John Donne - Delphi Poets Series

by John Donne

  This text, then, is so far from giving encouragement to any particular man to be careful of his own well-being as the expositors, of whatever persuasion in controverted points, take from the text an argument that, for establishing and sustaining the whole body, a man is bound to dismiss all concerns for himself and give his life to strengthen those who are weak. This text as a common fountainhead has afforded justification for martyrdoms, for visiting those under pestilence, and for all those desertions of ourselves and of our natural right of preserving ourselves that we heretofore had occasion to insist upon.

  6. Just as that construction consists well with those words, so does it also with the words in the next chapter, “No man ever hated his own flesh but nourished it, etc.” (Eph. 5:2-9). Because we are to speak of this hate when we come to Christ’s commandment about hating our life, here we will only say with Marlorat on this text, “He does not hate his flesh who hates its desires and would subject it to the spirit, any more than a goldsmith hates the gold that he casts into a furnace to purify and reduce to a better fashion.”

  Since I have not found that they take from the armory of scripture any more or better weapons than these, we may here end this distinction.

  Distinction IV

  1. In the next distinction our business is to test of what force and proof their arms are against their adversary forces. We shall oppose two kinds of them. The first are natural and assured subjects, reasons arising naturally from texts of scripture. The other, as auxiliaries, are examples. For although we do not rely upon them, still we have the advantage that our adversaries can neither use nor profit from examples! Therefore, the answer that both Peter Martyr and Lavater, borrowing from him, make— that we must not live by examples and that if examples proved anything they would have the stronger side (after all, there have been more men who have not killed themselves than who have done so—may well seem peremptory or lazy and the impossibility of a better defense may seem to be so alloyed as to be irrelevant. To prepare us for a right understanding and application of these texts from scripture, we must linger a while on the nature, degrees, and effects of charity, the mother and form of all virtue, which not only will lead us to heaven (for faith opens the door for us) but also will continue with us when we are there, when both faith and hope are spent and useless.

  Nowhere will we find a better portrait of charity than the one Saint Augustine has drawn: she does not love that which should not be loved, and she does not neglect that which should be loved; she does not bestow more love upon that which deserves less love, nor does she equally love more and less worthiness; she does not bestow upon equal worthiness more and less love. To this charity the same blessed and happy Father apportions this growth. “Initiated, increased, grown great, and perfected—and the last is,” he says, “when in regard for it we hate this life.” Still, he acknowledges a higher charity than this one. For Peter the Lombard allows charity this growth: “Beginning, proficient, perfect, more perfect, and most perfect.” He cites Saint Augustine who calls it “Perfect charity to be ready to die for another.” But when he comes to that than which none can be greater, he says the apostle came “To desire to depart this life and be with Christ” (Phil. 1:23).

  So, “One may love God with all his heart, and yet he may grow and love God more with all his heart, for the first was commanded in the law, and yet the counsel of perfection was given to him who said that he had fulfilled the first commandment.” Just as Saint Augustine found a degree above charity, which made a man ready to offer life, which is to desire to depart and be with Christ, so there is a degree above that, which is to do it.

  This is the virtue by which martyrdom, which is not such in itself, becomes an act of highest perfection. This is the virtue too that assures any suffering that proceeds from it to be infallibly accompanied by the grace of God. Upon the assurance and testimony of a rectified conscience that we have a charitable purpose, let us consider how far we may adventure on the authority of scripture in this matter that we have in hand.

  2. To begin with, look at the frame and working of Saint Paul’s argument to the Corinthians, “Though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profits me nothing” (I Cor. 13:3). Two things seem evident. First, in a general notion and common reputation it was counted a high degree of perfection to die so, and therefore it was not counted against the law of nature. Second, by this exception, “without charity,” with love it might be done well and profitably.

  As for the first, if anybody thinks the apostle here takes an example of an impossible thing, as when it is said, “If an angel from heaven teach another doctrine” (Gal. 1:8), he will, I believe, correct himself if he considers the foregoing verses and the apostle’s progress in his argument. In order to dignify charity the most that he can, he undervalues all other gifts, which there were ambitiously liked. As for eloquence, he says it is nothing to have all languages, even that of the angels (I Cor. 13:1). This is not put literally, since angels have no language, but to express a high degree of eloquence, as Calvin says on this point; or, according to Nicholas of Lyra, by language is meant the desire of communicating our ideas to one another. Then Paul adds that a knowledge of mysteries and prophesies, which also was much liked, is also nothing (I Cor. 13:2). The same for miraculous faith; it is also nothing.

  The first of these gifts does not make a man better, for Balaam’s ass could speak (Num. 22:30) and still was an ass. The second gift Judas and the Pharisees had. The third gift is so small a matter that as much as a grain of mustard seed (Matt. 17:20) is enough to remove mountains. All these were feasible things and were sometimes done. After he had passed through the gifts of knowledge and the gifts of utterance, he presents the gifts of good works in the same stages. Therefore, he says, “If I feed the poor with all my goods” (I Cor. 13:3), which he presents as a harder thing than either of the others because in the others God gives to me but here I give to the other, yet as a thing possible to be done. Then he presents the last, “If I give my body,” as the hardest of all and yet, like all the rest, sometimes to be done.

  What I observed as arising secondly from this argument was that with charity such a death might be acceptable. I know that the Donatists are said to have made this use of these words. Still, the intent and the aim condition every action and infuse the poison or the nourishment that those who follow suck from it. The Donatists rigorously and tyrannously racked and extorted so much from this text, in order to present themselves to others to be promiscuously killed, and if that were denied them they might kill themselves as well as those who refused to kill them. Still, I say, I do not doubt that so much may be gathered from this text as by these words, “If I give my body” (I Cor. 13:3), is implied rather more than a prompt and willing yielding of it when I am forced to do so by the persecuting magistrate.

  These words will justify the deed of the martyr Nicephorus, being then in perfect charity. His case was this. Having some enmity with Sapricius, who was brought to the place where he was to receive the bloody crown of martyrdom, he fell down to Sapricius and begged from him a pardon of all former bitternesses. Sapricius, elated with the glory of martyrdom, refused him but was soon punished. His faith cooled and he lived. Nicephorus, standing by, stepped into his place and cried, “I am also a Christian,” and so provoked the magistrate to execute him, lest from the faintness of Sapricius the cause might have received a wound or a scorn. I take this to be a giving of his body.

  Where there is a necessity to confirm weaker Christians it is very probable, as in this case, that a man may be bound to commit self- homicide. So there may be cases in which a very exemplary man before a prosecutor of cunning and subtle carriage can in no other way give his body for testimony to God’s truth, to which he may then be bound, except by doing it himself.

  3. Since men naturally and customarily thought it good to die by self-homicide, and that such a death with charity was acceptable, so it is generally said by Christ, “The good shepherd gives his life for h
is sheep” (John 10:11). This is a justification and approval of our inclination to do so. For to say that the good do it is to say that they who do it are good!

  Since we all are sheep of one fold, so in many cases we all are shepherds of one another and owe one another this duty of giving our temporal lives for another’s spiritual advantage, even for his temporal advantage. That I may abstain from purging myself when another’s crime is imputed to me is grounded in another text such as this one, where it is said, “The greatest love is to bestow his life for his friend” (John 15:13). In this matter and all of its kind we must remember that we are commanded to do as Christ did. How Christ gave his body we shall have to consider below.

  4.—On these grounds, Saint Peter’s zeal was so forward and carried him so high that he wanted to die for the shepherd, for he says, “I will lay down my life for your sake” (John 13:37). All expositors say this was merely and purely out of natural affection, without examination of his own strength to do it, but soon nature carried him fully to that promise. In a more deliberate and orderly resolution Saint Paul testifies of himself, “I will gladly be spent for your souls” (II Cor. 12:15).

  5.—A Christian nature does not rest in knowing that we may do it, that charity makes it good, that the good do it, and that we must always promise (that is, incline) to do it and do something towards it. A Christian nature will have the prefect fulness of doing it in the resolution, doctrine, and example of our blessed savior, who said, in fact, “I lay down my life for my sheep” (John 10:15). He used the present tense, says Musculus, because he was ready to do it, just as Paul and Barnabas, while still alive, are said to have laid down their lives for Christ. But I rather think that, because exposing oneself to danger is not properly called dying, Christ said this at that time because his passion had begun. All his doings here were steps toward laying down his life.

  All words are defective to express the abundant and overflowing charity of our savior, for if we could express all that he did, even that would not come near to what he would do if need be. It is observed by Malloni—I confess too credulous an author, yet one who administers good and wholesome incitements to devotion—that Christ going to Emmaus spoke of his passion so slightly, as though he had in three days forgotten all that he had suffered for us.

  Christ in an apparition to Saint Charles says that he would be content to die again, if need be. Yes, to Saint Bridgit he said that “For any one soul he would suffer as much in every limb as he had suffered for all the world in his whole body.” It is noted as an extremely high degree of charity, according to Anselm, that Christ’s blessed mother said, “Rather than he should not have been crucified, she would have done it with her own hands.” Certainly his charity was not inferior to hers. He did as much as any could be willing to do.

  As he himself said, “No man can take away my soul,” and, “I have power to lay it down” (John 10:18). Without doubt, no man took it away, nor was there any other cause of his dying at that time than his own will, for many martyrs have hanged alive upon crosses for many days, and the thieves were still alive, and therefore Pilate marveled to hear that Christ was so soon dead. “His soul,” says Saint Augustine, “did not leave his body under constraint but because he willed it to happen and he willed when and how it happened.” Of this Saint Thomas Aquinas produced this sign, that he still had his body’s nature in its full strength, because at the last moment he was able to cry with a loud voice. Marlorat gathers that whereas our heads decline after our death by the slackness of the sinews and muscles, Christ first on his own bowed down his head and then gave up the ghost. Although it is truly said, “After they have scourged him, they will put him to death” (Luke 18:33), yet it is said thus because, maliciously and purposely to kill him, they inflicted upon him those pains that in time would have killed him. But nothing that they had done occasioned his dying so quickly.

  Therefore Aquinas, a man neither of unholy thoughts nor of bold, irreligious, or scandalous phrase or elocution (still, I do not venture so far in his behalf as Mazzolini does, that “It is impossible that he should have spoken any things against faith or good manners”), does not stop short of saying that “Christ was so much the cause of his death as one is of his own wetting who might but would not shut the window when the rain beats in.”

  This actual emitting of his soul is his death and was his own act, before his natural time. His best-loved apostle could imitate it who also died when he would and went into his grave and there buried himself, which is reported of only a very few others, and by not very credible authors. We find Christ’s emitting of his own soul thus celebrated: “That is a brave death which is accepted unconstrained, and that is a heroic act of fortitude if a man, when an urgent occasion is presented, exposes himself to a certain and assured death, as he did.”

  It is said that Christ did just as Saul did, who thought it foul and dishonorable to die by the hand of an enemy. Also it is said that Apollonia and others who anticipated the fury of executioners and cast themselves into the fire were imitating this act by our savior of giving up his soul before he was constrained to do it. Therefore, if the act of our blessed savior, for whom there was no more required for death but that he should will that his soul depart, was the same as Saul’s and these martyrs’ actual helping further their own deaths (without which they could not have died), then we are taught that all those texts about “Giving up our bodies to death” and “Laying down the soul” signify more than yielding to death when it comes.

  6. As I understand it, there is a further degree of cheerful readiness and proneness to such a death expressed in the phrase of John 12:25, “He who hates his life in this world shall keep it in life eternal”; also, in that of Luke 14:26, “Unless he hates his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” Such a loathing to live is what is spoken of in Hebrews 12:35, “Some were racked and would not be delivered, so that they might receive a better resurrection.” Calvin interprets John 12:25 as a readiness to die and expresses it elegantly as carrying our life in our own hands and offering it to God for a sacrifice. The Jesuits in their rule extend the matter this far, “Let everyone think that this was said directly to him, ‘Hate your life.’”

  Those who, on the other hand, stand by this phrase, “No man hates his own flesh” (Eph. 5:29) must, to yield an argument against self- homicide in every case, also allow that the hate that is commanded here authorizes that act in some cases. Saint Augustine, apprehending the strength of this text, denies that by its authority the Donatists can justify their self-homicide when they wish to die. Still, in those cases that are exempt from his rules, this text may encourage a man not to neglect the honor of God for the sole reason that nobody else will take his life.

  7.—The Holy Ghost proceeds more directly in the First Epistle of Saint John 3:16 and shows us a necessary duty, “Because he laid down his life for us, therefore we ought to lay down our lives for our brethren.” All these texts bring us to a true understanding of charity and to a contempt of this life in respect of charity.

  As these texts inform us how ready we must be, so all the texts that direct us by the example of Christ to do as he did show that, in cases when our lives must be given up, we need not always wait for extrinsic force by others but, as he did in perfect charity so we in such degrees of it as this life and our nature are capable of, we must die by our own will rather than let his glory be neglected, whenever, as Paul says, Christ may be magnified in our bodies (Phil. 1:20), or the spiritual good of another whose good we are bound to advance importunes it.

  8.—To this readiness of dying for his brethren Saint Paul had so accustomed himself and made it his nature that, except for his general resolution of always doing what would promote their happiness, he could hardly have obtained for himself permission to live. At first he says he did not know which to wish for, life or death. Therefore, unless some circumstance inclines or averts us, life and death are generally equal to our nature. Then, after much perplexity, he made up his mind, and
he desired to be released and to be with Christ. Therefore, a holy man may wish it. Still, he corrected that again, because he says, “For me to abide in the flesh is more needful for you” (Phil. 1:24). Therefore, charity must be the rule of our wishes and actions in this matter.

  9.—Another text, Galatians 4:15, although it does not extend to death, proves that holy men may be ready to express their loves to others by violence to themselves: “If it had been possible, you would have plucked out your own eyes and given them to me.” Calvin says, “This was more than to pour out one’s life.” Saint Paul does not reprehend this readiness in them.

  10.—The highest degree of compassionate charity for others is that of the apostle in contemplating the Jews’ dereliction, “I would wish myself to be separated from Christ for my brethren’s sake” (Rom. 9:3).