John Donne - Delphi Poets Series (40 page)

To the right honorable Lord Philip Herbert: My lord, although I have not exactly obeyed your commands, yet I hope I have exceeded them by presenting to your honor this treatise, which is so much the better for being none of my own and which perchance may deserve to live for facilitating the issues of death.

It was written long since by my father and by him forbidden both the press and the fire; neither would I have subjected it now to the public view. But I could find no certain way to defend it from the one save by committing it to the other. For since the beginning of this war, my study having been often searched and all my books (almost my brains) by their continual alarums sequestered for the use of the Committee, two dangers appeared more eminently to hover over this work, being then a manuscript—the danger of being utterly lost and the danger of being utterly found. These dangers are fathered by some of those wild atheists who, as if they came into the world by conquest, own all other men’s wits and are resolved to be learned, in spite of their stars, which would fairly have inclined them to a more modest and honest course of life.

Your lordship’s protection will defend this innocent writing from these two monsters, men who cannot write and men who cannot read, and I am very confident that all those who can will think it may deserve this favor from your lordship. For although this book appears under the form of a paradox, still I desire your lordship to look upon this doctrine as a firm and established truth.

“To dare death gives life.”

Your lordship’s most humble servant,

John Donne

From my house in Covent Garden 28.

THE PREFACE

Declaring the Reasons, the Purpose, the Way, and the End of the Author

Beza, a man as eminent and illustrious in the full glory and noon of learning as others were in the dawning and morning (when even the least sparkle was notorious) confesses of himself that but for the anguish of a running sore on his head, he would have drowned himself from the Miller’s Bridge in Paris, if his uncle just then had not by chance come that way. I often have such a sickly inclination. Whether it is because I had my first breeding and conversation with men of a suppressed and afflicted religion, accustomed to despising death and hungry for an imagined martyrdom; or because the common enemy finds that door in me worst locked against him; or because there is a perplexity and flexibility in the doctrine itself; or because my conscience always assures me that no rebellious grudging at God’s gifts or other sinful concurrence accompanies these thoughts in me; or because a brave scorn or a faint cowardliness beget it whenever any affliction assails me—whatever the reason, I think I have the keys of my prison in my own hand, and no remedy presents itself so quickly to my heart as my own sword. Often, meditation on this act has won me to a charitable interpretation of their action who die thus and has provoked me a little to watch and attack the reasons of those who pronounce such peremptory judgments upon them.

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

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.