and definiteness of thought, and studied arrangement of the steps of an argument, are to be found in all his sermons; and it is always more evident what he is proving, than whether his premises legitimately belong to that conclusion. "Whereunto all this tendeth" is a note which never need be placed in his margin, as far as the immediate subject is concerned. Again, his power over the English language, one rarely surpassed in its capabilities of ministering to thought, was only equalled by one or two of his great contemporaries. And the affectation of obscurity, (the resource of weakness and ignorance, and the greatest of crimes in a literary, much more in an ecclesiastical writer,) can hardly be laid to the charge of one so single-hearted in his zeal, and so far above such a meanness, both from his learning and genius. His faults in this matter are the faults of his time, somewhat increased by a mind naturally fond of subtilty and laborious thought. And even the real difficulties of his style will soon give way and become familiar to the reader, who is capable of discovering and appreciating the treasures which it contains. But it is not in diction, or genius, or power of thought, that we must look for the crowning excellence of these Sermons. We find in them, what we feel to be wanting in most of the great preachers of that and the succeeding age, a distinct and clear exposition of the doctrines of redemption, as declared in the Scriptures, and believed by the Church in England. This too is set forth, without any dread of that poisonous maxim, “the further from Rome, the nearer the truth;" to the working of which we owe most of the dissent from, and the ignorance in, the present English church. That these remarks are not to be taken without exception; that Donne does fall, upon comparatively minor points, into very many puerilities and superstitions; that the implicit following of the Fathers is, in divinity, his besetting fault, and often interferes with his lucid declarations of the truth, no impartial reader of his sermons can deny. Still when all these have been amply allowed for-all the obnoxious or trifling passages struck out-I think every reader will be equally convinced, that there is left unimpaired a genuine body of orthodox divinity (in the best sense of the words) not to be found, perhaps, in any other English theologian. In his expositions of Scripture he follows chiefly the close and verbal method of the day: which though it frequently leads him to make too much of an indifferent word, never allows the passing over of an important one; and the want of which is, perhaps, more to be regretted in modern divinity, than its use despised in ancient. His I have selected a few passages which may enable the reader shortly to exemplify the above remarks:— For an exposition of the doctrine of redemption free and universal, by the assumption of the human nature by Christ, see vol. I., p. 566, line 36. On the Church, and the Scripture, see vol. 1., p. 418, 1. 33; vol. iv., p. 176, 1. 20. On the Sacraments-Baptism, see vol. 1., p. 583, 1. 12. Baptism and the Lord's Supper, see the whole of Ser. 78, vol. III., p. 414. The sacrificial nature of the Lord's Supper, vol. vI., p. 39, 1. 21, seq. The real presence, in ditto, vol. III., p. 327, 1. 13-22; vol. I., p. 479, 1. 5—10. Prayer for the dead entered into, Ser. 77, vol. III. His judgment of the Roman Church, Ser. 99, vol. iv., p. 295, 1. 4. Estimation of the fathers by the Roman Church, vol. III., p. 309, 1. 18, seq. Prayer to saints; vol. II., p. 320, 1. 7. For an instance of puerility and superstition, see vol. 1., p. 456, 1. 12. arrangements are often artificial and fanciful; but always easily retained, and instructive to the Scripture student. It has been observed of him, that he has the faculty of making whatever he touches upon to appear important. It should, perhaps, rather have been said, that he resolves all minor matters into more important ones, and by constantly fixing the attention of his hearer on the great objects of Christian faith, and bringing every doctrine and opinion to bear upon them in greater or less degree, invests every subject with a dignity which does not belong to it, considered apart. In illustration by simile or allusion, Donne shows the true marks of great genius. The reader of the following Sermons will find sentences and passages which he will be surprised he never before had read, and will think of ever after. In depth and grandeur these far surpass (in my judgment) the strings of beautiful expressions to be found in Jeremy Taylor; they are the recreations of a loftier mind; and while Taylor's similes are exquisite in their melody of sound, and happy in external description, Donne enters into the inner soul of art, and gives his reader more satisfactory and permanent delight". " I have subjoined one or two specimens as a foretaste to the reader. Speaking of eternity, he says:-"A day that hath no pridie, nor postridie; yesterday doth not usher it in, nor to-morrow shall not drive it out. Methusalem, with all his hundreds of years, was but a mushroom of a night's growth, to this day; all the four monarchies, with all their thousands of years, and all the powerful kings, and all the beautiful queens of this world, were but as a bed of flowers, some gathered at six, some at seven, some at eight, all in one morning, in respect of this day." Vol. III., p. 326. "Our flesh, though glorified, cannot make us see God better, nor clearer, than the soul above hath done, all the time, from our death to our resurrection. But as an indulgent father, or a tender mother, when they go to see the king in any solemnity, or any other thing of observation and curiosity, delights to carry their child, which is flesh of their Sir Thomas Browne is, perhaps, the writer whose style will be most forcibly recalled to the mind of the reader by many parts of these Sermons; but here again Donne has immeasurably the advantage. While the one is ever guessing at truth, the other is pouring it forth from the fulness of his heart. While the one in his personal confessions keeps aloof and pities mankind, the other is of them, and feels with them. Donne's epistolary writings are models in their kind. Laboured compliments, and studied antitheses have seldom been so ably or pleasingly strung together; or playfulness and earnest, pathos and humour, more happily blended. His poems were mostly written in his youth; his satires, according to one of the panegyrics on him, before he was twenty. It has been remarked, that the juvenile poems of truly great men are generally distinguished by laborious condensation of thought; and the remark is amply borne out in this instance. This labour of compression on his part has tended to make his lines harsh and unpleasing; and the corresponding effort required on the reader's part to follow him, renders most persons insensible to his real flesh, and bone of their bone, with them, and though the child cannot comprehend it as well as they, they are as glad that the child sees it, as that they see it themselves;-such a gladness shall my soul have, that this flesh (which she will no longer call her prison, nor her tempter, but her friend, her companion, her wife), that this flesh, that is, I, in the re-union and redintegration of both parts, shall see God: for then one principal clause in her rejoicing, and acclamation, shall be, that this flesh is her flesh; in my flesh shall I see God." Vol. IV., p. 239. "O what a Leviathan is sin, how vast, how immense a body! and then what a spawner, how numerous! Between these two, the denying of sins which we have done, and the bragging of sins which we have not done, what a space, what a compass is there, for millions of millions of sins!" Vol. IV., p. 370. merits. That he had and could turn to account a fine musical ear, is amply proved by some of his remaining pieces. Why Dr. Johnson should have called him a metaphysical poet, is difficult to conceive. What "wittily associating the most discordant images" has to do with. metaphysics is not very clear; and Johnson, perhaps, little thought that the title which he was giving to one of the most apparently laboured of poets, belonged of all others to his immortal contemporary, who is recorded "never to have blotted a line". A greater man than Dr. Johnson, even Dryden, has said in his dedication of Juvenal to the Earl of Dorset, that Donne "affects the metaphysics;" probably meaning no more than that scholastic learning and divinity are constantly to be found showing themselves in his poems. The personal character of Donne is generally represented to us to have undergone a great change, between his youth and the time when he entered holy orders. This representation is countenanced by the uniform tenor of deep penitence with which he speaks in his Sermons of his former life; and by the licentiousness of some of his poetical pieces. It would be wrong, however, to infer moral depravity solely from the latter circumstance, as this strain was in keeping with the prevalent taste of the times; and the object addressed in the Love-poems of the day, and the circumstances introduced, were often both equally imaginary. That his manners were the manners of the court and the society in which he lived, is the most reasonable and the most charitable sentence; 10 See especially the piece, "Come live with me and be my love;" that written to his wife on parting from her to go into France, (vol. vI., p. 554,) and the opening of his Epithalamion on the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth. |