John Donne - Delphi Poets Series

by John Donne

  This use of the definition cannot be thought to apply only to sin, since it limits sin to the eternal law of God. (This term, although not in Peter the Lombard, Sayer and all the rest retain.) This eternal law of God is the ground of the governance of God, no other than his eternal decree for the government of the whole world; that is, providence. Certainly a man may without sin both speak and act against providence, since it is not always revealed, just as I may resist a disease from which God has decreed that I shall die. Even though he seems to reveal his will, we may resist it with prayers against it, because it is often conditioned and accompanied by limitations and exceptions. Even though God dealt plainly with Nathan, saying, “The child shall surely die” (I Sam. 12:14), David resisted God’s decree by prayer and penance.

  We must therefore seek another definition of sin. I think it is not as well put in those words of Aquinas, “Every failure to perform an obligation has the character of sin,” as in his other definition, “Sin is an act departing from the ordained end, against the rule of nature or of reason, or of eternal law.” Here eternal law, being stated as a member and part of the definition, cannot admit of the vast and large interpretation that it could not escape in the description of Saint Augustine; in this text it must necessarily be intended as the divine law of scripture. Through this definition, therefore, we will grace this act of self-homicide and see whether it offends any of those three sorts of law.

  6.—Of all these three laws—of nature, of reason, and of God—every precept that is permanent and always binds is so composed, elemented, and complexioned that to distinguish and separate them is an alchemistic work. Either it only seems to be done or it is done by the torture and vexation of scholastic nit-pickings [original: “school-limbicks,” a racking of the brain over abstract ideas], which are abstruse and violent distinctions. The part of God’s law that always binds already bound before it was written, and so it is simply the rule of rectified reason, and that is the law of nature. Therefore Isidore of Seville (as it is related in the canons), dividing all law into divine and human, adds, “Divine consists of nature, human of custom.”

  Although these three laws are almost entirely one, yet because one thing may be commanded in various ways and by various authorities—as the common law, a statute, and a decree of an arbitrary court may bind me to do the same thing—it is necessary that we weigh the obligation of every one of these laws that is in the definition.

  But first I shall only soften and prepare their crude, undigested opinions and prejudice, which may be contracted from the frequent iteration and specious but sophisticated inculcatings of law—of nature, reason, and God—by this antidote: many things that are of natural, human, and divine law may be broken. To conceal a secret delivered to you is of this sort. The honor due to parents is so strictly one of these laws that none of the Second Table (Exod. 20:12-17) is more so, yet in a just war a parricide is not guilty. Indeed, according to a law of Venice—though Bodin says better the town were sunk than that this ever should be an example or precedent—a son must redeem himself from banishment by killing his father who is also banished. We read of another state (and laws of civil commonwealths may not lightly be pronounced to be against nature) where, when fathers came to be of an unprofitable and useless age, the sons must beat them to death with clubs. We read of still another where all persons above seventy years were dispatched.

  7.—This term, the law of nature, is so variously and inconsistently defined that I confess I must read it a hundred times before I understand it once or can conclude that it signifies what the author at that time means. Yet I never found it in any sense that might justify their vociferations upon sins against nature. For the transgressing of the law of nature in any act seems to me not to increase the heinousness of that act, as though nature were more obligatory than divine law. Only in one respect does natural law aggravate a transgression; that is, in such a sin we are inexcusable by any pretense of ignorance, since we can discern it by the light of nature. Many things that we call sin (and therefore evil) have been done by the commandment of God; for example, by Abraham (Gen. 22:2) and by the Israelites in their departing from Egypt (Exod. 12:35). Thus the evil is neither in the nature of the thing nor in the nature of the whole harmony of the world. Therefore, evil inheres in no law of nature but in violating or omitting a commandment.

  All is obedience or disobedience. Wherefore our countryman Sayer confesses that self-homicide is not as intrinsically evil as it is to lie. This point is also evident from Cajetan, who affirms that to save my life I may not accuse myself from the rack. Although Cajetan extends the matter no further than that I may not belie myself, Soto refuses Cajetan’s reasons with so much force as to forbid any self-accusation, even though it is true. Thus, according to Cajetan, I may depart from life much more easily than from truth or fame. But we find that many holy men have been very negligent of their fame. Not only Augustine, Anselm, and Jerome betrayed themselves by unurged confessions; Saint Ambrose even procured certain prostitute women to come into his chamber so that he might be defamed and the people would thereby abstain from making him their bishop.

  Intrinsic and natural evil can hardly be found! For God, who can command a murder, cannot command an evil or a sin. Since the whole frame and government of the world is his, he may use it as he will. For example, although he can do a miracle, he can do nothing against nature, because “That is the nature of everything which he works in it,” says Augustine. From this and from that other rule of Aquinas’s, “Whatever is wrought by a superior agent upon a patient who is naturally subject to that agent is natural,” we may safely infer that nothing we call sin is so against nature that it may not sometimes be agreeable to nature.

  On the other side, nature is often taken so widely and so extensively that all sin is very truly said to be against nature—even before it comes to be sin. Saint Augustine says, “Every vice, so far as it is a vice, is against nature.” Vice is only habit that, being extended into act, is then sin. Yes, the parent of all sin, which is hereditary, original sin, which Aquinas calls “a languor and faintness in our nature and an indisposition, proceeding from the dissolution of the harmony of original justice,” is said by him to be in us “as if natural” and is, as he says in another place, so natural “that although it is propagated with our nature in generation, it is not caused by the principles of nature.” Thus, if God should now miraculously frame a man, as he did the first woman, from another’s flesh and bone (and not by generation) into that creature, all the infirmities of our flesh would be derived, but not original sin. Original sin is transmitted by nature only, and, since all actual sin issues from it, all sin is natural.

  8.—To approach nearer, let us leave the consideration of the law of nature in this sense of providence and God’s decree for his government of the great world, and reduce it simply to the law of nature in the lesser world of ourselves. There is in us a double law of nature, sensitive and rational, and the first naturally leads and conduces to the other. Because by the languor and faintness of our nature we lazily rest there and for the most part go no further in our journeys, out of this ordinary disposition Aquinas pronounces that the inclination of our sensitive nature is against the law of reason. This is what the apostle calls the law of the flesh and what he opposes to the law of the spirit (Rom. 7:23).

  Although it is possible to sin and to transgress against this sensitive nature, which naturally and lawfully is inclined toward a desirable good, by denying it lawful refreshings and promptings, still I think this is not the law of nature that those who abhor self-homicide complain is violated by that act. They might as well accuse all discipline, all austerity, and all love of martyrdom, which are just as contrary to the law of sensitive nature.

  9.—Therefore by the law of nature, if they will mean anything and speak to be understood, they must intend the law of rational nature, which is the light that God has given of his eternal law. It is usually called rectified reason. Now since this law of na
ture exists only in man and directs him toward piety, religion, and sociableness—so far as it reaches to the preservation of the species and of individuals, there are lively prints of it in beasts—most authors confound it and make it the same with the law of nations. So says Azorius. Sylvius writes that “the law of nature as it concerns only reason is the law of nations.” Therefore, whatever is the law of nations, that is, practiced and accepted, most especially in civilized nations, is also the law of nature, which Artemidorus exemplifies in these two, to serve God and to be overcome by women.

  How then shall we accuse idolatry or immolation of being sins against nature? (I will not speak of the first, which like a deluge overflowed the world, and only Canaan was a little ark swimming in it, delivered from utter drowning—but not from storms, leaks, and dangerous weather- beatings.) Immolation of men was so ordinary that “almost every nation, although not barbarous, had received it.” The Druids of France made their divinations from sacrifices of men, and in their wars they foretold the future in the same way. In our times it appears, according to the Spanish reports, that in Hispaniola alone they sacrificed yearly 20,000 children.

  10.—However, since it is received from Aquinas that “The nature of every thing is the form by which it is continued, and to act against it is to act against nature,” and since also this form in man is reason, and to act against reason is to sin against nature, what sin can be exempt from the charge that it is a sin against nature, since every sin is against reason? In this sense Lucidus takes the law of nature when he says, “God has written in our hearts such a law of nature as by that we are saved in the coming of Christ.” Thus, every act that does not agree exactly with our religion will be a sin against nature. This will appear evidently from Jeremiah’s words, where God promises as a future blessing that he will write his laws in their hearts, which is the Christian law (Jer. 31:33).

  The Christian law and the law of nature (for that is the law written in hearts) must be the same. Sin therefore against nature is not so enormous but that what Navarrus says may stand true, “Many laws both natural and divine bind only to what is pardonable.” (I am not disputing at this time whether or not it is always against reason, for reason and virtue differ exactly as do a closed box of drugs and a plaster or medicine made from them and applied to a particular use and necessity; in the box are not only aromatic medicinals but also many poisons made wholesome by the nature of the disease and the art of the one who administers them.) By the same token, self-homicide is no more against the law of nature than any other sin, not in any of the interpretations that we touched upon above.

  This is as much as I determined for this first distinction.

  Distinction II

  1. There is a lower and narrower interpretation of this law of nature (which could not well be discerned except in light of the foregoing discussion), against which law this sin and very few others seem to be directly bent and opposed. Azorius says, “There are sins peculiarly against nature that are against the natural practice of men,” which he exemplifies in unnatural lusts and in self-homicide. Of the former example Aquinas says, “There are some kinds of lusts that are sins against nature both as they are generally vices and as they are against the natural order of the act of generation.” In the scriptures the sin of misusing sex is called against nature by Saint Paul (Rom. 1:26-27) and once in the Vulgate edition in the Old Testament (Judges 19:24). But, as I intimated once before, this sin against nature is so much abhorred not because its being against nature makes it so abominable but because the knowledge thereof is so domestic, so near, so inward to us that our conscience cannot slumber in it nor dissemble it, as it does in most sins.

  Take the example of the Levite in the book of Judges (19:lff.). Let’s assume that those wicked men did seek him for that abominable use— although Josephus says it was only for his wife, and when he himself relates to the people the story of his injury in the next chapter, he complains only that they went about to kill him to enjoy his wife and of no other kind of injury. Although the host who had harbored him tried to dissuade the men, saying, “Only let nothing be done that is against nature,” will any man say that the offer he made to extinguish their furious lust, to expose them to his own daughter, a virgin, and the wife of his guest (which Josephus increases by calling her a Levite and his kinswoman) was a lesser sin than to have given way to their violence, or less against nature, because what they sought was against natural practice?

  Is not every voluntary pollution in the genus of sin as much against the law of nature as this was, since it strays and departs from the way and defeats the end of that faculty in us, which is generation? In no interpretation does the violating of the law of nature aggravate the sin. Neither does the scripture call any sin other than disorderly lust by that name. Saint Paul once appeals to the law of nature, when arguing about the covering of the heads of men or women at public prayer. He says, “Judge for yourselves,” and, “Does not nature teach you that if a man has long hair it is a shame?” (I Cor. 11:13-14). Not that this was against that law of nature to which all men are bound, for it was not always so. In most places shavings, cuttings, and pullings of hair are reprehended for delicacy and effeminacy by the satirists and epigrammatists of those times. Until foreign corruption poisoned them, the Romans were always gloriously called unshorn. But, says Calvin, “Because it was at that time received as a custom throughout all Greece to wear short hair, Saint Paul calls it natural.”

  So Vegetius says, “From November to March the seas are shut up and unmanageable by the law of nature, which now are tame and manageable enough, and this is also by the law of nature.” And the custom that Saint Paul called natural in Greece was not long natural there. For the bishops of Rome, when they made their canons regulating priest’s shavings, did it because they wanted their priests to differ from the priests of the Greek Church. So Saint Paul’s mentioning the law of nature does not argue from the weight and heinousness of the fault, as our adversaries use it, but he uses it as the nearest, most familiar, and easiest way to lead them to a knowledge of decency and to a departing from scandalous singularity in those public meetings.

  2. Although Azorius (as I said) and many others make self-homicide an example of sin in particular against the law of nature, it is only for the reason that self-preservation is of natural law. But that natural law is so general that it applies to beasts more than to us, because they cannot compare degrees of obligation and distinctions of duties and offices, as we can. We know from Aquinas that “some things are natural to the species and other things to the particular person” and that the latter may correct the former. Thus, when Cicero consulted the oracle at Delphi, he had this answer, “Follow your own nature.” Certainly the text, “It is not good for the man to be alone” (Gen. 2:18) is meant there, because if he were alone God’s purpose of multiplying mankind would have been frustrated. Though it would be bad for the conservation of our species in general, it may be very fitting for some particular man to abstain from all such consorting in marriage or with men and to retire into solitude. Some may need Chrysostom’s counsel, “Depart from the highway and transplant yourself in some enclosed ground, for it is hard for a tree that stands by the wayside to keep its fruit till it is ripe.”

  Our safest assurance that we will not be misled by the ambiguity of the term, natural law, and by the perplexed variety of its use in authors will be this from Aquinas: “All the precepts of natural law result in these: flee evil; seek good.” That is to say, act according to reason.

  As these precepts are not dispensable by any authority, so they cannot be abolished or obscured, for our hearts will always not only retain but also acknowledge this law. From these precepts are deduced by consequence others that are not always necessary, such as, “Return a deposit.” Although this seems to follow from the first rule (act according to reason), it is not always just. Aquinas says that the lower you go towards particulars the more you depart from the necessity of being bound to it. Ennencke
l illustrates it more clearly, “It is natural and binds all always to know that there is a God. From this it is deduced by necessary consequence that God (if he is) must be worshiped and then by likely consequence that he must be worshiped in this or that manner.” So, a little corruptly and adulterately, every sect will call their discipline natural law and enjoin a necessary obedience to it.

  While our substance of nature (the foundations and principles and first grounds of natural law) may not be changed, yet the function of nature (the exercise and application of those principles) and deductions therefrom may and must be changed. A similar danger lies in deducing consequences from the natural law of self-preservation, which does not bind so rigorously, urgently and unlimitedly as to preclude that by the law of nature itself living things may, indeed must, neglect themselves for others. Of this the pelican [believed to have fed its young its own blood] is an instance or emblem. Saint Ambrose, philosophizing divinely in a contemplation of bees, after he has afforded them many other praises, says, “When they find themselves guilty of having broken any of their king’s laws, they injure themselves, condemned to punishment, that they may die from their own wound.” This magnanimity and justice he compares with that of the subjects of the kings of Persia, who in similar cases are their own executioners. Like this natural instinct in beasts, so rectified reason, belonging only in us, instructs us often to prefer public and necessary persons by exposing ourselves to inevitable destruction.