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Donne's Devotions: A Meditative Sequence on Repentance
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 June 2011
Extract
John Donne's Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions had its genesis in 1623 when Donne fell into a nearly fatal illness. In an age which held that there is literally no health in man — “only two degrees, sickness and neutrality,” as Donne wrote to Sir Henry Goodyer — sickness was widely taken as the visible sign of a sinful condition, and Donne's Devotions is no exception. Like “Good Friday, 1613,” “Batter my heart, three person'd God,” and “A Hymne to God the Father,” the Devotions reflects a soul distressed by sin and longing for the assurance of grace. Yet the Devotions is more than a series of meditations on his physical and spiritual condition; it is also a prose sequence on repentance that is aimed at a public audience. As Donne wrote to Sir Robert Ker while convalescing, “I have used this leisure to put the Meditations, had in my sickness, into some such order as may minister some holy delight.” Given Donne's public intention, both the “order” of the Devotions and its “holy delight” merit further examination.
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- Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1973
References
1 Quoted from SirGosse, Edmund, The Life and Letters of John Donne (London, 1899), I, 227Google Scholar.
2 Gosse, II, 189.
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4 Martz, Louis L., The Poetry of Meditation, rev. ed. (New Haven and London, 1962), 35–38Google Scholar. In his popular Ancilla Pietatis (1626), for example, Daniel Featley recommends that “The Matter” for a prayer consist of “Humble Confession,” “Confident Invocation, or petition,” and “Hearty Thanksgiving.”
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6 Ed. Evelyn M. Simpson (Oxford, 1952), 39. Mrs. Simpson places the date of the work about 1614–15.
7 Devotions (1624), ed. John Sparrow (Cambridge, 1923), 113. Subsequent references are to this edition and will be included in the text.
8 This appears to be the sense in which Janel M. Mueller takes this passage in The Exegesis of Experience: Dean Donne's, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, JEGP 67 (1968), 1–19Google Scholar.
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11 Cf. Serm. 2,6: “prius illud quod lectum est credatis sic gestum, quomodo lectum est; ne substrata fundamento rei gestae, quasi in aere quaeratis aedificare”, quoted by Auerbach, 39.
12 Auerbach, 39–44, gives many examples of Augustine's use of the third stage; he notes that the most complete is probably Contra Faustinum, 4,2.
13 The Works of … Richard Hooker, ed. Keble, John, rev. Church, R. W. and Paget, E., 7th ed. (Oxford, 1888)Google Scholar, VI.iii.i. Subsequent references are to this edition and will be included in the text.
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15 Cf. An Homely of Repentaunce, and of true reconciliation vnto God in The seconde Tome of Homelyes of such matters (London, 1563): “They that do from the bottem of their hartes acknowledge theyr sinnes … wyll cast of all hipocrisie, and put on true humilitie, and lowlynes of hart. They wyll not onely receaue the Phisition of the soule: but also with a mooste feruent desyre, longe for hym” (sig. Pppl).
16 See also Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II–II, Q.19.Art. 7: “Whether Fear is the Beginning of Wisdom?” Thomas answers that in order to make a beginning in wisdom, “man must first of all fear God and submit himself to Him.” He then quotes Ecclus. 25:16, “The fear of God is the beginning of love: and the beginning of faith is to be fast joined to it” (trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, rev. Daniel J. Sullivan, Chicago, 1952).
17 See also The Sermons of John Donne, ed. Potter, George R. and Simpson, Evelyn M. (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1953–62), I, 203; III, 278Google Scholar.
18 Cf. Sermons, V, 81.
19 Donne's use of the bells tolling for his neighbor is strikingly similar to his discussion in a sermon of the three issues of death. The first, deliverance from death, Donne treats in Devotion 7; the second, deliverance in death, is the subject of Devotion 18; the third, deliverance by the death of another, is comparable to Devotions 16–18. See Deaths Duell, Sermons, X, 230–48.
20 Cf. Deaths Duell: “I thanke him that prayes for me when my bell tolles, but I thank him much more that Catechises mee, or preaches to me, or instructs mee how to live.” Donne continued that he who used this instruction to live well here, would live well forever (Sermons, X, 241).
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