IN THE LAST years of the Jacobean church, John Donne emerged as an important public figure at the center of political culture. In several high-profile sermons – especially his sermon defending James's Directions to Preachers in 1622 and his first sermon before King Charles in 1625 – Donne tested the boundaries of this sphere and the limits of its capacity to tolerate public dispute. Both sermons were preached on official occasions, published at royal command, and reprinted. Increasingly in the late Jacobean years, however, Donne's sense of vocation demanded a private discourse of conscience as well as a public discourse of religious identity. Both of these are brought together in sermons that negotiate the crises of censorship and controversy affecting the public sphere by creating a space within it to “stand inquiring right.” The identity formed in this crucible is one that exposes tensions and fault lines in the integrity of the English church as a community of believers as well as a public, national institution still working out the terms of its doctrine, discipline, and piety.

Because we have more evidence on which to evaluate his role, Donne's importance as a public figure ought to be even more apparent to us than to his contemporaries. However, despite a reputation as an engaging preacher, Donne does not figure in the annals of political and ecclesiastical power generally documented by historians.