This sermon was preached by John Donne, the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral. at Whitehall on the first Friday in Lent, 8th March 1621/2
1
Doth not man die even in his birth? The breaking of prison is death, and what id our birth but a breaking of prison? As soon as we were clothed by God, our very apparel was an emblem of death. In the skins of dead beasts, he covered the skins of dying men. As soon as God set us on work, our very occupation was an emblem of death – it was to dig the earth, not to dig pitfalls for other men but graves for ourselves. Hath any man here forgot today that yesterday is dead? And the bell tolls for today and will ring out anon, and for as much of everyone of us as appertains to this day. Quotidie morimur, et tamen nos esse aeternos putamus, says St Hierome. We die every day and we die all the day long; and because we are not absolutely dead, we call that an eternity, an eternity of dying. And is there comfort in that state? Why that is the state of hell forever, eternal dying and not dead.
But for this there is enough said by the moral man (that we might require divine proofs for divine points anon, for our several resurrections) for this death is merely natural , and it is enough that the moral man says: Mors lex, tributum, officium, mortalium.
First, it is lex, you were born under that law, upon that condition to die: so it is a rebellious thing not to be content to die, it oppresses the Law.
Then it is tributum, an imposition which nature, the queen of this world, lays on us and which she will take, when and where she list: here a young man, there an old man, there a happy, there a miserable man. And so it is a seditious thing not to be content to die – it opposes the prerogative.
And lastly, it is officium – men are to have their turns, to take their time, and then to give way to successors.
And so it is incivile, inofficiosum, not content to die, it opposes the frame and form of government. It comes equally to us all and makes us all equal when it comes. The ashes of an oak in the chimney are no epitaph to that oak, to tell me how high or how large that was. It tells me not what flocks it sheltered while it stood, nor what men it hurt when it fell. The dust of great persons is speechless too – it says nothing, it distinguishes nothing. As soon as the dust of a wretch whom thou wouldst not, as of a prince whom thou couldst not look upon, will trouble thin eyes if the wind blow it thither; and when a whirlwind hath blown the dust of the churchyard into the church, and the man sweeps out the dust of the church into the churchyard, who will undertake to sift those dusts again and to proclaim: this is the patrician, this is the noble flower, and this the yeomanly, this is the plebian bran.
2
Death hangs upon the edge of every prosecutor’s sword, and upon the sting of every calumniator’s, and accuser’s tongue. In the Bull of Phalaris, in the bulls of Bashan, in the bulls of Babylon, the shrewdest bulls of all, in temporal, in spiritual persecutions, ever since God put an enmity between man and the serpent, from the time of Cain who began in murder, to the time of the Anti-Christ, who proceeds in massacres, death hath adhered to the enemy, and so is an enemy.
Death has a commission: Stipendium peccati mors est; the reward of sin is death. But where God gives a super-sedeas upon that commission, Vivo Ego, nolo mortem: as I live, saith the Lord, I would have no sinner die, not die the second death, yet Death proceeds to that execution. And whereas the enemy whom he adheres to, the serpent himself, hath power, but In calcaneo, upon the heel, the lower, the mortal part, the body of man.
Death is come up into our windows, saith the Prophet, into our best lights, our understandings, and benights us there, either with ignorance before sin or with senselessness after. And a sheriff that should burn him, who were condemned to be hanged, were a murderer, though that man must have died. To come by the door, by the way of sickness upon the body is but to come in at the window by the way of sin, is not death’s commission. God opens not that window.
3
Death is the last and, in that respect, the worst enemy. In an enemy that appears first, when we are or may be provided against him, there is some of that, which we call honour. But in the enemy that reserves himself unto the last and attends our weak estate, there is more danger. Keep it where I attend it, in that which is my sphere, the conscience: If my enemy meet me betimes in my youth, in an object of temptation (so Joseph’s enemy met him in Potiphar’s wife) yet if I do not adhere to this enemy, dwell upon a delightful meditation of that sin, if I do not fuel and foment that sin, assist and encourage that sin by high diet, wanton discourse, other provocations, I shall have reason on my side, and I shall have grace on my side, and I shall have the history of a thousand that have perished by that sin on my side. Even Spittles will give me soldiers to fight for me by their miserable example against that sin; nay, perchance sometimes the virtue of that woman whom I solicit will assist me. But, when I lie under the hands of that enemy that hath reserved himself to the last, to my last bed, then when I shall be able to stir no limb in any other measure than a fever or a palsy shall shake them, when everlasting darkness shall have an inchoation in the present dimension of mine eyes, and the everlasting gnashing in the present chattering of my teeth, and the everlasting worm in the present gnawing of the agonies of my body and anguishes of my mind, and my disconsolate soul there, there, where not the physician in his way perchance not the priest in his, shall be able to give any assistance. And when he hath sported himself with my misery upon that stage, my death-bed, shall shift the scene and throw me from that bed into the grave, and there triumph over me. God knows how many generations till the Redeemer, my Redeemer, the Redeemer of all me, body as well as soul, come again. As death is Novissimus hostis, the enemy which watches me at my last weakness and shall hold me when I shall be no more, till that angel come, who say and swears that time shall be no more, in that consideration, in that apprehension, he is the powerfullest, the fearfullest enemy; and yet even there this enemy, he shall be destroyed.
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