Authors: John Donne
…Of all the ways in which God hath expressed himself towards us, we have made no word which doth less signify what we mean than ‘power’: for power, which is but an ability to do, ever relates to some future thing, and God is ever present, simple, and pure act. But we think we have done much and gone far when we have made up the word ‘omnipotence’ – which is both ways improper; for it is much too short, because omnipotence supposes and confesses a matter and subject to work upon, and yet God was the same when there was
nothing. And then it over-reaches and goes downward beyond God: for God hath not, or is not, such an omnipotence as can do all things. For though squeamish and tenderer men think it more mannerly to say
This thing cannot be done
than
God cannot do this thing
, yet it is all one. And if that be an omnipotence which is limited with the nature of the worker, or with the congruity of the subject, other things may encroach upon the word
omnipotent
; that is, they can do all things which are not against their nature or the nature of the matter upon which they work. Beza therefore might well enough say that God could not make a body without place; and Prateolus might truly enough infer upon that, that the Bezanites (as he calls them) deny omnipotence in God. For both are true. And therefore I doubt not that it hath some mystery that the word ‘omnipotence’ is not found in all the Bible, nor ‘omnipotent’ in the New Testament. And where it is in the Old, it would rather be interpreted ‘all-sufficient’ than ‘almighty’ – between which there is much difference. God is so all-sufficient that he is sufficient for all, and sufficient to all. He is enough, and we are in him able enough to take and apply. We fetch part of our wealth, which is our faith, expressly from his treasury; and for our good works, we bring the metal to his mint (or that mint comes to us) and there the character of baptism and the impression of his grace makes them current and somewhat worth,
even towards him. God is all-efficient: that is, hath created the beginning, ordained the way, foreseen the end of everything; and nothing else is any kind of cause thereof. Yet since this word ‘efficient’ is now grown to signify infallibility in God, it reaches not home to that which we mean of God; since man is efficient cause of his own destruction. God is also
all-conficient
, that is, concurs with the nature of everything; for indeed the nature of everything is that which he works in it. And as he redeemed not man as he was God (though the mercy and purpose and acceptation were only of God) but as God and man, so in our repentances and reconciliations, though the first grace proceed only from God, yet we concur so, as there is an union of two hypostases, grace and nature. Which (as the incarnation of our blessed Saviour himself was) is conceived in us of the Holy Ghost, without father, but fed and produced by us, that is, by our will, first enabled and illumined. For neither God nor man determine man’s will (for that must either imply a necessiting thereof from God, or else Pelagian-ism) but they condetermine it. And thus God is truly all-conficient, that is, concurrent in all; and yet we may not dare to say that he hath any part in sin. So God is also all-perficient: that is, all and all parts of every work are his entirely; and lest any might seem to escape him and be attributed to nature or to art, all things were in him at once before he made nature, or she art. All things
which we do today were done by us in him before we were made. And now (when they are produced in time, as they were foreseen in eternity) his exciting grace provokes every particular good work, and his assisting grace perfects it. And yet we may not say but that God begins many things which we frustrate, and calls when we come not. So that as yet our understanding hath found no word which is well proportioned to that which we mean by ‘power of God’…
…All ordinary significations of justice will conveniently be reduced to these two: innocence, which in the Scriptures is everywhere called righteousness; or else satisfaction for transgressions, which, though Christ have paid aforehand for us all, and so we are rather pardoned than put to satisfaction, yet we are bound at God’s tribunal to plead our pardon and to pay the fees of contrition and penance. For since our justification now consists not in a pacification of God (for then nothing but that which is infinite could have any proportion) but in the application of the merits of Christ to us, our contrition (which is a compassion with Christ, and so an incorporating of ourselves into his merit) hath
aliqualem proportionem
to God’s justice; and the passion of Christ had not
aequalem
, but that God’s acceptation (which also dignifies our contrition, though not to that height) advanced it to that worthiness. To enquire further the way and manner by which God makes a few do acceptable
works, or how out of a corrupt lump he selects and purifies a few, is but a stumbling block and a temptation. Who asks a charitable man that gives him an alms, where he got it, or why he gave it? Will any favourite, whom his Prince, only for his appliableness to him, or some half-virtue, or his own glory, burdens with honours and fortunes every day, and destines to future offices and dignities, dispute or expostulate with his Prince why he rather chose not another, how he will restore his coffers, how he will quench his people’s murmurings by whom this liberality is fed, or his nobility, with whom he equals new men; and will not rather repose himself gratefully in the wisdom, greatness, and bounty of his master? Will a languishing desperate patient, that hath scarce time enough to swallow the potion, examine the physician, how he procured those ingredients, how that soil nourished them, which humour they affect in the body, whether they work by excess of quality, or specifically; whether he have prepared them by correcting, or else by withdrawing their malignity; and for such unnecessary scruples neglect his health? Alas, our time is little enough for prayer, and praise, and society; which is, for our mutual duties. Moral divinity becomes us all; but natural divinity, and metaphysic divinity, almost all may spare…
Divers men may walk by the sea side, and the same beams of the sun giving light to them all, one gathereth by the benefit of that light pebbles, or speckled shells, for curious vanity, and another gathers precious pearl, or medicinal amber, by the same light. So the common light of reason illumines us all; but one employs this light upon the searching of impertinent vanities, another by a better use of the same light, finds out the mysteries of religion; and when he hath found them, loves them, not for the light’s sake, but for the natural and true worth of the thing itself. Some men by the benefit of this light of reason, have found out things profitable and useful to the whole world; As in particular, printing, by which the learning of the whole world is communicable to one another, and our minds and our inventions, our wits and compositions may trade and have commerce together, and we may participate of one another’s understandings, as well as of our clothes, and wines, and oils, and other merchandize: So by the benefit of this light of reason, they have found out artillery, by which wars come to quicker ends than heretofore, and the great expense of blood is avoided: for the numbers of men slain now, since the invention of artillery, are much less than before, when the sword was the executioner. Others, by the benefit of this light have
searched and found the secret corners of gain and profit, wheresoever they lie. They have found wherein the weakness of another man consisteth, and made their profit of that, by circumventing him in a bargain: They have found his riotous, and wasteful inclination, and they have fed and fomented that disorder, and kept open that leak, to their advantage, and the other’s ruin. They have found where was the easiest, and most accessible way, to solicit the chastity of a woman, whether discourse, music, or presents, and according to that discovery, they have pursued hers, and their own eternal destruction. By the benefit of this light, men see through the darkest, and most impervious places, that are, that is, Courts of Princes, and the greatest Officers in Courts; and can submit themselves to second, and to advance the humours of men in great place, and so make their profit of the weaknesses which they have discovered in these great men. All the ways, both of wisdom, and of craft lie open to this light, this light of natural reason: But when they have gone all these ways by the benefit of this light, they have got no further, than to have walked by a tempestuous sea, and to have gathered pebbles, and speckled cockle shells. Their light seems to be great out of the same reason, that a torch in a misty night, seemeth greater than in a clear, because it hath kindled and inflamed much thick and gross air round about it. So the light and wisdom of
worldly men, seemeth great, because he hath kindled an admiration, or an applause in airy flatterers, not because it is so indeed…
The Church is the house of prayer, so, as that upon occasion, preaching may be left out, but never a house of preaching, so, as that prayer may be left out. And for the debt of prayer, God will not be paid, with money of our own coining, (with sudden, extemporal, inconsiderate prayer) but with current money, that bears the King’s image, and inscription; The Church of God, by his ordinance, hath set his stamp, upon a liturgy and service, for his house.
Audit Deus in corde cogitantis, quod nec ipse audit, qui cogitat
, says St Bernard: God hears the very first motions of a man’s heart, which, that man, till he proceed to a farther consideration, doth not hear, not feel, not deprehend in himself.
That soul, that is accustomed to direct herself to God, upon every occasion, that, as a flower at sun-rising, conceives a sense of God, in every beam of his, and spreads and dilates itself towards him, in a thankfulness, in every small blessing that he sheds upon her; that soul, that as a flower at the sun’s declining, contracts and gathers in, and shuts up herself, as though she had received a blow, whensoever she hears her Saviour
wounded by an oath, or blasphemy, or execration; that soul, who, whatsoever string be strucken in her, base or treble, her high or her low estate, is ever tuned toward God, that soul prays sometimes when it does not know that it prays. I hear that man name God, and ask him what said you, and perchance he cannot tell; but I remember, that he casts forth some of those
ejaculationes animæ
, (as St Augustine calls them) some of those darts of a devout soul, which, though they have not particular deliberations, and be not formal prayers, yet they are the
indicia
, pregnant evidences and blessed fruits of a religious custom; much more is it true, which St Bernard says there, of them,
Deus audit
, God hears that voice of the heart, which the heart itself hears not, that is, at first considers not. Those occasional and transitory prayers, and those fixed and stationary prayers, for which, many times, we bind ourselves to private prayer at such a time, are payments of this debt, in such pieces, and in such sums, as God, no doubt, accepts at our hands. But yet the solemn days of payment, are the sabbaths of the Lord, and the place of this payment, is the house of the Lord, where, as Tertullian expresses it,
Agmine facto
, we muster our forces together, and besiege God; that is, not taking up every tattered fellow, every sudden rag or fragment of speech, that rises from our tongue, or our affections, but mustering up those words, which the Church hath levied for that service, in the
confessions, and absolutions, and collects, and litanies of the Church, we pay this debt, and we receive our acquittance.
As he that travels weary, and late towards a great city, is glad when he comes to a place of execution, because he knows that is near the town; so when thou comest to the gate of death, be glad of that, for it is but one step from that to thy Jerusalem. Christ hath brought us in some nearness to salvation, as he is
vere Salvator mundi
in that we know, that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world: and he hath brought it nearer than that, as he is
Salvator corporis sui
, in that we know, That Christ is the head of the Church, and the Saviour of that body: And nearer than that, as he is
Salvator tuus sanctus
, In that we know, He is the Lord our God, the holy One of Israel, our Saviour: But nearest of all, in the
Ecce Salvator tuus venit
, Behold thy Salvation cometh. It is not only promised in the prophets, nor only writ in the gospel, nor only sealed in the sacraments, nor only prepared in the visitations of the Holy Ghost, but
Ecce
, behold it, now, when thou canst behold nothing else: The sun is setting to thee, and that for ever; thy houses and furnitures, thy gardens and orchards, thy titles and offices, thy wife and children are departing from thee,
and that for ever; a cloud of faintness is come over thine eyes, and a cloud of sorrow over all theirs; when his hand that loves thee best hangs tremblingly over thee to close thine eyes,
Ecce Salvator tuus venit
, behold then a new light, thy Saviour’s hand shall open thine eyes, and in his light thou shalt see light; and thus shalt see, that though in the eyes of men thou lie upon that bed, as a statue on a tomb, yet in the eyes of God, thou standest as a colossus, one foot in one, another in another land; one foot in the grave, but the other in heaven; one hand in the womb of the earth, and the other in Abraham’s bosom.
We have a convenient author, who writ a discourse of bells when he was prisoner in Turkey. How would he have enlarged himself if he had been my fellow-prisoner in this sick bed, so near to that steeple which never ceases, no more than the harmony of the spheres, but is more heard. When the Turks took Constantinople, they melted the bells into ordnance; I have heard both bells and ordnance, but never been so much affected with those as with these bells. I have lain near a steeple in which there are said to be more than thirty bells, and near another, where there is one so big, as that the clapper is said to weigh more than six hundred pound, yet never so affected as here. Here the bells can scarce solemnize the funeral of any person, but that I knew him, or knew that he was my neighbour: we dwelt in houses near to one another before, but now he is gone into that house into which I must follow him. There is a way of correcting the children of great persons, that other children are corrected in their behalf, and in their names, and this works upon them who indeed had more
deserved it. And when these bells tell me, that now one, and now another is buried, must not I acknowledge that they have the correction due to me, and paid the debt that I owe? There is a story of a bell in a monastery which, when any of the house was sick to death, rung always voluntarily, and they knew the inevitableness of the danger by that. It rung once when no man was sick, but the next day one of the house fell from the steeple and died, and the bell held the reputation of a prophet still. If these bells that warn to a funeral now, were appropriated to none, may not I, by the hour of the funeral, supply? How many men that stand at an execution, if they would ask, For what dies that man? should hear their own faults condemned, and see themselves executed by attorney? We scarce hear of any man preferred, but we think of ourselves, that we might very well have been that man; why might not I have been that man that is carried to his grave now? Could I fit myself to stand or sit in any man’s place, and not to lie in any man’s grave? I may lack much of the good parts of the meanest, but I lack nothing of the mortality of the weakest; they may have acquired better abilities than I, but I was born to as many infirmities as they. To be an incumbent by lying down in a grave, to be a doctor by teaching mortification by example, by dying, though I may have seniors, others may be older than I, yet I have proceeded apace in a good university, and gone a great
way in a little time, by the furtherance of a vehement fever; and whomsoever these bells bring to the ground to-day, if he and I had been compared yesterday, perchance I should have been thought likelier to come to this preferment then than he. God hath kept the power of death in his own hands, lest any man should bribe death. If man knew the gain of death, the ease of death, he would solicit, he would provoke death to assist him by any hand which he might use. But as when men see many of their own professions preferred, it ministers a hope that that may light upon them; so when these hourly bells tell me of so many funerals of men like me, it presents, if not a desire that it may, yet a comfort whensoever mine shall come…