READING
ROOM
DEATH'S
DUEL
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READING
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DEATH'S
DUEL
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| Or A Consolation to the Soul Against the Dying Life and Living Death of the Body | |
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Delivered in a Sermon at Whitehall before the King's Majesty, in the beginning of Lent, 1630, by the Late Learned and Reverend Divine, John Donne, Dr. in Divinity, and Dean of Saint Paul's, London. This being his last Sermon, and called by his Majesty's Household, the Doctor's own Funeral Sermon. |
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| TO THE READER |
| THIS sermon was, by sacred authority, styled the author's own funeral sermon, most fitly, whether we respect the time or matter. It was preached not many days before his death, as if, having done this, there remained nothing for him to do but to die; and the matter is of death--the occasion and subject of all funeral sermons. It hath been observed of this reverend man, that his faculty in preaching continually increased, and that, as he exceeded others at first, so at last he exceeded himself. This is his last sermon; I will not say it is therefore his best, because all his were excellent. Yet thus much: a dying man's words, if they concern ourselves, do usually make the deepest impression, as being spoken most feelingly, and with least affectation. Now, whom doth it concern to learn both the danger and benefit of death? Death is every man's enemy, and intends hurt to all, though to many he be occasion of greatest good. This enemy we must all combat dying, whom he living did almost conquer, having discovered the utmost of his power, the utmost of his cruelty. May we make such use of this and other the like preparatives, that neither death, whensoever it shall come, may seem terrible, nor life tedious, how long soever it shall last. |
| DEATH'S DUEL by John Donne |
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And
unto God the Lord belong the issues of death.
PSALM LXVIII. 20 |
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is the exaltation of misery to fall from a near hope of happiness. And in
that vehement imprecation, the prophet expresses the highest of God's anger,
Give them, O Lord, what wilt thou
give them? give them a miscarrying womb. Therefore as soon as we are
men (that is, inanimated, quickened in the womb), though we cannot ourselves,
our parents have to say in our behalf, Wretched man that he is, who shall deliver
him from this body of death?[352] if there be no deliverer. It must
be he that said to Jeremiah, Before I formed thee I knew thee, and before thou camest out of the womb
I sanctified thee. We are not sure that there was no kind of ship nor
boat to fish in, nor to pass by, till God prescribed Noah that absolute
form of the ark.[353] That word which the Holy Ghost, by Moses, useth for
the ark, is common to all kind of boats, thebah; and is the same word that Moses useth for the boat that he
was exposed in, that his mother laid him in an ark of bulrushes. But we
are sure that Eve had no midwife when she was delivered of Cain, therefore
she might well say, Possedi virum
à Domino, I have gotten a man from the Lord,[354] wholly, entirely from
the Lord; it is the Lord that enabled me to conceive, the Lord that infused
a quickening soul into that conception, the Lord that brought into the world
that which himself had quickened; without all this might Eve say, my body
had been but the house of death, and Domini
Domini sunt exitus mortis, To
God the Lord belong the issues of death. But then this exitus à morte is but introitus
in mortem; this issue, this deliverance, from that death, the death
of the womb, is an entrance, a delivering over to another death, the manifold
deaths of this world; we have a winding-sheet in our mother's womb which
grows with us from our conception, and we come into the world wound up in
that winding-sheet, for we come to seek a grave. And as prisoners discharged
of actions may lie for fees, so when the womb hath discharged us, yet we
are bound to it by cords of hestae, by such a string as that we cannot go
thence, nor stay there; we celebrate our own funerals with cries even at
our birth; as though our threescore and ten years' life were spent in our
mother's labour, and our circle made up in the first point thereof; we beg
our baptism with another sacrament, with tears; and we come into a world
that lasts many ages, but we last not. In
domo Patris, says our Saviour, speaking of heaven, multae
mansiones, divers and durable; so that if a man cannot possess a martyr's
house (he hath shed no blood for Christ), yet he may have a confessor's,
he hath been ready to glorify God in the shedding of his blood. And if a
woman cannot possess a virgin's house (she hath embraced the holy state
of marriage), yet she may have a matron's house, she hath brought forth
and brought up children in the fear of God. In
domo Patris, in my Father's house, in heaven, there are many mansions;[355] but here, upon earth, the Son of man hath
not where to lay his head,[356] saith he himself. Nonne
terram dedit filiis hominum? How then hath God given this earth to the
sons of men? He hath given them earth for their materials to be made of
earth, and he hath given them earth for their grave and sepulchre, to return
and resolve to earth, but not for their possession. Here
we have no continuing city,[357] nay, no cottage that continues, nay,
no persons, no bodies, that continue. Whatsoever moved Saint Jerome to call
the journeys of the Israelites in the wilderness,[358] mansions; the word
(the word is nasang) signifies
but a journey, but a peregrination. Even the Israel of God hath no mansions,
but journeys, pilgrimages in this life. By what measure did Jacob measure
his life to Pharaoh? The days of the
years of my pilgrimage.[359] And though the apostle would not say morimur,
that whilst we are in the body we are dead, yet he says, perigrinamur, whilst we are in the body we are but in a pilgrimage,
and we are absent from the Lord:[360]
he might have said dead, for this whole world is but an universal churchyard,
but our common grave, and the life and motion that the greatest persons
have in it is but as the shaking of buried bodies in their grave, by an
earthquake. That which we call life is but hebdomada mortium, a week of death, seven days, seven periods of our
life spent in dying, a dying seven times over; and there is an end. Our
birth dies in infancy, and our infancy dies in youth, and youth and the
rest die in age, and age also dies and determines all. Nor do all these,
youth out of infancy, or age out of youth, arise so, as the phoenix out
of the ashes of another phoenix formerly dead, but as a wasp or a serpent
out of a carrion, or as a snake out of dung. Our youth is worse than our
infancy, and our age worse than our youth. Our youth is hungry and thirsty
after those sins which our infancy knew not; and our age is sorry and angry,
that it cannot pursue those sins which our youth did; and besides, all the
way, so many deaths, that is, so many deadly calamities accompany every
condition and every period of this life, as that death itself would be an
ease to them that suffer them. Upon this sense doth Job wish that God had
not given him an issue from the first death, from the womb, Wherefore
thou hast brought me forth out of the womb? Oh that I had given up the ghost,
and no eye seen me! I should have been as though I had not been.[361]
And not only the impatient Israelites in their murmuring (would to God we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt),[362]
but Elijah himself, when he fled from Jezebel, and went for his life, as
that text says, under the juniper tree, requested that he might die, and
said, It is enough now, O Lord, take
away my life.[363] So Jonah justifies his impatience, nay, his anger,
towards God himself: Now, O Lord, take, I beseech thee, my life from me, for it is better to
die than to live.[364] And when God asked him, Dost thou well to be angry for this? he
replies, I do well to be angry, even
unto death. How much worse a death than death is this life, which so
good men would so often change for death! But if my case be as Saint Paul's
case, quotidiè morior, that I die daily, that
something heavier than death fall upon me every day; if my case be David's
case, tota die mortificamur; all the
day long we are killed, that not only every day, but every hour of the
day, something heavier than death fall upon me; though that be true of me,
Conceptus in peccatis, I was shapen in iniquity,
and in sin did my mother conceive me (there I died one death); though
that be true of me, Natus filius irae,
I was born not only the child of sin, but the child of wrath, of the wrath
of God for sin, which is a heavier death: yet Domini Domini sunt exitus mortis, with God the Lord are the issues of death; and after a Job, and a
Joseph, and a Jeremiah, and a Daniel, I cannot doubt of a deliverance. And
if no other deliverance conduce more to his glory and my good, yet he hath
the keys of death,[365] and he can let me out at that door, that is, deliver
me from the manifold deaths of this world, the omni die, and the tota die, the every day's death and every hour's death, by that one
death, the final dissolution of body and soul, the end of all. But then
is that the end of all? Is that dissolution of body and soul the last death
that the body shall suffer (for of spiritual death we speak not now). It
is not, though this be exitus à morte:
it is introitus in mortem; though it be an issue
from manifold deaths of this world, yet it is an entrance into the death
of corruption and putrefaction, and vermiculation, and incineration, and
dispersion in and from the grave, in which every dead man dies over again.
It was a prerogative peculiar to Christ, not to die this death, not to see
corruption. What gave him this privilege? Not Joseph's great proportion
of gums and spices, that might have preserved his body from corruption and
incineration longer than he needed it, longer than three days, but it would
not have done it for ever. What preserved him then? Did his exemption and
freedom from original sin preserve him from this corruption and incineration?
It is true that original sin hath induced this corruption and incineration
upon us; if we had not sinned in Adam, mortality
had not put on immortality[366](as the apostle speaks), nor corruption had not put on incorruption,
but we had had our transmigration from this to the other world without any
mortality, any corruption at all. But yet since Christ took sin upon him,
so far as made him mortal, he had it so far too as might have made him see
this corruption and incineration, though he had no original sin in himself;
what preserved him then? Did the hypostatical union of both natures, God
and man, preserve him from this corruption and incineration? It is true
that this was a most powerful embalming, to be embalmed with the Divine
Nature itself, to be embalmed with eternity, was able to preserve him from
corruption and incineration for ever. And he was embalmed so, embalmed with
the Divine Nature itself, even in his body as well as in his soul; for the
Godhead, the Divine Nature, did not depart, but remained still united to
his dead body in the grave; but yet for all this powerful embalming, his
hypostatical union of both natures, we see Christ did die; and for all his
union which made him God and man, he became no man (for the union of the
body and soul makes the man, and he whose soul and body are separated by
death as long as that state lasts, is properly no man). And therefore as
in him the dissolution of body and soul was no dissolution of the hypostatical
union, so there is nothing that constrains us to say, that though the flesh
of Christ had seen corruption and incineration in the grave, this had not
been any dissolution of the hypostatical union, for the Divine nature, the
Godhead, might have remained with all the elements and principles of Christ's
body, as well as it did with the two constitutive parts of his person, his
body and his soul. This incorruption then was not in Joseph's gums and spices,
nor was it in Christ's innocency, and exemption from original sin, nor was
it (that is, it is not necessary to say it was) in the hypostatical union.
But this incorruptibleness of his flesh is most conveniently placed in that;
Non dabis, thou wilt not suffer thy
Holy One to see corruption; we look no further for causes or reasons
in the mysteries of religion, but to the will and pleasure of God; Christ
himself limited his inquisition in that ita est, even so, Father, for so it seemeth good in thy sight. Christ's
body did not see corruption, therefore, because God had decreed it should
not. The humble soul (and only the humble soul is the religious soul) rests
himself upon God's purposes and the decrees of God which he hath declared
and manifested, not such as are conceived and imagined in ourselves, though
upon some probability, some verisimilitude; so in our present case Peter
proceeds in his sermon at Jerusalem, and so Paul in his at Antioch.[367]
They preached Christ to have been risen without seeing corruption, not only
because God had decreed it, but because he had manifested that decree in
his prophet, therefore doth Saint Paul cite by special number the second
Psalm for that decree, and therefore both Saint Peter and Saint Paul cite
for it that place in the sixteenth Psalm;[368] for when God declares his
decree and purpose in the express words of his prophet, or when he declares
it in the real execution of the decree, then he makes it ours, then he manifests
it to us. And therefore, as the mysteries of our religion are not the objects
of our reason, but by faith we rest on God's decree and purpose--(it is
so, O God, because it is thy will it should be so)--so God's decrees are
ever to be considered in the manifestation thereof. All manifestation is
either in the word of God, or in the execution of the decree; and when these
two concur and meet it is the strongest demonstration that can be: when
therefore I find those marks of adoption and spiritual filiation which are
delivered in the word of God to be upon me; when I find that real execution
of his good purpose upon me, as that actually I do live under the obedience
and under the conditions which are evidences of adoption and spiritual filiation;
then, so long as I see these marks and live so, I may safely comfort myself
in a holy certitude and a modest infallibility of my adoption. Christ determines
himself in that, the purpose of God was manifest to him; Saint Peter and
Saint Paul determine themselves in those two ways of knowing the purpose
of God, the word of God before the execution of the decree in the fulness
of time. It was prophesied before, said they, and it is performed now, Christ
is risen without seeing corruption. Now, this which is so singularly peculiar
to him, that his flesh should not see corruption, at his second coming,
his coming to judgment, shall extend to all that are then alive; their hestae
shall not see corruption, because, as the apostle says, and says as a secret,
as a mystery, Behold I shew you a
mystery, we shall not all sleep (that is, not continue in the state
of the dead in the grave), but we
shall all be changed in an instant, we shall have a dissolution, and
in the same instant a redintegration, a recompacting of body and soul, and
that shall be truly a death and truly a resurrection, but no sleeping in
corruption; but for us that die now and sleep in the state of the dead,
we must all pass this posthume death, this death after death, nay, this
death after burial, this dissolution after dissolution, this death of corruption
and putrefaction, of vermiculation and incineration, of dissolution and
dispersion in and from the grave, when these bodies that have been the children
of royal parents, and the parents of royal children, must say with Job,
Corruption, thou art my father, and to the worm, Thou art my mother and
my sister. Miserable riddle, when the same worm must be my mother, and
my sister and myself! Miserable incest, when I must be married to my mother
and my sister, and be both father and mother to my own mother and sister,
beget and bear that worm which is all that miserable penury; when my mouth
shall be filled with dust, and the worm
shall feed, and feed sweetly[369]
upon me; when the ambitious man shall have no satisfaction, if the poorest
alive tread upon him, nor the poorest receive any contentment in being made
equal to princes, for they shall be equal but in dust. One
dieth at his full strength, being wholly at ease and in quiet; and another
dies in the bitterness of his soul, and never eats with pleasure; but they
lie down alike in the dust, and the worm covers them.[370] In Job and
in Isaiah,[371] it covers them and is spread under them, the
worm is spread under thee, and the worm covers thee. There are the mats
and the carpets that lie under, and there are the state and the canopy that
hang over the greatest of the sons of men. Even those bodies that were the
temples of the Holy Ghost come
to this dilapidation, to ruin, to rubbish, to dust; even the Israel of the
Lord, and Jacob himself, hath no other specification, no other denomination,
but that vermis Jacob, thou worm
of Jacob. Truly the consideration of this posthume death, this death after
burial, that after God (with whom are the issues of death) hath delivered
me from the death of the womb, by bringing me into the world, and from the
manifold deaths of the world, by laying me in the grave, I must die again
in an incineration of this flesh, and in a dispersion of that dust. That
that monarch, who spread over many nations alive, must in his dust lie in
a corner of that sheet of lead, and there but so long as that lead will
last; and that private and retired man, that thought himself his own for
ever, and never came forth, must in his dust of the grave be published,
and (such are the revolutions of the grave) be mingled with the dust of
every highway and of every dunghill, and swallowed in every puddle and pond.
This is the most inglorious and contemptible vilification, the most deadly
and peremptory nullification of man, that we can consider. God seems to
have carried the declaration of his power to a great height, when he sets
the prophet Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones, and says, Son
of man, can these bones live? as though it had been impossible, and
yet they did; the Lord laid sinews upon them, and flesh, and breathed into
them, and they did live. But in that case there were bones to be seen,
something visible, of which it might be said, Can this thing live? But in
this death of incineration and dispersion of dust, we see nothing that we
call that man's. If we say, Can this dust live? Perchance it cannot; it
may be the mere dust of the earth, which never did live, never shall. It
may be the dust of that man's worm, which did live, but shall no more. It
may be the dust of another man, that concerns not him of whom it was asked.
This death of incineration and dispersion is, to natural reason, the most
irrecoverable death of all; and yet Domini
Domini sunt exitus mortis, unto God the Lord belong the issues of death;
and by recompacting this dust into the same body, and remaining the same
body with the same soul, he shall in a blessed and glorious resurrection
give me such an issue from this death as shall never pass into any other
death, but establish me into a life that shall last as long as the Lord
of Life himself. |
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And
so have you that that belongs to the first acceptation of these words
(unto God the Lord belong the issues
of death); That though from the womb to the grave, and in the grave
itself, we pass from death to death, yet, as Daniel speaks, the
Lord our God is able to deliver us, and he will deliver us. And so we pass unto our second accommodation
of these words (unto God the Lord
belong the issues of death); that it belongs to God, and not to man,
to pass a judgment upon us at our death, or to conclude a dereliction
on God's part upon the manner thereof. |
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indications which the physicians receive, and those presagitions which they
give for death or recovery in the patient, they receive and they give out
of the grounds and the rules of their art, but we have no such rule or art
to give a presagition of spiritual death and damnation upon any such indication
as we see in any dying man; we see often enough to be sorry, but not to
despair; we may be deceived both ways: we use to comfort ourself in the
death of a friend, if it be testified that he went away like a lamb, that
is, without any reluctation; but God knows that may be accompanied with
a dangerous damp and stupefaction, and insensibility of his present state.
Our blessed Saviour suffered colluctations with death, and a sadness even in his soul to death, and
an agony even to a bloody sweat in his body, and expostulations with God,
and exclamations upon the cross. He was a devout man who said upon his death-bed,
or death-turf (for he was a hermit), Septuaginta
annos Domino servivisti, et mori times? Hast thou served a good master
threescore and ten years, and now art thou loth to go into his presence?
Yet Hilarion was loth. Barlaam was a devout man (a hermit too) that said
that day he died, Cogita te hodie
caepisse servire Domino, et hodie finiturum, Consider this to be the
first day's service that ever thou didst thy Master, to glorify him in a
Christianly and a constant death, and if thy first day be thy last day too,
how soon dost thou come to receive thy wages! Yet Barlaam could have been
content to have stayed longer forth. Make no ill conclusions upon any man's
lothness to die, for the mercies of God work momentarily in minutes, and
many times insensibly to bystanders, or any other than the party departing.
And then upon violent deaths inflicted as upon malefactors, Christ himself
hath forbidden us by his own death to make any ill conclusion; for his own
death had those impressions in it; he was reputed, he was executed as a
malefactor, and no doubt many of them who concurred to his death did believe
him to be so. Of sudden death there are scarce examples be found in the
Scriptures upon good men, for death in battle cannot be called sudden death;
but God governs not by examples but by rules, and therefore make no ill
conclusion upon sudden death nor upon distempers neither, though perchance
accompanied with some words of diffidence and distrust in the mercies of
God. The tree lies as it falls, it is true, but it is not the last stroke
that fells the tree, nor the last word nor gasp that qualifies the soul.
Still pray we for a peaceable life against violent death, and for time of
repentance against sudden death, and for sober and modest assurance against
distempered and diffident death, but never make ill conclusions upon persons
overtaken with such deaths; Domini
Domini sunt exitus mortis, to God the Lord belong the issues of death.
And he received Samson, who went out of this world in such a manner (consider
it actively, consider it passively in his own death, and in those whom he
slew with himself) as was subject to interpretation hard enough. Yet the
Holy Ghost hath moved Saint Paul to celebrate Samson in his great catalogue,[372]
and so doth all the church. Our critical day is not the very day of our
death, but the whole course of our life. I thank him that prays for me when
the bell tolls, but I thank him much more that catechises me, or preaches
to me, or instructs me how to live. Fac
hoc et vive, there is my security, the mouth of the Lord hath said it,
do this and thou shalt live. But though I do it, yet I shall die too,
die a bodily, a natural death. But God never mentions, never seems to consider
that death, the bodily, the natural death. God doth not say, Live well,
and thou shalt die well, that is, an easy, a quiet death; but, Live well
here, and thou shalt live well for ever. As the first part of a sentence
pieces well with the last, and never respects, never hearkens after the
parenthesis that comes between, so doth a good life here flow into an eternal
life, without any consideration what so manner of death we die. But whether
the gate of my prison be opened with an oiled key (by a gentle and preparing
sickness), or the gate be hewn down by a violent death, or the gate be burnt
down by a raging and frantic fever, a gate into heaven I shall have, for
from the Lord is the cause of my life, and with
God the Lord are the issues of death. And further we carry not this
second acceptation of the words, as this issue
of death is liberatio in morte, God's care that the
soul be safe, what agonies soever the body suffers in the hour of death.
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pass to our third part and last part: As this issue of death is liberatio
per mortem, a deliverance by the death of another. Sufferentiam Job audiisti, et vidisti finem Domini, says Saint James
(v. 11), You have heard of the patience
of Job, says he: all this while you have done that, for in every man,
calamitous, miserable man, a Job speaks. Now, see the end of the Lord, sayeth that apostle, which is not that end
that the Lord proposed to himself (salvation to us), nor the end which he
proposes to us (conformity to him), but see
the end of the Lord, says he, the end that the Lord himself came to,
death, and a painful and a shameful death. But why did he die? and why die
so? Quia Domini Domini sunt exitus mortis (as
Saint Augustine, interpreting this text, answers that question),[373] because
to this God our Lord belonged the
issues of death. Quid apertius diceretur? says he there, what can be
more obvious, more manifest than this sense of these words? In the former
part of this verse it is said, He that is our God is the God of salvation; Deus salvos faciendi, so he reads
it, the God that must save us. Who can that be, says he, but Jesus? For
therefore that name was given him because he was to save us. And to this
Jesus, says he, this Saviour,[374] belong the issues of death; Nec oportuit eum de hac vita alios exitus
habere quam mortis: being come into this life in our mortal nature,
he could not go out of this life any other way but by death. Ideo dictum, says he, therefore it is said, to God the Lord belonged the issues of death; ut ostenderetur moriendo
nos salvos facturum, to show that his way to save us was to die. And
from this text doth Saint Isidore prove that Christ was truly man (which
as many sects of heretics denied, as that he was truly God), because to
him, though he were Dominus Dominus
(as the text doubles it), God the Lord, yet to him,
to God the Lord belonged the issues of death; oportuit eum pati; more
cannot be said than Christ himself says of himself; These things Christ ought to suffer;[375] he had no other way but
death: so then this part of our sermon must needs be a passion sermon, since
all his life was a continual passion, all our Lent may well be a continual
Good Friday. Christ's painful life took off none of the pains of his death,
he felt not the less then for having felt so much before. Nor will any thing
that shall be said before lessen, but rather enlarge the devotion, to that
which shall be said of his passion at the time of due solemnization thereof.
Christ bled not a drop the less at the last for having bled at his circumcision
before, nor will you a tear the less then if you shed some now. And therefore
be now content to consider with me how to this God the Lord belonged the issues of
death. That God, this Lord, the Lord of life, could die, is a strange
contemplation; that the Red Sea could be dry, that the sun could stand still,
that an oven could be seven times heat and not burn, that lions could be
hungry and not bite, is strange, miraculously strange, but super-miraculous
that God could die; but that God would die is an exaltation of that. But
even of that also it is a super-exaltation, that God should die, must die,
and non exitus (said Saint Augustine), God
the Lord had no issue but by death, and oportuit
pati (says Christ himself), all this Christ ought to suffer, was bound
to suffer; Deus ultimo Deus, says
David, God is the God of revenges, he would not pass over the son of man
unrevenged, unpunished. But then Deus
ultionum libere egit (says that place), the God of revenges works freely,
he punishes, he spares whom he will. And would he not spare himself? he
would not: Dilectio fortis ut mors, love is strong as
death;[376] stronger, it drew in death, that naturally is not welcome.
Si possibile, says Christ, if
it be possible, let this cup pass, when his love, expressed in a former
decree with his Father, had made it impossible. Many
waters quench not love. C[377]hrist tried many: he was baptised out
of his love, and his love determined not there; he mingled blood with water
in his agony, and that determined not his love; he wept pure blood, all
his blood at all his eyes, at all his pores, in his flagellation and thorns
(to the Lord our God belonged the issues of
blood), and these expressed, but these did not quench his love. He would
not spare, nay, he could not spare himself. There was nothing more free,
more voluntary, more spontaneous than the death of Christ. It is true, libere egit, he died voluntarily; but yet
when we consider the contract that had passed between his Father and him,
there was an oportuit, a kind
of necessity upon him: all this Christ
ought to suffer. And when shall we date this obligation, this oportuit, this necessity? When shall we
say that began? Certainly this decree by which Christ was to suffer all
this was an eternal decree, and was there any thing before that that was
eternal? Infinite love, eternal love; be pleased to follow this home, and
to consider it seriously, that what liberty soever we can conceive in Christ
to die or not to die; this necessity of dying, this decree is as eternal
as that liberty; and yet how small a matter made he of this necessity and
this dying? His Father calls it but a bruise, and but a bruising of his
heel[378] (the serpent shall bruise his heel), and yet that was, that the
serpent should practise and compass his death. Himself calls it but a baptism,
as though he were to be the better for it. I have
a baptism to be baptized with,[379] and he was in pain till it was accomplished,
and yet this baptism was his death. The Holy Ghost calls it joy (for
the joy which was set before him he endured the cross),[380] which was
not a joy of his reward after his passion, but a joy that filled him even
in the midst of his torments, and arose from him; when Christ calls his
calicem a cup, and no worse (Can ye drink of my cup)[381], he speaks
not odiously, not with detestation of it. Indeed it was a cup, salus mundo, a health to all the world.
And quid retribuam, says David,
What shall I render to the Lord? [382]Answer
you with David, Accipiam calicem, I will take the cup of salvation; take it, that
cup is salvation, his passion, if not into your present imitation, yet into
your present contemplation. And behold how that Lord that was God, yet could
die, would die, must die for our salvation. That Moses and Elias talked
with Christ in the transfiguration, both Saint Matthew and Saint Mark[383]
tells us, but what they talked of, only Saint Luke; Dicebant excessum ejus, says he, They talked of his disease, of his death, which was to be accomplished
at Jerusalem.[384] The word is of his exodus, the very word of our text, exitus, his issue by death. Moses, who in his exodus had prefigured this issue
of our Lord, and in passing Israel out of Egypt through the Red Sea, had
foretold in that actual prophecy, Christ passing of mankind through the
sea of his blood; and Elias, whose exodus and issue of this world was a
figure of Christ's ascension; had no doubt a great satisfaction in talking
with our blessed Lord, de excessu
ejus, of the full consummation of all this in his death, which was to
be accomplished at Jerusalem. Our meditation of his death should be more
visceral, and affect us more, because it is of a thing already done. The
ancient Romans had a certain tenderness and detestation of the name of death;
they could not name death, no, not in their wills; there they could not
say, Si mori contigerit, but si quid
humanitas contingat, not if or when I die, but when the course of nature
is accomplished upon me. To us that speak daily of the death of Christ (he
was crucified, dead, and buried), can the memory or the mention of our own
death be irksome or bitter? There are in these latter times amongst us that
name death freely enough, and the death of God, but in blasphemous oaths
and execrations. Miserable men, who shall therefore be said never to have
named Jesus, because they have named him too often; and therefore hear Jesus
say, Nescivi vos, I never knew you, because
they made themselves too familiar with him. Moses and Elias talked with
Christ of his death only in a holy and joyful sense, of the benefit which
they and all the world were to receive by that. Discourses of religion should
not be out of curiosity, but to edification. And then they talked with Christ
of his death at that time when he was in the greatest height of glory, that
ever he admitted in this world, that is, his transfiguration. And we are
afraid to speak to the great men of this world of their death, but nourish
in them a vain imagination of immortality and immutability. But bonum
est nobis esse hic (as Saint Peter said there), It is good to dwell here, in this consideration of his death, and
therefore transfer we our tabernacle (our devotions) through some of those
steps which God the Lord made to his issue
of death that day. Take in the whole day from the hour that Christ received
the passover upon Thursday unto the hour in which he died the next day.
Make this present day that day in thy devotion, and consider what he did,
and remember what you have done. Before he instituted and celebrated the
sacrament (which was after the eating of the passover), he proceeded to
that act of humility, to wash his disciples' feet, even Peter's, who for
a while resisted him. In thy preparation to the holy and blessed sacrament,
hast thou with a sincere humility sought a reconciliation with all the world,
even with those that have been averse from it, and refused that reconciliation
from thee? If so, and not else, thou hast spent that first part of his last
day in a conformity with him. After the sacrament he spent the time till
night in prayer, in preaching, in psalms: hast thou considered that a worthy
receiving of the sacrament consists in a continuation of holiness after,
as well as in a preparation before? If so, thou hast therein also conformed
thyself to him; so Christ spent his time till night. At night he went into
the garden to pray, and he prayed prolixious, he spent much time in prayer,
how much? Because it is literally expressed, that he prayed there three
several times,[385] and that returning to his disciples after his first
prayer, and finding them asleep, said, Could
ye not watch with me one hour,[386] it is collected that he spent three
hours in prayer. I dare scarce ask thee whither thou wentest, or how thou
disposedst of thyself, when it grew dark and after last night. If that time
were spent in a holy recommendation of thyself to God, and a submission
of thy will to his, it was spent in a conformity to him. In that time, and
in those prayers, was his agony and bloody sweat. I will hope that thou
didst pray; but not every ordinary and customary prayer, but prayer actually
accompanied with shedding of tears and dispositively in a readiness to shed
blood for his glory in necessary cases, puts thee into a conformity with
him. About midnight he was taken and bound with a kiss, art thou not too
conformable to him in that? Is not that too literally, too exactly thy case,
at midnight to have been taken and bound with a kiss? From thence he was
carried back to Jerusalem, first to Annas, then to Caiaphas, and (as late
as it was) then he was examined and buffered, and delivered over to the
custody of those officers from whom he received all those irrisions, and
violences, the covering of his face, the spitting upon his face, the blasphemies
of words, and the smartness of blows, which that gospel mentions: in which
compass fell that gallicinium, that crowing of the cock which called up
Peter to his repentance. How thou passedst all that time thou knowest. If
thou didst any thing that needest Peter's tears, and hast not shed them,
let me be thy cock, do it now. Now, thy Master (in the unworthiest of his
servants) looks back upon thee, do it now. Betimes, in the morning, so soon
as it was day, the Jews held a council in the high priest's hall, and agreed
upon their evidence against him, and then carried him to Pilate, who was
to be his judge; didst thou accuse thyself when thou wakedst this morning,
and wast thou content even with false accusations, that is, rather to suspect
actions to have been sin, which were not, than to smother and justify such
as were truly sins? Then thou spentest that hour in conformity to him; Pilate
found no evidence against him, and therefore to ease himself, and to pass
a compliment upon Herod, tetrarch of Galilee, who was at that time at Jerusalem
(because Christ, being a Galilean, was of Herod's jurisdiction), Pilate
sent him to Herod, and rather as a madman than a malefactor; Herod remanded
him (with scorn) to Pilate, to proceed against him; and this was about eight
of the clock. Hast thou been content to come to this inquisition, this examination,
this agitation, this cribration, this pursuit of thy conscience; to sift
it, to follow it from the sins of thy youth to thy present sins, from the
sins of thy bed to the sins of thy board, and from the substance to the
circumstance of thy sins? That is time spent like thy Saviour's. Pilate
would have saved Christ, by using the privilege of the day in his behalf,
because that day one prisoner was to be delivered, but they choose Barabbas;
he would have saved him from death, by satisfying their fury with inflicting
other torments upon him, scourging and crowning with thorns, and loading
him with many scornful and ignominious contumelies, but they regarded him
not, they pressed a crucifying. Hast thou gone about to redeem thy sin,
by fasting, by alms, by disciplines and mortifications, in way of satisfaction
to the justice of God? That will not serve that is not the right way; we
press an utter crucifying of that sin that governs thee: and that conforms
thee to Christ. Towards noon Pilate gave judgment, and they made such haste
to execution as that by noon he was upon the cross. There now hangs that
sacred body upon the cross, rebaptized in his own tears, and sweat, and
embalmed in his own blood alive. There are those bowels of compassion which
are so conspicuous, so manifested, as that you may see them through his
wounds. There those glorious eyes grew faint in their sight, so as the sun,
ashamed to survive them, departed with his light too. And then that Son
of God, who was never from us, and yet had now come a new way unto us in
assuming our nature, delivers that soul (which was never out of his Father's
hands) by a new way, a voluntary emission of it into his Father's hands;
for though to this God our Lord belonged these issues of death, so that considered
in his own contract, he must necessarily die, yet at no breach or battery
which they had made upon his sacred body issued his soul; but emisit, he gave up the ghost; and as God
breathed a soul into the first Adam, so this second Adam breathed his soul
into God, into the hands of God. |
|
| There
we leave you in that blessed dependency, to hang upon him that hangs upon
the cross, there bathe in his tears, there suck at his wounds, and lie down
in peace in his grave, till he vouchsafe you a resurrection, and an ascension
into that kingdom which He hath prepared for you with the inestimable price
of his incorruptible blood. |
|
| AMEN.
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[348] Psalm 139:6. |
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