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book_n	call_v	holy_a	write_v	2,920	5	5.5632	4	true

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A67468	The life of John Donne, Dr. in divinity, and late dean of Saint Pauls Church London	Walton, Izaak, 1593-1683.	1658 (1658)	Wing W668; ESTC R17794	42,451	172

faithfull friend and Executor of whose Care and Justice I make no more doubt then of Gods blessing on that which I have conscienciously collected for them and this I declare as my unalterable resolution The reply to this was onely a promise to observe his request Within a few dayes his distempers abated and as his strength increased so did his thankfulnesse to Almighty God testified in his book of Devotions which he published at his recovery In which the reader may see the most secret thoughts that then possest his soul Paraphrased and make publick a book that may not unfitly be called a Sacred picture of spirituall extasies occasioned and applyable to the emergencies of that sicknesse which being a composition of Meditations disquisitions and prayers he writ on his sick-bed herein imitating the holy Patriarchs who were wont to build their Altars in that place where they had received their blessings This sicknesse brought him so neer to the gates of death and he saw the grave so ready to devour him that he would often say his recovery was supernaturall But God that restor'd his health continued it to him till the fifty-ninth year of his life And then in August 1630. being with his eldest Daughter Mrs. Harvie at Abury hatch in Essex he there fell into a fever which with the help of his constant infirmity vapors from the spleene hastened him into so visible a Consumption that his beholders might say as St Paul of himself He dies daily and he might say with Iob my welfare passeth away as a cloud the dayes of my affliction have taken hold of me and weary nights are appointed for me Reader this sicknesse continued long not onely weakening but wearying him so much that my desire is he may now take some rest and that before I speake of his death thou wilt not think it an impertinent digression to look back with me upon some observations of his life which whilst a gentle slumber gives rest to his spirits may I hope not unfitly exercise thy consideration His marriage was the remarkable errour of his life an errour which though he had a wit able very apt to maintain Paradoxes yet he was very farre from justifying though his wives Competent yeares and other reasons might be justly urged to moderate severe Censures yet he would occasionally condemn himself for it and doubtlesse it had been attended with an heavy Repentance if God had not blest them with so mutuall and Cordiall affections as in the midst of their sufferings made their bread of sorrow taste more pleasantly then the banquets of dull and low-spirited people The recreations of his youth were Poetry in which he was so happy as if nature and all her varieties had been made onely to exercise his sharpe wit and high fancy and in those pieces which were facetiously Composed and carelesly scattered most of them being written before the twentieth year of his age it may appear by his choice Metaphors that both Nature and all the Arts joyn'd to assist him with their utmost skill It is a truth that in his penitentiall yeares viewing some of those pieces loosely scattered in his youth he wish't they had been abortive or so short liv'd that his own eyes had witnessed their funeralls But though he was no friend to them he was not so fallen out with heavenly Poetry as to forsake that no not in that in his declining age witnessed then by many Divine Sonnets and other high holy and harmonious Composures Yea even on his former sick-bed he wrote this heavenly Hymne expressing the great joy that then possest his soul in the Assurance of Gods favour to him An Hymne to God the Father Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun Which was my sin though it were done before Wilt thou forgive that sin through which I run And do run still though still I do deplore When thou hast done thou hast not done For I have more Wilt thou forgive that sin which I have wonne Others to sin and made my sin their doone Wilt thou forgive that sin which I did shun A year or two but wallowed in a score When thou hast done thou hast not done For I have more I have a sin of fear that when I 've spun My last thred I shall perish on the shore But swear by thy self that at my death thy Son Shall shine as he shines now and heretofore And having done that thou hast done I fear no more I have the rather mentioned this Hymne for that he caus'd it to be set to a most grave and solemn tune and to be often sung to the Organ by the Choristers of that Church in his own hearing especially at the Evening Service and at his return from his Customary Devotions in that place did occasionally say to a friend The words of this Hymne have restored to me the same thoughts of joy that possest my soul in my sicknesse when I composed it And Oh the power of Church-musick that Harmony added to it has raised the affections of my heart and quickned my graces of zeal and gratitude and I observe that I alwaies return from paying this publick duty of Prayer and Praise to God with an unexpressible tranquillity of mind and a willingnesse to leave the world After this manner did the Disciples of our Saviour and the best of Christians in those Ages of the Church nearest to his time offer their praises to Almighty God And the reader of St. Augustines life may there find that towards his dissolution he wept abundantly that the enemies of Christianity had broke in upon them and prophaned and ruin'd their Sanctuaries and because their Publick Hymns and Lauds were lost out of their Churches And after this manner have many devout soules lifted up their hands and offered acceptable Sacrifices unto Almighty God in that place where Dr. Donne offered his But now oh Lord Before I proceed further I think fit to informe the reader that not long before his death he caused to be drawn a figure of the body of Christ extended upon an Anchor like those which painters draw when they would present us with the picture of Christ Crucified on the Crosse his varying no otherwise then to affixe him to an Anchor the Embleme of hope this he caused to be drawn in little and then many of these figures thus drawn to be ingraven very small in H●litropian Stones and set in gold and of these he sent to many of his dearest friends to be used as Seales or Rings and kept as memorialls of him and his affection His dear friends Sir Henry Goodier and Sir Robert Drewry could not be of that number for they had put off mortality and taken possession of the grave before him But Sir Henry Wootton and Dr. Hall the late deceased Bishop of Norwich were and so were Dr. Duppa Bishop of Salisbury and Dr. Henry King Bishop of Chicester both now living-men in whom there was and is such a Commixture

of others many persons of Nobility and of eminency for Learning who did love and honour him in his life did shew it at his death by a voluntary and sad attendance of his body to the grave where nothing was so remarkable as a publick sorrow To which place of his Buriall some mournful Friend repaired and as Alexander the Great did to the grave of the famous Achilles so they strewed his with an abundance of curious and costly Flowers which course they who were never yet known continued morning and evening for many dayes not ceasing till the stones that were taken up in that Church to give his body admission into the cold earth now his bed of rest were again by the Masons art levelled and firmed as they had been formerly and his place of buriall undistinguishable to common view Nor was this all the Honour done to his reverend Ashes for as there be some persons that will not receive a reward for that for which God accounts himself a debter persons that dare trust God with their Charity and without a witness so there was by some gratefull unknowne friend that thought Dr. Donne's memory ought to be perpetuated an hundred Marks sent to his two faithfull Friends * and Executors towards the making of his Monument It was not for many years known by whom but after the death of Dr. Fox it was known that he sent it and he lived to see as lively a representation of his dead friend as Marble can express a Statue indeed so like Dr. Donne that as his friend Sir Henry Wotton hath expressed himself it seems to breath faintly and Posterity shall look upon it as a kind of artificiall Miracle He was of Stature moderately tall of a straight and equally-proportioned body to which all his words and actions gave an unexpressible addition of Comelinesse The melancholy and pleasant humor were in him so contempered that each gave advantage to the other and made his Company one of the delights of mankind His fancy was unimitably high equalled onely by his great wit both being made usefull by a commanding judgement His aspect was cheerfull and such as gave a silent testimony of a clear knowing soul and of a Conscience at peace with it self His melting eye shewed that he had a soft heart full of noble compassion of too brave a soul to offer injuries and too much a Christian not to pardon them in others He did much contemplate especially after he entred into his Sacred Calling the mercies of Almighty God the immortality of the soul and the joyes of Heaven and would often say Blessed be God that he is God divinely like himself He was by nature highly passionate but more apt to reluct at the excesses of it A great lover of the offices of humanity and of so mercifull a spirit that he never beheld the miseries of mankind without pity and relief He was earnest and unwearied in the search of knowledge with which his vigorous soul is now satisfied and imployed in a continued praise of that God that first breathed it into his active body which once was a Temple of the Holy Ghost and is now become a small quantity of Christian dust But I shall see it reinanimated J. W. To all my friends Sir H. Goodere SIR I Am not weary of writing it is the course but durable garment of my love but I am weary of wanting you I have a mind like those bodies which have hot Livers and cold stomachs or such a distemper as travelled me at Paris a Fever and dysentery in which that which is physick to one infirmity nourishes the other So I abhor nothing more then sadnesse except the ordinary remedy change of company I can allow my self to be Animal sociale appliable to my company but not gregale to herd my self in every troup It is not perfectly true which a very subtil yet very deep wit Averroes says that all mankind hath but one soul which informs and rules us all as one Intelligence doth the firmament and all the Stars in it as though a particular body were too little an organ for a soul to play upon And it is as imperfect which is taught by that religion which is most accommodate to sense I dare not say to reason though it have appearance of that too because none may doubt but that that religion is certainly best which is reasonablest That all mankind hath one protecting Angel all Christians one other all English one other all of one Corporation and every civill coagulation or society one other and every man one other Though both these opinions expresse a truth which is that mankind hath very strong bounds to cohabit and concurre in other then mountains and hills during his life First common and mutuall necessity of one another and therefore naturally in our defence and subventions we first fly to our selves next to that which is likest other men Then naturall and inborn charity beginning at home which perswades us to give that we may receive and legall charity which makes us also forgive Then an ingraffing in one another and growing together by a custome of society and last of all strict friendship in which band men were so presumed to be coupled that our Confessor King had a law that if a man be killed the murderer shall pay a summe felago suo which the interpreters call fide ligato comiti vitae All these bands I willingly receive for no man is less of himself then I nor any man enough of himself To be so is all one with omnipotence And it is well marked that in the holy Book wheresoever they have rendred Almighty the word is Self-sufficient I think sometimes that the having a family should remove me far from the curse of Vaesoli But in so strict obligation of Parent or Husband or Master and perchance it is so in the last degree of friendship where all are made one I am not the lesse alone for being in the midst of them Therefore this oleum laetitiae this balme of our lives this alacrity which dignifies even our service to God this gallant enemy of dejection and sadnesse for which and wickednesse the Italian allows but one word Triste And in full condemnation whereof it was prophesied of our blessed Saviour Non erit tristis in his conversation must be sought and preserved diligently And since it grows without us we must be sure to gather it from the right tree They which place this alacrity onely in a good conscience deal somewhat too roundly with us for when we ask the way they shew us the town afar off Will a Physician consulted for health and strength bid you have good sinews and equal temper It is true that this conscience is the resultance of all other particular actions it is our triumph and banquet in the haven but I would come towards that also as Mariners say with a merry wind Our nature is Meteorique we respect because