by John Donne
A devout and godly man has guided us well and rectified our uncharitableness in such cases by this remembrance, “You know this man’s fall, but you do not know his wrestling, which perhaps was such that his fall itself is almost justified and accepted by God.” For to this end, says Bosquier, “God has appointed us temptations that we might have some excuses for our sins when he calls us to account.” It is an uncharitable misinterpreter who unthriftily demolishes his own house and does not repair another; he loses without any gain or profit to anybody. Tertullian, comparing and making equal one who provokes another and one who will be provoked by another, says, “There is no difference, but that the provoker offended first, and that is nothing, because in evil there is no respect of order or priority.” So we may quickly become as evil as any offender, if we offend by severely reproving his act. For John Climacus in his Ladder of Paradise places these two steps very near to one another when he says, “Although in the world it would be possible for you to escape all defiling by actual sin, yet by your judging and condemning those who are defiled you are defiled.” Basil notes that you are defiled because “In comparing others’ sins you cannot avoid excusing your own.” Especially this is done if your zeal is too fervent in reprehending others. For as in most other happenings, so in this one also, sin has the nature of poison, in that “It enters the easiest and works the fastest upon choleric constitutions.” It is a good counsel of the Pharisees, “Do not judge a neighbor before you stand in his place.”
“Feel and wrestle with such temptations as he has done, and your zeal will be tamer.”
“Therefore,” says the apostle, “it was fitting for Christ to be like us, so that he might be merciful” (Hebr. 2:10).
After a Christian affirmation of an innocent purpose, after submitting all that is said not only to every Christian church but to every Christian man, and after an entreaty that the reader will follow this advice of Judah ben Tabbai, “May those who quarrel be in your sight both bad and guilty,” and that the reader will trust neither me nor the adverse party but the reasons—if then there is any scandal in this enterprise of mine, it is taken, not given. I know that malicious, prejudiced men and lazy affecters of ignorance will use the same calumnies and protests toward me, for the voice and sound of the snake and goose is all one. Nevertheless, because I thought that, as in the pool of Bethsaida there was no healing till the water was troubled (John 5:2-9), so the best way to find the truth in this matter is to debate and examine it. “We must dispute about truth as well as for truth,” wrote Athenagoras. Thus I did not for fear of misinterpretation abstain from this undertaking. Our stomachs now are not so tender and queasy, after feeding so long upon solid divinity, nor are we so suspicious and afraid, having been so long enlightened in God’s path, that we should think any truth strange to us or relapse into that childish age in which a council in France forbade Aristotle’s Metaphysics and punished with excommunication either the copying, reading, or possessing of that book.
Contemplative and bookish men must of necessity be more quarrelsome than others, because neither do they contend about matters of fact nor can they determine their controversies by any certain witnesses or judges. But as long as they move towards peace (that is, truth), which way they take does not matter. The tutelary angels resisted one another in Persia, but none resisted God’s revealed purpose (Dan. 10). Jerome and Gregory seem to be of the opinion that Solomon is damned; Ambrose and Augustine, that he is saved—all Fathers, all zealous of God’s glory. At the same time when the Roman Church canonized Becket, the school of Paris disputed whether he could be saved; both Catholic judges, and of reverend authority. After so many ages of devoutly and religiously celebrating the memory of Saint Jerome, Casaubon has spoken so dangerously that Campion says he pronounces him to be as deep in hell as the devil. But in all such intricacies, where both opinions seem to conduce equally to the honor of God, his justice being as much advanced in the one as is his mercy in the other, it seems reasonable to me that it tips the scales, if on either side there appears charity toward the poor soul departed. The church in her hymns and antiphons often salutes Christ’s nails and cross with epithets of sweetness and thanks, but it always calls the spear that pierced him when he was dead the horrible sword.
Such piety, I affirm again, urges me in this discourse. Whatever infirmity my reasons may have, still I have comfort in Tresmegistus’s axiom, “He who is pious is the best philosophizer.” Therefore, without any disguising or careful and libelous concealing, I present and expose it to all who have candor and neutrality, in order to escape the just reproof of Jerome, “A new kind of malice and intemperance is to communicate what you wish to hide.” When Ladislas took the occasion of the Great Schism to corrupt the nobility of Rome and hoped thereby to possess the town, they added to their seven governors, whom they called wise men, three more, whom they called good men, and confided in them; so do I wish and, as much as I can, bring it about that to those many learned and subtle men who have traveled over this point, some charitable and compassionate men might be added.
Yosippon observes that readers are of four sorts: sponges that attract everything without distinguishing, hour-glasses that pour out as fast as they receive, bags that retain only the dregs of the spices and let the wine escape, and sieves that retain only the best. If I find some of the last sort, I do not doubt they may be enlightened. As the eyes of Eve were opened by the taste of the apple (although it is said she had already seen the beauty of the tree), so the digesting of this, though it may not present fair objects, may bring them to see the nakedness and deformity of their own reasons, founded upon a rigorous suspicion, and win them over to the temper that Chrysostom commends: “He who suspects benignly would fain be deceived and be overcome, and he is piously glad when he finds to be false what he uncharitably suspected.” May it have as much vigor (as one observes of another author) as the sun in March; may it stir and dissolve humors—though not expel them, for that must be a work of a stronger power.
Not every branch that is excerpted from other authors and engrafted here is written for the reader to believe, but for the sake of illustration and comparison. Because I undertook the declaration of a proposition that was controverted by many—and therefore I was drawn to cite many authorities—I was willing to go all the way with company and to take light from others, as well in the journey as at the journey’s end. If in multiplicity of unnecessary citations there appears vanity, or ostentation, or digression, my honesty must make my excuse and compensation. I acknowledge, as Pliny does, “That to choose to be taken in a theft rather than to give every man his due” is to be low of mind and miserable of nature. I did it rather because scholastic and skillful men use this way of instructing, and I took into account that I was to deal with such, because I presume that natural men are of themselves at least enough inclinable to this doctrine.
This is my way, and my end is to remove scandal. Certainly God often punishes a sinner more severely because others have taken occasion of sinning from his deed. By the same token, if we corrected in ourselves this readiness to be scandalized, how much easier and lighter might we make the punishment of many transgressors? For God in his judgments has almost made us his assistants and counselors as to how far he will punish, and our interpretation of another’s sin often gives the measure to God’s justice or mercy.
Since “disorderly long hair, which was pride and wantonness in Absalom and squalor and horridness in Nebuchadnezzar, was virtue and strength in Solomon and sanctification in Samuel,” if these severe men will not allow to neutral things the best construction they are capable of nor pardon my inclination to do so, surely they will pardon this opinion, that their severity proceeds from self-guiltiness, and will give me leave to apply the saying of Ennodius, “It is the nature of stiff wickedness to think of others what they themselves deserve, and all the comfort that the guilty have is to find nobody innocent.”
THE FIRST PART: OF LAW AND NATURE
Distinction I<
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1.—As lawyers used to call impossible what is so difficult that by the rules of law it can be accomplished only by the indulgence of the prince and the exercise of his prerogative, so divines are accustomed to call sin what mostly is so and naturally occasions and accompanies sin. Of such condition is self-homicide. Everybody has so sucked, digested, and incorporated it as a sin into the body of his faith and religion that now they forbid any opposition. Thus all discourse on this point turns on the degrees of this sin and how far it exceeds all others. So nobody now brings the metal to the test or the touch, but only to the balance. Whatever to our appetite is good or bad was first to our understanding true or false; therefore, if we might proceed orderly, our first disquisition should be employed upon the first source and origin—which is, whether this opinion is true or false. But, finding ourselves under the inequity and burden of this custom and prescription, we must yield to necessity and first inversely examine why this act should be so resolutely condemned and why there should be this precipitousness in our judgment to pronounce self-homicide to be above all other sins unpardonable. Then, having removed what was nearest to us and having delivered ourselves from the tyranny of this prejudice, our judgment may be brought nearer to a straightness and our charity awakened and made tender to apprehend that this act may be free not only from those enormous degrees but from all degrees of sin.
2.—Those who pronounce this sin to be necessarily damnable are of one of these three persuasions. Either they misstate that this act always proceeds from desperation [i e., despair of God’s mercy], and so they load it with all the abundant denunciations available from scripture, Fathers, and histories. Or they entertain the dangerous opinion that there is in this life an inability to repent and an impossibility of returning to God, and that this is apparent to us; otherwise, the act could not justify our uncharitable censure. Or else they build upon the foundation that this act, being presumed to be sin, and all sin presumed to be unpardonable without repentance, this is therefore unpardonable because the sin itself precludes all ordinary ways of repenting it.
3.—To those of the first group, if I might be as vainly subtle as they are uncharitably severe, I answer that not all desperation is sinful. For in the devil it is not sin, nor does he suffer demerit from it, because he is not commanded to hope. In a man who undertook an austere and disciplinary taming of his body by fasts or corrections it would not be sinful to despair that God would take from him the desire of the flesh. In a priest employed to convert infidels it would not be sinful to despair that God would give him the power of miracles. If, therefore, to quench and extinguish this desire of the flesh a man should kill himself, the effect and fruit of this desperation would be evil; yet the root itself is not necessarily so. No detesting or exhorting against this sin of desperation, when it is a sin, can be too earnest. But since it may exist without infidelity, it cannot be a greater sin than that is.
Although Aquinas calls it truly sin, he says he does so because it occasions many sins. If, as others affirm, it is punishment for sin, then it is involuntary, which is hardly consistent with the nature of sin. Certainly, many devout men have justly imputed to it the cause and effect of sin; yet, as in the Penitential Canons greater penance is inflicted upon one who kills his wife than upon one who kills his mother, and the reason added is not that the fault is greater but that otherwise more would commit it, so is the sin of desperation so earnestly exaggerated because, as it springs from sloth and cowardliness, our nature is more slippery and inclinable to such a descent than to presumptions, which without a doubt does more to wound and violate the majesty of God than desperation does. However, so that none may justly say that all who kill themselves have done it out of a despair of God’s mercy (which is the only sinful despair), we shall in a more proper place, when we come to consider the examples exhibited in scriptures and other stories, find many who in that act have been so far from despair that they have esteemed it a great degree of God’s mercy to have been admitted to such a glorifying of his name and have proceeded therein as religiously as in a sacrifice. As Bosquier says elegantly of Job, “He appears in splendid proverbs,” and of him we may properly say what Moses said when they punished one another for their idolatries, “Consecrate your hands to the Lord” (Exod. 32:29).
I come to consider their words who are of the second opinion and who affirm an inability to repent in this life. (A strong authorizer if not an author of this opinion is Calvin, who says that actual unrepentance is not the sin intimated in Matthew 12:30-31; rather, we must hold that whoever falls into such a willful resistance of the Holy Ghost never rises again.) Because these hard and misinterpretable words fall from them when they are perplexed and enmeshed with that heavy question of sin against the Holy Ghost, and because I presume to speak proportionally and analogically to their other doctrine, I rather incline to make for them this construction: that they place this inability to repent only in the knowledge of God—or that I do not understand them rather than either believe them literally or believe that they have clearly expressed their own meanings. For I do not see why we should be more loath to allow that God has made some persons unable to sin than that he has made them unable to repent. Even if they had their way and this were granted to them, I cannot see that therefore such an inability to repent must necessarily be concluded to have been in a person by reason of self-homicide, and it gives great-
4. The third sort is the tamest of all the three, and it gives the greatest hope of being overcome and corrected. Although they pronounce severely upon the act, it is for the single reason that the act precludes all entrance into repentance. I wonder why they refuse to apply to their opinions in this matter the milder rules of the casuists, who in doubtful cases always teach an inclination to the safer side. While it is safer to think a thing to be sin than not, that rule serves for your own information and as a as a bridle to you, not for another’s condemnation. They used to interpret that rule of taking the safer side so that in things necessary (necessary to an end, as repentance is necessary to salvation) we must follow any probable opinion, even if another is more probable, and so that opinion is to be followed directly which is favorable to the soul. They exemplify this point as follows. Although all the leading scholastics hold that baptizing a child, not yet fully born, on the hand or foot is ineffectual, still they all advise in that case to baptize and to believe it to be of good effect. The example of the good thief on the cross (Luke 23:43) informs us that repentance works immediately, and from that story Calvin gathers that such pain at the moment of death is naturally apt to beget repentance.
The church is so indulgent and liberal to all her children that at the point of death she will bestow her treasure of baptism upon one who has been insane from his birth, by the same reason as upon a child—indeed, upon one recently fallen into insanity, although he appears to be in mortal sin, if only he has attrition, which is only a fear of hell and not a taste of God’s glory. Such attrition shall be presumed to be in him, if nothing appears evidently to the contrary. If the church is content to extend and interpret this point of death to every danger by sea or travel; if she will interpret any mortal sin in a man provoked by sudden passion and proceeding from indeliberation to be no worse and of no greater malignity than the act of a child; if, being able to succor one before he is dead, she will deliver him from excommunication after he is dead; if she is content that both the penitent and confessor are only diligent, not most diligent; if, rather than be frustrated in her desire to dispense her treasure, she grants that insane and possessed men shall be bound until they may receive extreme unction; if, lastly, she absolves some whether they wish it or not—in light of all this, why should we abhor our mother’s example and as brethren be more severe than the parent? Not to pray for those who die without faith is a precept so obvious to every religion that even Muhammad has forbidden it. But to presume an inability to repent because you were not nearby to hear it is a usurpation.
True repentance, says Cle
ment of Alexandria, is “To do no more and to speak no more those things whereof you repent; it is not to be always sinning and always asking pardon.” Of such a repentance as this our case is capable enough. Of one who died before he had repented the good Paulinus charitably interprets his haste, “That he chose rather to go to God a debtor than as free,” and so to die in his debt rather than to carry his discharge from it. Since in matters of fact the delinquent is so much favored that a layman who acquits him is sooner to be believed than a clergyman who accuses him—although in other cases there is much disproportion between the value of these two testimonies—so, if any will of necessity proceed to judgment in our case, those reasons that are most benign and (as I said) favorable to the soul ought to have the best acceptance and entertainment.
5. Of all those definitions of sin that the first collector of sentences, Peter the Lombard, has presented out of ancient learning, the authors of summas as well as the casuists insist most on the one that he gets from Saint Augustine. As usual, where that Father serves their purposes they look no further. This definition is that sin is a word, deed, or desire against the eternal law of God. They stick to this definition (if it is one) because it best supports their argument, because it is the easiest conveyance, carriage, and vent for their conceptions and for their applying rules of divinity to particular cases. Thus they have made all our actions perplexed and litigious in the inner court of conscience, which is their tribunal. By this torture they have brought men’s consciences to the same reasons of complaint that Pliny attributes to Rome until Trajan’s time, that the city founded on the laws was being overturned by the laws. For as informers vexed them with continual denunciations upon penal laws, so does this act of sinning entangle wretched consciences in manifold and desperate anxieties.
