Authors: John Donne
I am not of that seared impudency that I dare defend women, or pronounce them good. Yet when we see physicians allow some virtue in every poison, alas, why should we except women? Since certainly they are good for physic – at least, so as wine is good for a fever. And though they be the occasioners of most sins, they are also the punishers and revengers of the same sins. For I have seldom seen one which consumes his substance or body upon them escape diseases or beggary. And this is their justice. And if
suum cuique dare
be the fulfilling of all civil justice, they are most just: for they deny that which is theirs to no man.
And who may doubt of great wisdom in them, that doth but observe with how much labour and cunning our justices and other dispensers of the laws study to embrace them; and how zealously our preachers dehort men from them, only by urging their subtleties and policies and wisdom which are in them, yea, in the worst and most prostitute sort of them. Or who can deny them a good measure of fortitude, if he consider how many valiant men they have overthrown, and, being themselves overthrown, how much and how patiently they bear? And though they be all most intemperate, I care not; for I undertook to furnish them with some virtue, not all. Necessity, which makes even bad things good, prevails also for them; and we must say of them, as of some sharp punishing laws; if men were free from infirmities, they were needless; but they are both good scourges for bad men. These or none must serve for reasons; and it is my great happiness that examples prove not rules. For to confirm this opinion the world yields not one example.
In the twinkling of an eye, I saw all the rooms in Hell open to my sight. And by the benefit of certain spectacles (I know not of what making, but, I think, of the same by which Gregory the Great and Beda did discern so distinctly the souls of their friends when they were discharged from their bodies, and sometimes the souls of such men as they knew not by sight, and of some that were never in the world, and yet they could distinguish them flying into Heaven or conversing with living men) I saw all the channels in the bowels of the earth; and all the inhabitants of all nations and of all ages were suddenly made familiar to me…
Proceeding therefore to more inward places, I saw a secret place, where there were not many, beside Lucifer himself; to which only they had title which had so attempted any innovation in this life that they gave an affront to all antiquity, and induced doubts and anxieties and scruples, and, after a liberty of believing what they would, at length established opinions directly contrary to all established before…
Now to this place not only such endeavour to come as have innovated in matters directly concerning the soul, but also they which have done so either in the arts, or in conversation, or in anything which exerciseth the faculties of the soul, and may so provoke to quarrelsome and brawling controversies. For so the truth be lost, it is no matter how. But the gates are seldom opened, nor
scarce oftener than once in an age. But my destiny favoured me so much that I was present then, and saw all the pretenders, and all that affected an entrance, and Lucifer himself, who then came out into the outward chamber, to hear them plead their own causes.
As soon as the door creaked, I spied a certain mathematician, which till then had been busied to find, to deride, to detrude Ptolemy, and now with an erect countenance and settled pace came to the gates, and with his hands and feet (scarce respecting Lucifer himself) beat the doors, and cried: ‘Are these shut against me, to whom all the Heavens were ever open; who was a soul to the Earth, and gave it motion?’
By this I knew it was Copernicus. For though I had never heard ill of his life, and therefore might wonder to find him there, yet when I remembered that the Papists have extended the name and the punishment of heresy almost to everything, and that as yet I used Gregory’s and Bede’s spectacles, by which one saw Origen, who deserved so well of the Christian church, burning in Hell, I doubted no longer, but assured myself that it was Copernicus which I saw.
To whom Lucifer said: ‘Who are you? For though even by this boldness you seem worthy to enter, and have attempted a new faction even in Hell, yet you must first satisfy those which stand about you, and which expect the same fortune as you do.’
‘Except, O Lucifer,’ answered Copernicus, ‘I thought thee of the race of the star Lucifer, with which I am so well acquainted, I should not vouchsafe thee this discourse. I am he which, pitying thee who wert thrust into the centre of the world, raised both thee and thy prison, the earth, up into the heavens; so as by my means God doth not enjoy his revenge upon thee. The sun, which was an officious spy, and a betrayer of faults, and so thine enemy, I have appointed to go into the lowest part of the world. Shall these gates be open to such as have innovated in small matters? And shall they be shut against me, who have turned the whole frame of the world, and am thereby almost a new Creator?’
More than this he spoke not. Lucifer stuck in a meditation. For what should he do? It seemed unjust to deny entry to him which had deserved so well, and dangerous to grant it to one of so great ambitions and undertakings: nor did he think that he himself had attempted greater matters before his fall. Something he had which he might have conveniently opposed, but he was loath to utter it, lest he should confess his fear.
But Ignatius Loyola, which was got near his chair, a subtle fellow, and so indued with the devil that he was able to tempt, and not only that but (as they say) even to possess the devil, apprehended this perplexity in Lucifer. And making himself sure of his own entrance, and knowing well that many thousands of his family
aspired to that place, he opposed himself against all others. He was content they should be damned, but not that they should govern. And though when he died he was utterly ignorant in all great learning, and knew not so much as Ptolemy’s or Copernicus’s name, but might have been persuaded that the words ‘Almagest’, ‘zenith’ and ‘nadir’ were saints’ names, and fit to be put into the Litany, and
Ora pro nobis
joined to them, yet after he had spent some time in Hell he had learnt somewhat of his Jesuits, which daily came thither. And whilst he stayed at the threshold of Hell, that is, from the time when he delivered himself over to the Pope’s will, he took a little taste of learning.
Thus furnished, thus he undertakes Copernicus: ‘Do you think to win our Lucifer to your part by allowing him the honour of being of the race of that star, who was not only made before all the stars, but being glutted with the glory of shining there, transferred his dwelling and colonies unto this monarchy, and thereby gave our Order a noble example to spy, to invade, and to possess foreign kingdoms?…But for you: what new thing have you invented by which our Lucifer gets anything? What cares he whether the earth travel or stand still? Hath your raising up of the earth into heaven brought men to that confidence that they build new towers or threaten God again? Or do they, out of this motion of the earth, conclude that there is no Hell, or deny the
punishment of sin? Do not men believe? Do they not live just as they did before? Besides, this detracts from the dignity of your learning, and derogates from your right and title of coming to this place, that those opinions of yours may very well be true … Let therefore this little mathematician, dread Emperor, withdraw himself to his own company …’
Lucifer signified his assent: and Copernicus, without muttering a word, was as quiet as he thinks the sun.
The first book of the Bible, is a Revelation, and so is the last, in the order as they stand, a Revelation too. To declare a production of all things out of nothing, (which is Moses his work;) that when I do not know, and care not whether I know or no, what so contemptible a creature as an ant is made of, but yet would fain know what so vast, and so considerable a thing as an elephant is made of; I care not for a mustard seed, but I would fain know what a cedar is made of; I can leave out the consideration of the whole earth, but would be glad to know what the heavens, and the glorious bodies in the heavens, sun, moon and stars are made of; I shall have but one answer from Moses for all, that all my elephants, and cedars, and the heavens that I consider, were made of nothing; that a cloud is as nobly born, as the sun in the heavens; and a beggar, as nobly, as the King upon earth; if we consider the great-grandfather of them all, to be nothing: to produce light of darkness thus, is a Revelation, a manifestation of that, which, till then, was not: this Moses does. St John’s is a Revelation too: a manifestation of that state, which shall be, and be for ever, after all those which were produced of nothing, shall be returned and resolved to nothing again; the glorious state of the everlasting Jerusalem, the Kingdom of Heaven…
The drowning of the first world, and the repairing that again; the burning of this world, and establishing another in heaven, do not so much strain a man’s reason, as the creation, a creation of all out of nothing. For, for the repairing of the world after the flood, compared to the creation, it was eight to nothing; eight persons to begin a world upon, then; but in the creation, none. And for the glory which we receive in the next world, it is (in some sort) as the stamping of a print upon a coin; the metal is there already, a body and a soul to receive glory: but at the creation, there was no soul to receive glory, no body to receive a soul, no stuff, no matter, to make a body of. The less any thing is, the less we know it: how invisible, how inintelligible a thing then, is this nothing! We say in the School,
Deus cognoscibilior Angelis
, We have better means to know the nature of God, than of angels, because God hath appeared and manifested himself more in actions, than angels have done: we know what they are, by knowing what they have done; and it is very little that is related to us what angels have done: what then is there that can bring this Nothing to our understanding? What hath that done? A Leviathan, a whale, from a grain of spawn; an oak from a buried acorn, is a great; but a great world from nothing, is a strange improvement. We wonder to see a man rise from nothing to a great estate; but that nothing is nothing in comparison; but absolutely
nothing, merely nothing, is more incomprehensible than any thing, than all things together. It is a state (if a man may call it a state) that the Devil himself in the midst of his torments, cannot wish. No man can, the Devil himself cannot, advisedly, deliberately, wish himself to be nothing. It is truly and safely said in the School, That whatsoever can be the subject of a wish, if I can desire it, wish it, it must necessarily be better (at least in my opinion) than that which I have; and whatsoever is better, is not nothing; without doubt it must necessarily produce more thankfulness in me, towards God, that I am a Christian; but certainly more wonder that I am a creature: it is vehemently spoken, but yet needs no excuse, which Justin Martyr says,
Ne ipsi quidem Domino fidem haberem, &c.
I should scarce believe God himself, if he should tell me, that any but himself created this world of nothing; so infallible, and so inseparable a work, and so distinctive a character is it of the Godhead, to produce anything from nothing; and that God did when he commanded light out of darkness…
This captivity to sin, comes so swiftly, so impetuously upon us. Consider it first in our making; In the generation of our parents, we were conceived in sin;
that is, they sinned in that action; so we were conceived in sin; in their sin. And in our selves, we were submitted to sin, in that very act of generation, because then we became in part the subject of original sin. Yet, there was no arrow shot into us then; there was no sin in that substance of which we were made; for if there had been sin in that substance, that substance might be damned, though God should never infuse a soul into it; and that cannot be said well then: God, whose goodness, and wisdom will have that substance to become a man, he creates a soul for it, or creates a soul in it, (I dispute not that) he sends a light, or he kindles a light, in that lanthorn; and here’s no arrow shot neither; here’s no sin in that soul, that God creates; for there God should create something that were evil; and that cannot be said: Here’s no arrow shot from the body, no sin in the body alone; None from the soul, no sin in the soul alone; And yet, the union of this soul and body is so accompanied with God’s malediction for our first transgression, that in the instant of that union of life, as certainly as that body must die, so certainly the whole man must be guilty of original sin. No man can tell me out of what quiver, yet here is an arrow comes so swiftly, as that in the very first minute of our life, in our quickening in our mother’s womb, we become guilty of Adam’s sin done 6000 years before, and subject to all those arrows, hunger, labour, grief, sickness, and death, which have
been shot after it. This is the fearful swiftness of this arrow, that God himself cannot get before it. In the first minute that my soul is infused, the image of God is imprinted in my soul; so forward is God in my behalf, and so early does he visit me. But yet original sin is there, as soon as that image of God is there. My soul is capable of God as soon as it is capable of sin; and though sin do not get the start of God, God does not get the start of sin neither. Powers, that dwell so far asunder, as Heaven, and Hell, God and the Devil, meet in an instant in my soul, in the minute of my quickening, and the image of God and the Image of Adam, original sin, enter into me at once, in one, and the same act. So swift is this arrow, original sin, from which, all arrows of subsequent temptations, are shot, as that God, who comes to my first minute of life, cannot come before death.
But except we do come to say, Our sins are our own, God will never cut up that root in us, God will never blot out the memory in himself, of those sins. Nothing can make them none of ours, but the avowing of them, the confessing of them to be ours. Only in this way, I am a holy liar, and in this the God of truth will reward my lie; for, if I say my sins are mine own, they are none of mine, but, by that confessing and appropriating of
those sins to my self, they are made the sins of him, who hath suffered enough for all, my blessed Lord and Saviour, Christ Jesus. Therefore that servant of God, St Augustine confesses those sins, which he never did, to be his sins, and to have been forgiven him:
Peccata mihi dimissa fateor, et quœ mea sponte feci, et quœ te duce non feci
; Those sins which I have done, and those, which, but for thy grace, I should have done, are all, my sins. Alas, I may die here, and die under an everlasting condemnation of fornication with that woman, that lives, and dies a virgin, and be damned for a murderer of that man, that outlives me, and for a robbery, and oppression, where no man is damnified, nor any penny lost. The sin that I have done, the sin that I would have done, is my sin…