptible vilification, the most deadly and peremptory
nullification of man, that we can consider. God seems to have carried the
declarations of his power to a great height, when he sets the prophet Ezekiel
in the valley of dry bones, and says, Son of man, can these bones live?
as though it had been impossible, and yet they did; the Lord laid sinews
upon them, and flesh, and breathed into them, and they did live. But in
that case there were bones to be seen, something visible, of which it might be
said, Can this thing live? But in this death of incineration and dispersion of
dust, we see nothing that we call that man’s. If we say, Can this dust live? Perchance
it cannot, it may be the mere dust of the earth, which never did live, never
shall. It may be the dust of that man’s worm, which did live, but shall no
more. It may be the dust of another man, that concerns not him of whom it was
asked. This death of incineration and dispersion is, to natural reason, the
most irrecoverable death of all; and yet Domini Domini sunt exitus mortis,
unto God the Lord belong the issues of death; and by recompacting this
dust into the same body, and remaining the same body with the same soul, he
shall in a blessed and glorious resurrection give me such an issue from this
death as shall never pass into any other death, but establish me into a life
that shall last as long as the Lord of Life himself.
And so have you
that that belongs to the first acceptation of these words (unto God the Lord
belong the issues of death). That though from the womb to the grave, and in
the grave itself, we pass from death to death, yet, as Daniel speaks, the
Lord our God is able to deliver us, and he will deliver us.
And so we pass unto
our second accommodation of those words (unto God the Lord belong the issues
of death), that it belongs to God, and not to man, to pass a judgement upon
us at our death, or to conclude a dereliction on God’s part upon the manner
thereof.
Those
indications which the physicians receive, and those presagitions which they
give for death or recovery in the patient, they receive and give out of the
grounds and the rules of their art, but we have no such rule or art to give a presagition
of spiritual death and damnation upon any such indication as we see in any
dying man; we see often enough to be sorry, but not to despair; we may be
deceived both ways: we use to comfort ourselves in the death of a friend, if it
be testified that e went away like a lamb, that is, without any reluctance, but
God knows that may be accompanied with a dangerous damp and stupefaction, and
insensibility of his present state. Our blessed Saviour suffered colluctiations
with death, and a sadness even in his soul to death, and an agony even
to a bloody sweat in his body, and expostulations with God, and exclamations
upon the cross. He was a devout man who said upon his death-bed, or death-turf
(for he was a hermit), Septuaginta annos Domino servivisiti, et mori times? Hast
thou served a good master threescore and ten years, and now art thou loth to go
into his presence? Yet Hilarion was loth. Barlaam was a devout man (a hermit
too) that said that day he died, Cognito te hodie carpisse servire Domino,
et hodie finiturum, Consider this to be the first day’s service that ever
thou didst thy Master, to glory him in a Christianly and a constant death, and
if thy first day be thy last day too, how soon dost thou come to receive thy
wages! Yet Barlaam could have been content to have stayed longer forth. Make no
ill conclusion upon any man’s lothness to die, for the mercies of God work
momentarily in minutes, and many times insensibly to bystanders, or any other
than the party departing. And then upon violent deaths inflicted upon
malefactors, Christ himself hath forbidden us by his own death to make any ill
conclusion; for his own death had those impressions in it; he was reputed, he
was executed as a malefactor, and no doubt many of them who concurred to his
death did believe him to be so. Of sudden death there are scarce examples be
found in the Scriptures upon good men, for death in battle cannot be called
sudden death; but God governs not by examples but by rules, and therefore make
no ill conclusion upon sudden death nor upon distempers neither, though
perchance accompanied with some words of diffidence and distrust in the mercies
of God. The tree lies as it falls, it is true, but it is not the last stroke
that fells the tree, nor the last word nor gasp that qualifies the soul. Still
pray we for a peaceable life against violent death, and for time of repentance
against sudden death, and for sober and modest assurance against distempered
and diffident death, but never make ill conclusions upon persons overtaken with
such deaths; Domini Domini sunt exitus mortis, to God the Lord belong the
issues of death. And he received Samson, who went out of this world in such
a manner (consider it actively, consider it passively in his own death, and in
those he slew with himself) as was subject to interpretation hard enough. Yet
the Holy Ghost hath moved Saint Paul to celebrate Samson in his great catalogue
[xxv] and so doth all the
church. Our critical day is not the very day of death, but the whole course of
our life. I thank him who prays for me when the bell tolls, but I thank him
much more who catechises me, or preaches to me, or instructs me to live. Fac
hoc et vive, there is my security, the mouth of the Lord hath said it, do
this and thou shalt live. But though I do it, yet shall I die too, die a bodily,
a natural death. But God never mentions, never seems to consider the death, the
bodily, the natural death. God doth not say, Live well, and thou shall die
well, that is, an easy, a quiet death; but, Live well here, and thou shalt live
well forever. As the first part of the sentence pieces well with the last, and
never respects, never hearkens after parathesis that comes between, so doth a
good life here flow into an eternal life, without any consideration what so
manner of death we die. But whether the gate of my prison be opened with an
oiled key (by a gentle and preparing illness), or the gate be hewn down by a
violent death, or the gate be burnt down by a raging and frantic fever, a gate
into heaven I shall have, for from the Lord is the cause of my life, and with
God the Lord are the issues of death. And further we carry not this second
acceptation of the words, as this issue of death is liberatio in
morte, God’s care that the soul be safe, what agonies soever the body
suffers in the hour of death.
But pass to our
third part and last part: As this issue of death is liberatio per mortem,
a deliverance by the death of another. Sufferentiam Job audisti, et vidisti
finem Domini, says Saint James (v. 11), You have heard of the patience
of Job, says he; all this while you have done that, for in every man,
calamitous, miserable man, a Job speaks. Now, see the end of the Lord,
sayeth that apostle, which is not that end that the Lord proposed to himself
(salvation to us) nor the end which he proposes to us (conformity to him), but see
the end of the Lord, says he, the end that the Lord himself came to death,
and a painful and shameful death. But why did he die? and die so? Quia
Domini Domini sunt exitus mortis (as Saint Augustine, interpreting the
text, answers the question), [xxvi]because to this God
our Lord belonged the issues of death. Quid apertius diceretur? says
he there, what can be more obvious, more manifest than this sense of these
words? In the former part of this verse it is said, He that is our God is
the God of salvation: Deus salvos faciendi, so he reads it, the God that
must save us. Who can this be, says he, but Jesus? For therefore that name was
given him because he was to save us. And to this Jesus, says he, this Saviour [xxvii] belong the issues
of death: Nec opportuit eum de hac vitae alios exitus habere quam mortis: being
come into this life in our mortal nature, he could not go out of this life any
other way but by death. Ideo dictum, he says, therefore it is said, to
God the Lord belonged the issues of death: ut odstederetur moriendo nos salvos faturum,
to show that his way to save us was to die. And from this text doth Saint
Isidore prove that Christ was truly man (which as many sects denied, as that he
was truly God), because to him, though he was Dominus Dominus (the text
doubles it), God the Lord, yet to him, to God the Lord belonged the issues
of death: oportuit eum pati; more cannot be said than Christ himself says
of himself; These things Christ ought to suffer;[xxviii]he had no other way
but death; so then this part of our sermon must be a passion sermon, since all
his life was a continual passion, all our Lent may well be a continual Good
Friday. Christ’s painful life took off none of the pains of his death, he felt
not the less then for having felt so much before. Nor shall any thing that
shall be said before lessen, but rather enlarge the devotion, to that shall be
said of his passion at the time of the solemnisation thereof. Christ bled not a
drop the less at the last for having bled at his circumcision before, nor will
you a tear the less if you shed some now. And therefore be content to consider
with me how to this God the Lord belonged the issues of death. That God,
this Lord, the Lord of life, could die, is a strange contemplation; that the
Red Sea could be dry, that the sun could stand still, that an oven could be seven
times heat and not burn, that lions could be hungry and not bite, is strange,
miraculously strange, but super-miraculous that God could die; but that
God would die is an exaltation of that. But even of that also it is a
super-exaltation, that God should die, must die, and non exitus (said
Saint Augustine), God the Lord had no issue but by death, and oportuit pati
(says Christ himself). All this Christ ought to suffer, was bound to suffer; Deus
ultimo Deus, says David, God is the God of revenges, he would not pass over
the son of man unrevenged, unpunished. But then Deus ultionum libere egit (says that place), the God of the revenges
works freely, he punishes, he spares whom he will. And would he not spare
himself? he would not. Dilectio fortis ut mors, love is strong as death;[xxix] stronger, it drew in
death, that naturally is not welcome. Si possible, says Christ, if it
be possible, let this cup pass, when his love expressed in a former decree
with his Father, had made it impossible. Many water quench not love. [xxx] Christ tried many: he
was baptised out of his love, and his love determined not there; he mingled
blood in his agony, and that determined not his love; he wept pure blood, all his
blood at all his eyes, at all his pores, in his flagellation and the thorns (to
the Lord our God belonged the issues of blood), and these expressed, but
these did not quench his love. He would not spare, nay, he could not spare
himself. There was nothing more free, more voluntary, more spontaneous than the
death of Christ. It is true, libere egit, he died voluntarily; but yet
when we consider the contract that had passed between his Father and him, there
was an oportuit, a kind of necessity upon him: all this Christ might
to suffer. And when shall we date this obligation, this oportuit,
this necessity? And when shall we say that began? Certainly this decree by which
Christ was to suffer all this was an eternal decree, and was there any thing before
that that was eternal? Infinite love, eternal love; be pleased to follow this
home, and to consider it seriously, that what liberty soever we can conceive in
Christ to die or not to die.; this necessity of dying, this decree is as
eternal as that liberty; and yet how small a matter made he of this necessity
and this dying? His Father calls it but a bruise, and but a bruising of the
heel [xxxi] (the serpent shall
bruise his heel), and yet that was, that the serpent shall practise and compass
his death. Himself calls it but a baptism, as though he were to be the better for
it. I have a baptism to be baptised with[xxxii], and he was in pain till it was accomplished,
and yet this baptism was his death. The Holy Ghost calls it joy (for the joy
which was set before him he endured the cross), [xxxiii] which was not a joy
of his reward after his passion, but a joy that filled him even in the midst of
his torments, and arose from him; when Christ called his calicem a cup,
and no worse (Can ye drink of my cup)[xxxiv], he speaks not
odiously, not with the detestation of it. Indeed it was a cup, salus mundo,
a health to all the world. And quid retribuam, says David, What shall
I render to the Lord? [xxxv] Answer you with David, Accipiam
calicem, I will take the cup of salvation, take it, that cup is salvation,
his passion, if not into your present imitation, yet into your present
contemplation. And behold how that the Lord that was God, yet could die, would
die, must die for our salvation. That Moses and Elias talked with Christ in the
transfiguration, both Saint Matthew and Saint Mark [xxxvi] tells us, but what
they talked of, only Saint Luke; Dicebant excessum ejus, says he, They
talked of his disease, of his death, which was to be accomplished at Jerusalem.
[xxxvii] The word is of his exodus,
the very word of our text, exitus, his issue by death. Moses, who
in his exodus had prefigured this issue of our Lord, and in passing Israel out
of Egypt through the Red Sea, had foretold in that actual prophecy, Christ
passing of mankind through the sea of his blood; and Elias, whose exodus and
issue of this world was a figure of Christ’s ascension, had no doubt a great
satisfaction in talking with our blessed Lord, de exessu ejus, of the
full consummation of all this in his death, which was to be accomplished at
Jerusalem. Our meditation of his death should be more visceral, and affect us
more, because it is of a thing already done. The ancient Romans had a certain
tenderness and detestation of the name of death; they could not name death, no,
not in their wills; there they could not say, Si mori contigerit, but si
quid humanitas contigerit, not if or when I die, but when the course of
nature is accomplished upon me. To us that speak daily of the death of Christ
(he was crucified, dead, and buried), can the memory or the mention of our own
death be irksome or bitter? There are in these latter times amongst us that
name death freely enough, and the death of God, but in blasphemous oaths and
execrations. Miserable men, who shall therefore be said never to have never
named Jesus, because they have named him too often; and therefore hear Jesus
say, Nescivi vas, I never knew you, because they made themselves
too familiar with him. Moses and Elias talked with Christ of his death only in
a holy and joyful sense, of the benefit which they and all the world were to
receive by that. Discourses of religion should not be out of curiosity, but to
edification. And then they talked with Christ of his death at that time when he
was in the greatest height of glory, that ever he admitted in this world, that
is, his transfiguration. And we are afraid to speak to the great men of this
world of their death, but nourish in them a vain imagination of immorality and
immutability. But bonum est nobis esse hic (as Saint Peter said there), It
is good to dwell here, in this consideration of his death, and therefore
transfer we our tabernacle (our devotions) through some of those steps which God
the Lord made to his issue of death that day. Take in the whole day from
the hour that Christ received the Passover upon Thursday unto the hour in which
he died the next day. Make this present day that day in thy devotion, and consider
what he did, and remember what you have done. Before he instituted and
celebrated the sacrament (which was after the eating of the Passover), he
proceeded to that act of humility, to wash his disciples’ feet, even Peter’s,
who for a while resisted him. In thy preparation to the holy and blessed sacrament,
hast thou with a sincere humility sought a reconciliation with all the world,
even with those that have been adverse from it, and refused that reconciliation
from thee? If so, and not else, thou hast spent that first part of his last day
in a conformity with him. After the sacrament he spent the time till night in
prayer, in preaching, in psalms; hast thou considered that a worthy receiving
of the sacrament consists in a continuation of holiness after, as well as in
preparation before? If so, thou hast therein conformed thyself to him; so
Christ spent his time till night. At night he went to the garden to pray, and
he prayed prolixious, he spent much time in prayer, how much? Because it is
literally expressed, that he prayed there three several times [xxxviii] and that returning
to his disciples after his first prayer, and finding them asleep, said, Could
ye not watch with me one hour, [xxxix] it is collected that
he spent three hours in prayer. I dare scarce ask thee whither thou wentest, or
how thou disposedst of thyself, when it grew dark and after last night. If that
time were spent in a holy recommendation of thyself to God, and a submission of
thy will to his, it was spent in conformity to him. In that time, and in those
prayers, was his agony and bloody sweat. I will hope that that thou didst pray;
but not every ordinary and customary prayer, but prayer actually accompanied
with shedding of tears and dispositively in a readiness to shed blood for his
glory in necessary cases, puts thee in a conformity with him. About midnight he
was taken and bound with a kiss, art thou not too conformable to him in that?
Is not that too literally, too exactly thy case, at midnight to have been taken
and bound with a kiss? From thence he was carried back to Jerusalem, first to
Annas, then to Caiaphas, and (late as it was) then he was examined and
buffered, and delivered over to the custody of those officers from whom he
received all those irrisions, and violences, the covering of his face, the spitting
upon his face, the blasphemies of words, and the smartness of blows, which that
gospel mentions: in which compass fell that gallicinium, that crowing of the
cock which called up Peter to his repentance. How thou passedst all that time,
thou knowest. If thou didst any thing that needed Peter’s tears, and hast not
shed them, let me be thy cock, do it now. Now, thy Master (in the unworthiest of
his servants) looks back upon thee, do it now. Betimes, in the morning, so soon
as it was day, the Jews held a council in the high priest’s hall, and agreed
upon their evidence against him, and then carried him to Pilate, who was to be
his judge, didst thou accuse thyself when thou walkedst this morning, and was
thou content even with false accusations, that is, rather to suspect actions to
have been sin, which were not, than to smother and justify such as were truly
sins? Then thou spentest that hour in conformity to him; Pilate found no
evidence against him, and therefore to ease himself, and to pass a compliment
upon Herod, tetrarch of Galilee, who was at time at Jerusalem (because Christ,
being a Galilean, was of Herod’s
jurisdiction), Pilate sent him to Herod, and rather as a madman than a
malefactor; Herod remanded him (with scorn) to Pilate, to proceed against him;
and this was about eight of the clock.
Hast thou been content to come to this inquisition, this examination, this
agitation, this cribration, this pursuit of thy conscience; to sift it, to
follow it from the sins of thy youth to thy present sins, from the sins of thy
bed to the sins of thy board, and from the substance to the circumstance of thy
sins? That is time spent like thy Saviour’s. Pilate would have saved Christ, by
using the privilege of the day in his behalf, because that day one prisoner was
to be delivered, but they choose Barabbas; he would have saved him from death,
by satisfying their fury with inflicting other torments upon him, scourging and
crowning with thorns, and loading him with many scornful and ignominious
contumelies, but they regarded him not, they pressed a crucifying. Hast thou gone
about to redeem thy sin, by fasting, by alms, by disciplines and
mortifications, in a way of satisfaction to the justice of God? That will not
serve that is not the right way; we press an utter crucifying of that sin that
governs thee; and that conforms thee to Christ. Towards noon Pilate gave
judgement, and they made such haste to execution as that by noon he was upon
the cross. There now hangs that sacred body upon the cross, rebaptised in his
own tears, and sweat, and embalmed in his own blood alive. There are those
bowels of compassion which are so conspicuous, so manifested, as that you may
see them through his wounds. There those glorious eyes grew faint in their
sight, so as the sun, ashamed to survive them, departed with his light too. and
then that Son of God, who was never from us, and yet had come a new way unto us
in assuming our nature, delivers that soul (which was never out of his Father’s
hands) by a new way, a voluntary emission of it into his Father’s hands; for
though to this God our Lord belonged these issues of death, so that
considered in his own contract, he must necessarily die, yet at no breach or
battery which they had made upon his sacred body issued his soul; but emisit,
he gave up the ghost; and as God breathed a soul into the first Adam, so this
second Adam breathed his soul into God, into the hands of God.
There we leave
you in that blessed dependency, to hang upon him that hangs on the cross, there
bathe in his tears, there suck at his wounds, and lie down in peace in his
grave, till he vouchsafe you a resurrection, and an ascension into that kingdom
which He hath prepared for you with the inestimable price of his incorruptible blood.
Amen.
[i] Psalm 139: 6
[ii] Psalm 118: 23
[iii] Psalm 100: 3
[iv] Isaiah 37: 3
[v] Romans 7: 24
[vi] Genesis 6: 14
[vii] Genesis 4: 1
[viii] John 14: 2
[ix] Matthew 8: 20
[x]
Hebrews 13: 14
[xi]
Exodus 17: 1
[xii]
Genesis 47: 9
[xiii]
2 Corinthians 5: 6
[xiv] Job
10: 18, 19
[xv]
Exodus 16: 3
[xvi]
1 Kings 19: 4
[xvii]
Jonah 4: 3
[xviii]
Revelation 1: 18
[xix]
1 Corinthians 15: 33
[xx]
Acts 2: 31; 13: 35
[xxi]
Ver. 10
[xxii]
Job 24: 20
[xxiii]
Job 21: 23, 25, 26
[xxiv]
Isaiah 14: 11
[xxv]
Hebrews 11
[xxvi]
De Civitate Dei, lib. 17
[xxvii]
Matthew 1: 21
[xxviii]
Luke 24: 26
[xxix]
Cant. 8: 6
[xxx]
Cant. 8: 7
[xxxi]
Genesis 3: 15
[xxxii]
Luke 12: 50
[xxxiii]
Hebrews 12: 2
[xxxiv]
Matthew 20: 22
[xxxv]
Psalm 116: 12
[xxxvi]
Matthew 17: 3; Mark 9: 4
[xxxvii]
Luke 9: 31
[xxxviii]
Luke 22: 41
[xxxix]
Matthew 26: 40
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