countable to him of all my former life. And although the hope of his mercy is my sheet-anchor of eternal salvation, yet am I persuaded, that whosoever wittingly neglecteth and regardeth not to clear his conscience, he cannot have peace with God, nor a lively faith in his mercy. Conscience therefore moveth me, considering you were one of my family and one of my household, of whom then I think I had a special cure, and of all them which were within my house, which indeed ought to have been an example of godliness to all the rest of my cure, not only of good life, but also in promoting of God's word to the uttermost of their power: but (alas) now when the trial doth separate the chaff from the corn, how small a deal it is, God knoweth, which the wind doth not blow away this conscience, I say, doth move me to fear lest the lightness of my family shall be laid to my charge for lack of more earnest and diligent instruction which should have been done. But blessed be God which hath given me grace to see this my default and to lament it from the bottom of my heart before my departing hence. This conscience doth move me also now to require both you and my friend Doctor Harvey, to remember your promises made to me in times past, of the pure setting forth and preaching of God's word and his truth. These promises, although you shall not need to fear to be charged with them of me hereafter before the world, yet look for none other (I exhort you as my friends) but to be charged with them at God's hand. This conscience and the love that I bear unto you biddeth me now say unto you both in God's name, fear God and love not the world: for God is able to cast both body and soul into hell-fire, when his wrath shall suddenly be kindled, blessed are all they that put their trust in him. And the saying of St John is true: All that is in the world, as the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the father, but of the world, and the world passeth away and the lust thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever. If this gift of grace, which undoubtedly is necessarily required unto eternal, salvation, were truly and unfeignedly graffed, and firmly stablished in

abhor an And be

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r way to our last habitation. Thanks be ee for thy love; glorie to God thy Father, on towards mankind. So be it. Amen.

JOHN DONNE

ORATION OF A SERMON ON THE NATIVITY

:

his then is truly to depart in peace, by the of peace, to the God of peace. Thy body is my I would be so obedient to the Law as not to 1; I would not hasten my death by starving, or his body But if this prison be burnt down by vers, or blown down with continual vapours, would De so in love with that ground upon which that od, as to desire rather to stay there, than to go Our prisons are fallen, our bodies are dead to many es; our palate dead in a tastelessness; our stomach an indigestibleness; our feet dead in a lameness, invention in a dulness, and our memory in a forgetand yet, as a man that should love the ground, is prison stood, we love this clay, that was a body in s of our youth, and but our prison then, when it was ; we abhor the graves of our bodies; and the body, in the best vigour thereof, was but the grave of the we over-love. Pharaoh's Butler, and his Baker went out of prison in a day; and in both cases, Joseph, in interpretation of their dreams, calls that (their very harge out of prison) a lifting up of their heads, a kind of ferment: Death raises every man alike, so far, as that it livers every man from his prison, from the encumbrances this body both Baker and Butler were delivered of their rison; but they passed into divers states after, one to the estitution of his place, the other to an ignominious execution. Of thy prison thou shalt be delivered whether thou wilt or no ;

men's hearts, they would not be so light, so suddenly to shrink from the maintenance and confession of the truth, as is now, alas, seen so manifestly of so many in these days. But here, peradventure, you would know of me what is the truth. Sir, God's word is the truth, as I, John saith, and that even the same that was heretofore. For albeit man doth vary and change as the moon, yet God's word is stable and abideth one for evermore and of Christ it is truly said, Christ yesterday and to-day, the same is also forever.

When I was in office, all that were esteemed learned in God's word, agreed this to be a truth in God's word written, that the common prayer of the Church should be had in the common tongue. You know I have conferred with many, and I ensure you I never found man (so far as I do remember) neither old nor new, Gospeller nor Papist, of what judgment soever he was, in this thing to be of a contrary opinion. If then it were a truth of God's word, think you that the alteration of the world can make it an untruth? If it cannot, why then do so many men shrink from the confession and maintenance of this truth received once of us all. For what else is it, I pray you, else to confess or deny Christ in this world, but to maintain the truth taught in God's word, or from any worldly respect to shrink from the same? This one thing have I brought for an example: other things be in like case, which now particularly I need not to rehearse. For he that will forsake wittingly, either for fear or gain of the world, any one open truth of God's word, if he be constrained, he will assuredly forsake God and all his truth, rather than he will endanger himself to lose or to leave that he loveth better indeed than he doth God and the truth of his Word. I like very well your plain speaking, wherein you say, I must either agree or die, and I think that you mean of the bodily death, which is common to good and bad. Sir, I know I must die whether I agree or no. But what folly were it then to make such an agreement by the which I could never escape this death which is so common to all, and also incur the guilt of death and eternal damnation? Lord grant that I may utterly

abhor and detest this damnable agreement so long as I live. And because (I daresay) you wrote of friendships unto me this short earnest advertisement, and I think verily wishing me to live and not to die, therefore bearing you in my heart no less love in God than you do me in the world, I say unto you in the word of the Lord (and that I say to you I say to all my friends and lovers in God) that if you do not confess and maintain to your power and knowledge, that which is grounded upon God's word, but will either for fear or gain of the world shrink and play the Apostata in deed you shall die the death: you know what I mean. And I beseech you all, my true friends and lovers in God, remember what I say, for this may be the last time peradventure that ever I shall write unto you.

From Bocardo in Oxford, the 18 day of Aprill, 1554

T. DECKER

THE PHOENIX

A THANKSGIVING FOR ALL THOSE BENEFITS WHICH WE REAP BY THE BURIAL OF CHRIST

THE grave is full of horror, the house of the dead is the

habitation of sadness, for the body receiveth no comfort, when it cometh to lodge in this last and farthest Inn. When our feet step upon that shore, we are robbed of all our honour, stripped out of all our gay attires, spoiled of all our gold and silver, forsaken by our friends, fled from by our kinsfolkes, yea, abhorred to be looked upon by our own children nothing is left us but a poor mantle of linen to hide our nakedness; that is the last apparel we must wear, and when that is worn out, we must be turned out of all.

A dreadful thing therefore would it be to dwell in this land of everlasting silence and darkness, but that Christ himself