John Donne - Delphi Poets Series

by John Donne

  So, not only the sickly and infirm later ages but even the purest times cherished in men this desire of death, even for contrary reasons; notwithstanding by change of circumstances, both reasons had the appearance of good. For as fire is made more intense sometimes by sprinkling water and sometimes by adding fuel, so when their teachers found any coolness or remissness in them and an inclination to flight or compromise with the state, then Cyprian noted such with the ignominy of Libellatici—buyers of forged certificates—because they had gotten false papers from the state. He says of them, “The fault of those Christians who made pagan sacrifices is less, not that their conscience is clean.” Tertullian equally decries both fleeing and buying such papers when he says, “Persecution must not be redeemed, for running away is a buying of your peace for nothing, and a buying of your peace for money is a running away.”

  Then we shall find that, even against the plain meaning of the word martyr [i e., a witness], it became the common opinion that death was requisite and necessary to make one a martyr. So in Eusebius the Christians, although afflicted, modestly refused the name of martyrs and professed that they did not deserve it, unless they were killed.

  Contrariwise, in other times, the disease of headlong dying at once seemed both to wear down their numbers and to lay some scandal upon the cause that worked such a desire in men who did not understand why they did it; the uninstructed, the uncatechized, yes the unbaptized did only what they saw others do. The charity of the survivors imputed to them a baptism of water, as they hoped, or at least of blood, for that they saw! I say, as a learned writer of our time says, “The church abstains from easy canonizing, so that sanctity should not be devalued”— and sanctity here means sainthood, not holiness. Lest the dignity of martyrdom should be debased by such promiscuous admittance to it, they were often content to allow them the comfort of martyrdom without dying, which was only a returning to the natural sense of the word.

  Ignatius in his letters calls himself a martyr. Yes, more than the rest he brought down the value of martyrdom and the costly price, for he says, “As he who honors a prophet in the name of a prophet shall have a prophet’s reward (Matt. 10:41), so he shall have a martyr’s honor who honors one who has been bound to Christ.” As our most blessed savior was proceeding in his merciful purpose of increasing his kingdom on earth while permitting the heathen princes to continue theirs, the Christian religion was dilated and oppressed. Then its professors, so dejected and worn with confiscations and imprisonments, thought that, as in the passover from Egypt every door was sprinkled with blood (Exod. 12:7), so heaven had no door from this world except by fires, crosses, and bloody persecutions. Presuming heaven to be at the next step, they would often stubbornly or stupidly wink and so make that one step.

  God forbid that any should be so malignant as to misinterpret me, as though I either thought the blood of martyrs was not the seed of the church or diminished their dignity. Yet it befits candor to confess that those times were afflicted with a disease of this natural desire for such a death, and that to such may fruitfully be applied those words of the good Paulinus, “The athlete does not win just because he undresses, nor do they swim to the far shore just because they strip off their clothes.” Alas! We may sink and drown at the last stroke. To sail to heaven it is not enough to cast away the burdensome superfluities that we have long carried about us, but we must also take in a good freight. It is not lightness but an even-reposed steadfastness that carries us there.

  Cyprian was forced to search out an answer to this lamentation, which he then found to be common to men on their death-beds, “We mourn because with all our strength we had vowed ourselves to martyrdom, of which we are deprived, being prevented by natural death.” For those who offered themselves to martyrdom before they were called upon he is fain to provide the glorious and satisfying name of professors.

  From such an inordinate desire, all too obedient to nature, proceeded the fury of some Christians who, standing by when sentence was pronounced against others, cried out, “We also are Christians.” And that inexcusable zeal of Germanicus, who drew the beast to himself and forced it to tear his body! Why did he do this? Eusebius gives us his reason, that he might sooner be delivered out of this wicked and sinful life. These acts Eusebius glorifies with the praise that “They did them with a mind worthy of a philosopher.” It seems that the wisest men provoked this act by their examples. At the burning of the temple at Jerusalem, Meirus son of Belgas and Josephus son of Delaeus, although they had access to the Romans, cast themselves into the fire.

  How passionately Ignatius solicits the Roman Christians not to interrupt his death. “I fear,” he says, “your charity will hurt me and make me begin my life all over again, unless you strive that it may be sacrificed now. I profess to all churches that I die willingly.” After that, “Let me stroke the wild beasts with soothing words; let me entice and corrupt the beasts to devour me and to be my sepulcher; let me enjoy those beasts whom I wish were much more cruel than they are, and if they will not attack me, I will provoke and attract them by force.” What was Ignatius’s reason for this, being a man necessary to those churches and having allowable excuses for avoiding it? “Because to me it is more useful to die.”

  Such intemperance prompted the woman of Edessa, when the Emperor Valens had forbidden the Christians one temple to which particular reasons of devotion attracted them. When the officers asked her, “Why so squalid?” as she headlong dragged her son through the streets, to enrage them with this contumely she replied, “I do it lest, when you have slain all the other Christians, I and my son should come too late to partake of that benefit.”

  Such a disorderly heat possessed that old, wretched man who, passed by after the execution of a whole legion of 6,666 by iterated decimation [i e., by repeatedly drawing lots and slaying every tenth soldier] under Maximinian. Although he was told that they died for resisting not only the Roman religion but also the state, for all that he wished that he might have the happiness to be with them, and so he extorted a martyrdom. For that age had grown so hungry and ravenous for it that many were baptized only because they would be burned, and children were taught to vex and provoke executioners so they might be thrown into the fire.

  This assuredness that men, fully persuaded that they were doing well, would naturally run to this act made the proconsul in Africa exclaim, “Are there any more Christians who desire to die?” When a whole multitude by general voice disclosed themselves, he bade them, “Go hang and drown yourselves, and ease the magistrate.” This natural disposition afforded Muhammad an argument against the Jews: “If your religion is so good, why do you not die for it?” Our primitive church was so enamored of death and so satisfied with it that, in order to vex and torture them more, the magistrate made laws to take from them the comfort of dying and increased their persecution by stopping it. They gloried in their numbers.

  As in other warfares men muster and reckon how many they bring into the field, their confidence of victory was in the multitudes of those who were lost. In this interest they admitted into the catalogue of martyrs the infants slain by Herod and the 11,000 virgins. When 9,000 soldiers under Hadrian are said to have embraced the Christian religion by apparition of an angel, and when the emperor sent others to execute them, 1,000 of the executioners joined them, and so the whole 10,000 were crucified. Baronius speaks of the 10,000 executed in Armenia, celebrated on the twenty-second day of June—whether or not these are different from the 10,000 under Hadrian I have not investigated. Saint Gregory says, “Let God number our martyrs, for to us they are more in number than the sands.” Baronius says that except for the first of January (for which the Roman martyrology records as many as most other days), there is no day that has less than 500 martyrs and almost every one has 900 or 800.

  3. The church increased abundantly under all these pressures. For in profane and secular wars the greater the triumphs of a conqueror, the greater also are his armies, because then more and more concur to his s
plendor and participate in his fortunes. So in this spiritual warfare the greater the triumphant church was, the greater grew the militant church, each assisted by the prayers of the other. Although I still say that very many died out of a natural infirmity of despising this life, a great number had their direct sights on the glory of God and went to it fully awares. When all these treadings down only harrowed our savior’s field and prepared and improved it for his harvest, the blood of the martyrs having (as Nicephorus Callistus says) almost strangled the devil, he tried to turn them away from this inclination by his two greatest instruments (when they are his), the magistrates and the learned.

  By suggesting to the magistrate that their zeal to die grew only from their faith in the resurrection, the devil procured their bodies to be burnt and their ashes scattered into rivers, to frustrate and defeat that expectation. And he raised up subtle heretics to weaken and darken the virtue and majesty of martyrdom.

  Of these the most pestilently cunning was Basileides. Suspecting in advance that he would not easily remove the desire of dying that nature had bred and custom confirmed in them, he tried to remove the desire that had root only in their religion, being of tenderer growth and more removable than natural impressions. He offered not to impugn their exposing themselves to death in all cases, but only said that it was madness to die for Christ, since he, by whose example they did it, was not crucified, but instead Simon who bore the cross. Another heretic called Elkesai, perceiving that it was too hasty to condemn the act of martyrdom even for Christ, thought only to slacken their desire for it by teaching that in time of persecution, as long as we kept our heart at anchor safe, we were not bound to testify to our religion by any outward act, much less by dying.

  This doctrine the Gnostics also taught, because the contrary was rooted in nature, because they accompanied this doctrine with many others foul and odious even to sense, and because they were resisted by Tertullian, a mighty man both in his general abilities and in his particular and professed earnestness to magnify martyrdom. Against these he wrote his Remedy against a Scorpion’s Sting.

  4.—This way the orthodox gave no advantage to heretics, who also let loose the bridle of their own nature and seized every occasion of dying as zealously as the orthodox Christians. Because the latter prescribed against them and were ahead of them in numbers, to redeem time and overtake them they constituted new occasions of martyrdom. Petilianus, against whom Saint Augustine wrote, taught that whoever killed himself as a magistrate, to punish a previously committed sin, was a martyr.

  There were those whom Saint Augustine and others called Circumcellians and Circuitores, because (I think, like their master [i e., the devil], they went about to devour) they would entreat, persuade, and coerce others to kill them. Then, frustrated after all those provocations, they would do it themselves and be celebrated for martyrs by their survivors. These were Donatists, of whom Saint Augustine says, “To kill themselves out of respect for martyrdom was daily sport.” Other heretics also, whose errors did not concern martyrdom, hastened to it. So the Cataphrygians who, erroneously baptizing the dead, ordaining women, annulling second marriages, and erring in similar points, could soon boast of their number of martyrs—perhaps because they found Tertullian on their side, since wherever he went he was a hot encourager of men to martyrdom.

  Eusebius complained that heretics, seeing their arguments refuted, then fled to their number of martyrs, in which they pretended to exceed the others. From their numbers of martyrs the Euphemites called themselves “martyrians.” Baronius says, “Amongst the heathen perchance you may here and there find one Empedocles who will burn himself, but among the Donatists, swarms of men.”

  5.—Thus the authority gained by their zeal to equal the number of true martyrs was so great and began so far to perplex the world that some councils, foreseeing that if both sides did it equally it would all be imputed to human concerns, began to take care to provide against it. One council at Laodicaea exhibits an express canon that no Christian should leave the true martyrs for false ones because they were enemies of God. Another council at Carthage corrects the other heresy of diminishing the reputation of martyrs by directing, “Let nobody who is profane defame the martyrs’ dignity.”

  6.—When the true spirit of God drew many, the spirit of contention drew many also, and other natural infirmities even more, to expose themselves easily to death. It may well be thought that the authors of these later ages have somewhat diminished the intenseness of martyrdom and mingled more alloys, or rather more metal, and made it of not so great value in itself as those earnest times did. Later, Saint Thomas Aquinas said, “Though martyrdom is a work of greatest perfection, yet it is not of itself but only as it is wrought by and expresses charity.”

  Vazquez reprehends Cordoba for saying that it is any worship of God, for “It is not,” says he, “a sacrifice or work of religion but of fortitude, which is only a moral virtue.” Navarrus now teaches that “It is a mortal sin to provoke another to inflict martyrdom.” It is also taught that a martyr (although martyrdom purges much) is bound to cleanse himself by every one of the degrees of penance, for, says Carbone, “It is not a sacrament but a privileged work.” They seem tender and loath by adding religious incitements to cherish or further that desire of dying to which, by reason of our weakness and this world’s encumbrances, our nature is too prone and inclined.

  Only the Jesuits boast of their seeking martyrdom in the new worlds and of their rage until they find it. Scribanius, who has brought them all upon one scene, says that “Alfonso de Castro at his execution in the Molucca was so overjoyed that he forgot his modesty. ‘We snatch martyrdom,’ says he, ‘with a spontaneous rush.’”Further, “One would think it a disease in us, something we do lest the rest of our life should be devoid of merit and lacking in glory.” Again, “We bargain and contract with our profession upon the condition that we squander souls on hostile swords.” Yet again, “We possess no more than such small matters as only serve to cut off our life.” If this desire of dying is against and not agreeable to the nature of man, apparently it is not against the nature of a Jesuit.

  Here we end this discussion, which we intended only for the consideration of this desire of martyrdom that swallowed up all the other inducements which, before Christianity contracted them, tickled and inflamed mankind.

  Distinction IV

  1. There remains for the fourth and last distinction of this first part only to state the reason by which self-homicide seems to me to escape breaking any law of nature. Both express, literal laws and mute law or custom have authorized it, not only by allowing and conniving in it but also by commissioning it.

  It is countenanced not only by many flourishing and well-policed states but also by ideal commonwealths that cunning authors have conceived—in which very enormous faults are unlikely to be allowed. Among the Athenians condemned men were their own executioners by means of poison and among the Romans by means of blood-letting. It is recorded of many places that all sexagenarians were by the laws of wise states thrown from a bridge. Pereira has conjectured that this report was occasioned by a custom in Rome, according to which men of that age were not allowed to vote; since the way to the senate was via a bridge [Latin: per pontem], those who by reason of that age were not permitted to come to the senate were called “Depontans.”

  However that may be, it is more certain that among the Ceans unprofitable old men poisoned themselves; they were crowned with garlands as men triumphant over human misery. The Ethiopians loved death so well that their greatest malefactors, being condemned to banishment, ordinarily escaped it by killing themselves. The civil law, where it appoints no punishment to the delinquent in this case either in his estate or in his memory, punishes a jailer if his prisoner kills himself— out of a prejudice that if the means is afforded them they will all do so.

  Do we not see it to be the custom of all nations now to manacle and disarm condemned men, from a prior assurance that otherwise they would escape dea
th by death? Sir Thomas More, a man of the most tender and delicate conscience that the world has seen since Saint Augustine, one who was not likely to write anything in jest or mischievously, says that in Utopia the priests and magistrates used to exhort men afflicted with incurable diseases to kill themselves, and they were obeyed as the interpreters of God’s will; but they who killed themselves without giving an account of their reasons to the priests and magistrates were cast out unburied. Plato, who is usually cited against this opinion, disputes it in a fashion as severe and peremptory as this: “What shall we say of him who kills his nearest and dearest friend, who deprives himself of life and of the purpose of destiny?—who, not urged by any sentence or heavy misfortune or externe shame, but out of a cowardliness and weakness of a fearful mind, unjustly kills himself? What purgatory and what burial by law belongs to him, God himself knows. But let his friends inquire of the interpreters of the law, and do as they shall direct.” You see, nothing is said by him against self- homicide except what is said modestly, limitedly, and perplexedly.

  This is all that I shall say of the first member of that definition of sin that I undertook, which is transgressing the law of nature. I claim that I have sufficiently delivered and rescued self-homicide from any such violating of the law as may aggravate the act or make it heinous.

  THE SECOND PART: OF THE LAW OF REASON

  Distinction I

  1.—The part of the definition of sin that we reserved for the second part is that self-homicide is against the law of reason. If we should interpret reason as rectified reason (especially primarily and originally), it would be the same as the law of nature. I rather choose to admit an interpretation that will bring the most doubts under disputation and therefore into clarity.

  Reason, therefore, in this place shall signify conclusions drawn and deduced from the primary reason by our discourse and ratiocination. Thus sin against reason is sin against such arguments and conclusions as by sound consequence may be derived from primary and original reason, which is the light of nature.