After my skin
,
must be rendered 'according to, or as far as my skin is concerned.'
Though the flies and maggots in my ulcers have destroyed my skin, yet
still, and in my flesh, I shall see God as my Redeemer
. Now St. Paul
says, that flesh and blood cannot
Greek: sàrx kaì aima — ou dynantai
)
inherit the kingdom of heaven, that is, the spiritual world.
how
is the passage, as commonly interpreted, consistent with the numerous
expressions of doubt and even of despondency in Job's speeches?
Ib.
B. C. (Ezekiel's vision xxxvii.)
I cannot but think that Dr. Donne, by thus antedating the distinct
belief of the Jews in the resurrection, "which you all know already,"
destroys in great measure the force and sublimity of this vision.
Besides, it does not seem, in the common people at least, to have been
much more than a mongrel Egyptian-catacomb sort of faith, or rather
superstition.
In fine
. This is one of Donne's least estimable discourses; the worst
sermon on the best text. Yet what a Donne-like passage is this that
follows!
P. 146. A.
Let the whole world be in thy consideration as one house; and then
consider in that, in the peaceful harmony of creatures, in the
peaceful succession, and connexion of causes and effects, the peace of
nature. Let this kingdom, where God hath blessed thee with a being, be
the gallery, the best room of that house, and consider in the two
walls of that gallery, the Church and the state, the peace of a royal
and religious wisdom. Let thine own family be a cabinet in this
gallery, and find in all the boxes thereof, in the several duties of
wife and children, and servants, the peace of virtue, and of the
father and mother of all virtues, active discretion, passive
obedience; and then lastly, let thine own bosom be the secret box and
reserve in this cabinet, and then the gallery of the best home that
can be had, peace with the creature, peace in the Church, peace in the
state, peace in thy house, peace in thy heart, is a fair model, and a
lovely design even of the heavenly Jerusalem, which is visio pacis,
where there is no object but peace.
Serm. XVI. John xi. 35. p. 153.
Ib.
C.
The Masorites (the Masorites are the critics upon the Hebrew Bible,
the Old Testament) cannot tell us, who divided the chapters of the Old
Testament into verses: neither can any other tell, who did it in the
New Testament.
11
How should the Masorites, when the Hebrew
Scriptures were not as far as we know divided
into verses at all in their time? The Jews
seem to have adopted the invention from the
Christians, who were led to it in the construction
of Concordances.
Ib.
p. 154. E.
If they killed Lazarus, had not Christ done enough to let them see
that he could raise him again?
Malice, above all party-malice, is indeed a blind passion, but one can
scarcely conceive the chief priests such dolts as to think that Christ
could raise Lazarus again. Their malice blinded them as to the nature of
the incident, made them suppose a conspiracy between Jesus and the
family of Lazarus, a mock burial, in short; and this may be one, though
it is not, I think, the principal, reason for this greatest miracle
being omitted in the other Gospels.
Ib.
p. 155. B.
Christ might ungirt himself, and give more scope and liberty to his
passions than any other man; both because he had no original sin
within to drive him, &c.
How then is he said to have _condemned sin in the flesh?_ Without guilt,
without actual sin, assuredly he was; but
Greek: egéneto sàrx
, and
what can we mean by original sin relatively to the flesh, but that man
is born with an animal life and a material organism that render him
temptible to evil, and which tends to dispose the life of the will to
contradict the light of the reason?
St. Paul by
Greek: homoi_ómati sarkòs hamartiás
see previous image
mean a deceptive resemblance?
Ib.
D.
I can see no possible edification that can arise from these
ultra-Scriptural speculations respecting our Lord.
Ib.
p. 157. A.
Though the Godhead never departed from the carcase ... yet because the
human soul was departed from it, he was no man.
Donne was a poor metaphysician; that is, he never closely questioned
himself as to the absolute meaning of his words.
did he mean by the
'soul?' what by the ' body?'
Ib.
D.
And I know that there are authors of a middle nature, above the
philosophers, and below the Scriptures, the Apocryphal books.
A whimsical instance of the disposition in the mind for every pair of
opposites to find an intermediate, — a
mesothesis
for every
thesis
and
antithesis
. Thus Scripture may be opposed to
philosophy; and then the Apocryphal books will be philosophy relatively
to Scripture, and Scripture relatively to philosophy.
Ib.
p. 159. B.
And therefore the same author (Epiphanius) says, that because they
thought it an uncomely thing for Christ to weep for any temporal
thing, some men have expunged and removed that verse out of St. Luke's
Gospel, that
Jesus, when he saw that city, wept.
14
This, by the by, rather indiscreetly lets out the liberties, which the
early Christians took with their sacred writings. Origen, who, in answer
to Celsus's reproach on this ground, confines the practice to the
heretics, furnishes proofs of the contrary himself in his own comments.
Ib.
p. 161. D.
That world, which finds itself in an authumn in itself, finds itself
in a spring in our imaginations.
Worthy almost of Shakspeare!
Serm. XVII. Matt. xix. 17. p. 163.
Ib.
E.
The words are part of a dialogue, of a conference, between Christ and
a man who proposed a question to him; to whom Christ makes an answer
by way of another question, Why callest thou me good? &c. In
the words, and by occasion of them, we consider the text, the context,
and the pretext; not as three equal parts of the building; but the
context, as the situation and prospect of the house, the pretext, as
the access and entrance into the house, and then the text itself, as
the house itself, as the body of the building: in a word, in the text
the words; in the context the occasion of the words; in the pretext
the purpose, the disposition of him who gave the occasion.
What a happy example of elegant division of a subject! And so also the
compendium
of Christianity in the preceding paragraph (D). Our great
divines were not ashamed of the learned discipline to which they had
submitted their minds under Aristotle and Tully, but brought the
purified products as sacrificial gifts to Christ. They baptized the
logic and manly rhetoric of ancient Greece.
Ib.
p. 164. A. B.
Excellent illustration of fragmentary morality, in which each man takes
his choice of his virtues and vices.
Ib.
D.
Men perish with whispering sins, nay, with silent sins, sins that
never tell the conscience they are sins, as often as with crying sins.
Yea, I almost doubt whether the truth here so boldly asserted is not of
more general necessity for ordinary congregations, than the denunciation
of the large sins that cannot remain
in incognito
.
Ib.
p. 165. A.
Venit procurrens, he came running. Nicodemus came not so, Nicodemus
durst not avow his coming, and therefore he came creeping, and he came
softly, and he came seldom, and he came by night.
Ah! but we trust in God that he did in fact come. The adhesion, the
thankfulness, the love which arise and live after the having come,
whether from spontaneous liking, or from a beckoning hope, or from a
compelling good, are the truest
criteria
of the man's Christianity.
Ib.
B.
When I have just reason to think my superiors would have it thus, this
is music to my soul; when I hear them say they would have it thus,
this is rhetoric to my soul; when I see their laws enjoin it to be
thus, this is logic to my soul; but when I see them actually, really,
clearly, constantly do thus, this is a demonstration to my soul, and
demonstration is the powerfullest proof. The eloquence of inferiors is
in words, the eloquence of superiors is in action.
A just representation, I doubt not, of the general feeling and principle
at the time Donne wrote. Men regarded the gradations of society as God's
ordinances, and had the elevation of a self-approving conscience in
every feeling and exhibition of respect for those of ranks superior to
their own. What a contrast with the present times! Is not the last
sentence beautiful? "The eloquence of inferiors is in words, the
eloquence of superiors is in action."
Ib.
B. and C.
He came to Christ, he ran to him; and when he was come, as St. Mark
relates it, he fell upon his knees to Christ. He stood not then
Pharisaically upon his own legs, his own merits, though he had been a
diligent observer of the commandments before, &c.
All this paragraph is an independent truth; but I doubt whether in his
desire to make every particle exemplary, to draw some Christian moral
from it, Donne has not injudiciously attributed,
quasi per prolepsin
,
merits inconsistent with the finale of a wealthy would-be proselyte. At
all events, a more natural and, perhaps, not less instructive
interpretation might be made of the sundry movements of this religiously
earnest and zealous admirer of Christ, and worshipper of Mammon. O, I
have myself known such!
Ib.
D.
He was no ignorant man, and yet he acknowledged that he had somewhat
more to learn of Christ than he knew yet. Blessed are they that
inanimate all their knowledge, consummate all in Christ Jesus, &c.
The whole paragraph is pure gold.
being aware of this passage in
Donne, I expressed the same conviction, or rather declared the same
experience, in the appendix
to the Statesman's Manual. O! if only one
day in a week, Christians would consent to have the Bible as the only
book, and their minister's labour to make them find all substantial good
of all other books in their Bibles!
Ib.
E.
I remember one of the Panegyrics celebrates and magnifies one of the
Roman emperors for this, that he would marry when he was young; that
he would so soon confine and limit his pleasures, so soon determine
his affections in one person.
It is surely some proof of the moral effect which Christianity has
produced, that in all Protestant countries, at least, a writer would be
ashamed to assign this as a ground of panegyric; as if promiscuous
intercourse with those of the other sex had been a natural good, a
privilege, which there was a great merit in foregoing! O! what do not
women owe to Christianity! As Christians only it is that they do, or
ordinarily can, cease to be things for men, instead of co-persons in one
spiritual union.
Ib.
p. 166. A.
But such is often the corrupt inordinateness of greatness, that it
only carries them so much beyond other men, but not so much nearer to
God.
Like a balloon, away from earth, but not a whit nearer the arch of
heaven. There is a praiseworthy relativeness and life in the morality of
our best old divines. It is not a cold law in brass or stone; but "this
I may and should think of my neighbour, this of a great man," &c.
Ib.
p. 167. A.
Christ was pleased to redeem this man from this error, and bring him
to know truly what he was, that he was God. Christ therefore doth not
rebuke this man, by any denying that he himself was good; for Christ
doth assume that addition to himself, I am the good shepherd.
Neither doth God forbid that those good parts which are in men should
be celebrated with condign praise. We see that God, as soon as he saw
that any thing was good, he said so, he uttered it, he declared it,
first of the light, and then of other creatures. God would be no
author, no example of smothering the due praise of good actions. For
surely that man hath no zeal to goodness in himself, that affords no
praise to goodness in other men.
Very fine. But I think another — not, however, a different — view might be
taken respecting our Lord's intention in these words. The young noble,
who came to him, had many praiseworthy traits of character; but he
failed in the ultimate end and aim. What ought only to have been valued
by him as means, was loved, and had a worth given to it, as an end in
itself. Our Lord, who knew the hearts of men, instantly in the first
words applies himself to this, and takes the occasion of an ordinary
phrase of courtesy addressed to himself, to make the young man aware of
the difference between a mere relative good and that which is absolutely
good; that which may be called good, when regarded as a mean to good,
but which must not be mistaken for, or confounded with, that which is
good, and itself the end.
Ib.
B. C. D.
All excellent, and D. most so. Thus, thus our old divines showed the
depth of their love and appreciation of the Scriptures, and thus led
their congregations to feel and see the same. Here is Donne's authority
(
Deus non est ens
, &c.) for what I have so earnestly endeavored to
show, that
Deus est ens super ens
, the ground of all being, but
therein likewise absolute Being, in that he is the eternal
self-affirmant, the I Am in that I Am; and that the key of this mystery
is given to us in the pure idea of the will, as the alone
Causa Sui
.
O! compare this manhood of our Church divinity with the feeble dotage of
the Paleyan school, the 'natural' theology, or watchmaking scheme, that
knows nothing of the maker but what can be proved out of the watch, the
unknown nominative case of the verb impersonal
fit — et natura est
; the
'it,' in short, in 'it rains,' 'it snows,' 'it is cold,' and the
like. When, after reading the biographies of Walton and his
contemporaries, I reflect on the crowded congregations, on the
thousands, who with intense interest came to their hour and two hour
long sermons, I cannot but doubt the fact of any true progression, moral
or intellectual, in the mind of the many. The tone, the matter, the
anticipated sympathies in the sermons of an age form the best moral
criterion of the character of that age.
Ib.
E.
His name of Jehova we admire with a reverence.
Say, rather, Jehova, his name. It is not so properly a name of God, as
God the Name, — God's name and God.
Ib.
p. 169. A.
Land, and money, and honour must be called goods, though but of
fortune, &c.
We should distinguish between the conditions of our possessing goods and
the goods themselves. Health, for instance, is ordinarily a condition of
that working and rejoicing for and in God, which are goods in the end,
and of themselves. Health, competent fortune, and the like are good as
the negations of the preventives of good; as clear glass is good in
relation to the light, which it does not exclude. Health and ease
without the love of God are plate glass in the darkness.
Ib.
p. 170.
Much of this page consists of play on words; as, that which is useful as
rain, and that which is of use as rain on a garden after drouth. There
is also much sophistry in it. Pain is not necessarily an ultimate evil.
As the mean of ultimate good, it may be a relative good; but surely that
which makes pain, anguish, heaviness necessary in order to good, must be
evil. And so the Scripture determines. They are the
wages of sin
; but
God's infinite mercy raises them into sacraments, means of grace. Sin is
the only absolute evil; God the only absolute good. But as myriads of
things are good relatively through participation of God, so are many
things evil as the fruits of evil. What is the apostasy, or fall of
spirits? That that which from the essential perfection of the Absolute
Good could not but be possible, that is, have a potential being, but
never ought to have been actual, did nevertheless strive to be
actual? — But this involved an impossibility; and it actualized only its
own potentiality.
What is the consequence of the apostasy? That no philosophy is possible
of man and nature but by assuming at once a zenith and a nadir, God and
Hades
; and an ascension from the one through and with a condescension
from the other; that is, redemption by prevenient and then auxiliary
grace.
Ib.
p. 171. B.
So says St. Augustine, Audeo dicere, though it be boldly said, yet I
must say it, utile esse cadere in aliquod manifestum peccatum, &c.
No doubt, a sound sense may be forced into these words: but why use
words, into which a sound sense must be forced? Besides, the subject is
too deep and too subtle for a sermon. In the two following paragraphs,
especially, Dr. Donne is too deep, and not deep enough. He treads
waters, and dangerous waters. N.B. The Familists.
Serm. XVIII. Acts, ii. 36. p. 175.
Ib.
B.
I would paraphrase, or rather lead the way to this text, something as
follows:
Truth is a common interest; it is every man's duty to convey it to his
brother, if only it be a truth that concerns or may profit him, and he
be competent to receive it. For we are not bound to say the truth, where
we know that we cannot convey it, but very probably may impart a
falsehood instead; no falsehoods being more dangerous than truths
misunderstood, nay, the most mischievous errors on record having been
half-truths taken as the whole.
But let it be supposed that the matter to be communicated is a fact of
general concernment, a truth of deep and universal interest, a momentous
truth involved in a most awe-striking fact, which all responsible
creatures are competent to understand, and of which no man can safely
remain in ignorance. Now this is the case with the matter, on which I am
about to speak;
therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly,
that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord
and Christ!
Ib.
p. 176. A. B. C.
True Christian love not only permits, but enjoins, courtesy. God
himself, says Donne, gave us the example.
Ib.
p. 177. A. C. E.
All excellent, and E. of deeper worth. All that is wanting here is to
determine the true sense of 'knowing God,' — that sense in which it is
revealed that to know God is life ever-lasting.
Ib p. 178. A.
Now the universality of this mercy hath God enlarged and extended very
far, in that he proposes it even to our knowledge; sciant, let
all know it. It is not only credant, let all believe it; for
the infusing of faith is not in our power; but God hath put it in our
power to satisfy their reason, &c.
A question is here affirmatively started of highest importance and of
deepest interest, that is, faith so distinguished from reason,
credat
from
sciat
, that the former is an infused grace
'not in our power;' the latter an inherent quality or faculty, on which
we are able to calculate as man with man. I know not what to say to
this. Faith seems to me the coadunation of the individual will with the
reason, enforcing adherence alike of thought, act, and affection to the
Universal Will, whether revealed in the conscience, or by the light of
reason, however the same may contravene, or apparently contradict, the
will and mind of the flesh, the presumed experience of the senses and of
the understanding, as the faculty, or intelligential yet animal
instinct, by which we generalize the notices of the senses, and
substantiate their
spectra
or
phænomena
. In this sense,
therefore, and in this only, I agree with Donne.
No man cometh to
Christ unless the
Father lead him
. The corrupt will cannot,
without prevenient as well as auxiliary grace, be unitively subordinated
to the reason, and again, without this union of the moral will, the
reason itself is latent. Nevertheless, I see no advantage in not saying
the 'will,' or in substituting the term 'faith' for it. But the sad
non-distinction of the reason and the understanding throughout Donne,
and the confusion of ideas and conceptions under the same term,
painfully inturbidates his theology. Till this distinction of the
Greek:nous
and the
Greek:phronaema sarkos
be seen, nothing can be
seen aright. Till this great truth be mastered, and with the sight that
is insight, other truths may casually take possession of the mind, but
the mind cannot possess them. If you know not this, you know nothing;
for if you know not the diversity of reason from the understanding, you
know not reason; and reason alone is knowledge.
All that follows in B. is admirable, worthy of a divine of the Church of
England, the National and the Christian, and indeed proves that Donne
was at least possessed by the truth which I have always labored to
enforce, namely, that faith is the
apotheosis
of the reason in
man, the complement of reason, the will in the form of the reason. As
the basin-water to the fountain shaft, such is will to reason in faith.
The whole will shapes itself in the image of God wherein it had been
created, and shoots on high toward, and in the glories of, Heaven!
Ib.
D.
If we could have been in Paradise, and seen God take a clod of red
earth, and make that wretched clod of contemptible earth such a body
as should be fit to receive his breath, &c.
A sort of pun on the Hebrew word
Adam
or red earth, common in Donne's
age, but unworthy of Donne, who was worthy to have seen deeper into
the Scriptural sense of the 'ground,' the Hades, the multeity, the many
absque numero el infra numerum
, that which is below, as God is
that which transcends, intellect.
Ib.
p. 179. B.
We place in the School, for the most part, the infinite merit of
Christ Jesus ... rather in pacto than in persona, rather
that this contract was thus made between the Father and the Son, than
that whatsoever that person, thus consisting of God and Man, should
do, should, only in respect of the person, be of an infinite value and
extension to that purpose, &c.
O, this is sad misty divinity! far too scholastical for the pulpit, far
too vague and unphilosophic for the study.
Ib.
p. 180. A.
Quis nisi infidelis negaverit apud inferos fuisse Christum?
says St. Augustine.
Where?
Pearson expressly asserts and
that the clause was in
none of the ancient creeds or confessions. And even now the sense of
these words,
He descended into hell
, is in no Reformed Church
determined as an article of faith.
Ib.p.182. D.
Audacter dicam, says St. Hierome, cum omnia posset Deus,
suscitare virginem post ruinam non potest.
One instance among hundreds of the wantonness of phrase and fancy in the
Fathers. What did Jerome mean?
quod Deus membranam hymenis luniformem
reproducere nequit?
No; that were too absurd. What then? — that God
cannot make what has been not to have been? Well then, why not say that,
since that is all you can mean?
Serm. XIX. Rev. xx.6.p.183.
The exposition of the text in this sermon is a lively instance how much
excellent good sense a wise man, like Donne, can bring forth on a
passage which he does not understand. For to say that it may mean either
X, or Y, or Z, is to confess he knows not what it means; but that if it
be X. then, &c.; if Y. then, &c.; and lastly if it be Z. then, &c.; that
is to say, that he understands X, Y, and Z; but does not understand
the text itself.
Ib.
p. 185. B.
Seas of blood and yet but brooks, tuns of blood and yet but basons,
compared with the sacrifices, the sacrifices of the blood of men, in
the persecutions of the primitive Church. For every ox of the Jew, the
Christian spent a man; and for every sheep and lamb, a mother and her
child, &c.
Whoo! Had the other nine so called persecutions been equal to the
tenth, that of Diocletian, Donne's assertion here would be extravagant.
Serra. XXXIV. Rom. viii.16.p.332.
Ib.