This sermon was preached by John Donne, Dean of St Pauls, London, in 1627
THE PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON
O eternal, and most glorious God, who sometimes in thy justice, dost give the dead bodies of the saints, to be meat unto the fowls of the Heaven, and the flesh of thy Saints unto the beasts of the Earth, so that their blood is shed like water, and there is none to bury them, who sometimes, sellest thy People for nought, and dost not increase thy wealth, by their price, and yet never leavest us without that knowledge, that precious in thy sight is the death of thy Saints, enable us, in life and death, seriously to consider the value, the price of a soul. It is precious, O Lord, because thine image is stamped, and imprinted upon it; precious, because the blood of thy Son was paid for it; precious, because thy blessed Spirit, the Holy Ghost works upon it, and tries it, by his divers fires; and precious because it is entered into thy revenue, and made a part of thy treasure. Suffer us not therefore, O Lord, so to undervalue ourselves, nay, so to impoverish thee, as to give away those souls, thy souls, thy dear and precious souls, for nothing, and all the world for nothing, if the soul must be given for it. We know, O Lord, that our rent, due to thee, is our soul; and the day of our death, is the day, and our deathbed the place, where this rent is to be paid. And we know too, that he that have sold his soul before, for unjust gain, or given away his soul before, in the society and fellowship of sin, or lent away his soul, for a time, by a lukewarmness and temporizing, to the discouraging of thy servants, he comes to that day, and to that place, his death, and deathbed, without any rent in his hand, without his soul, to this purpose, to surrender it unto thee. Let therefore, O Lord, the same hand which is to receive them then, preserve these souls those souls till then; Let that mouth, that breathed them into us, at first, breath always upon them, whilst they are in us, and suck them into itself, when they depart when they depart from us.
Preserve our souls, O Lord, because they belong to thee; and preserve our bodies, because they belong to those souls.
Thou alone, dost steer our boat, through all our voyage, but hath a more especial care of it, a more watchful eye upon it, when it comes to a narrow current, or to a dangerous fall of waters. Thou hast a care of the preservation of those bodies, in all the ways of our life; but in the straights of death, open thine eyes wider, and enlarge thy providence toward us, so far, that no fever in the body may shake the soul, no apoplexy in the body damp or benumb the soul, nor any pain or agony of the body presage future torments to the soul. But to make thou our bed in all our sickness, that being used to thy hand, we may be content with any bed of thy making; whether thou be pleased to change our feathers into flocks, by withdrawing the conveniences of this life, or to change our flocks into dust, even the dust of the grave, by withdrawing us out of thus life. And though divide man and wife, mother and child, friend and friend, by the hand of death, yet stay them that stay, and send them away that go, with this consolation, that though we part at divers days and by divers ways, here, yet we shall all meet at one place, and at one day, a day that no night shall determine, the day of the glorious Resurrection. Hasten that day, O Lord, for their sakes, that beg it at thy hands, from under the Altar in Heaven; hasten it for our sakes, that groan under the manifold incumbrances of these mortal bodies; hasten it for her sake, whom we have lately laid down, in this thy holy ground; and hasten it for thy Son Christ Jesus sake, to whom then, and not till then, all things shall be absolutely subdued. Seal to our souls now an assurance of thy gracious purpose towards us in that day, by accepting this day’s service, at our hands. Accept our humble thanks, for all thy benefits, spiritual, and temporal, already bestowed upon us, and accept our humble prayers for the continence and enlargement of them. Continue, and enlarge them, O God upon thine universal Church, dispersed, etc.
I
First then, to shake the constancy of a Christian, there will always be scorners, jesters, scoffers, and mockers at religion; the period and consummation of the Christian religion, the Judgement Day, the second coming of Christ, will always be subject to scorns. And many times a scorn cuts deeper than a sword. Lucian wounded religion more by making jests at it, than Arius, or Pelagius, or Nestorius, with making arguments against it. For, against those professed heretics, and against their studied arguments, which might seem to have some weight, it well-beseemed those grave and reverend Fathers of the Church, to call their Councils, and to take into their serious consideration those arguments, and solemnly to conclude, and determine, and decree in the point. But it would ill have become those reverend persons, to have called their councils, or taken into their so serious considerations, epigrams, and satires, and libels, and scurrile and scornful jests, against any point of religion; scorns and jests, against are easily apprehended, and understood by vulgar and ordinary capacities, than arguments are; and then, learned men are not so earnest, nor so diligent to overthrow, and confute a jest, or scorn, as they are, an argument; and so they pass more uncontrolled, and prevail further, and live longer, than arguments do.
It is the height of Job’s complaint, that contemptible persons made jests upon him.
And it is the depth of Samson’s calamity, that when the Philistines’ hearts were merry, then they called for Samson, to make them sport.
So to the Israelites in Babylon, when they were in that heaviness, that every breath they breathed was a sigh, their enemies called, to sing them a song.
And so they proceeded with him, who fulfilled in himself alone, all types, and images, and prophesies of sorrows, who was (as the Prophet calls him Vir dolorum, A man composed, and elemented of sorrow, our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus; for, they plotted a crown of thorns upon his head, and they put a reed into his hand, and they bowed the knee before him, and mocked him. Truly, the conniving at several religions, (as dangerous as it is) is not so dishonourable to God, as the suffering of jesters at religion: that may induce heresy; but this does establish atheism.
And as that is the public mischief, so, for the private, there lies much danger in this, that he that gives himself to the liberty of jesting at religion, shall find it hard, to take up at last; as, when Julian the Apostate had received his death’s wound, and could not choose but confess, that the wound came from the hand, and power of Christ; yet he confessed it in a phrase of scorn: Vicisti Galilae, the day is thine, O Galilean, and no more; It is not, Thou hast accomplished thy purpose, O my God, nor O my Master, nor O my Redeemer, but, in a style of contempt, Vicisti Galilae, and no more.
2
It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God, if I do fall into hands, in a fever in my bed, or in a tempest at sea, or in discontent at home; but to fall into the hands of the living God, so, as that, that living God, enters into judgement, with me, and passes a final and irrevocable judgement upon me, this is a consternation of all my spirits, an extermination of all my succours. I consider, what God did with one word; with one fiat he made all; and I know, he can do as much with another word; with one pereat, he can destroy all; as he spoke, and it was done, he commanded and all stood fast; so he can speak, and all shall be undone; command, and all shall fall in pieces.
I consider that I may be surprised by that day, the day of judgement, Here Saint Peter says, The day of the Lord will come as a thief.
And Saint Paul says, we cannot be ignorant of it, so comes a thief.
And, as the judgement itself, so the Judge himself, says of himself, I will come upon thee as a thief. He says, he will, and he does it. It is not Ecco veniam, but Ecco venio, Behold, I do come upon thee as a thief.
There, the future, which might imply a dilatoriness, will be reduced to an infallible present. It is so sure that he will do it, that he said to have done it already. I consider, he will come as a thief, and then, a thief in the night; and I do not know when that night shall be, (for he himself, as he is the Son of man, knows not that) but I do not know what night, that is, which night, but not what night, that is, what kind of night he means.
It is said so often, so often repeated, that he will come as a thief in te night, as that he may mean all kinds of nights. In my night of ignorance he may come’; and he may come in my night of wantonness; in my night of inordinate and sinful melancholy, and suspicion of his mercy, he may come; and he may come in the night of so stupid, or so raging a sickness, as that he shall not come by coming. Not come so, as that I shall receive him in the absolution of his minister, or receive him in the participation of his body and his blood in the sacrament. So he may come upon me, such as thief, in such a night; nay, when all these nights of ignorance, of wantonness, of desperation, of sickness, of stupidity, of rage, may be upon me all at once.
I consider that the Holy Spirit meant to make a deep impression of deep terror in me, when he came to that expression, that the heaven should pass away, cum stridore. With a great noise, and the elements melt with fervent heat, and the earth, and the works that are therein, shall be burnt up.
And when he adds the Lord will come with fire, and with his chariots, like a whirlwind, to render his anger, with fury; for by fire and by his sword will the Lord plead with all flesh. So when he proceeds in Joel: a day of darkness and gloominess: and yet a fire devoureth before them, and a flame burneth behind them.
And so in Daniel also: his throne a fiery flame, and his wheels a burning fire, and a fiery stream issuing from him.
I consider too, that with this stream of fire, there shall be a stream, a deluge, a flood of tears, from us; and all that flood, and deluge of tears, shall not put out one coal, nor quench one spark of that fire.
Behold he comes with clouds, and every eye shall see him; and, plangent omnes, all the kindreds of the earth shall wail and lament, and weep and howl because of him.
I consider that I shall look upon him then, and see all my sins, substance, and circumstance of sin, weight and measure of sin, heinousness and continuance of sin, all my sins imprinted in his wounds; and how shall be affected then, confounded then to see him so mangled with my sins?
But then I consider again that I shall look upon him again, and not see all my sins in his wounds; my forgotten sins, my unconsidered, unconfessed, unrepented sins, I shall not see there. And how will I be affected then when I shall stand in judgement, under the guiltiness of some sins, not buried in the wounds, not drowned in the blood of my Saviour? Many and many and very many infinite and infinitely infinite are the terrors of that day.
3
For, if we consider God in the present, today, now, God hath had as long a forenoon as he shall have an afternoon, God hath been God as many millions of millions generations already, as he shall be hereafter. But if we consider man in the present, today, now, how short a forenoon hath any man had; if 60, if 80 years, yet few and evil have his days been. Nay if we take man collectively, entirely, altogether, all mankind, how short a forenoon hath man had? It is not yet 6,000 years since man had his first being. But if we consider him in his afternoon, in his future state, in his life after death, if every minute of his 6,000 years, were multiplied by so many millions of ages, all would amount to nothing, merely nothing, in respect of that eternity which he is to dwell in.
We can express man’s afternoon, his future perpetuity, his everlastingness, but one way, but it is a fair way, a noble way, this: that how late a beginning soever God gave man, man shall no longer see an end, no more die, than God himself, that gave him life.
4
But as it is said of old cosmographers, that when they had said all that they knew of a country, and yet much more was to be said, they said that the rest of the countries were possessed with giants, or witches, or spirits, or wild beasts, so that they could not pierce no further into that country, so when have travelled as far as we can, with safety, that is as far as ancient, or modern expositors, in the discovery of these new heavens and new earth, yet we must say, that it is a country inhabited with angels and archangels, with cherubim and seraphim, and that we can look no further into it, with these eyes.
Where it is locally, we enquire not. We rest in this, that is the habitation prepared for the blessed saints pf God; heavens where the moon is more glorious than our sun, and the sun as glorious as he made it; and the sun as glorious as he made it, for he himself the Son of God, the sun of glory. And a new earth, where all their waters are milk, and all their milk, honey; where all their grass is corn, and all their corn, manna; where all their glebe, all their clods of earth are gold, and all their gold og innumerable carats; where all their minutes are ages, and all their ages, eternity.
Where everything, is every minute, in the highest exaltation as good as it can be, and yet super-exalted, and infinitely multiplied, by every minutes addition; every minute, infinitely better than ever before. Of these new heavens and this earth, we must say at last, that we can say nothing. For the eye of man hath not seen, nor ear heard, not heart conceived that State of this place. We limit, and determine our consideration with that horizon, with which the Holy Spirit hath limited us, that is that the new heavens and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.
Here then the Holy Spirit intends the same new heavens and new earth, which he does in the Apocalypse, and describes there by another name, the new Jerusalem. But her, the Holy Spirit does not proceed, as there, to enamour us of the place, by a promise of improvement of those things, which we have and love here; but by a promise of that, which here we have not at all. There, and elsewhere, the Holy Spirit applies himself, to the natural affections of men. To those that are affected with riches, he says that the new city shall all be gold and in the foundations all manner of precious stones. To those who are affected with beauty, he promises an everlasting association with that beautiful couple, that fair pair, which spend their time, in contemplation, and that protestation, Ecco tu pulchra dilecta mea:
Ecco tu Pulchra – Behold, thou art fair, beloved, says he, noting the mutual complacency between Christ and his Church there. To those who delight in music, he promises continual singing, and every minute a new song. To those whose thoughts are exercised upon honour, and titles, civil or ecclesiastical, he promises priesthood; and if that not honour enough, a royal priesthood. And to those who look after military honour, triumph after their victory in the militant Church. And to those who are carried with sumptuous and magnificent feasts, a marriage supper of the Lamb, where not only all the rarities of the whole world, but the whole world itself shall be served in.
The whole world shall be brought to the fire and served on that table. But here the Holy Spirit proceeds not that way by improvement of things which we have and love here: riches, or beauty, or music, or honour, or feasts; but by an everlasting possession of that which we hunger, and thirst, and pant after here and cannot compass that is justice, or righteousness; for both of these our present world denotes, and both we want here, and shall have both, for ever, in these new heavens and new earth.
5
And for her, some sicknesses in the declination of her years had opened her to an overflowing of melancholy; not that she ever lay under that water, but yet had some high tides of it; and, though this distemper would sometimes cast a cloud, and some half damps on her natural cheerfulness and sociableness, and sometimes induce dark and sad apprehensions. Nevertheless, who ever heard or saw in her any such effect of melancholy as to murmur, or repine, dispute upon any of God’s proceedings, or to lodge a jealousy or suspicion of his mercy and goodness toward her and all hers? The wit of our time is profaneness. Nevertheless, she that loved that, hated this. Occasionally melancholy had taken some hold in her. Nevertheless, that never eclipsed, never interrupted her cheerful confidence and assurance in God.
Our second word denotes the person: we, nevertheless we. And, here in this consideration, nevertheless she. This may seem to promise some picture, some character of her person. But she was no stranger to them that hear me now, nor scarce to any that may hear hereafter which you hear now, and therefore much needs not to that purpose. Yet, to that purpose of her person and personal circumstances, thus much I may remember some and inform others. That from that worthy family whence she had her original extraction and birth, she sucked that love of hospitality (hospitality which hath celebrated that family in many generations successively) which dwelt in her to her end. But in that ground, her father’s family, she grew not many years.
Translated young from then by marriage into another family of honour, as a flower that doubles and multiplies by transplantation, she multiplied into ten children: Job’s number. And Job’s distribution (as she herself would very often remember) seven sons and three daughters. And, in this ground, she grew not many years more, than were necessary, for the producing of so many plants.
And then left to choose her own ground in her widowhood, having at home established and increased the estate, with a fair and noble addition, proposing to herself as her principal care, the education of her children; to advance that, she came with them and dwelt with them in the university, and recompensed to them the loss of a father, in giving them two mothers, her own personal care and the advantage of that place, where she contracted a friendship with divers reverend persons and estimation there, which contributed to their ends. And as this was her greatest business so she made this state, a large period – for in this state of widowhood, she continued twelve years.
And then, returning to a second marriage, that second marriage turns us to the consideration of another personal circumstance, that is the natural endowment of her person which were such as that. though her virtues were his principal object, yet even these her personal and natural endowments had their part in drawing and fixing the affections of such a person as by his birth, and youth, and interest in great favours in Court, and legal proximity to great possessions in the world, might have justly promised him acceptance in what family soever, or upon what person soever, he had directed and placed his affections. He placed them here, neither diverted then nor repented since. For, as the well tuning of an instrument makes higher and lower strings of one sound, so the inequality of their years was thus reduced to an evenness that she had a cheerfulness agreeable to his youth, and he a sober staidness conformable to her more years. So that I would not consider her at so much more than forty, nor him at so much less than thirty at that time; but as their persons were made one and their fortunes made one by marriage, so I would put their years into one number , and finding sixty between them, think them thirty a piece, for, as twins of one hour, they lived. God, who joined them, then having also separated them now, may make their years even, this other way too: by giving him, as many years after her going out of this world as he has given her before his coming into it, and then as many more as God may receive glory and the world benefit by that addition. That so, as at their first meeting she was, she was their last meeting, he may be the elder person.
To this consideration of her person then belongs this: that God gave her such a comeliness as, though she was not proud of it, yet she was content with it as not to go about to amend it by any art. And for her attire (which is another personal circumstance), it was never sumptuous, never sordid; but always agreeable to her quality and agreeable to her company, such as she might and such others such as she was, did wear. For, in such things of indifferency in themselves, many times a singularity may be a little worse that a fellowship in that, which is not altogether so good. It may be worse, nay it may be a worse pride, to wear worse things than other do. Her rule was mediocrity.
And, as to the consideration of the house belongs to the consideration of the furniture too, so in these personal circumstances, we consider her fortune, her estate. Which was in a fair and noble proportion derived from her first husband and fairly and nobly dispensed by herself with the allowance of her second. In which she was one of God’s true stewards and almoners too. There are dispensations which had rather give presents than pay debts, and rather do good to strangers than to those that are nearer to them. But she always thought the care of her family a debt and upon that, for the provision, for the order, for the proportions, in good largeness, she placed her first thoughts of that kind. For our families we are God’s stewards, for those without we are his almoners. In which office she gave not at some great days or some solemn goings abroad but, as God’s true almoner, the sun and the moon that pass on in a continual doing of good, as she received her daily bread from God, so daily she distributed and imparted it to others. In which office, though she never turned her face from those who in a strict inquisition might be called idle and vagrant beggars, yet she ever looked first upon them who laboured and whose labours could not overcome the difficulties nor bring in the necessities of life; and to the sweat of their brows, she contributed even her wine and her oil and anything that was, and anything that might be, if it not prepared for her own table.
And as her house was a court in the conversation of the best and an alms house in feeding the poor, so was it too a hospital in ministering relief to the sick. And truly the love of doing good in this kind of ministering to the sick was honey that was spread over all her bread; the air, the perfume that breathed all over her house. The disposition that dwelt in those her children and those her kindred which dwelt with her, so bending this way, that the studies and knowledge of one, the hand of another, and purse of all, and a joint facility, and openness, and accessibleness to persons of the meanest quality concurred in this blessed act of charity to minister relief to the sick. Of which myself, who at that time had the favour to be admitted into that family, can and must testify this: that when the late heavy visitation felt hotly upon this town when every door was shut up lest death should enter into the house, every house was made a sepulchre of them that were in it, in that time of infection, divers persons visited with that infection, had their relief and release applicable to that very infection from this house.
Now when I have said thus much (rather thus little) of her person, as of her house, that the ground upon which it was built, was the family where she was born and then where she was married, and then her widowhood, and lastly her last marriage. And that the house itself were those bodily endowments which God bestowed on her, and the furniture of that house, the fortune and the use lof that fortune of which God had made her steward and almoner, when I should have said that the inhabitants of this house (rather the servants for they did but wait upon religion in her) were those married couples of mortal virtues: conversation married with a reservedness, facility married with a reservedness, alacrity married with a thoughtfulness, and largeness married with a providence. I may have to leave to depart from this consideration lest, by insisting longer upon them, I should seem to pretend to say all the good, if I could say all the good. But that’s not my purpose, yet only therefore, because it is not in my power. For I would do her all right and all you that good if I could say all. But, I haste to an end in consideration of some things that appertain more expressly to me than these personal or civil or moral things do.
In those, the next is Secumdum promissa. That she governed herself according to his promises , his promises laid down in Scripture. For , as the rule of all her civil actions were religion; and her rule for her particular understanding of the Scripture was the Church. She never diverted to the Papist in undervaluing the Scripture, nor towards the Separatist in undervaluing the Church. But in the doctrine and discipline of that Church in which God sealed her to himself in baptism, she brought up her children, she assisted her family, she dedicated her soul to God in her life and surrendered it to him in her death. And, in that form of common prayer which is ordained by that church and to which she had accustomed herself with her family twice every day, she joined with that company which was about her death-bed, in answering to every part thereof which the congregation is directed to answer to with a clear understanding, with constant memory, with a distinct voice, not two hours before she died.
According to this promise, that is the will of God manifested in the Scriptures, she expected, she expected that she had received God’s physic and God’s music – a Christianly death. For death, in the Old Testament, was a commitation; but, in the New Testament, death is a promise. When there was a super-dying, a death upon a death, a morte upon the morieris, a spiritual death after the bodily Then we died according to God’s threatening. Now, when by the Gospel, that second death is taken off. Though we still die still, yet we die according to his promise. That’s part of his mercy and his promise which his apostle gives us from him, that we all be changed. For, after that promise, that change follows that triumphant acclamation: O death where is thy sting? O grave where is thy victory? Consider us fallen in Adam and we are miserable, that we must die. But consider us restored and re-integrated in Christ. We were more miserable if we might not die. We lost the earthly Paradise by death then; but we get not heaven, but by death now. This she expected till it came, and embraced it when it came. How may we think, she was joyed to see that face that angels delight to look upon, the face of her Saviour, that did not abhor the face of his fearfullest messenger Death? She showed no fear of his face in any change of her own, but died without any change of countenance, or posture, without any struggling, any disorder; but her death-bed was as a quiet as her grave. To another Magdalene, Christ said on earth: Touch me not, for I am not ascended. Being ascended now to his glory and she being gone up to him, after she had awaited his leisure so many years as that more, would soon have grown to be vexation and sorrow as her last words here were: I submit my will to the will of God. So we doubt not that the first word which she heard there, was that from her Saviour: Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into thy master’s joy.
She expected that: dissolution of body and soul, and rest in both from the incumbrances and temptations of this world. But yet, she is in expectation still: still a reversionary, and a reversionary upon a long life. The whole world must die, before she come to comes in possession of this reversion, which is a glorified body in the resurrection. In which expectation, she returns to her former charity. She will not have it till all we shall have it as well as she. She eat not her morsels alone in her life (as Job speaks). She looks not for the glory of the resurrection alone after her death. But when all we shall have been mellowed in the earth many years or changed in the air in the twinkling of an eye (God knows which), that body upon which you tread now, that body which now whilst I speak is mouldering and crumbling into less and less dust though no life. That body which was the tabernacle of a holy soul and a temple of the Holy Spirit. That body that was eyes to the blind, and hands and feet to the lame, whilst it lived, and being dead is still so, by having been so lively an example to teach others to be so. That body at last shall have her last expectation satisfied and dwell bodily with that righteousness in these new heavens and new earth for ever, and ever, and ever, and infinite, and super infinite ours. We end all with the validation of the Spouse to Christ: His left hand is under my head and his right embraces me was the Spouse’s validation, and goodnight to Christ then when she laid herself down to sleep in the strength of his mandrakes, and in the power of his spices, as it expressed there, that is in the influence of his mercies. Beloved, every good soul is the Spouse of Christ. And this good soul, being thus laid down to sleep in his peace, his left hand under her head, gathering and composing and preserving her dust for future glory. His right hand embracing her, assuming and establishing her soul in present glory, in his name, and in her behalf. I say that, to all you, which Christ says there in the behalf of that Spouse, Adjuro vos, I adjure you, I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, that ye wake her not till she please. The words are directed to the daughters rather than to the sons of Jerusalem because, for the most part, the aspersions that women receive, wither in moral or religious actions, proceed from the women themselves. Therefore, Adjure vos, I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, wake her not. Wake her not with any half calamities, with any whispering. But, if you will wake her, wake her and keep her awake with active imitation of her moral and her holy virtues. That so her example working upon her and the number of God’s saints, being the sooner by this blessed example fulfilled we may all meet and meet quickly in that quickly in that kingdom which hers and our Saviour hath purchased for us all with the inestimable price of his incorruptible blood.
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