ablutions, by ceremonial washings, within a certain time prescribed by the law, yet if that time were negligently and inconsiderately overslipped, then they became sins, and then they could not be expiated, but by a more solemn, and a more costly way, by sacrifice. And even before they came to that, whilst they were but uncleannesses and not sins, yet even then they made them incapable of eating the Paschal Lamb. So careful was God in the law, and the Jews in their practice (for these outward things) to preserve this pureness, this cleanness, even in things which were not fully sins. So also must he that affects this pureness of heart, and studies the preserving of it, sweep down every cobweb that hangs about it. Scurrile and obscene language: yea, misinterpretable words, such as may bear an ill sense; pleasureable conversation and all such little entanglings, which though he think too weak to hold him, yet they foul him. And let him that is subject to these smaller sins, remember, that as a spider builds always where he knows there is most access and haunt of flies, so the devil that hath cast these light cobwebs into thy heart, knows that that heart is made of vanities and levities; and he that gathers into his treasure whatsoever thou wastest out of thine, how negligent soever thou be, he keeps thy reckoning exactly, and will produce against thee at last as many lascivious glances as shall make up an adultery, as many covetous wishes as shall make up a robbery, as many angry words as shall make up a murder; and thou shalt have dropped and crumbled away thy soul, with as much irrecoverableness, as if thou hadst poured it out all at once; and thy merry sins, thy laughing sins, shall grow to be crying sins, even in the ears of God; and though thou drown thy soul here, drop after drop, it shall not burn spark after spark, but have all the fire, and all at once, and all eternally, in one entire and intense torment. For, as God, for our capacity, is content to be described as one of us, and to take our passions upon Him, and be called angry, and sorry, and the like; so is He in this also like us, that He takes it worse to be slighted, to be neglected, to be left out, than to be actually injured. Our inconsideration, our not thinking of God in our actions, offends him more than our sins. We know, that in nature, and in art, the strongest bodies are compact of the least particles, because they shut best, and lie closest together; so be the strongest habits of sin compact of sins which in themselves are least; because they are least perceived, they grow upon us insensibly, and they cleave unto us inseparably. And I should make no doubt of recovering him sooner that had sinned long against his conscience, though in a great sin, than him that had sinned less sins, without any sense or conscience of those sins; for I should sooner bring the other to a detestation of his sin, than bring this man to a knowledge, that that that he did was sin. But if thou couldst consider that every sin is a crucifying of Christ, and every sin is a precipitation of thyself from a pinnacle: were it a convenient phrase to say, in every little sin, that thou wouldst crucify Christ a little, or break thy neck a little. (From Sermon to the Lords of the Council.) DEATH Now this which is so singularly peculiar to him, that His flesh should not see corruption, at His second coming, His coming to judgment, shall be extended to all that are then alive, their flesh shall not see corruption; because (as the apostle says, and says as a secret, as a mystery, Behold I show 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, no corruption. But for us, who 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 which have been the children of royal parents, and the parents of royal children, must say with Job, To corruption, Thou art my father, and to the worm, Thou art 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 mine own mother and sister, and be both father and mother, to mine 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 upon me. When the ambitious man shall have no satisfaction if the poorest alive read 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. The worm covers them in Job, and in Esay, it covers them, and is spread under them, (the worm is spread under thee, and the worm covers thee). There is the mats and the carpet that lie under; and there is the state and the canopy that hangs over the greatest 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 had no other specification, no other denomination but that, Vermis Jacob, Thou worm 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 all that monarch that spread over many nations alive, must in his dust lie in a corner of that sheet of lead, and there but so long as the 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 graves) be mingled in his dust, 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 declaration 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, this live? but in this death of incineration and dispersion of dust, we see nothing that we can 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, nor shall; it may be the dust of that man's worms which did live, but shall no more; it may be the dust of another man that concerns not him of whom it is asked. This death of incineration and dispersion is to natural reason the most irrevocable 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 reanimating 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 in a life, that shall last as long as the Lord of life himself. (From Donne's Last Sermon.) TO MY VERY TRUE AND VERY GOOD FRIEND, SIR HENRY GOODYERE SIR-At some later reading, I was more affected with that part of your letter, which is of the book, and the nameless letters, than at first. I am not sorry, for that affection were for a jealousy or suspicion of a flexibility in you. But I am angry, that any should think you had in your religion peccant humours, defective, or abundant, or that such a book (if I mistake it not) should be able to work upon you; my comfort is, that their judgment is too weak to endanger you, since by this it confesses, that it mistakes you in thinking you irresolved or various; yet let me be bold to fear that that sound true opinion, that in all Christian professions there is way to salvation (which I think you think) may have been so incommodiously or intempestively sometimes uttered by you; or else your having friends equally near you of all the impressions of religion, may have testified such an indifference, as hath occasioned some to further such inclinations, as they have mistaken to be in you. This I have feared, because heretofore the inobedient puritans, and now the over-obedient papists, attempt you. It hath hurt very many, not in their conscience, nor ends, but in their reputation, and ways, that others have thought them fit to be wrought upon. As some bodies are as wholesomely nourished as ours, with acorns, and endure nakedness, both which would be dangerous to us, if we for them should leave our former habits, though theirs were the primitive diet and custom; so are many souls well fed with such forms, and dressings of religion, as would distemper and misbecome us, and make us corrupt towards God, if any human circumstance moved it and in the opinion of men, though none. You shall seldom see a coin, upon which the stamp were removed, though to imprint it better, but it looks awry and squint. And so, for the most part, do minds which have received divers impressions. I will not, nor need to you, compare the religions. The channels of God's mercies run through both fields; and they are sister teats of His graces, yet both diseased and infected, but not both alike. And I think, that as Copernicism in the mathematics hath carried earth farther up, from the stupid centre; and yet not honoured it, nor advantaged it, because for the necessity of appearances, it hath carried heaven so much higher from it: so the Roman profession seems to exhale, and refine our wills from earthly drugs, and lees, more than the reformed, and so seems to bring us nearer heaven; but then that carries heaven farther from us, by making us pass so many courts, and offices of saints in this life, in all our petitions, and lying in a painful prison in the next, during the pleasure, not of Him to whom we go, and who must be our Judge, but of them from whom we come, who know not our case. Sir, as I said last time, labour to keep your alacrity and dignity in an even temper; for in a dark sadness, indifferent things seem abominable, or necessary, being neither; as trees, and sheep, to melancholy night-walkers, have unproper shapes. And when you descend to satisfy all men in your own religion, or to excuse others to all you prostitute yourself and your understanding, though not a prey, yet a mark, and a hope, and a subject, for every sophister in religion to work on. For the other part of your letter, spent in the praise of the countess, I am always very apt to believe it of her, and can never believe it so well, and so reasonably, as now, when it is averred by you; but for the expressing it to her, in that sort as you seem to counsel, I have these two reasons to decline it. That that knowledge which she hath of me, was in the beginning of a graver course, than of a poet, into which (that I may also keep my dignity) I would not seem to relapse. The Spanish proverb informs me that he is a fool which cannot make one sonnet, and he is mad which makes two. The other stronger reason is my integrity to the other countess, of whose worthiness, though I swallowed your opinion at first upon your words, yet I have had since an explicit faith, and now a knowledge: and for her delight (since she descends to them) I had reserved not only all the verses, which I should make, but all the thoughts of women's worthiness. But because |