John Donne and Conformity in Crisis in the Late Jacobean Pulpit (Studies in Renaissance Literature)

JOHN DONNE AND CONFORMITY IN CRISIS IN THE LATE JACOBEAN PULPIT

Jeanne Shami

D. S. BREWER

Studies in Renaissance Literature Volume 13

JOHN DONNE AND CONFORMITY IN CRISIS IN THE LATE JACOBEAN PULPIT

This book considers the professional contribution of John Donne to an emerging homiletic public sphere in the last years of the Jacobean English Church (1621–25), arguing that his sermons embody the conflicts, tensions, and pressures on public religious discourse in this period; while they are in no way “typical” of any particular preaching agenda or style, they articulate these crises in their most complex forms and expose fault lines in the late Jacobean Church. The study is framed by Donne’s two most pointed contributions to the public sphere: his sermon defending James I’s Directions to Preachers and his first sermon preached before Charles I in 1625. These two sermons emerge from the crises of controversy, censorship, and identity that converged in the late Jacobean period, and mark Donne’s clearest professional interventions in the public debate about the nature and direction of the Church of England. In them, Donne interrogates the boundaries of the public sphere and of his conformity to the institutions, authorities, and traditions governing public debate in that sphere, modelling for his audience an actively engaged conformist identity. Professor JEANNE SHAMI teaches in the Department of English at the University of Regina.

Studies in Renaissance Literature ISSN 1465–6310 Founding Editor John T. Shawcross General Editor Graham Parry Editorial Board Helen E. Wilcox Graham Parry Paul Stanwood

Studies in Renaissance Literature offers investigations of topics in English literature focussed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; its scope extends from early Tudor writing, including works reflecting medieval concerns, to the Restoration period. Studies exploring the interplay between the literature of the English Renaissance and its cultural history are particularly welcomed. Proposals or queries should be sent in the first instance to Graham Parry at the address below, or to the publisher; all submissions receive prompt and informed consideration. Professor Graham Parry, Department of English, University of York, Heslington, York YO1 5DD, UK Previously published volumes in this series are listed at the back of this volume

JOHN DONNE AND CONFORMITY IN CRISIS IN THE LATE JACOBEAN PULPIT

Jeanne Shami

D. S. BREWER

© Jeanne Shami 2003 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner

First published 2003 D. S. Brewer, Cambridge

ISBN 0 85991 789 4

D. S. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. PO Box 41026, Rochester, NY 14604–4126, USA website: www.boydell.co.uk

A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Shami, Jeanne. John Donne and conformity in crisis in the late Jacobean pulpit / Jeanne Shami. p. cm. – (Studies in Renaissance literature, ISSN 1465–6310 ; v. 13) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–85991–789–4 (alk. paper) 1. Donne, John, 1572–1631 – Prose. 2. Donne, John, 1572–1631 – Religion. 3. Christian literature, English – History and criticism. 4. Dissenters, Religious – England – History – 17th century. 5. Clergy – England – History – 17th century. 6. Sermons, English – History and criticism. 7. England – Church history – 17th century. I. Title. II. Series: Studies in Renaissance literature (Woodbridge, Suffolk, England) ; v. 13. PR2248.S44 2003 828'.308 – dc21 2003005337

This publication is printed on acid-free paper Printed in Great Britain by St Edmundsbury Press Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

CONTENTS Acknowledgements Abbreviations

vii ix

1 “discreet or religious preachers”: John Donne and the late Jacobean Public Sphere

1

2 “the indiscretion of that foole”: John Knight and the Jacobean Pulpit, 1620–2

36

3 “the fishing of whales”: John Donne’s Sermons, 1620–2

75

4 “faire interpretation”: The Directions and the Crisis of Censorship

102

5 “wise as Serpents, and innocent as Doves”: Zeal and Discretion in the Pulpit, 1623–5

139

6 “Jesus Wept”: The Journey to Spain and Pulpit Lamentation

166

7 “blinde buzzards in the choise of a wife”: Sermons and the Moral Marketplace

183

8 “The Lovesick Spouse”: Parliament, Patriots, and the Public Sphere

212

9 “Church-quakes”: Post-Parliamentary Faultlines

234

10 “If the Foundations be Destroyed”: Rules of Engagement

256

11 “blessed sobriety”: John Donne, the Public Sphere, and Caroline Conformity

272

Works Cited

284

General Index

297

Index to John Donne References

313

Index to John Donne’s Sermons

317

for without order, an armie is but a great Ryot; and without this decencie, this peaceablenesse, this discretion, this order, zeale is but fury, and such preaching is but to the obduration of ill, not to the edification of good Christians. (John Donne, Sermons, IV, 197, sermon defending James’s Directions to Preachers)

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the President’s Publications Fund, University of Regina, in the production of this volume.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book is the product of many years of reading, thinking, and writing about John Donne. It is not the last word on the subject of Donne’s Jacobean career, nor is it likely to be my final foray into the rich world of Tudor and Stuart sermons. It is a book that would not have been possible without the assistance of a number of people and institutions, mentioned below. What is lacking in this study is entirely my responsibility, but it has been immeasurably improved by the support I acknowledge here. First, to my parents I owe the largest debt. Their trust in my abilities and my judgment and their confidence in whatever I accomplished, however small, has given me the courage to take on big tasks. Their work ethic has been my inspiration. I was introduced to the study of Renaissance literature at the University of Western Ontario by two great minds and incomparable teachers: Balachandra Rajan and Arthur Barker. At the University of Toronto, Hugh MacCallum provided a steady and judicious eye to my studies. And over the course of 20 years, the John Donne Society has been the source of my most long-lasting friendships and collaborations. Dennis Flynn, Tom Hester, Dayton Haskin, Gary Stringer, Ernie Sullivan, and Achsah Guibbory have supported my work and my spirit, and have pushed me to think about Donne’s sermons in new ways. I owe them a tremendous debt of gratitude. Other colleagues have also been supportive in scholarly and intellectual as well as other ways. I cannot name them all, but would like to thank Peter Beal, Martin Butler, Tom Cogswell, David Colclough, Dan Doerksen, Ken Fincham, Jeff Johnson, Peter Lake, Peter McCullough, Anthony Milton, Mary Papazian, Annabel Patterson, and Michael Questier for their ready assistance and the inspiration of their own scholarship on my project. Annabel Robinson and Cameron Louis of the University of Regina assisted me with Latin translations of some materials in this book, and Donna Achtzehner and Jennifer Elliott, former graduate students at the University of Regina, thought through some parts of Chapter 4 with me. The editors at Boydell & Brewer have been encouraging, helpful, and professional in their handling of this manuscript. I want to thank Caroline Palmer and Pru Harrison of the press, and, in particular, Susan Dykstra-Poel for her friendship and support for this project. The University of Regina has assisted me over the years in many ways: sabbatical leaves, research grants, and in the last months financial assistance in the form of a publication subvention from the President’s Publication Fund. Mostly, I want to thank the former Dean of Arts, Dr. Murray Knuttila, for indulging this long project and for making the University of Regina a supportive base from which to conduct the research that has gone into this book.

Acknowledgements The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada has assisted with research grants to support this project, as has the Bibliographical Society of America, and I thank them. To the staff of the major research libraries where I have conducted this research I owe considerable debts of gratitude. Here I would like to acknowledge the British Library (and especially Dr. Hilton Kelliher, former Curator of Western Manuscripts), the Cambridge University Library, the Bodleian Library, Lambeth Palace Library, St. Paul’s Cathedral Library, the National Library of Scotland, the Public Record Office, and the Folger Shakespeare Library. None of this work, however, could have been accomplished without the assistance of the Interlibrary Loan Department of the University of Regina, especially Marion Lake and Susan Robertson-Krezel. Finally, to my family, Ken, Andrew, and Julia Mitchell, I owe the greatest debt. They have supported my obsession with Donne and with early modern sermons for too long now – Julia since before she was born! If, as Donne says, this world is a parenthesis, they have filled it immeasurably and enriched the grammar of my life.

viii

ABBREVIATIONS BL CSPD CSPV CUL ELH JEGP LIT PBSA PMLA PRO SP

British Library Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Calendar of State Papers, Venetian Cambridge University Library English Literary History Journal of English and Germanic Philology Literature, Interpretation, Theory Publications of the Bibliographical Society of America Publications of the Modern Language Association of America Public Record Office State Papers

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Chapter 1 “DISCREET OR RELIGIOUS PREACHERS”: JOHN DONNE AND THE LATE JACOBEAN PUBLIC SPHERE

MOMENT OF CRISIS

T

HIS STUDY proposes to examine the late Jacobean pulpit, and particularly the sermons of John Donne, as an index of “conformity” and its expression in the years immediately preceding and including the transition from the Jacobean to the Caroline monarchy (1621–5). During these years, sermons, always important in Jacobean religious and political culture, became sites of contention for important matters of religious and national identity, contention epitomized by James I’s Directions to Preachers. These Directions, issued on 4 August 1622 by George Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury, were an attempt to reduce to order a pulpit that had become increasingly critical of and outspoken about the implications for religious belief and practice of James’s domestic and foreign policies. The uncertainty created by James’s inconsistent policies regarding Catholics, his negotiations for a Spanish marriage for his son Charles, and his apparent indifference to the affairs of his daughter Elizabeth, her husband the Elector Palatine (now claiming the title of King of Bohemia), and James’s grandchildren on the continent contributed to the heightened religious tension. Even the decision to issue such directions attested to James’s desperation, or perhaps to his waning political acuity. Such an edict was practically unenforceable, especially outside London, and subject to the energy, commitment, and political agenda of James’s bishops and their agents. Whether or not the Directions were actually effective in controlling the kinds of pulpit discourse that James intended, however, their issuing exposed fault lines in the Church of England that contributed to a reconfigured Caroline church and the demise of the Jacobean order. The crisis they both reflected and precipitated was, to some, barely perceptible at the time. But the pressures they exerted worked a tectonic shift in the balance of forces within the English church, the effects of which were profound. The crisis in the late Jacobean English church is evidenced first by the pressures of censorship to make language conform to certain “acceptable” standards at a time when these standards were not well understood or articulated, nor the consequences of unacceptable speech clear. Under pressure, some preachers exceeded the boundaries of conformity, and paid the legal and political consequences, while others applied strict laws of self-censorship to their words. The forces brought to bear also radicalized formerly conformist divines, many of whom became increasingly aware of the pulpit’s persuasive power and attempted to manipulate it. Efforts to control 1

John Donne and Conformity in Crisis the number, content, and location of sermons also intensified rather than diminishing religious controversy. A dominant anti-papist discourse was fractured among divines, all of whom had differing motives and styles for distinguishing themselves from the Church of Rome. In the last years of James’s reign, this discourse was complicated by increasingly open anti-puritan and anti-Calvinist rhetoric. All of these circumstances were exacerbated by the extension of pulpit debate into print. At stake for all of these preachers and controversialists was the definition of the Church of England, through a process of public and communal debate that would have profound consequences for religion – and politics – in decades to follow.1 In particular, this study attempts to place the sermons of John Donne in the context of these historical circumstances affecting pulpit discourse, and of Donne’s personal circumstances and vocational responsibilities during these years. Donne’s crucial role in the events surrounding the Directions in 1622 to the death of James and Charles’s accession make him the ideal barometer of these political and religious crises, and a test case for responding to historical claims about late Jacobean sermons. Although he is no way “typical” of any particular preaching agenda or style, his sermons articulate these crises in their most complex forms and expose fault lines in the late Jacobean English church that produced their most profound effects only after Donne’s death in 1631. Donne’s vision for the Church of England meant that he resisted the pressure to radicalize, although his sermons bear all the marks of the tension to stay whole. READING SERMONS The methodology for approaching late Jacobean sermons – and particularly the sermons of John Donne – must attend to problems of neglect and of evidence. Scholars generally have not acknowledged adequately the power and popularity of early-modern English sermons as a medium of instruction, debate, propaganda, and polemic. But, as a discourse not easily controlled by any authority or interest group, sermons served a public cultural function, and contributed to the construction of a post-Reformation English church. Moreover, since scholarly study of sermons relies primarily on printed sources, it presents the difficulty of determining with any certainty how closely extant printed materials correspond to what was actually said in the pulpit. Frequently, sermons were amplified, revised, and otherwise made coherent for publication.2 Moreover, most sermons were spoken from 1

2

Claydon discusses how sermons as much as coffee houses or parliamentary debates contributed to the creation of a “public sphere” following the Restoration. He comments on the role preaching might have played in maintaining active public discussion on controversial matters of public interest before 1640, referring specifically to the molding of public opinion on such matters as “the future direction of the Church of England” (p. 225). Lake and Questier extend the term back to the Elizabethan regime in “Puritans, Papists, and the ‘Public Sphere’. ” They argue that, in particular, “the ideological imperatives of antipopery helped to introduce and underwrite the public, national, and common interests that rendered the public sphere genuinely public” (591). Prefaces of most published sermons assume differences between oral and printed versions; Stoughton’s claim in XV. Choice Sermons to reproduce “the Author’s mind, as nearly as can be expressed in his own words, without additions or deletions” is unusual and ironic given the existence of a substantially different manuscript version of one sermon, The Lovesick Spouse. This manuscript dates the sermon in 1623/4, and differs substantively from the printed version. Morrissey dates this sermon in 1623 from the evidence of the Rawlinson MS and from an incomplete copy in Emmanuel College Library (Cambridge), MS 96 (“Rhetoric, religion, and politics,” pp. 1, 205–6).

2

John Donne and the late Jacobean Public Sphere notes, or from memory, and were transcribed, if at all, after the event, and often published in much different circumstances than those under which they were delivered.3 Some authors’ prefaces indicate how sermons were altered for publication, and occasionally manuscript and printed versions are available for comparison, but the majority of printed Jacobean sermons offer few clues as to their original delivery. Body language, gestures, tone of voice, dramatic pauses, and pacing, of course, are all lost to us, and yet these would undoubtedly have influenced the reception of the sermon message. So, too, we must be careful when we generalize about sermons to remember that most surviving printed sermons chronicle the voices of the early-modern pulpit elite. The thousands of sermons delivered in poor country parishes by barely educated parsons no longer speak to us, and we are left to form conclusions on the basis of a few sermons delivered by great men, at important pulpits, on special occasions. Despite these limitations, the printed remains and historical reports of the period make sermons by far the most culturally pervasive medium for influencing and reflecting public opinion. Given their importance in forming public opinion, and the sheer volume of sermons preached and published in early-modern England, it is surprising that they have not received sustained attention from literary scholars and historians.4 Scholarly estimates of the number of sermons preached have foundered on the methods used to calculate them. The call for frequent reprints of the works of eminent preachers such as Henry Smith, for example, revises estimates upward, as does the observation that single entries in the STC might contain anywhere from one to one hundred sermons, perhaps an author’s complete works.5 And if we take into account sermons collected, published, and edited since that time, the number increases substantially. Furthermore, many members of the congregation, such as Simonds D’Ewes, took notes at sermons, or recorded them in shorthand, for further study and contemplation at home. Others, such as Anne Sadlier, eldest daughter of Sir Edward Coke, became collectors of sermons and patrons of particular preachers.6 In the years preceding James’s Directions, the demand for sermon literature was especially high, or so it seemed to contemporaries.7 3

4

5

6

7

See my edition of John Donne’s 1622 Gunpowder Plot Sermon, which discusses material conditions affecting the transmission of this and other sermons. See also Klemp, “ ‘Betwixt the Hammer and the Anvill’. ” New work by McCullough and Ferrell is correcting this problem. See McCullough, Sermons at Court; Ferrell, Government by Polemic. In addition, Morrissey’s dissertation noted above promises further insights into sermons of this period. The state of sermon scholarship is considered in my “Introduction: Reading Donne’s Sermons”; Ferrell and McCullough, “Introduction,” The English Sermon Revised, pp. 2–21; Morrissey, “Interdisciplinarity.” Cogswell, Blessed Revolution, p. 325, makes explicit the profound impact of such a saturated medium. See Godfrey Davies,“English Political Sermons,” Klotz, and Simmons. Webster says “it must be acknowledged that the surviving material is a negligible fragment” (Godly Clergy, p. 105). Bennett, pp. 108–9. BL MS Harleian 6356 contains copies of two sermons by Donne, inscribed to Anne Sadlier, “Donum honoretissimae & amicissimae foeminae Annae Sadlier” (fo. 230r). John Conway Davies describes manuscripts donated by Anne Sadlier to the Inner Temple Library (I, 85–88). In answer to the question “how far is a sermon preached the same thing as a sermon published?”, see Hunt, “The Books, Manuscripts and Literary Patronage of Mrs. Anne Sadlier.” Webster observes that the audience for published sermons is “substantially different” on the grounds that “it takes a great deal more commitment to buy a substantial volume than to attend a parish church” (p. 105). I am concerned less with evidence of ownership of sermons than with the possibility that printed sermons bore sufficient resemblance to those preached to justify generalizations about homiletics in this period. Hall, for example, in Pharisaisme and Christianity, sig. A2r observed “there is a store of sermons extant. The pulpit scarce affordeth more than the presse.”

3

John Donne and Conformity in Crisis Of course, precisely because of their popularity, sermons could be and were appropriated for purposes other than edification. Sermons supplemented the meagre printed sources of news, and often offered editorial commentary on current events to a broad social cross-section, which included women, the poor, and the illiterate.8 Consequently, the pulpit became an energetic locus for the dissemination of ideas, and the power that it commanded became the prize in the religious and ideological conflicts of the age. Godfrey Davies terms it “the most influential of all the organs of public opinion.”9 As an integral part of the political process, sermons in the early Stuart period, and particularly in the 1620s, served to enhance the political polarization that Cust has observed as an effect of newsgathering and dissemination. Sermons were part of the news industry of the 1620s whose growth paralleled England’s involvement in the Thirty Years’ War, alongside newsletters, corantoes, separates, pamphlets, and alehouse verses – and especially word of mouth. Ecclesiastical and state officials were particularly sensitive to the propaganda value of the pulpit and vied for influence over what was said and published. As Seaver points out, however, the pulpit was open to exploitation by exponents of many points of view, and, as a consequence, competing ideologies were also able to make their views known in this way. The pulpit was at best an unpredictable political tool.10 That the pulpit served a propaganda function for a multiplicity of causes is well documented. Louis Wright discusses the campaign against the king’s Spanish policy after the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War in 1618 as a “consistent and violent” opposition designed to undermine the negotiations for a Spanish marriage for Charles. It was successful, he argues, in that it was “clearly influential” in arousing public opinion against the match. James, he says, was “powerless to silence the whole body of the Protestant clergy” who were unified in their opposition.11 The pulpit, however, was not simply the instrument of a coherent “opposition.” Cogswell has persuasively demonstrated that the Stuarts, and particularly Charles, were acutely aware of propaganda and sought to manipulate it, and that for Charles, “the pulpits of England represented a formidable platform for disseminating the royal line.”12 Preachers were becoming more actively engaged in propaganda for and against public policies in this period. While it was generally true that the pulpits of England became the focus of political commentary in the early Stuart years, the most influential pulpit of the day was at Paul’s Cross in London. Originally a site from which proclamations were read, this pulpit came to combine the functions of news and

8 9

10 11 12

See work by Cust (“News and Politics”) and Levy. Davies, 7. This stress on public opinion in a more general sense anticipates the argument of Lake and Questier in “Puritans, Papists, and the ‘Public Sphere’ ” that the public sphere to which the pulpit contributed was not defined as always “autonomously apart from the state” but rather “in terms of struggles to gain the ideological and political initiative within an ideologically, politically, and even institutionally variegated establishment or regime” (591). They suggest that this public space, once opened, became “a crucial means whereby a variety of groups and factions sought to influence and alter not merely the policies and personnel but also, in the case of both Presbyterian Puritans and Catholics, the very structures of the Protestant state itself ” (627). Seaver, pp. 56–60. Wright, “Propaganda against James I’s ‘Appeasement’ of Spain,” 149, 150, 154. Cogswell, “The Politics of Propaganda,” 215, 196.

4

John Donne and the late Jacobean Public Sphere propaganda.13 This was the place where distinguished preachers were summoned at certain seasons and special occasions, where aspiring prophets such as William Clough of Bramham dreamed of exposing the evils of government, where the rituals of public penance were enacted, where heretical and seditious books were burned. Because the preachers selected to preach at the Cross were appointed at the discretion of the Bishop of London, one might assume that comment on state affairs would be unlikely. However, the importance of the pulpit and its location at the hub of the London newsgathering network drew many preachers, not all of whom could be relied on to preach official doctrine or to steer clear of matters of state, especially when these were matters of religion as well, as in the case of the Spanish match negotiations. As Maclure has shown, the influence of patrons was also a factor to consider in any analysis of the impact of censorship on the pulpit and the press during this period. And in times of crisis, the Bishop of London took advice from the Council before selecting preachers or issuing specific instructions to them. Paul’s Cross was, in fact, not only the instrument of the Council and the Church of England, as Maclure has shown, but of God’s English ministers, “his prophets to the fallen city, the architects of a new and holy order.”14 It was also the instrument of many preachers, neither voices of the administration, nor vehement critics of it, and this study addresses these voices of a “middle nature.”15 Morrissey observes that no single issue monopolised Paul’s Cross during James I’s reign, and so this period “gives the broadest sample of issues addressed by preachers.”16 In addition, Morrissey notes that extant printed sermons include “the full spectrum of religious opinion from William Laud to the notorious puritan William Whateley.”17 While the Paul’s Cross pulpit was important for the reasons noted above, other pulpits gave expression to theological and political counsel in the 1620s as part of an emerging public sphere. McCullough has demonstrated James’s remarkable patronage of sermons at court, and analyzed their impact on the court’s cultural life and the polity of the Jacobean church. He concludes that “court preaching rotas, with their striking juxtaposition of spokesmen for very different interests in the English church, attest to a commendable inclusivity on James’s part,” although some of the lists for particular seasons also reveal the “fault lines” that would rend the church during the next reign.18 James’s delight in appointing chaplains is indicated by the fact that at his death he was attended by 62 royal chaplains to Elizabeth’s 17, an increase which would have made tight personal control over court sermon rotas “practically impossible.”19 Perhaps the most significant change 13

14 15

16 17 18 19

The standard work on this pulpit is Maclure, The Paul’s Cross Sermons, revised by Pauls and Boswell, Register of sermons. See, as well, Morrissey’s dissertation, “Rhetoric, religion, and politics,” and the discussion of the changing doctrinal tenor of Paul’s Cross sermons in Appendix I of Tyacke’s Anti-Calvinists. Maclure, p. 141. Lake and Questier argue that “modes of action and communication appropriate to the sort of public sphere we are discussing here could be and were used by both the Catholic opponents and the Puritan critics of the [Elizabethan] regime, but these practices and techniques originated in the actions of groups or factions located at or near the center of the establishment” (“Puritans, Papists, and the ‘Public Sphere’, ” 591–2). The concept of “middle nature” is explored in my “Donne’s Protestant Casuistry,” 53–66. Morrissey, “Rhetoric, religion, and politics,” p. 2. Ibid. McCullough, Sermons at Court, p. 113. Ibid., p. 116.

5

John Donne and Conformity in Crisis instituted by James was the creation of Tuesday sermons commemorating his deliverance from the Gowry conspiracy of 5 August 1600. After the Gunpowder Plot was discovered, also on a Tuesday, both days were kept with great solemnity, observed in every church with a specially appointed service and sermon.20 James’s enthusiasm for sermons elevated a mundane, perhaps optional, observance to a twice-weekly court obligation, and “galvanized a small but very prominent group of clergy to focus their attention on the court as a crucial battleground in a long campaign to reorient the ecclesiology of the English church.”21 McCullough also describes the court sermons delivered specifically at Denmark House and St. James’s to Queen Anne and Prince Henry respectively by colleges of sworn chaplains similar to those who preached at Whitehall before James. These three Jacobean courts tripled the number of royal centres of ecclesiastical patronage, and, together, dramatize “the ecclesiological varieties – and divisions – that marked the Jacobean church.”22 McCullough demonstrates that despite Anne’s Catholicism, her patronage, both religious and secular, observed no neat confessional boundaries. She was a church papist in the matter of weekly services, although she appears to have abstained from public communion in the Church of England. Prince Henry’s chaplains, too, bear the mark of their patron, imbued in the “progressive and politicized Calvinism of the Leicester–Sidney–Essex tradition.”23 Henry was confirmed by these in a “brand of English Protestantism that was doctrinally Calvinist, vehemently anti-Catholic, and sympathetic to military evangelism.”24 Such an agenda needs to be compared to the balancing of political and ecclesiological interests that marked James’s court. The competing interests of these three courts would come to a head in the years immediately preceding Charles’s accession to the throne in 1625. Outside London and its tradition of court and public sermons appointed for certain days, sermons at visitations, assizes, and other occasions contributed to pulpit discourse as well. Sermons were part of the triennial diocesan visitations, generally devoted to issues of vocation appropriate to preachers and ecclesiastical administrators.25 Assize sermons, delivered by preachers who were, strictly speaking, chaplains of the sheriff, commonly concerned themselves with the health of the body politic to stress the importance of justice, authority, and order to national stability, and the concomitant duties of magistrates and civil authorities to maintain justice. Clearly, awareness of the conventional nature of these types of sermons allows for more effective analysis of particular examples of the genre.26 For the most part, however, the sermons of the period have not been well served by literary critics or historians. Although sermons are acknowledged as powerful media for propaganda, instruction, prophecy, and polemic, they have not been

20 21 22 23 24 25 26

Ibid., p. 119. Ibid., p. 164. Ibid., p. 7. Ibid., p. 183. Ibid., p. 187. Fincham, Prelate as Pastor, p. 117. For an account of the genre of the Paul’s Cross Jeremiad see Morrissey, “Elect Nations and prophetic preaching.”

6

John Donne and the late Jacobean Public Sphere treated thoroughly as important components of an emerging public sphere.27 This lack of attention to sermons in general has not prevented scholars from mining sermons for quotations to prove certain political theses, but very little sustained analysis has been devoted to the sermons of even the most well known preachers. To some extent, scholars have examined sermons with literary as well as historical interest, but on the whole sermons have tended to fall between the disciplines in the construction of seventeenth-century political and religious culture. Scholarly use of Donne’s sermons is not different in kind from that made of the sermons of Andrewes, Hall, or any number of early-modern preachers whose work is deemed to have literary as well as theological or historical merit. In fact, despite T. S. Eliot’s preference for the pulpit eloquence of Andrewes, there is very little written specifically about his sermons.28 Huntley passes over Hall’s sermons in a survey of his literary career, while the sermons of such popular and prolific seventeenth-century preachers as Thomas Adams, John Prideaux, Robert Sanderson, James Ussher, and Thomas Gataker have been virtually ignored.29 Cogswell’s advice to historians to pay closer attention to the sermons and pamphlets that poured from the press during the 1620s is particularly important for determining contemporary political attitudes apart from those documented in official sources relating to royal administration. Cogswell cautions that while the results will be sparse and impressionistic, they will provide practically the only clues we possess to the complex dynamics of early Stuart political life. True, these materials do represent “one of the largest underutilized veins of information on the early seventeenth century”;30 however, the rules of scholarly engagement with these sources have not been clear. Cogswell’s own work on the diplomatic and political history of the 1620s offers readings of some of these underutilized archival resources, but points as well to some of the oversimplifications that are the necessary byproduct of a focus on sermons as prooftexts rather than as objects of scholarly investigation in their own right.31 Morrissey’s survey of the use of sermons as primary sources rather than as texts lays out this problem in more detail,

27

28

29

30 31

This methodological point, first made in my “Introduction” to a special issue of the John Donne Journal, has been updated and extended in the editorial introduction to The English Sermon Revised and in Morrissey’s review of the historiography of sermons in “Interdisciplinarity.” Morrissey concurs with my point, made also by McCullough and Ferrell in their monographs, that “there is considerable research still needed before we can claim to have a methodology that uncovers a sermon’s full engagement with its historical moment” (1123). See for example works by Reidy and Lossky. McCullough has recently published a treatment of the printing history of Andrewes’s sermons before the Civil War entitled “Making Dead Men Speak.” We await McCullough’s edition of Andrewes’s works and his biography of Andrewes, both in progress. See also Tyacke, “Lancelot Andrewes and the Myth of Anglicanism.” For a review of two recent editions of Andrewes’s texts that analyzes the “construction” of Andrewes as a preacher, see Klemp, “Editing Renaissance Sermons.” See Corthell, “Joseph Hall.” Huntley’s monograph contains no chapter on the sermons. There is some treatment of sermons in McCabe’s study of Hall. Work by Lake cited throughout this study is the exception to these claims. Cogswell, “Politics of Propaganda,” 215. Cogswell’s brief discussion of the ways in which preachers exploited the horrors of continental wars of religion “to encourage as well as to stifle criticism of royal policy” (Blessed Revolution, pp. 27–9) groups preachers together without engaging fully in analysis of the political intentions or effects of the sermons cited. Cogswell’s aim to construct a political history makes these sermons illustrative, but implicitly less authoritative than other documentary sources.

7

John Donne and Conformity in Crisis and outlines the “methodological laziness” that she says characterizes many investigations of the relations between preaching styles and philosophies.32 USING DONNE’S SERMONS AS EVIDENCE The problem of scholarly neglect of sermons in general is mirrored unexpectedly in scholarship on the sermons of John Donne, despite his reputation and the undisputed literary merit of his work. Among many fine preachers, Donne was popular in the city pulpits of Lincoln’s Inn, St. Paul’s, Whitehall, and St. Dunstan’s-in-the-West. The high esteem in which he was held at Lincoln’s Inn is well documented; even after he had been promoted to the deanery of St. Paul’s in 1621, he was made an honourary bencher of the Inn, and asked to preach the sermon at the official dedication of its new chapel. Bald speaks of Donne’s later reputation as one of the great preachers of his age; and reports of Donne’s sermons preached at Paul’s Cross appear in contemporary letters of newswriters and diarists.33 Despite the revival in Donne studies, and more recently the revival of interest in Donne’s prose, however, sermon scholarship is not sufficiently developed. Donne’s sermons have been studied for their style, imagery, and poetic sensibility, the primary interest in them being that they are the sermons of a poet. Some important textual, critical, and contextual studies have been produced, of course, and increasingly Donne’s sermons have been used to provide evidence of his philosophical, religious, and epistemological habits of thought. However, very little work has been done on historical contexts for the sermons.34 This is not to say that the sermons have not been cited. In many recent studies, they form the texture and weave of the critical fabric, but remain stubbornly invisible, inaccessible except as cryptic references in footnotes and fragmentary quotations. Rarely are the sermons cited in indices, despite pervasive quotation; however, even the most passing reference to a poem by Donne finds its way into a book’s index. Even when the sermons emerge from their condition of neglect, the difficulties of using them as evidence for political and theological generalizations is apparent. T. S. Eliot predicted that “Donne will always have more readers than Andrewes, for the reason that his sermons can be read in detached passages and for the reason that they can be read by those who have no interest in the subject.”35 But, as criticism of his sermons bears out, such popularity, on such terms, has exacted its toll. Most readers of Donne’s sermons, trained as literary critics, approach the sermons with the aid of the Index, to argue from the sermons to the poems, to Donne’s biography, and increasingly, to Donne’s religion and politics. In fact, readers who profoundly mistrust the literal in poetry and appreciate the witty complexity of Donne’s poetic strategies, find nothing anomalous in reading the sermons literally, assuming that Donne’s views are here straightforwardly expressed. At the same 32 33 34

35

Morrissey, “Interdisciplinarity,” 1121. See the account of Donne at Lincoln’s Inn in Bald, p. 315 and passim. Exceptions include the work cited by McCullough, Ferrell, and Morrissey above. In addition, important work using historical contextualism as part of the methodology includes Guibbory; Johnson, pp. 16–27, 77–84 and passim; Annabel Patterson, “Donne in Shadows: Pictures and Politics”; Scodel; Shami, “Pulpit Crisis of 1622.” Eliot, p. 23.

8

John Donne and the late Jacobean Public Sphere time, readers quote selectively from among Donne’s apparently contradictory statements to support their general impression of Donne’s religious and political alignments. Clearly, more rigorous interpretive paradigms for historical contextualism need to be developed.36 If arguing from within the sermons to generalize about Donne’s theology is treacherous, arguing from the sermons to Donne’s poems, his life, or his political beliefs is even more perilous. Historians, for example, have commented only sporadically, and tentatively, on Donne, discouraged perhaps by the sheer volume of his work, or by his ambiguous political profile. Generally, the sermons are read as authoritative proof texts, a compendium of quotations that can be appropriated literally by readers to provide glosses on Donne’s poetry and earlier writings, to confirm a biographical profile, or to support generalizations about Donne’s beliefs.37 The practice of “selective” quotation, of using the sermons as prooftexts or glosses, is bolstered by a second, closely related practice that pairs Donne with other figures by means of brief quotation. This method of pairing sometimes allows verbal similarities to modulate into biographical and then full-fledged religious identifications. Even where it doesn’t, quotations showing where Donne sounds like puritan preachers Richard Sibbes or Henry Smith have been used to support the claim that Donne’s imagination was “puritan,” while pairings with quotations by Laud and Montagu have supported the contradictory claim for an Arminian Donne.38 Both of these observations are instructive, but insufficient. For the terms “Arminian” and “puritan” to have any significant meaning in relation to Donne, or for any other preacher, these larger contexts, based on detailed and comprehensive historical reading, need to be constructed. To some extent, all quotation and comparison participates in the interpretive practice outlined above, and the habit of noticing linguistic similarities is a defining feature of the best literary scholarship. But what one “sounds like” has to be gauged much more precisely in terms of context, and larger patterns of emphasis and rhetorical strategy. Rhetorical moderation could be sincere or tactical, as Lake’s studies of Hall demonstrate, and it is often difficult to gauge the degree of similarity between like-sounding rhetorical formulations. Donne himself felt the sting of this sort of guilt by association when he was called before Laud in 1627 to

36

37

38

Early attempts to define Donne’s religion using sermons include Horton Davies, pp. 195–203; Lewalski, p. 17; Sellin, passim. Lake’s work on Sanderson, Hall, and Skinner exemplifies the kind of analysis such complex bodies of work require. See especially “Serving God and the Times,” “The moderate and irenic case for religious war,” and “Joseph Hall, Robert Skinner and the Rhetoric of Moderation.” Work by Milton, although not focused in a detailed or systematic way on particular authors, exemplifies the kind of rhetorical reading of texts called for in the reviews of sermons scholarship by Shami, Ferrell and McCullough, and Morrissey, noted above. On the reliability of the Index to Donne’s sermons see my review of Troy D. Reeves’s Index to the Sermons of John Donne. See my “Introduction: Reading Donne’s Sermons” for discussion of the faulty assumptions underlining this methodology. I share Webster’s suspicion of analyses that depend on the published works of seventeenth-century divines as “rounded systems of theology” (p. 106), and the historically contextualized treatment of Donne in this book is intended to mitigate this weakness. Webster observes that printed sermons tell us “most about those ministers held in highest esteem by their colleagues and about the subjects they were most prepared to release into the uncontrollable public sphere of print” (p. 106). See especially, Doerksen, “Saint Paul’s Puritan” and the article by Guibbory noted above. I am grateful to Achsah Guibbory for many productive discussions on these issues.

9

John Donne and Conformity in Crisis justify one of his sermons.39 In many cases the minute rhetorical and contextual differences are more important than the similarities. Finally, use of Donne’s biography to establish the network of Donne’s religious allegiances has proven problematic because scholars have not agreed on which details to emphasize or ignore, if they challenge at all, the biographical narrative (from apostasy to ambition) constructed by Bald and Carey.40 But, the importance of rewriting the narrative of Donne’s biography cannot be overestimated. In his own day, Donne was not identified with any particular faction within the English church; in fact, his associates included a wide range of people, connected with virtually every named religious party. This record has been difficult to interpret for modern scholars. My own work has stressed Donne’s political and social connections with people along the full spectrum of religious positions in England, and, especially, with continental protestantism. So, I have emphasized Donne’s connections with Archbishop Abbot in 1622 (at a time when Abbot was out of favour); his connections with Lincoln’s Inn puritans, including Thomas Gataker; his participation in a coded correspondence among continental protestant supporters; his medal commemorating the Synod of Dort; his election as prolocutor of Convocation.41 Others have stressed his Catholic baptism, his status as royal chaplain, his possession of a controversial Arminian book, his gift of that book to Izaak Walton, and his participation on the High Commission with Neile and Laud.42 Even where the record has been silent, scholars have interpreted that silence. I have noted for example, that Donne was not promoted to the bishopric that his absolutist theology might have predicted, that he was not a participant at the York House debates on Arminian theology, and that, while Donne was elected prolocutor of the 1626 Convocation, Richard Montagu was absent from the proceedings altogether. A number of interpretive problems result from these assumptions and from the “politics of quotation” that expresses them. Some of these problems can be attributed directly to difficulties of access to the large and complex body of material that constitutes Donne’s sermons, and can be applied to use of sermons in general. The usual approach to the sermons is synecdochal, the use of fragments to represent the whole, whether these fragments are selected by reference to the Index to Donne’s sermons, or whether they depend on the pre-selection of “significant” texts by earlier critics. 39

40

41

42

This sermon has provoked considerable interest among scholars because it is one recorded example of Donne’s failure to satisfy the authorities. For discussion of the sermon see Annabel Patterson, Censorship and Interpretation; Shami, “Kings and Desperate Men”; Strier; Scodel; Shami, “AntiCatholicism,” pp. 147–8; Guibbory, 434–5. For reappraisals of Donne’s biography that call into question these formulations and reassess Donne’s Catholicism see, especially, Flynn, John Donne and the Ancient Catholic Nobility; Hester, “ ‘this cannot be said’: a Preface to the Reader of Donne’s Lyrics.” Flynn’s contributions to the project of rewriting Donne’s biography have altered the course of Donne studies. See especially Shami, “Pulpit Crisis of 1622”; Shami, “ ‘Speaking openly’ ”; Flynn, “Donne’s Politics” (outlining Donne’s possible associations with Paolo Sarpi, the Italian republican); Sellin; Johnson. Guibbory, 437–8. At Laud’s trial, the prosecution associated Laud with Montagu on the grounds that Laud had Montagu’s books in his study. Laud denied having given his approbation to Montagu’s published views, adding “I have Bellarmine in my study [and] therefore I am a Papist, or I have the Alcoran in my study [and] therefore I am a Turk, is as good an argument as . . . I have Bishop Montague’s books in my study [and] therefore I am an Arminian” (Works, IV, 289–90). Tyacke notes that Laud appears here to acknowledge that Montagu was indeed an Arminian (AntiCalvinists, p. 268).

10

John Donne and the late Jacobean Public Sphere Although many examples might be adduced, the evolution of a tradition of scholarship that finds Donne’s politics to be “absolutist” relies on such an approach. In itself, such a claim is unobjectionable, if by “absolutist” one means advocating obedience to a king whose power derived “either from a direct divine gift or an irreversible grant from the people,” who was “under a moral obligation to obey the laws of the land,” but who, theoretically at least, was “free to override any of the legal rights of their subjects in case of necessity.43 Donne’s theoretical support of absolutism is readily demonstrable. However, if by “absolutism” one means simply a lust for power, and if one cites Donne’s comments on God’s power to support a claim about Donne’s politics, the situation is altered. One of the founding claims of Carey’s study is that Donne was most fascinated by God’s attribute of power as something that somehow compensated for his own political powerlessness. As Carey expresses it, “when Donne entered the Church he found in God, and in his own position as God’s spokesman, a final and fully adequate expression of his power lust. If we ask what positive quality Donne most consistently reverences in the sermons, the answer is neither beauty, nor life, nor love, but power. His God is a heavenly powerhouse, with all circuits ablaze. . . . Further . . . it is God’s destructive power that Donne particularly relishes dwelling on. . . . It is God as killer and pulverizer that Donne celebrates.”44 The proof for such provocative claims hides in terse footnotes that even someone armed only with the Index might challenge. Even a cursory glance at the Index under GOD: Attributes of would have sent Carey to 204 places that mention God’s Mercy (III, 82) as compared to 41 that mention Power (III, 83). One of these places actually celebrates the power of God to comfort, “a power to erect and settle a tottering, a dejected soule, an overthrowne, a bruised, a broken, a troden, a ground, a battered, an evaporated, an annihilated spirit” (III, 270). Nor does Carey consider how, across the sermons, Donne regularly invokes the Son’s attribute of wisdom, and the Spirit’s attribute of goodness to balance the focus on power attributed to the Father. The practice of quotation that I am describing can best be illustrated from Debora Shuger’s recently reprinted chapter on Donne’s sermons.45 Shuger takes the single phrase “Measure God by earthly Princes” as the epigraph to an analysis of how Donne uses the analogy between God and king.46 In fact, the reference in the sermon from which it is taken qualifies, if it does not negate, the meaning Shuger intends and epitomizes the misinterpretability of isolated quotations from the sermons. Donne continues the analogy in parentheses: “(for we may measure the world by a Barly corne)” (V, 371), nullifying Shuger’s claim that Donne differs from his contemporaries in the degree to which he stresses the analogy between God and kings. Clearly, the parenthetical material undercuts the epigraph’s imperative, revealing a complex irony that Shuger’s quotation masks.

43

44 45

46

Lake, Anglicans and Puritans?, p. 7. Sommerville refutes the revisionist definition of “absolutism” as the power to “rule by proclamation” without any obligation to “consult with their subjects or uphold old constitutional agreements,” pp. 228–34. Carey, John Donne, pp. 122–3. Shuger, Habits of Thought. The chapter on Donne is reprinted, without revision or correction, in The English Sermon Revised. It is possible to trace the genealogy of Shuger’s view of Donne’s absolutism to her quotation of Carey’s quotations (Shami, “Politics of Quotation,” p. 406, n.12). Shuger, p. 165.

11

John Donne and Conformity in Crisis Similarly, in a paragraph discussing Donne’s habit of depicting divine/human interaction as analogous to seventeenth-century absolute monarchy and its subjects, Shuger focuses on the highly politicized language in which Donne speaks of God’s unrevealed decrees. Donne associates these, she notes, with royal prerogative and absolute power, implying that a reserve of power exists behind the ordinary lawful operations of the monarch (or divinity) that can neither be questioned nor limited. To prove this point, Shuger cites this “passage” from the sermons. “It is not merely unnecessary,” she concludes, “to probe God’s secrets, but ‘Libell’ to publish them, ‘an injury to God, and against his Crowne’ ” [4.12.78–81].47 Donne’s own words are much more ambivalent, however, and reveal a concern for decorum and audience, for the “fit” place in which to discuss controversial matters, specifically the doctrine of election. Donne’s wording is far more tentative than Shuger’s (it “may” be a libel, it “may” be an injury to God), suggesting in fact that the error is not in questioning and knowing, but in publishing, particularly in public sermons where the abilities of the congregation to discern the subtle points of controversy might not be sufficient to render that place fit for arguing mysterious points of doctrine. Furthermore, the passage is not attempting to argue for the absolutism, whether religious or political, of particular doctrines, but stressing the pastoral aims of preaching these doctrines in the public sphere. Donne’s sermons, then, are paradigmatic of the use of sermons by modern scholars. The intriguing problems of evidence offered by sermons, and particularly those of a preacher so resistant to labeling as Donne, indicate that a study of Donne as a unique pulpit voice outside the context of other pulpit voices is not tenable. To some extent, then, while this book is not strictly a contribution to political or church history as those disciplines are commonly understood, it contributes, nonetheless, to an understanding of the broader political aspects of the pulpit at precisely those points where Donne’s career intersects with that institution. By putting his sermons into a broader context, I hope to place him more fully than has hitherto been attempted among his peers, as a professional voice within the Church of England. This aim has created problems of proportion and length, mitigated to some extent by my decision to focus on Donne’s sermons during the last years of James’s pulpit. I have done so for a variety of reasons. Primary among these is the fact that through his Directions to Preachers, James attempted to intervene directly to control pulpit discourse in this period of crisis. Furthermore, the spotlight focused on sermons by the Directions and their efforts at censorship highlights a particularly rich sample of sermons within which to test the evidentiary methodologies I am developing and to contextualize Donne’s own contributions, including his sermon defending the Directions of 15 September 1622. Focus on sermons of these late Jacobean years also allows concentration on the most difficult evidence to interpret, that provided by conformist preachers of the middle ground under pressures both internal and external within the English church. The pressures brought to bear on sermons by the three crises I have called the crisis of censorship, the crisis of controversy, and the crisis of religious and national identity provide a context for interpreting Donne’s contributions to the reconstruction of the early Stuart church.

47

Ibid., p. 167.

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John Donne and the late Jacobean Public Sphere CRISIS OF CENSORSHIP Examining the circumstances surrounding the issuing of the Directions and the sermons preached or reprinted in the years directly following them can illuminate one of the crucial historical debates of the period. The question remains of what James hoped to gain by issuing such Directions, and whether in fact they succeeded in taming the pulpits. So a consideration of what could reasonably constitute conformity in sermons after James I issued his Directions in 1622 leads directly to questions regarding the nature, extent, and effectiveness of censorship of sermons in the last years of his reign. The first is the question of how ecclesiastical and state authorities enforced these Directions, if at all, particularly outside of London and the university towns. Historical reporting of such regulation is by no means complete, but we can fill out our sense of what was allowed by examining printed sermons from the period, including sermons that were popularly reprinted. In addition we can reach tentative conclusions about what was not allowed by examining Visitation Articles, correspondence, diaries, pamphlets, and other evidence scattered among historical archives. The Directions to Preachers, then, and the pulpit response to them, must be viewed in the larger context of state efforts to control speech in the Jacobean period. Fincham has shown that churchmen of all persuasions recognized regulation of preaching as necessary. He notes that 14 canons of 1604 were devoted to this matter, “with the aim of ensuring a plentiful supply of edifying sermons from licensed preachers.”48 He also observes that James’s ambivalence towards preaching, balancing a desire for “good preaching and preachers” against the fear of such as are “factious and turbulent,” was in fact a destabilizing force in the pulpit, used by those Arminian bishops who wanted to curb contentious preaching,49 and radicalizing marginal conformists. Not surprisingly, how to control the most powerful public medium for influencing opinion in the nation became particularly important in the 1620s with the growing opposition to James’s foreign policy and its domestic consequences. However, the debate about the nature and extent of censorship – of the pulpit, the theatres, and the press – though wide-ranging, is inconclusive.50 James’s Directions for Preachers were his most explicit attempt to control and regulate speech during his reign, and, whatever their success, their issuing marked an important moment in the history of the English pulpit. This was not the first time, however, that James had been disturbed by the unruliness of his preachers. In 1604 the Venetian ambassador reported James’s anger against preachers who spoke against the peace with Spain, for example. More recently, in 1620 and 1621, James had issued proclamations prohibiting interference with affairs of state, although a specific injunction not to discuss the Spanish match in sermons was apparently not obeyed. Those who were indiscreet could be examined legally and before the Privy Council, and suppressed judicially by the Courts of High Commission or Star Chamber.

48 49 50

Fincham, Prelate as Pastor, p. 240. Ibid., p. 241. Lambert, “The Printers and the Government,” p. 1, makes the point that a repressive relationship is not the only association possible between government and printers. Annabel Patterson describes a “repressive culture” that dominated “consciousness and communication” among the literate in this period (Censorship, pp. 17, 63).

13

John Donne and Conformity in Crisis They could also be examined by the bishops during diocesan visitations, and forced to answer to specific articles relating to discipline and conformity in the church. A small but significant number were interrogated, imprisoned, fined, or deprived of their clerical livings. While these courts could not punish with death, the remedies of corporal punishment such as pillory, whipping, branding, and mutilation, were available to them as punishments for seditious libel.51 However, control of what was said in the pulpit remained tenuous and laws against seditious speech difficult to enforce, even at Paul’s Cross. In fact, the unpredictable nature of law enforcement was perhaps the most effective deterrent to explicitly political sermons. Preachers could never be certain what would attract the attention of the authorities or how severely they would be punished. And while measuring the degree of self-censorship exercised by preachers during this period is difficult, there can be no doubt that the climate of uncertainty contributed to a more cautious approach by all but the most zealous critics. Documenting the conditions affecting censorship of printed sermons in this period is somewhat easier. Until 1640, when Parliament initiated its own controls, regulation of the press proceeded from the crown, the Stationers Company, the church, and the licensing system. Not all of these influenced the printing of sermons directly, but together they affected the dissemination of religious works, and particularly controversial material. Increasingly, however, scholars question the notion of censorship as sufficient to explain the non-appearance or delayed publication of any particular book. Lambert, for one, cites social, economic, and practical explanations to qualify the distortions of such a narrowly political analysis, concluding: “we should not extrapolate the well-known special cases, most of which were originally enumerated for purely political purposes, into a crushing weight of bureaucratic censorship intended to stifle all discussion. . . . Sermons of all complexions were preached and printed.”52 Worden also questions claims made for the impact of censorship, arguing that it was the ineptitude rather than the existence of censorship to which writers objected.53 Even registering the effects of censorship primarily in terms of the non-publication of books or interference in their production may be misleading. Milton’s reconsideration of the subject focuses on the connections between licensing, censorship, and religious orthodoxy,54 acknowledging that “there was an effective tightening of regulations of printing of religious literature in the 1630s, but there were also other means of varying subtlety deployed by the authorities to influence the nature of what was printed in this decade.”55 As he observes, “In the increasingly polarized atmosphere of these years, licensing and censorship could be (and were) used as weapons to block texts and embarrass opponents.”56 Laudian government policy and the hegemony of Laudian opinion succeeded in marginalizing those opposed to its policies.57 51 52 53 54 55 56 57

The broad outlines of censorship laws, enforcement, and procedures can be found in Siebert. Lambert, “Richard Montagu, Arminianism and Censorship,” 68. Worden, p. 48. Milton, “Licensing, Censorship, and Religious Orthodoxy in Early Stuart England.” Ibid., 636. Ibid., 633. A case in point is Stoughton’s The Lovesick Spouse, published in 1640 but circulating in manuscript with other Cambridge anti-Laudian sermons after its delivery at Paul’s Cross in 1623/4. The sermon is discussed in Chapter 9 below.

14

John Donne and the late Jacobean Public Sphere In the end, Milton argues that “censorship” may not be the most useful way of describing the influence of licensers in this period. “The notion of ‘censorship’ was itself a weapon in the controversies of the period, and our obsession with proving or denying its existence may prove to be something of a red herring.”58 Instead, Milton argues that different establishment groups acted against each other in seeking to claim to speak for the Church of England, using the official licensing system as an instrument for determining which religious group appeared moderate and which marginal. The apparent radicalization of puritans in the 1630s, on this account, may have more to do with licensing, and jockeying for the middle ground of orthodoxy, than with doctrine and belief, a topic to which I shall return shortly. CRISIS OF CONTROVERSY What I call the crisis of controversy was the immediate cause of the Directions, the playing out in the public sphere not only of longstanding differences with papists, but now, as well, increasing differences with co-religionists. The pressures of censorship, whether subtly deployed as in the licensing practices described by Milton, or ostentatiously imposed, as in the Directions and the administrative apparatus established to support them, succeeded in intensifying rather than ameliorating the divisions of religious controversy. While preachers were instructed to move away from a polemical preaching style and to raise their debate to less rancorous and personal levels, sermons continued to inveigh against doctrinal enemies in vitriolic terms and to label opponents with the polemical names of “puritan,” “Arminian,” “papist,” “heretic,” and “atheist.” In this period, we find many examples of controversial labels applied polemically, misapplied, rejected, or contested. The resulting atmosphere of controversy – a crisis in the making – has created a crisis of sorts in the modern historiography of this moment. For one thing, although it is convenient to classify or label preachers according to their specific religious orientation, such attempts have obscured the relationships among these preachers. Nor was it always the case that sermons were either one thing or the other. The sermons of Donne, Hall, and many others suggest that many preachers were using the pulpit to work out their own theological positions, not readily assimilated to any system of classification. In scholarship of the specifically religious history of the Jacobean church, Lake, Fincham, and Milton, in particular, have moved discussion away from binary terms – Anglican and puritan – to a full acknowledgement of the complexity of the religious spectrum of positions, ranging from radical to moderate puritanism on the one end, through various versions of largely Calvinist conformity in the centre, to Arminianism and crypto-popery on the other end.59 But the problems of definition and classification that arise from early-modern religious discourse have created difficulties for historians of this period. Furthermore, Buckingham’s crude distinction in 1625 between “o” (for “orthodox”) and “p” (for puritan) has been amplified today to include Calvinists, puritans, conformists, avant-garde

58 59

Ibid., 650. See works by Fincham, Milton, and Lake cited above.

15

John Donne and Conformity in Crisis conformists, Laudians, Arminians, anti-Calvinists – groupings which overlap or collapse doctrinal, ecclesiological, and political categories. And yet, the sophistication promised by these categories hardly improves upon the oversimplification of “o” vs. “p.” If that isn’t complicated enough, we also have to remember that much religious controversy, particularly in moments of crisis, was conducted in polarized rhetorical terms, thus inscribing in the historiography the very binaries that scholars have been at pains to dismiss.60 The names of sectarian religious controversy used in current scholarship were already freighted with their own historical baggage in Donne’s time. Consequently, after the Reformation, churchmen of all stripes claimed to prefer the name of Christian to that of Calvinist, Lutheran, or any other religion named after men. Francis Bunny, a puritan, felt the sting of such labeling from the Catholic side, and rejected their use of “reprochfull names of ‘Lutherans, Zwinglians, Calvinistes, Bezites’, and such like.”61 Richard Montagu, charged with Arminianism, noted that his opponents were willing to be called Calvinists, but asserted that he did not wish to be accounted “Arminian, Calvinist, or Lutheran . . . but a Christian.”62 Called by King James to adhere to a common reformed faith at the Synod of Dort, Joseph Hall asked what, then, to make of those infamous names of Remonstrant, Counter-Remonstrant, Calvinist and Arminian. In the end, he exhorted his hearers to remember that “We are Christians, let us also be ‘of like spirit.’ We are one body, let us also be of one mind” (X, 361). Donne states the point clearly, managing to include Catholics among these religions named after men by calling them “papists”: “If we will goe farther then to be Christians, and those doctrines, which the whole Christian Church hath ever beleeved, . . . if we will call our selves, or endanger, and give occasion to others, to call us from the Names of men, Papists, or Lutherans, or Calvinists, we depart from the true glory and serenity, from the lustre and splendor of this Sunne; . . . Here in the Christian Church, God hath set a tabernacle for the Sunne; And, as in nature, Man hath light enough to discerne the principles of Reason; So in the Christian Church, (considered without subdivisions of Names, and Sects) a Christian hath light enough of all things necessary to salvation” (VII, 310). Milton has suggested that one of the prized names that opponents battled to claim was the name of “moderate,” an observation that further complicates our understanding of religious discourse in the sermons under examination. The historical impact of James’s most extravagant pulpit critics and supporters has been recorded, but these voices at the extremes tell only part of the story. This study arises out of a general sense that the middle ground has been written out of the history of the pulpit in early-modern England, in part because post-revisionist historians are suspicious – and rightly so – of self-proclaimed moderates, and even of moderate-sounding preachers. This might explain why the extreme voices

60

61 62

Milton, Catholic and Reformed, pp. 7–9; Fincham and Lake, “The Ecclesiastical Policies of James I and Charles I”; Fincham, “Clerical Conformity from Whitgift to Laud”; Lake, “The Problem of Puritanism.” Bunny, sig. Cc7v. Montagu, Appello Caesarem, p. 10. Milton, Catholic and Reformed, observes that “Montagu’s rejection of ‘names of division’ represented not just a standard distaste for exclusive terminology, but a more radical detachment from the churches to which this terminology was generally applied” (p. 447).

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John Donne and the late Jacobean Public Sphere of dissent or endorsement have been recorded, while sermons of the majority of preachers have been ignored or, as in the case of Donne, appropriated for other political agendas. But it is at the risk of misrepresenting the nature and extent of public discussion in the sermons that we neglect this vast body of material. CRISIS OF IDENTITY The crisis precipitated by the pressure of censorship and exacerbated by the increasingly controversial nature of religious discourse led to the third crisis, the crisis of identity for the Church of England. Many scholars have taken James’s depiction of the English church as an inclusive institution, balancing within its boundaries all but the most extreme religious voices, as the reality. The moderation of his claim to exclude only seditious or heretical men, however, has been challenged by Ferrell, Lake, Questier, and Milton who describe a much more polemical, less moderate, substratum beneath the moderate exterior. Focus on sermons rather than on more polemical tracts modifies this conclusion, suggesting that a great many preachers – particularly those we identify as conformists – were working to interpret, define, and express the religious values of the Church of England by resisting as well as by participating in religious controversy. Evidence of “moderation” or “conformity,” of course, is difficult to gather and interpret. In the 1620s, it was rare to find the hardened ideological positions and polarized political attitudes that precipitated the constitutional and religious crises of the 1640s, although certain events, like the Directions to Preachers and the Forced Loan, succeeded in raising the stakes of the debates sufficiently to polarize some opponents, and to lure them out of their imagined or pretended “middle way.”63 Another question to be addressed is what could reasonably constitute “moderation” in the late Jacobean pulpit. According to Fincham, the Jacobean policy was one of “accommodation of moderate nonconformity,” a policy challenged under Charles, who attempted a tighter regulation of preaching and lecturing than hitherto, and a binding of lecturers more closely to a parochial ministry.64 Clearly the sermons of Sibthorpe and Manwaring, which aroused such bitter controversy later in the decade, took the most extreme royalist position in making obedience to the king’s demand for the forced loan a case of conscience, and in labeling refusers of the loan with the politically loaded name of “recusants.” These sermons taxed the tolerance of many of the clergy, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, who refused to license Sibthorpe’s sermon and was eventually overruled by the king himself. But what avenues were open for preachers like Donne, Hall, Gataker, Sanderson and others who, though not enthusiastic about all royal policies or their implementation, offered their advice through authorized pulpit discourses, choosing to

63

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Cust’s narrative of the “erosion of the middle ground” in his discussion of the political impact of the forced loan of 1626 has some explanatory power in relation to this earlier crisis as well (The Forced Loan, p. 329). See also Sharpe, “Parliamentary History.” Fincham, “Conformity,” pp. 10–13.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis work for change within the English church by pressing from the centre to the margins? Certainly preachers had at their command many resources of biblical and historical interpretation. In particular, they could rely on choice of text, application of biblical example to present circumstances, and analogy to comment discreetly on the spiritual and political condition of England. In addition, traditions such as those encouraging anti-papist rhetoric in sermons commemorating the Gunpowder Plot, the Gowry anniversary, liturgical feasts, and other important preaching occasions allowed a measure of free speech against common enemies of the church and state. Thematic emphasis on issues of conscience, obedience, and authority also foregrounded these questions, and not always to preach unquestioning obedience. Even dedications and introductory material attached to printed sermons could alert readers to the sermon’s political alignment. Within the limits of allowable discourse, many preachers found room to speak their minds freely and yet obediently. A study of late Jacobean sermons reveals that preachers in the 1620s were increasingly challenged by the competing claims of conscience and authority, particularly following the Directions. It is possible, and I will argue, likely, that conscience rather than fear or political expediency alone persuaded many of these preachers to support existing structures of authority and urged them to concentrate on lawful means of effecting change and offering counsel. In this respect, they were still absolutists, but their theoretical absolutist framework was often qualified considerably by their sermons. Making claims for the “moderation” of any preacher, however, is problematic. Almost all scholars who talk about moderation warn us that even apparently moderate statements of doctrine and attitude were tactical (especially among conformists), designed to cast opponents (especially puritan opponents) as extremists.65 Lake, for example, describes Sanderson as “a moderate of sorts: a moderate Calvinist, a moderate supporter of the Laudian church and the Personal Rule, a moderate supporter of iure divino episcopacy, a moderate (or at least inactive) Royalist – a moderate in virtually everything, therefore, except in his hatred of Puritanism. That and that alone determined the style of piety that he drew out of his formal Calvinism; it determined the extent and nature of his collaboration with Laud, of his royalism, and eventually it prompted him heavily to modify if not repudiate his long-standing commitment to Calvinist orthodoxy.”66 Lake also demonstrates that both Hall and Skinner, divines at some distance from each other on the spectrum, employed the same moderate rhetoric in part because “they both recognized the considerable polemical and political advantages to be had from selling themselves to wider audiences in precisely those same moderate terms.”67 Guibbory agrees that most of the rhetoric of moderation was distinctly, 65

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Lake, “Moderation at the Early Stuart Court”; Ferrell, Government by Polemic; Narveson; Milton, “Licensing”. Lake, “Calvinist Conformity,” 114. Lake, “Moderation at the Early Stuart Court,” p. 181. Ferrell is less open to suggestions that the moderate rhetoric of mainstream conformists could ever be taken at face value. “The ultraconformists’ pursuit of a ‘moderate’ course was at its heart a rhetorical strategy aimed at eliminating the Puritans’ own claim to moderation” (Government by Polemic, p. 62). Ferrell finds in Jacobean “moderation” a “peculiarly provocative quality” (p. 87). She argues that this kind of rhetoric was dominant at court and “was capable of relegating moderate Puritans and the bishops who indulged them to roles as dangerous schismatics” (p. 174).

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John Donne and the late Jacobean Public Sphere and immoderately, anti-puritan.68 Milton suggests that perhaps “official licensing” was “decisive in determining which religious group appeared moderate and mainstream, and which appeared radical and marginal, in early Stuart England.”69 We clearly need much more detailed discussion of how the language of moderation was used before we can formulate, with certainty, the codes by which it can be interpreted. But surely, excluding puritans, or wanting to appear mainstream, were only two of many possible motives for speaking moderately. This study suggests that Donne’s rhetoric of moderation was tactically inclusive rather than exclusive, and that his goal was to expand rather than to limit the grounds of conformity to the Church of England. However, Donne’s rhetoric of moderation will have to be measured against that of his contemporaries in order to comprehend its nature and effects.70 CONFORMITY IN CRISIS: THE CASE OF JOHN DONNE On 15 September 1622, Donne delivered a sermon at Paul’s Cross defending the Directions to Preachers and interpreting their practical consequences for preachers. On 3 April 1625, following the death of King James, Donne preached before the new king at St. James’s, laying out his vision of the English church. These performances frame a crucial period in Donne’s relations with this church, and reveal an identity formed in the crucible of censorship and controversy that marked the late Jacobean pulpit. Scholarly assessment of Donne’s religious identity, in fact, mirrors the crises and uncertainties of these historical conditions and the rhetorical practices that emerged to deal with these pressures, producing a full range of Donnes: Donne of the puritan imagination; Donne the “Calvinist episcopalian”; Donne the conformist; Donne the avant-garde conformist; Donne 68

69 70

Guibbory concedes that “people on both sides of the controversies accused their opponents of lack of charity,” but also claims that “charity” became “the particular code word of the Arminians and the Laudians” who charged the puritans with uncharitable zeal (422). Donne has a great deal to say about “zeal,” not all of it negative. See my “Donne’s Protestant Casuistry,” 60–1, where I argue that, while Donne warns his hearers against inordinate zeal, he is also careful to warn against extremes of discretion. Two examples to which Donne returns here are Abraham, who was not zealous enough on behalf of the Sodomites, and Peter, whose advice to Christ to retire from evident danger shows the danger of labeling lack of zeal and retirement from the duties of one’s calling “discretion.” I agree entirely with Carrithers’s and Hardy’s qualifications of my false distinction between discretion and zeal, preferring their emphasis on Donne’s “zealous alertness that tried to avoid the dejection of spirit or uncharitable disputatiousness he associated with Separatism and to avoid the power-mongering tendentiousness he associated with spiritual complacency, Pelagianism, and Rome” (pp. 151–2). These authors are following Norbrook’s suggestion that Donne “preferred evangelical ‘zeal’ to the decency that was so much a feature of High Church rhetoric” (p. 23). Milton, “Licensing,” 651. In their introduction to Conformity and Orthodoxy, Lake and Questier warn against expanding the available lexicon of analytic terms “by thus privileging the supposedly moderate middle” and “inventing a third term for a soggy middle to which the majority of people, sitting neither at one extreme or the other, can be assimilated” (p. xv). Such an approach risks “preserving rather than transcending” these dichotomies, while conferring a “false coherence” of a middle way, “a coherence blessed with that peculiarly English and indeed very contemporary term of approval – the moderation of the third way” (pp. xv–xvi). By shifting analysis away from the “circular mode of category formation” to “the constitution and reconstitution of the boundaries which contemporaries used to form their own categories of approbation and disapprobation,” Lake and Questier prefer to think of orthodoxy and conformity “not as stable quantities but rather as sites of conflict and contest” (p. xx), a conclusion with which I concur.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis the Arminian. These Donnes occupy a spectrum from reluctant to enthusiastic conformity to the Church of England, from an emphasis on godly preaching to a preference for sacrament and ritual, from connection with international protestantism to connection with Rome, from predestinarian theology to a stress on universal grace and good works. Rather than refuting some identifications and endorsing others, however, one should ask the more interesting question of why Donne can be so readily assimilated to such radically different perspectives and positions. In what follows, I hope to show that, in response to the crises of censorship and controversy, Donne developed a professional and personal identity that embodied his capacious vision of the English church, and its mandate to integrate and convert all but the most determined recusants. Donne’s late Jacobean sermons clearly express an emerging early-modern awareness of the impact of public discourse on the expression of religious belief, and the importance of establishing principles governing this discourse. One of the first tasks of each generation of the post-Reformation church in England was to express itself in relation to competing versions of the “true” church. Whereas most Elizabethan and Jacobean ministers had defined themselves in large part in opposition to the Church of Rome, the Synod of Dort had ensured that public religious discourse now also took into account the relations between the Thirty-Nine Articles and the confessions of the reformed Churches.71 To some degree, Donne’s professional status in the 1620s was constructed in the larger international context and in opposition to the professional print controversialists who had usurped public discussion of the Church of England’s identity by means of their provocative polemics. Donne’s own sense of service implied a public religious identity, not simply a private discourse of conscience. His sermons continually speak of the church as an institutional necessity: those means and ordinances by which God’s scriptural promises are fulfilled.72 So the notion of Donne as a “professional” voice counters the notion of Donne the apostate or church-papist.73 Moreover, it speaks to the integrity rather than the ambition of Donne’s vocation, the correspondence in his sermons between rhetoric and conscience.74 Construing Donne’s “conformity” in these terms makes sense of his radical faith in an institution that he defended not simply as the unfortunate remnant of a lost devotion, but as the authorized means for achieving salvation. Donne rejects controversy in his sermons not because he lacks principles or skill in disputation, but because his professional aims differ fundamentally from those of controversialists. At stake for public controversialists may have been a particular view of the Church of England and its doctrine, but at stake for Donne is the application of doctrines necessary 71

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Several scholars have discussed the significance of the Synod of Dort for the formulation of English doctrinal positions. See, especially, Sellin, pp. 105–8; Milton, Catholic and Reformed, pp. 395–426; W. B. Patterson, pp. 260–92; White, pp. 175–202; Johnson, pp. 120–7; Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, pp. 87–105. See, for example, II, 253, where Donne says that “the knowledge which is to salvation, is by being in Gods house, in the Houshold of the Faithfull, in the Communion of Saints.” See also I, 29 and IV, 106; Levy-Navarro; and Johnson, pp. 33–6, 69–72 and passim. See Shami, “Politics of Quotation,” 401–3; McCullough, “Preaching to a Court Papist?” In this context, it is profitable to think of Donne in terms of those converts from Catholicism recruited by Abbot to persuade wavering Protestants to continue membership in the Church of England and to persuade wavering Catholics to join the communion of a visible church. See Questier’s “John Gee.” For a detailed, theoretical reading of Donne’s vocational self, see Terry G. Sherwood, “ ‘Ego videbo’: Donne and the Vocational Self.”

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John Donne and the late Jacobean Public Sphere for the salvation of his hearers within the existing institution. So when we examine Donne’s theological vocabulary, it is important to interpret his discourse as that of a pastor more than a controversialist.75 Although his rhetoric is deeply occasional, it is not useful to think of this vocabulary as careerist, changing with the times, except insofar as the Church of England was itself an institution changing with the times, responding to both Catholic and Reformed impulses, and engaging in a process of self-definition and interpretation by no means complete in the 1620s. Part of Donne’s conformity, and perhaps the primary way in which his religious individuality is evidenced, is in his casuistical discourse and habits of thought. These, too, were intensified in the religious climate of the late Jacobean church. These habits cut across genre and occasion, and reflect a lifelong pattern of adjudicating conflicting moral claims rather than polarizing them.76 Donne’s casuistical discourse is a flexible medium, deriving from the traditions of both legal interpretation and biblical exegesis in which he was experienced. The casuistical thrust of legal discourse is inherent in the fact that, as a general rule, legal discourse proposes for its audience a hostile listener or interpreter.77 It is constructed on the premise that the author must choose words that even the most unsympathetic listener cannot turn against him, and is acutely aware of the literal sense his words convey. In the sermons, Donne characteristically uses language that will discharge his responsibilities of counsel without putting him within the “vast reach of th’huge statute lawes” (Satyre II, 112).78 More positively, legal discourse channels stories and events that are technically outside the law into legally relevant forms. In his sermons, Donne uses this aspect of legal discourse to create a framework within which his audience can resolve cases of conscience with some degree of certainty. He does this by treating the Bible as a whole as a formal contract, a digest of legal precedents and concepts pertaining to salvation within which human actions find their moral meaning. And although no single precedent can be extracted from the Bible as a rule for action, the process of comparing texts yields certain patterns for salvation. Biblical exegesis, on the other hand, aims at the ethical and moral reform of the listener. Its goal is what Donne calls “nearenesse,” the recognition by the audience that the preacher “speaks to my conscience, as though he had been behinde the hangings when I sinned, and as though he had read the book of the day of Judgment already” (III, 142). However, as some preachers discovered, penetrating the consciences of the congregation could be politically and legally dangerous. The High Commission reports cite the unfortunate, but typical, case of John Vicars who was punished for coming “too near” describing an actual member of his congregation in a sermon. He was charged for preaching “that it was lawfull

75

76

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On Donne as “pastor” see Doerksen, “Preaching Pastor versus Custodian of Order”; Ferrell, “Donne and his Master’s Voice.” On Donne’s casuistical habits of thought see work by Slights (Casuistical Tradition; “Notaries, Sponges, and Looking-glasses: Conscience in Early-modern England”), Brown, and Shami, “Donne’s Protestant Casuistry.” Scholars have not adequately taken up the discourse of conscience in Donne, hence my insistence that this discourse and its attendant habits of thought are not only fruitful, but also essential, for understanding Donne. Crystal and Davy, p. 193. Quotations from Donne’s poetry are taken from John Donne: The Complete English Poems, ed. C. A. Patrides.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis for a minister to preach soe particularly that his auditors might knowe what and whome he meant, but yet to do it so covertly that noe legall advantage might be taken against him.”79 Clearly, Donne and Vicars were following the same exegetical principle, although Donne was demonstrably more skilful in choosing words whose “literal and ordinary” sense was less open to hostile interpretation. The “personal middle course” afforded by this discourse marks Donne’s intellectual approach, creating a theology that authorizes the choices made by individual consciences, even as it expresses these choices in conformity to the prescribed ceremonies, sacraments, doctrines, and institutions of the church, including its primary ordinance for Donne: preaching. Increasingly, external pressures on Donne’s preaching resulted in a pattern of “discreet” obedience, which, I have argued, governed his public discourse.80 Always, for Donne, “discretion” is the active and strenuous principle that acts as the complement, perhaps even as the corrective, to obedience. Donne’s discretion cannot, except anachronistically, and with violence, be interpreted simply as a rhetorical obedience at odds with his conscience. Such a reading of “discretion” was not common in Donne’s time, “discretion” almost always referring to discernment, judgment, and decorum, rather than prudential self-regard.81 Furthermore, Donne contrasts “passive” obedience (non-resistance to the laws of legitimate authorities) with “blind” or “implicit obedience” (unthinking or undiscerning obedience) which he considers the root evil of the contemporary Catholic Church.82 However, fragmentary and uncontextualized readings have allowed Donne “discretion,” but have used what is primarily a religious term (the contrasting complement to “passive obedience” in the sermons) in its modern, clichéd, political sense. In this latter sense, discretion means something like “toeing the line,” or “speaking out of both sides of your mouth.” And there are many willing to grant Donne that sort of discretion.83 But this description of Donne’s complex rhetorical practices cannot do justice to the strenuous balance between law and authority that Donne strikes as he adjudicates among competing claims in his sermons. For Donne, “obedience,” or “conformity,” must be understood in the context of his consistently-held views on a number of subjects, including the importance of orderly rules of engagement in handling controversy and the ongoing discrimination of fundamental from 79 80

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Reports of Cases, ed. Gardiner, p. 199. For the importance of “discretion” for Donne see my “Donne on Discretion” and “Politics of Quotation,” pp. 390–2. The complementary relationship between “passive obedience” and “active discretion” is made in Sermons IV, 49. OED, “discretion”, III.6a, includes “circumspection,” which may be construed negatively, as selfserving. The adjective “discreet” extends the conception to mean “showing discernment or judgement in the guidance of one’s speech and action; judicious, prudent, circumspect, cautious, esp. that can be silent when speech would be convenient.” Abraham’s obedience to God’s requirement of circumcision at the age of 99 is examined as a case of conscience more fully in Chapter 10. In a Lincoln’s Inn sermon, Donne states “thou canst not excuse thy selfe upon the unjust command of thy superiour; that’s the blinde and implicite obedience practised in the Church of Rome” (II, 105). See the discussion of this same topic in a Trinity Sunday sermon for 1627 (VI, 49). The view of Donne as propagandist for a state church and apologist for the most extreme version of the absolutist authority of the monarch is most plainly advanced by Bald, Carey (John Donne), Shuger, and Goldberg. See my “Politics of Quotation” and particularly “Pulpit Crisis of 1622,” for a qualification of this view, and a bibliography of sources that counter it. Annabel Patterson, “Afterword,” has provided an overview of the entire debate.

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John Donne and the late Jacobean Public Sphere indifferent matters in religion. Obedience is a much more complex category than mere verbal “discretion.” It is a commitment to the “meanes which God hath ordained” (VIII, 309), established in a particular time and place for fulfilling a personal as well as a communal spiritual life. Far from requiring the suppression of Donne’s “true” religious identity, an unparalleled example of sustained hypocrisy, discretion was a creative principle, with epistemological as well as rhetorical consequences. Discretion required Donne to examine the body of controverted divinity, and to decide to what extent he could use his unique placement as a baptized Catholic, an ecumenical and international intellectual, and a royal chaplain to ameliorate the divisive consequences of “militant” Christianity, while remaining committed to personal sanctity, political stability, and institutional integrity. Donne is conscious of and sensitive to the pulpit as a sphere where politics is engaged and conducted; a place where the institutional foundations of the English church are negotiated; a place where controversies are defused, exposed, and “managed”; a place where uncomfortable conformists can be “converted”; and, finally, a place where Donne’s own conscience is publicly satisfied in what I am calling his “performance of conversion.” Within the public sphere created by the pulpit, I believe Donne is attempting to do several things. First, his sermons marginalize as extremists those who do not play by accepted rules of public controversial discourse. Secondly, his sermons try to move doctrinal consensus towards a more generous interpretation of Calvin and the theology of grace. The goal here is to define the Church of England, “our” church, as an institution to which all but a handful of genuine separatists can belong. Third, Donne’s sermons model principles of discourse most likely to achieve all of these ends. Those who have discussed Donne as a moderate and a conformist, however, are themselves divided as to the nature of his conformity. Building on work by Sellin, Doerksen has argued that, for Donne, whose approach he identifies as “moderate” and “conformist,” true conformity “means conformity with Christ,”84 expressed rhetorically in “constructive and conciliatory” terms,85 and framed between Laudians and Arminians on the one hand, and nonconforming puritans on the other. Papazian also rejects the Anglican/Puritan dichotomy, describing Donne as a “conforming protestant episcopalian.”86 Scodel defines Donne’s moderation and conformity by offering a complex middle way for Donne, one that is “closely bound up with Donne’s own claims to adhere to a mean that allows him a certain critical distance from the very church he represents and upholds.”87 Rather than positioning Donne between immovable fixed points, Scodel identifies Donne’s church “both as a normative mean between [Catholic and puritan] extremes and a provisional, open-ended midpoint on the way to the best position.”88 Finally, Narveson has coined the phrase “contented conformity” to describe Donne’s religion. Such attention to its experiential force allows her to conclude that Donne’s 84 85 86

87 88

Doerksen, Conforming to the Word, pp. 112, 108. Ibid., p. 107. Papazian, “Literary ‘Things Indifferent’, ” p. 328. Whereas Doerksen locates Donne’s moderation in his interpretations of Calvin, Papazian finds it in “the strongly Reformed dimension of his Augustinianism,” particularly his emphasis on what she calls “things essential”: “authority of Scripture, original sin, predestination, the perseverance of the saints, grace, and eventual salvation through faith, not works” (p. 329). Scodel, p. 69. Ibid., p. 65.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis particular brand of conformity was “contented” in that it “endorsed the established church not simply as a compromise but as a well-reformed institution uniquely fitted to edify and promote true worship, and to avoid the errors of extremists on either side.”89 In particular, Narveson finds evidence of the “confession-centred” piety in which Donne publicly professed his “ongoing (and non-Arminian) sense of simultaneous sin and Grace, thereby ignoring questions about God’s decrees that he found over-curious and harmful to faith, and resisting the Puritan drift toward privatized self-examination at the same time that he rejected an anti-Calvinist distaste for intense self-examination.”90 Her conclusion that Donne conforms to a moderate, essentially Calvinistic church in the Devotions supports earlier work on the nature of Donne’s conformity, and offers a strong generic argument for “renewed attention on conformity as the forgotten middle.”91 The crises of censorship, controversy, and identity converge in Donne’s professional relationship to the Church of Rome. This was arguably the most important case of conscience Donne faced, and his “performance of conversion” was his most significant religious contribution to the identity of the English church. In his annotations on Donne’s sermons, Coleridge suggested that Donne “was a Protestant, because it enabled him to lash about to the Right & the Left – and without a motive to say better things for the Papists than they could say for themselves.”92 The suggestion here that Donne’s anti-Catholic rhetoric was a way of speaking for as well as against papists corresponds to the patterns of discretion already identified in Donne as a high-profile convert from Catholicism, loyal chaplain to James, and Dean of the most important English Reformed cathedral parish in London. Donne’s anti-Catholic rhetoric must be seen as part of the broader religious polemic that defined positions along the religious spectrum in the early Stuart period, but which was often expressed in “rigidly dualistic terms.”93 Milton argues that at least in the first half of James’s reign anti-papist writings “were the most distinctive feature of English protestant theology and occupied the energies of all the principal members of the Jacobean episcopate.”94 Rarely a statement of belief, this rhetoric was a way of registering the particular nature of one’s protestant credentials, as well as a public commitment to both church and state. Several features marked this discourse. Fundamental to it were the rejection of the pope as Antichrist, and, at least at the outset, a “radically polarizing and politically activist form of apocalypticism,” flourishing primarily among puritans.95 Debates raged over Rome as a “true” Church “in some sense”; Roman errors, particularly idolatry and heresy; and Rome’s political and jurisdictional aspirations. The very existence of the protestant church before Luther and questions of apostolic succession had to be defended against Catholics in an effort to assert the

89 90 91 92

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Narveson, 109. Ibid., 129. Ibid. Haskin, “On Trying to Make the Record Speak More about Donne’s Love Poems,” argues persuasively that these comments on Donne’s religion had a “wider applicability” than simply to “The Indifferent” beside which they were inserted in Lamb’s copy of Donne’s 1669 poems (p. 64, n.40). Milton, Catholic and Reformed, p. 7. Ibid., p. 31. Ibid., p. 105.

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John Donne and the late Jacobean Public Sphere legitimacy of the English church. This language played out in contexts relating to communion with the Church of Rome by offering changing views of the Reformation. All of these aspects of the rhetorical attacks on Rome changed over time, particularly during the transition from the Jacobean to the Caroline church under Laud’s ascendancy. More recently, Milton has demonstrated that “while confessionally driven anti-Catholicism was a prominent discourse in earlymodern England, it was not the single dominant one.”96 Anti-Catholicism was “not confined simply and exclusively to presenting the division between the two Churches and religions in absolute, polarized terms.”97 In fact, the precepts of anti-Catholicism were “effectively undermined on a daily basis by the norms of intellectual inquiry, political behaviour, commercial calculation, and social intercourse” and returned to their simple, polarized forms most often only in moments of “political crisis.”98 Donne’s vision of the Church of England, like that of most reformers, had its roots in the Catholic church. Recently, scholars have begun to pay more attention to the importance of Catholicism for Donne, not simply as the religion of his childhood, but as an enduring influence throughout his life.99 And, indeed, Donne evidently retained a strong commitment to the Old Religion into which he was born, and for which his family suffered.100 It is also clear that Donne’s sermons contain explicit, virulent, and satiric attacks against Catholicism. Add to this that at the time of these homiletic attacks, Donne’s Catholic mother resided with him in the deanery of St. Paul’s; that Donne retained his connections with the Earls of Northumberland and others of the Catholic nobility;101 and that Donne’s extended family was committed to specifically Catholic forms of piety in exile on the continent;102 and it is easy to see why the apparent contradictions of his life require explanation. Several biographical hypotheses have been advanced to explain these contradictions, beginning with the “conversion” theory (traceable to Izaak 96 97 98 99

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Milton, “A Qualified Intolerance.” Ibid., p. 90. Ibid., p. 110. The most extensive studies have been by Flynn and Hester. See Flynn, John Donne and the Ancient Catholic Nobility; and the following works by Hester, “Donne’s (Re)Annunciation of the Virgin(ia Colony) in Elegy XIX”; Kinde Pitty and Brave Scorn; “ ‘this cannot be said’. ” Recently, Guibbory has argued that Donne’s move towards Arminianism in the late 1620s was perhaps motivated by Arminianism’s ceremonial and doctrinal connections to the Catholicism of Donne’s early years (“Donne’s Religion,” 415, 427). In a sermon preached at St Dunstan’s, 11 April 1624, Donne redefines contemporary Catholicism to show that it is a “yonger Religion” than “the ancient Religion, of Christ, and his Apostles,” and warns his hearers not to be “adopted into the slavery, and bondage of mens traditions” which marks the “new Rome, that endevours to adopt all, in an imaginary filiation” (VI, 98). On 25 August 1622, for example, Donne preached at Hanworth, to an audience which included Lord Doncaster, the Earl of Northumberland, and the Marquis of Buckingham. Bald, p. 439, suggests that Donne and Northumberland had renewed their acquaintance at Hanworth, but does not explain why he thinks the friendship had lapsed since the time of Donne’s marriage when the Earl served as Donne’s messenger to bring the news to Sir George More, Donne’s father-in-law. Johnson, pp. 77–85, discusses this sermon in terms of the different audiences Donne was addressing on this occasion. See biographical notes and works by Helen Gertrude More, Bridget More, Anne More, and Grace More in “Glow-Worm Light,” ed. Latz. Gertrude and Bridget More were daughters of Cresacre More, the great-grandson of Thomas More; Anne More was their cousin, the daughter of Edward More; Grace More was the daughter of John More, and was also a first cousin to the other More women mentioned in this note.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis Walton’s Life of Donne) that Donne’s anti-Catholicism resulted from his total rejection of Catholicism. This view is bolstered by variations on the “timeserving” theory, the view that since preaching against Catholics was conventional and even expected in England – not to do so was to risk the charge of “negative popery”103 – Donne conformed to the requirements of the times.104 However, crucial to an understanding of the sometimes contradictory facets of Donne’s churchmanship is our ability to determine, in the first instance, how it is articulated as part of an ongoing relationship with the Church of Rome, and secondarily how it identifies with the reformed religions. So it is important to consider what Donne thought of as fundamental to English Christianity, what he considered indifferent, what he thought could be salvaged from Catholicism, and what things were entirely repugnant to him. In particular, this means examining specific sermons in context to understand how far Donne was willing to use his ability to “read” contemporary Catholicism to advance the political and doctrinal aims of the Church of England. Donne’s anti-Catholic rhetoric, then, allows us to discern his commitment to certain fundamentals of religion, and his subordination of marginal or indifferent matters. Citing Article XIX of the Thirty-Nine Articles in a Christmas 1628 sermon, Donne identifies, first, the conventionally accepted marks of a true Church as one “where the word is truly preached, and the Sacraments duly administred.” “But,” Donne goes on to say, it is the Word, the Word inspired by the holy Ghost; not Apocryphall, not Decretall, not Traditionall, not Additionall supplements; and it is the Sacraments, Sacraments instituted by Christ himself, and not those super-numerary sacraments, those posthume, post-nati sacraments, that have been multiplyed after: and then, that which the true Church proposes, is, all that is truly necessary to salvation, and nothing but that, in that quality, as necessary. So that Problematical points, of which, either side may be true, and in which, neither side is fundamentally necessary to salvation, those marginal and interlineary notes, that are not of the body of the text, opinions raised out of singularity, in some one man, and then maintained out of partiality, and affection to that man, these problematicall things should not be called the Doctrine of the Church, nor lay obligations upon mens consciences; They should not disturb the general peace, they should not extinguish particular charity towards one another. (VIII, 309)

Donne’s sermons of the 1620s are dominated by criticisms of the contemporary Roman Church in handling these matters essential to salvation and by his efforts to “renovate” the opinions of his congregation and to teach by rhetorical example the soteriological importance of rhetorical precision. Fundamental to Donne’s religion is, first of all, the sacrament of baptism, because “as in our baptisme, we take no other name necessarily, but the name of Christ: So in our Christian life, we accept no other distinctions of Iesuits, or Franciscans; but onely Christians: for we are baptized into his name, and 103

104

Milton, Catholic and Reformed, p. 68, defines “negative popery” as “a useful shorthand to describe the phenomenon whereby Laudians deliberately refrained from attacking Roman errors when discussing matters of doctrine or ceremony.” See Lake, “Anti-popery” and Milton, Catholic and Reformed, on the construction of the anti-papist prejudice.

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John Donne and the late Jacobean Public Sphere the whole life of a regenerate man is a Baptisme” (V, 164).105 The name of “Christian” is supported by the foundation of Christian doctrine, fortified by scriptural authority: “the foundation it selfe is Christ himselfe in his Word; his Scriptures” (VI, 253). Every Church is supreme and apostolical, Donne says, “as long as they agree in the unity of that doctrine which the Apostles taught, and adhere to the supreme head of the whole Church, Christ Jesus” (III, 138). As Donne’s sermons attest, however, the interpretation of these concepts was problematical. The Roman Church, too, adheres to word and sacrament, for example, but, as Donne notes wryly, “they lack a great part of the Word, and halfe the Sacrament” (V, 294). In fact, in the Roman Church, “the Additionall things exceed the Fundamentall; the Occasionall, the Originall; the Collaterall, the Direct; And the Traditions of men, the Commandements of God” (V, 294). In this discussion of fundamentals, Donne stresses that there can be but one baptism, and that “to depart from that Church, in which I have received my baptism, and in which I have made my Contracts and my stipulations with God, and pledged and engaged my sureties there, deserves a mature consideration; for I may mistake the reasons upon which I goe, and I may finde after, that there are more true errours in the Church I goe to, then there were in that I left” (X, 161).106 Although the words resonate with the impact of Donne’s own well-known shift of institutional allegiance, his explanation suggests that he questions the motive for rather than the fact of conversion. “Truly I have been sorry to see some persons converted from the Roman Church, to ours,” he says, “because I have known, that onely temporall respects have moved them, and they have lived after rather in a nullity, or indifferency to either religion, then in a true, and established zeale” (X, 161). Consequently, Donne distinguishes clearly in his sermons between the true religion into which he was born and contemporary Catholicism characterized officially by the Council of Trent, the Jesuitical campaign to re-establish Catholicism in England, and the political interventions of that “imaginary universall father” (VI, 90), the pope. In particular, Donne rejects the doctrinal innovations of the Council of Trent, most notoriously its doubling of the articles of faith necessary to salvation. Donne objects not to the articles themselves, which he seldom debates on substantive grounds, but to the whole process, the “monstrous birth” (III, 369), by which new articles, like new stars, have been added to the firmament. In fact, Donne calls the new creed of the Council of Trent a heresy, saying that “if all the particular doctrines be not Hereticall, yet, the doctrine of inducing new Articles of Faith is Hereticall” (III, 132). The results of these innovations have been disastrous, according to Donne, who points out that since the Council, many “sad and sober” men (VII, 125) have repented their forwardness in declaring new articles and “wished they had not determined so many particulars to be matter of faith” (VI, 301). This has been the bondage induced by the Council of Trent, Donne argues, “to make Problematical things, Dogmatical; and matter of Disputation, matter of Faith” (IV, 144).

105 106

Johnson, pp. 67–74. “That baptism within the Roman Church was still effectual was clear. All divines accepted that there was no true baptism outside the church, and since rebaptism was not practiced towards popish converts, the Church of Rome must still retain true baptism” (Milton, Catholic and Reformed, p. 135).

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis In one crucial matter, however, Trent did not fulfill the responsibility of the visible Church in that it refused to declare how far the laws of secular magistrates bind the conscience (VIII, 115). Donne asks “how does the Roman Church give any man infallible satisfaction, whether these or these things, grounded upon the temporall Laws of secular Princes, be sins or no, when as that Church hath not, nor will not come to a determination in that point?” “They pretend to give satisfaction and peace in all cases, and pretend to be the onely true Church for that, and yet leave the conscience in ignorance, and in distemper, and distresse, and distraction in many particulars” (VIII, 116). Donne undermines such reticence about providing pastoral certainty to troubled consciences, usually by explaining the processes by which conflicting laws may be adjudicated. He says, for example, in a 1628 sermon, that “though salvation consist not in Ceremonies, Obedience doth, and salvation consists much in Obedience” (VIII, 331). So in the matter of ceremonies, “we always informe our selves, of the right use of those things in their first institution, of their abuse with which they have been depraved in the Roman Church, and of the good use which is made of them in ours” (VIII, 331). Donne holds that the fundamental obstacles to communion with the Roman Church are the Jesuits and the Council of Trent. This is not new territory for Donne – both Pseudo-Martyr and Conclave Ignati made these points much earlier in Donne’s career – but on these he is explicit: “we had received the Reformation before the Council of Trent, and before the growth of the Jesuits: And if we should turn to them now, we should be worse then we were before we receiv’d the Reformation; and the Council of Trent and the Jesuits have made that Religion worse then it was” (IV, 139). The “growth” of the Jesuits, for Donne, like the burgeoning of articles of faith at Trent, is marked by the proliferation of controversy, and the undermining of certainty in scriptural interpretation.107 More insidious is their seduction of families, pastors, and magistrates, who remain insensible that these “Catterpillars of the Roman Church, doe eat up our tender fruit . . . [and] seduce our forwardest and best spirits” (III, 167).108 The Catholic Church’s claim for apostolical succession culminating in special status for the Bishop of Rome is another subject Donne filters through the discourse of Catholic innovation and singularity. Donne is unequivocal on this point. “And therefore it is an usurpation, an imposture, an illusion, it is a forgery, when the Bishop of Rome will proceed by Apostolicall authority, and with Apostolicall dignity, and Apostolicall jurisdiction” (II, 302–3). He refers on this and on several other occasions to the historical agreement among commentators of all religions that St. Peter was Bishop of Rome, but denies that there is 107

108

For a fascinating contemporary parody of Jesuit interpretation, see “A Jesuite Exposition upon ye 1 & 2 Psalme.,” BL Add. MS 72415, fo. 125r. The entire Psalm and the accompanying examination of a puritan in the Ten Commandments provide a satirical version of the papist–puritan rhetoric officially sanctioned by James. The examination occurs in BL Add. MS 72415, fo. 134r–138r. Marotti claims that for Donne and most nationalistic English the Jesuits were an object of paranoid fantasizing (“Alienating Catholics”). Milton argues that the practice of depicting the Roman communion as “a unified, centralized and autocratically governed community, in which all papists were simply mindless cogs in a great machine” was “not just paranoid overestimation of the unity and coherence of papal forces ranged against Protestant England, as some historians have tended to suggest. It was also a view which served a number of important polemical purposes” (Catholic and Reformed, p. 229). Marotti distinguishes between polemical and theological anti-Catholicism in Donne, and positions Donne’s Caroline sermons between extreme Calvinism and Arminianism in “Donne’s Conflicted Anti-Catholicism.”

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John Donne and the late Jacobean Public Sphere Scriptural proof that the present Bishop of Rome is Peter’s successor in the apostleship.109 As he concludes, “The Apostolicall faith remaines spread over all the world, but Apostolicall jurisdiction is expired with their persons” (II, 304). In a later sermon, he agrees that it is “moderate” to agree that St. Peter was at Rome, but not to “build their universall supremacy over all the Church, and so to erect matter of faith upon matter of fact” (III, 316). As Donne says of both the Roman and Reformed Churches “we all pretend to be successors of the Apostles; though not we, as they, in the Apostolicall, yet they as well as we in the Evangelicall, and Ministeriall function” (VII, 400). Donne endorsed the Jacobean claim that papists were persecuted for their interventions in state politics rather than for their doctrine: “theirs is a religion mixt as well of Treason, as of Idolatry” (III, 257). It is, he says, an “Arbitrarie, and . . . an Occasionall Religion” (VI, 250) that troubles states with “politicall Divinity” (VII, 131), a religion that “expunges and interlines articles of faith, upon Reason of State, and emergent occasions” (III, 129). For Donne, theirs is a religion of sliding signifiers, not grounded in the known contract of the word revealed in the Scriptures. Their divinity is “occasionall,” “doctrines to serve present occasions” (VIII, 104). He concludes that if “all the confused practices of that Babylon, all the emergent and occasionall articles of that Church, and that State-religion, shall become Sacraments, we shall have a Sacrament of Equivocation, a Sacrament of Invasion, a Sacrament of Powder, a Sacrament of dissolving allegiance, sacraments in the Element of Baptism, in the water, in navies, and Sacraments in the Elements of the Eucharist, in Blood, in the sacred blood of Kings” (VIII, 104). On particular abuses and errors in the Roman Church – invocation to Saints,110 prayers for the dead, purgatory,111 indulgences, adoration of images or the bread of the sacrament112 – Donne comments specifically. However, fundamental to Donne’s attacks on the Roman Church are her innovations in doctrine, her reliance on the traditions of men (the Fathers, the pope), her subversions of the authority of Scriptures, and her political interventions in matters purely civil.113 Rome’s absolutism in doctrinal and political matters is repugnant to Donne because he insists that the religious controversies raging in pulpit and press are fueled by topics that are problematical, disputable, but not fundamental. Much of the disciplinary controversy, associated primarily with nonconforming puritans, also falls into this category. In an undated sermon discussing ceremonial vestures and postures, for example, Donne says that while they are not of God, they are a kind of “light earth” underneath which are “good and usefull significations” that advance devotion” (X, 150–1). Donne’s prayer is that “in such things as are problematicall, . . . be not too inquisitive to know, nor too vehement, when thou thinkest thou doest know it” (II, 207). So, on the question of degrees of glory, Donne says “In the manner, we would not differ so, as to induce a Schisme, if they [Roman Catholics] would handle such points Problematically, and no farther. But when upon matter of fact they will induce matter of faith, when they will extend 109 110 111

112 113

See especially III, 316; VII, 132. See, for example, III, 48; III, 263; IV, 347; VI, 183; VIII, 143; VIII, 328; VIII, 359; X, 41. On the connection between prayers for dead and the doctrine of Purgatory, see especially VII, 164–89. See III, 132; VII, 432–3. Marotti, “Donne’s Conflicted Catholicism,” offers a full taxonomy of doctrinal and political opposition to Catholicism in Donne’s sermons.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis Problematicall Divinity to Dogmaticall, . . . then wee must necessarily call them to the Rule of all Doctrines, the Scriptures” (VII, 131–2). This principle is fundamental to Donne: “It is the Text that saves us; the interlineary glosses, and the marginal notes, and the variae lectiones, controversies and perplexities, undo us” (III, 208). In almost all cases where Donne examines controverted issues between the Roman and Reformed Churches, his practice is to argue that they be returned to their pre-Tridentine problematical status. Despite Donne’s uncompromising judgment on the Roman church’s failure to distinguish between fundamental and indifferent matters, however, his comments about the conventional language of religious polemic, both Catholic and Reformed, show that he was equally impatient with the ad hominem attacks that were the staple of controversial preaching. In this respect, he once more shows himself to be truly Jacobean. James seemed more concerned with the political threats posed by popery (the doctrine of papal deposition of kings) and puritanism (sedition and, possibly, separation) than with matters of doctrinal dispute, and used the terms “papist” and “puritan” fairly even-handedly to detach moderates from radicals within the English church.114 By the 1620s, the polarized terms “papist” and “puritan” had become firmly entrenched as labels used to brand opponents in religious controversy rather than as accurate descriptions of confessional views. Typically, Donne uses these terms to marginalize only the most extreme positions within the church. Even as he does so, however, Donne reveals his awareness of the polemical resonance these labels carry: “Let a man be zealous, and fervent in reprehension of sin, and there flies out an arrow, that gives him a wound of a Puritan. Let a man be zealous of the house of God, and say things by way of moderation, for the repairing of the ruines of that house, and making up the differences of the Church of God, and there flies out an arrow, that gives him the wound of a Papist” (II, 58). Even as late as 1630, when anti-papist rhetoric had declined, Donne continues to grapple with this particular style of polemical labeling. “This man is affected when he heares a blasphemous oath, and when he lookes upon the generall liberty of sinning; therefore he is a Puritan; That man loves the ancient formes, and Doctrines, and Disciplines of the Church, and retaines, and delights in the reverend names of Priest, and Altar, and Sacrifice, therefore he is a Papist, are hastie conclusions in Church affaires” (IX, 216). Donne’s chief variation is to substitute the term “separatist” for James’s “puritan,” to describe only nonconforming divines at one end of the spectrum, and to place “papists” at the other end. The following locution is typical: “The Papist hath not the knowledge of his Doctrine from any Scripture, the Separatist hath not the knowledge of his Discipline from any precedent, any example in the primitive Church” (IV, 148). Breaking down binary oppositions is not an invention of the post-modern age; it is Donne’s constant rhetorical and intellectual strategy. During the crises of the late 1620s, Donne resisted the radicalizing and polarizing energies of much 114

Questier has challenged the view that the Oath of Allegiance was “an essentially tolerant measure, designed to divide radicals from loyalists” (“Loyalty, Religion and State Power,” 314) arguing instead that the oath divided “clerical loyalists among themselves,” and even “clerics from laity” (317). It did so by “an insistence that the religious tenets within it could not be held separately from the political ones” (329). Questier calls it “an apple of discord” (321) thrown among English Catholics that succeeded, by its rhetoric, as “a particularly effective act of authority” (328) rather than as a sign of a more tolerant regime.

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John Donne and the late Jacobean Public Sphere controversial rhetoric by working within dichotomies that allow him to frame, but not to pinpoint, faulty or distorted beliefs. Typically, Donne frames his criticism of separatist impulses within the Church of England in these terms. So, Donne describes “those imaginary Churches, that will receive no light from Antiquitie, nor Primitive formes” as “crumbl[ing] into Conventicles.” And the Roman Church that “will needes be the Forme to all Churches, God leaves to her selfe, to her owne Traditions’ swell[ing] into tumors, and ulcers, and blisters” (VII, 83). Similarly, Donne exhorts discreet ministers to “harken neither to a superstitious sense from Rome, nor to a seditious sense of Scriptures from the Separation” (VIII, 50).115 Within these separatist extremes, Donne reiterates his advice to use terms that exclude only those who cannot be accommodated into the Church of England’s “mediocrity.” On the issue of ceremonies, for example, Donne positions “our” church in relation to churches named after men: “That Church, which they call Lutheran, hath retained more of these Ceremonies, then ours hath done; And ours more then that which they call Calvinist; But both the Lutheran, and ours, without danger, because, in both places, we are diligent to preach to the people the right use of these indifferent things” (VIII, 331). Donne’s rhetorical construction of the English church is that it is neither Calvinist, nor Lutheran, nor papist, nor puritan, but Christian. And he stigmatizes as un-Christian alchemists overzealous reformers, whether papist or puritan: If these men, I say of either kind, They who call all differing from themselves, Error, and all error damnable [i.e. papists]; or they . . . which call the abolishing and extermination of all Discipline and Ceremony, purenesse and holinesse [i.e. nonconforming puritans, or separatists]; If they thinke they have received their portion of this legacie, their measure of true knowledge in labouring onely to accuse, and reforme, and refine others, . . . The Holy Ghost makes men Christians, and not Alchymists.” (IX, 243)

If there are disagreements in religion, Donne makes clear, they are not to be resolved by calling “any man Lutheran, or Calvinist, or by any other name, ignominiously, but for such things, as had been condemned in Luther, or Calvin, and condemned by such, as are competent Judges between them, and us; that is, by the universall, or by our own Church” (II, 111). Much more common in Donne’s rhetoric in the sermons, however, is the technique of redefining terms so that they lose their conventional polemical baggage, and are understood in their spirit as well as in their letter. The “hastie” applying of “papist” and “puritan” as names of opprobrium, for example, causes Donne to redeem them in a passage where he reclaims them for polemically inclusive rather than divisive purposes. “I am a Papist, that is, I will fast and pray as much as any Papist, and enable my selfe for the service of my God, as seriously, as sedulously, as laboriously as any Papist . . . [and] I am a Puritan, that is, I wil endeavour to be pure, as my Father in heaven is pure, as far as any Puritan” 115

Because Donne consistently articulates the extremes of the spectrum as separatist, I find it difficult to concur with Guibbory in her argument that Donne, like Montagu, “was engaging in much the same rhetorical move as the Arminians did in the 1620s and 30s – extending the category ‘puritan’ to include the Calvinism that had been the orthodox mainstream of the English reformed church” (420).

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis (IX, 166). Worse than these names, however, is the name of heretic. Donne laments that Christians “scratch and wound and teare one another, with the ignominious invectives, and uncharitable names of Heretique, and Schismatique, about Ceremoniall, and Problematicall, and indeed but Criticall, verball controversies” (IX, 52–3). Donne’s own rule here is clear: “Be not apt to call any opinion false, or hereticall, or damnable, the contrary whereof cannot be evidently proved” (IX, 139).116 The consistency of Donne’s anti-Catholic rhetoric leads directly to the question of whether Donne was open to or even actively working toward reconciliation with Rome, despite the obstacles to such a programme that he clearly recognized. Sometimes, Donne’s sermons suggest that reconciling the Church of England with the Church of Rome is to reconcile “a true religion, and a false religion” (IV, 301–2), a religion, in fact, that is hopelessly divided within itself. Breaking away from such a church at the Reformation is likened to leaving a plague-infested house. The plague to which Donne refers is a recurring theme: “We departed not from them then, till it was come to a hot plague, in a necessity of professing old opinions to be new articles of Faith; not till we were driven by them, and drawn by the voice of God, in the learnedest men of all nations (X, 174). The Church of Rome is a true church, Donne maintains, “for the Pest-house is a house, and theirs is such a Church; But the Pest-house is not the best ayre to live in, nor the Romane Church the best Church to die in” (IX, 344). Despite Donne’s uncovering of the corruptions of the contemporary Roman Church, then, there are signs that reconciliation with it is possible, although never on Tridentine terms. “God loves not innovations,” according to Donne, preferring “Old doctrines, old disciplines, old words and formes of speech in his service” (II, 305). “Old,” of course, is a relative term for Donne, who also preaches woe unto those who “deliver not over our religion to posterity, in the same sincerity, and the same totality in which our Fathers have delivered us” (III, 129). The key to a public religious identity is to remain married to “that religion, and that worship of God, which God put into his armes, and which he embraced in his Baptism” (III, 129). To the majority in Donne’s congregation that church would be the Church of England, and Donne’s constant message to them is that conversion to the post-Tridentine Roman Church will not re-establish continuity with the religion of their fathers. While the “Church of Rome then” was imperfect, it is no longer a church but a “Court” (VII, 421), and the irony is that “fathers have left their former superstition, which they were born and bred in, and the sonnes, which were born, and bred in the truth, have embraced those superstitions” (VII, 421). These words, preached at Paul’s Cross by a person whose own father had handed him the religion of the Roman Church and whose own baptism and family tradition were so different from that of most of his congregation, require interpretation. In the end, Donne’s labours for the preservation and enrichment of the English church suggest that he remained committed to the fundamentals of the Christian religion as they could be approached through this particular national church, and that he did so for civil as well as religious reasons. A letter of 1609

116

Donne’s renovation of controverted terms is discussed in my “Anti-Catholicism,” pp. 150–2, and in “Labels,” pp. 138–42.

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John Donne and the late Jacobean Public Sphere supports the view that Donne called the religion into which he had been born Christianity: You know I never fettered nor imprisoned the word Religion; not straightning it Frierly, ad Religiones factitias, (as the Romans call well their orders of Religion) nor immuring it in a Rome, or a Wittemberg, or a Geneva; they are all virtuall beams of one Sun, and wheresoever they finde clay hearts, they harden them, and moulder them into dust; and they entender and mollifie waxen.117

And in the same letter, he suggests that Christianity is the “soul” that is covered by the “body of Religion.”118 When Donne refers to “the Religion I was born in,” then, it is not necessary to gloss that as referring to Donne’s “second birth” in the ministry of the Church of England, if we remember that, even if Donne here means nothing more specific than “Christianity,” that religion contained a healthy residue of Catholicism, as did all reformed protestantism. The sermons continue this metaphorical habit of expressing degrees of difference and separation rather than insisting on absolute differences of kind concerning matters embroiled in current religious controversy. But if all Churches are “of one and the same religion fundamentally” (VI, 246), Donne’s sermons also warn against reconciling impossible opposites in fundamental things, and they instruct his congregation in knowing the difference. “The dawning of the day, in the Morning, and the shutting in of the day in the Evening, make day and night so much one, as sometimes you cannot tell which to call them,” Donne says in his sermon defending the Directions, “but . . . light and darknes, Midnight and Noone never met, never joyned” (IV, 193). Reinforcing the proper enmity between the truth of God, and the inventions of men” (IX, 172), Donne’s sermons also contain warnings against thinking of religion as a “lifestyle” or fashion. Donne’s Gunpowder Day sermon for 1622 urges his hearers not to act “as though protestant and papist, were two seuerall callings, and as you would make one Sonne a lawyer, another a Merchant, you will make one Sonne a papist, another a protestant” (1515–20; IV, 263).119 At the Reformation, Donne says, there was a “circumcision” of the garment of religion. From his own pulpit, he warns against moving from this “circumcision” to a “concision.” So, while Donne admits that “If Sodome and Jerusalem were sisters, Babylon and we may be too, uterin sisters of one wombe, (for there is but one Baptism)” (IX, 375), he agrees with Tertullian that “the whole Church of God is one houshold, . . . as long as they agree in the unity of that doctrine which the Apostles taught, and adhere to the supreme head of the whole Church, Christ Jesus” (III, 138). Donne is careful to maintain that peace within the Church is not an “indifferencie to contrary Opinions in fundamentall doctrines” but “a peace with persons, an abstinence from contumelies, and revilings” (IV, 196). And there are “scarce any enemies, with whom wee may not live peaceably, and to whom we 117 118 119

Letters, p. 29. Ibid., p. 30. All references to Donne’s 1622 Gunpowder Plot sermon are taken from my edition (1996). I will indicate the line number for this sermon in parentheses, followed by the volume and page reference from the Potter and Simpson version. Another, undated sermon also warns against behaving “as though the different formes of Religion, were but the fashions of the garment, and not the stuffe, we put on, and we put off Religion, as we would doe a Livery, to testifie our respect to him, whom we serve” (X, 67).

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis may not wish charitably” (III, 383). Reconciliation, however, will not, for Donne, mean a general return to Rome, although Rome believes that to be the process by which union will occur (I, 230). Although Donne’s sermons admit no reconciliation with post-Tridentine Catholicism, even those he calls “separatists,” and therefore outside the “mediocrity” of “our” Church, are imagined within that communion. In a sermon probably preached in 1621/2, Donne says of recusants, “we love them at Church, we would be glad to see them here, and though they come not hither, wee love them so far, as that we may pray for them; and we love them in our studies so far, as we may rectifie them by our labours” (III, 382). They can find a place for religious practice in such a church, especially in a congregation where the sacraments are administered and sermons do not become a forum for controversial doctrinal debate. Such debate has its place outside the Church, Donne believes, in duly constituted institutions. Accordingly, “wee hate them in our Convocations, where wee oppose Canons against their Doctrines, and we hate them in our Consultations, where we make lawes to defend us from their malice, and we hate them in our bed-chambers, where they make children Idolaters, and perchance make the children themselves” (III, 382). Outwardly conforming papists are more distressing because their recusancy is impossible to detect and, therefore, to address.120 As Donne says in a Gunpowder Plot sermon for 1626, those who conform outwardly are not disavowed, but in heaven they shall meet “a conviction of Recusancy, that shall beare date from that day, when they came first to Church, with that purpose to delude the Congregation, to elude the lawes in that behalfe provided, to advance their treacherous designes by such disguises, or upon what other collaterall and indirect occasion soever, men come to this place” (VII, 246). In the end, Donne’s anti-Catholic rhetoric, and, more generally, his articulation of a broad middle ground between post-Tridentine papists, on the one hand, and separatists on the other, allows him to express a vision of the English church that increasingly defines itself in terms of its ongoing interpretation of the scriptures and of those canons, articles, and creeds formally accepted by the church. Using the evidence of his sermons, this study proposes to analyze the ways in which Donne performs and expresses his conformity in the conditions of crisis of the late Jacobean church. In these circumstances of heightened anxiety, censorship, and uncertainty, Donne’s contribution to our understanding of the Church of England as both a doctrinally and a politically unique reformed institution in the 1620s will enable a fuller understanding of the way in which language in the public sphere, particularly the language of sermons, contributed to its development.

120

Questier continues to challenge the historiography of religious culture that “relies on a radical distinction between recusant separatism and occasional conformity” (“Conformity, Catholicism and the Law,” p. 240). He argues instead that “Catholics, faced with the requirement that they should conform according to law, could, by manipulating the grey areas in the law, and by moving between recusancy and church papistry, play the same sort of political games with the local and national state which Protestants engaged in when they experimented with the limits of conformity” (p. 241). McCullough, “Preaching to a Court Papist?,” argues persuasively that Donne’s sermon preached before Queen Anne (December 1617) was an attempt to “inspire Anne to move from outward conformity to full communion.” See my discussion in Chapter 10 of Donne’s sermon on Abraham’s circumcision (preached 1 January 1624/5) that supports this view that Donne hoped to convert church papists to the Church of England.

34

John Donne and the late Jacobean Public Sphere CONCLUSIONS The crisis for conformist discourse enacted in late Jacobean sermons, particularly those of John Donne, points to the pulpit as a medium of public debate on the nature of the English church and its future directions. While the Reformation had initiated an anti-papist rhetoric that defined that institution as “not-Catholic,” preachers discovered they had a stake in arguing that the church was also not-puritan, and, more controversially, not-Calvinist. In this context, the significance of James’s Directions to Preachers lies not so much in external penalties imposed – preachers arrested, words expunged or misquoted, penal laws enforced, imprisonments – but in the pressures internalized that resulted in self-censorship, resistance to change, distrust, and suspicion. Historians have commented on the polarization of views resulting from such moments of crisis, but it is also true that the Directions prompted preachers such as Donne to greater efforts of moderation and negotiation between hard-line extremes, and greater commitment to shared values. Donne’s influence on the establishment of a public sphere of religious debate will not be defined according to narrow standards of influence – by which we usually mean political influence – but in terms of vision and intellectual leadership. Certainly, on several occasions, Donne’s professional life intersected with the political and religious turning points of the age, but, among divines, he was never the most powerful ecclesiastical administrator or political counsellor. Nor did his vision of the Church of England prevail in his lifetime.121 Nonetheless, his capacious imagination envisioned – and then modelled – ways of dealing with these crises that most of his countrymen were either incapable of or unwilling to follow. His experience as a public figure in the 1620s expresses in all its complexity the religious conflicts of the age.

121

In the nineteenth century, Donne’s sermons were edited as part of the enthusiasm for AngloCatholic origins that characterized the Oxford movement. For analysis of this Donne revival of the 1830s and 1840s see Haskin, “Donne and the Cultural Contradictions of Christmas.”

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Chapter 2 “THE INDISCRETION OF THAT FOOLE”: JOHN KNIGHT AND THE JACOBEAN PULPIT, 1620–2

CENSORSHIP: TIGHTENING REGULATIONS

A

LTHOUGH the conditions for preaching and publishing sermons in the early 1620s did not mark a sharp break with the early part of James’s reign, some principles governing allowable pulpit speech can be extrapolated. These principles do not amount to a clearly defined code; however, they suggest that sermons could be examined for both doctrinal and political lapses: exceeding the boundaries of orthodox divinity on the one hand, or meddling with matters of state on the other. Reported cases also suggest that definitions of both kinds of lapse were unstable.1 Edmond Peacham’s case indicates that it was perilous even to possess questionable manuscripts.2 Peacham’s examination and trial for treason engaged some of the best legal minds of the day, demonstrating that regulating words was an important issue for James’s administration, even when those words did not enter the public sphere via the pulpit. Peacham never delivered the offending sermon, but in his papers he commented directly upon James, criticizing his prodigality, the misconduct of his officials, and his refusal to subject the ecclesiastical to the temporal courts. The sermon suggested that the king might be smitten with sudden death (after the examples of Ananias and Nabal), or that the people might rise in rebellion. Under examination, Peacham justified his words by authority of his vocation, but James had other ideas. In the judgment that he himself wrote, James revealed his standard for treasonable pulpit speech by explaining that “had he [Peacham] compiled a sermon upon any other ground, or stuffed the bulk of it with any other matter, and only powdered it here and there, with some passages of reprehension of the king; or had he never so bitterly railed against the king and upbraided him of any two or three, though monstrous vices, it might yet have been some way excusable” (II, 878). So, too, would have been such words spoken 1

2

Undoubtedly, it was difficult to publish things that commented (even tangentially) on official policies or to import controversial materials (Milton, Catholic and Reformed, p. 235n.). Thomas Goad is alarmed in 1621 for economic rather than religious reasons by a proposal to grant monopoly on the import of foreign books written by popish authors. He sees the policy as prejudicial to scholarship in that it will raise the price of books (Bodleian MS Tanner 290, fols. 46, 47 [9 and 15 January 1620/21]). This account of Peacham’s trial is recorded in Cobbett’s Complete Collection of State Trials, II, 870–80. Chamberlain follows the story in his Letters, but introduces the charges against Peacham of “having written seditious discourses, under colour of petitions to the last parlement” (I, 568). The case is discussed in Gardiner, History, II, 272–83.

36

John Knight and the Jacobean Pulpit, 1620–2 in “drunkenness, or upon the occasion of any sudden passion or discontentment” (II, 878). But to stack all of these grievances against the king, and to do so, not hastily or rashly, “but after long premeditation” (II, 878), was, to James, plain proof that Peacham had intended treason. Glancing comments, tangential criticisms, or tart digressions might all have been acceptable, but, not surprisingly, a sermon, the whole tenor of which was directed against the king, and done so soberly and deliberately, was not. Censorship of the pulpit during James’s reign was not common; the “outright suppression” of preaching, obviously untenable, was never attempted.3 However, with the continental military defeat of James I’s son-in-law late in 1620, criticism of James’s policies, particularly concerning the Palatinate, became more overt and religious tensions mounted. The apparent collapse of the Reformation in Europe under the assault of counter-Reformation forces, along with the abrupt dissolution of the 1621 parliament over the issue of free speech, provoked considerable public response even among the more loyal pulpits. Certainly, by the early months of 1622, a series of preachers had been reprimanded for speaking about Spain and the Palatinate during Sunday services, their sermons prompted not simply by a desire to support the protestant cause in the continental wars, but more immediately by a fear that James’s unwillingness to war against Spain and his obsession with a Spanish match for his son proceeded from an attraction to Roman Catholicism as much as to peace. The unruliness of the pulpit illustrates just how entangled politics and religion had become. Despite Peacham’s case, however, there is no evidence of “advance censorship [at least] of court sermon texts by church or court officers.”4 The oath of allegiance sworn upon joining the royal household ensured that most chaplains were self-disciplining, and Laud’s 1629 order for Paul’s Cross preachers to produce copies of their intended sermons before delivery was an innovation.5 Nonetheless, James did take measures to reduce controversy and suppress heresy. He increased the policing power of the Dean of the Chapel in 1619 by requiring all court preachers who were not Chaplains in Ordinary to subscribe to the royal supremacy, the Book of Common Prayer, and the Thirty-Nine Articles before they could preach in the king’s presence. After the fact, court sermons could be censored by penal measures taken against preachers who had overstepped unwritten bounds. McCullough argues that these bounds were defined early in the reign by James’s response to a sermon preached by John Burgess at Greenwich, 19 June 1604. From this example, McCullough derives a de facto Golden Rule governing James’s court pulpit: that is, “even if only in the last moments of one’s sermon, compliment the prince.”6 Criticisms could also be defended by disclaimers against application to the present audience. As McCullough suggests, “So fundamental was the preacher’s right to control meaning, that disavowals of a clearly intended meaning seem to have been deemed sufficient to exempt the preacher from the punishment that he would otherwise receive.”7 The issue of “interpretive control” 3 4 5 6

7

Seaver, p. 57. McCullough, Sermons at Court, p. 141. MacLure, p. 13. McCullough, Sermons at Court, p. 144. Lake discusses this sermon by Burgess and its aftermath in order to probe the “murky transactions that formed the practice of modified subscription” (p. 182). See “Moving the Goal Posts?” McCullough, Sermons at Court, p. 146.

37

John Donne and Conformity in Crisis was one that preachers understood well, and in Donne’s sermons one can observe the masterful way in which he deploys the shifting grounds of interpretation to allow for the maximum “nearenesse” with the minimum of danger. James’s comments on Burgess and Peacham suggest that he was willing to allow all but the most egregious criticisms and blunders if they were subordinated to a larger message of conformity, if they were not directed personally to himself or to members of his court, if they were not intended by the preacher (or if such a claim could be plausibly made), or if the words were uttered in passion rather than premeditated. These principles governing commentary on matters of state were more clearly delineated than those prescribing orthodox doctrine. Extant sermons for the period immediately preceding the Directions suggest that while wide latitude was given to preachers, James occasionally intervened directly to prevent the handling of controversial doctrine. In the years surrounding the Synod of Dort, for example, James took steps to muzzle Arminians on the contentious doctrinal issue of predestination, the most notorious case being that of Edward Simpson, fellow of Trinity College in Cambridge.8 Chamberlain reports to Dudley Carleton that Simpson, preaching before the king at Royston, “fell upon a point of Arminius touching universalitie of grace, and so handled yt that he [the king] was much displeased, and sent to the Doctors and heads of houses in Cambridge to convent him and examine his sermon.”9 The case demonstrates that James was a “shrewd auditor and a harsh adjudicator”10 of sermons, and that he reserved the right to judge rigorously when he believed that either the doctrinal or political implications of a sermon warranted.11 Thus, dissatisfied with the light censure delivered by the Cambridge examiners, James ordered that the sermon be more “narrowly discussed”;12 similarly, when the retraction sermon did not satisfy, Simpson was ordered to preach again before the king, although, once there, he apparently “spake not one word of that was lookt for and enjoyned him.”13 The sermon may not have attracted James’s attention primarily for its doctrinal content, however, 8 9

10 11

12

13

Fincham and Lake, “Ecclesiastical Policies,” 190–1. Simpson preached on John 3:6, “That which is born of the spirit is spirit,” offering a detailed examination of the workings of grace. The sermon and the original objections of the Vice-Chancellor and Heads of College at Cambridge are found in CUL MS Ff.V.25, fols. 83–93. Tyacke cites BL Add. MS 5960, apparently a result of the fuller discussion at Newmarket reported by Chamberlain. Cade’s St. Paul’s Agony “amounts to a refutation of Simpson” and is discussed by Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, pp. 43–4. Cade’s sermon on Romans 7 argues that the regenerate man is still naturally corrupt, but he differs from the unregenerate in labouring to mortify his “evil lusts” (p. 15). McCullough, Sermons at Court, p. 128. Clearly, the Cambridge divines who discussed the sermon believed that Simpson was preaching innovative doctrine, and was taking interpretation of the text in the direction of Arminius. See the marginal commentary in BL Add. MS 5960, fols. 52v, 53r. Whether sin “dominates” or “dwells” in the regenerate is the crux of the dispute. The Cambridge heads found the distinction important enough to devote considerable attention to it in their censures. The distinction between wholly and partly carnal, which Simpson denies as logically impossible (using an either-or rhetoric), further distinguishes Simpson from his interrogators. The Cambridge heads talk of degrees of carnality, degrees of thralldom to or liberty from sin, whereas Simpson speaks in absolutes: one is or isn’t regenerate; the regenerate man is not carnal. Chamberlain, II, 121, 140. In the current historical debate over the rise of Arminianism, this sermon has attracted attention from commentators debating whether, in fact, James was correct in detecting Arminian doctrine in the sermon. Tyacke argues that James was intervening directly to prevent the encroachment of Arminian theological views at the universities and, especially, in the pulpits, while Peter White argues that Simpson, contrary to Chamberlain’s report, had said nothing about the universality of grace. In their judgment against him, the heads said that even a regenerate man may be said to be carnal in some sense “all though ye preacher taught ye contrary” (CUL MS Ff.V.25, fo. 93).

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John Knight and the Jacobean Pulpit, 1620–2 as the debate between Tyacke and White suggests, but for its potential for controversial and conflicting interpretations, especially as these engaged James’s prerogative to assign meaning.14 Simpson’s case suggests that sermons handling controversial theology were rare enough to attract the king’s attention. However, commentary on state matters, especially negotiations for the Spanish match, elicited the most vehement response, although in a losing cause. Suppression of one preacher encouraged others to emerge, and the number of reports of indiscretions suggests a widespread, popular base of dissatisfaction, as well as an increasingly organized network of resistance to the religious implications of the proposed marriage. In the same letter that discusses Simpson’s case, Chamberlain reports the case of Andrew Willet, who was placed in custody for writing and dispersing a treatise against the Spanish match (II, 140).15 Willet, who had preached at the marriage of James’s daughter Elizabeth to Frederick V, Count Palatine, had, on that occasion, stressed the importance of marrying within one’s religion: “Blessed of God are those thrice renouned parents, which have not sought out a match for their daughter from among the Canaanites, but with faith full Abraham, from the kindred of household faith: which have married religion to religion, and have matched the Gospell with the Gospel, and have set more by the pious education of both, than by the promised mountains of gold.”16 Only five years later, Willet’s reiteration of the advice against matching with idolaters found James apparently arguing that “a Papist was no idolater,”17 a position that must have surprised Willet since it directly contradicted one of the most common axioms of anti-popery in England. Preachers were also being co-opted by various interest groups to speak against the match. At the same time as Willet’s imprisonment, John Preston was persuaded by a member of the House of Lords to argue against the match, though not openly, and his material was distributed among supporters. Preston’s godly credentials explain his selection for this assignment. He had already found himself on the dangerous side of the conformity issue with regard to set prayers, and had been required to prove his conformity by preaching a recantation sermon concerning grace, and directed prayers as the means to it. In that instance, Preston disappointed those who had come to gloat by recanting “at ye very close of the sermon; all before being both sharpe & searching.”18 Though Preston was obviously adept at avoiding prosecution, however, his surreptitious writing against the Spanish match and his circumspect recantation point to an atmosphere prevailing at court that had serious consequences for preachers. Ball writes that chaplains who attended the court monthly were “not ambitious of preaching very often.” When Preston’s turn came to preach at Royston, he could not decline for fear of exposing himself to too much observation, yet feared what would happen if he preached. In the end he changed his course with one who was scheduled to preach later. On that occasion, Preston chose and explicated a text [John 1:16] that 14

15

16 17 18

Peter White, p. 213, stresses the important point that James wanted to silence controversy when he was unable to reconcile conflicting theological parties. For a discussion of Willet as a conforming puritan whose theology and politics grew increasingly apart from conforming Calvinism, see Milton, Catholic and Reformed, pp. 10–27. Willet, p. 56. Ball, p. 59. Ball, p. 59.

39

John Donne and Conformity in Crisis pleased the King on the subject of set forms of prayer.19 The personal interest that James took in matters of doctrine, and in the public dissemination of viewpoints inconsistent with his church’s official theological positions, is well documented in these accounts. What remains to be determined is how the situation changed after James issued his Directions in 1622. When James issued his Directions, he was responding to a crisis that had been building for several years, and that focused on the public fear of James’s relapse into popery. Many preachers were examined for suggesting that James’s commitment to the reformed religion of the Church of England was half-hearted. Accompanying such fears was a growing interest in the pulpit as a forum for discussing such issues. Documentary sources indicate that conscious exploitation of the pulpit as a medium of the public sphere was becoming widespread, and was not simply the prerogative of court interests. Sometimes, as in the case of Gerald Prior, Vicar of Eldersfield, the charges reveal as much about local parish politics as they do about his sermons.20 Prior was suspended on charges that he had prayed God to turn the king’s heart from prophaneness, vanity, and popery,21 and that he had done so in a “contemptuous & disloyall manner.”22 When the matter was taken outside the locality to the Bishop of Worcester, in whose diocese the offence had allegedly occurred,23 Prior was reinstated as a “worthy, modest & iudicious preacher.”24 James’s attempts to control public sermons sometimes extended even to matters of social policy. Chamberlain records the Bishop of London’s instructions to his clergy “to inveigh vehemently and bitterly in theyre sermons against the insolencie of our women, and theyre wearing of brode brimd hats, pointed doublets, theyre haire cut short or shorne, . . . adding withall that yf pulpit admonitions will not reforme them he [the King] wold proceed by another course” (II, 287). This initiative was apparently successful; Chamberlain reports that “Our pulpits ring continually of the insolence and impudence of women.” Knowing what the king intended, however, was always a problem, as the interventions by the Dean of Westminster, Robert Townson, indicate. Townson apparently took the bishop’s instructions to mean that he should preach against women wearing “yellow ruffes,” at which point James himself corrected him by saying that he intended them to preach against “man-like and unseemly apparell” (II, 294).25 Donne seems to have contributed, satirically, to the pulpit attack on women, incongruously enough at the marriage of Sir Francis Nethersole and Lucy Goodyer, daughter of his good 19

20

21 22 23 24 25

Preston, The Fulnesse of Christ for Us, says “That a set forme of Prayer is lawfull, much need not bee said. The very newnesse of the contrary opinion is enough to shew the vanity and falsehood of it” (p. 22). Questier demonstrates how accusations of recusancy were sometimes motivated by spite rather than civic duty (“Conformity, Catholicism and the Law,” passim). PRO SP 14/110/27, 27.I, 27.II, 28, 44, 45, 63. PRO SP 14/110/44. PRO SP 14/110/45. PRO SP 14/110/27.I. Ley comments on this issue first by claiming that “Our women turned into the shapes of men, our men and especially they of the gallants ranke grown effeminate” (p. 12). He adds a curious account of a complaint in St. Cyprian’s time “that when God had said thou canst not make one haire white or blacke, the women did confute the Scripture, and turned their haire to yellow . . . Now this colour is fallen about the necke [yellow ruffs?] and other places . . . (p. 12). Hall’s celebrated condemnation of female vanity in The Righteous Mammon refers specifically to “a verdingale, a yellow ruffe, and a periwig” as part of a satiric portrait of unnatural women in Cheapside (Works, I, 670).

40

John Knight and the Jacobean Pulpit, 1620–2 friend Henry Goodyer, in the early part of 1620. In that sermon, Donne, perhaps chafing at the demand for pulpit declamations against women, offers a biting sermon against marriage at the marriage of these dear friends.26 The sermon and the manner of its delivery may have shown Donne’s witty, wry, and daring conformity to the Bishop’s public and civil instructions, even as it used the public space of the sermon’s occasion to realign his personal values in the face of his wife’s death.27 In 1620, clergy were also being instructed in another matter: discussion of Bohemia in the pulpit. The prohibitions cohere around a sermon preached in March at St. Paul’s by the Bishop of London, John King, and provide more evidence of how the pulpit was becoming the focus for interpretation of public policy. Both Catholics and protestants tried to control in advance (by rumour) the interpretation of the sermon, a situation repeated when Donne defended James’s Directions at St. Paul’s in September 1622. Chamberlain’s account shows just how “expectation” affected interpretation: “some surmise that the King will there deliver somwhat touching the matters of Bohemia, others, concerning this intended match with Spaine, but yf yt so fall out that he [King James] come I rather beleve yt is about the repairing of Paules which indeed growes very ruinous” (II, 297). But, interpretations of the Bishop’s sermon varied. Chamberlain reports that the Bishop preached on repairs to Paul’s “the better halfe of the time (beeing above two howres)” (II, 299); Richard Young, however, said that the preacher’s heart was in Bohemia, though how Young determined this is difficult to infer.28 To some extent, audience construction and reconstruction of sermons was as much a part of their public impact as was their subsequent printing. In July 1620, efforts to control public criticism intensified. Chamberlain writes that “the world is now much terrified with the Star Chamber, there being not so little an offence against any proclamation, but is liable and subject to the censure of that court. And for proclamations and patents, they are become so ordinary, that there is no end, every day bringing forth some new project or other” (II, 310). In the period immediately preceding the Directions, two such proclamations were 26

27

28

See Flynn, “Donne and a Female Coterie,” who says this incident illustrates the “short leash” on which court preachers roamed (135, n.1). Potter and Simpson argue that to speculate on Donne’s reasons for such an “unenthusiastic” sermon on marriage is “probably futile.” They suggest only that he may have been suffering “from weariness and a temporary drop in emotional intensity” (II, 44–5) and conclude that the sermon is fundamentally unsatisfying because Donne “could not at the time express his best or deepest feelings” (II, 44). Rose, on the other hand, finds this sermon unsatisfying because it does express Donne’s deepest feelings, in particular, his “unmitigated misogyny” (p. 101). The sermon is unique in its abrupt and alarming conclusion. The moral fitness of a wife, he reminds his audience, resides in the virtues of chastity, sobriety, taciturnity and verity, while the civil fitness resides in discretion and accommodation. Still, one wonders whether Lucy Goodyer’s talents in “wit, learning, eloquence, musick, memory, [and] cunning” (II, 346) were discounted seriously by Donne or the wedding party, whether they were not, instead, part of his own hyperbolic – even satiric – accommodation to the civil “fitness” demanded by the Bishop of London, or whether they spoke to his own experience of loss – an experience that had refocused his attention on sobriety and discretion rather than on the more ephemeral qualities of wit and learning. This is part of the sermon’s performance that remains unrecoverable. Following this pointed lecture on women’s fitness as marriage partners, however, Donne concludes cryptically: “I am not sorry, if either the houre, or the present occasion call me from speaking any thing at all [about the fitness of the particular parties to be joined], because it is a subject too misinterpretable, and unseasonable to admit an enlarging in at this time. At this time, therefore, this be enough, for the explication and application of these words” (II, 347). Gardiner, History, III, 342.

41

John Donne and Conformity in Crisis issued to stem the “inordinate libertie of unreverent speech touching matters of high nature, unfit for vulgar discourse [which] doth dayly more and more increase.”29 Despite these warnings, however, preachers were growing increasingly intractable. Chamberlain’s letters report that clergy had been warned not to meddle with the Spanish match or with any other matters of state, but “for all that on Sonday following (whether by chaunce or otherwise) a younge fellow at Paulescrosse upon his text (thou shall not plowe with an oxe and an asse,) spake very freely in generall” (II, 331). Furthermore, Stuteville reports to Mead the fate of “a poor silly fellow” of Winchester who was “solemnly executed, for saying, if the king should change the religion, he would be the first one to cut his majesty’s throat.”30 Even single words on particularly hot subjects were contested. On 26 May 1621, Robert Jenison, lecturer in Newcastle, writes bitterly to Samuel Ward, Master of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, of the “timorousness” of the licenser Richard Sibbes who, after examining Jenison’s already-printed book, discovered some “dangerous” passages concerning Spanish cruelty and marriage with papists and ordered changes made. Under pretence of protecting Jenison and his “friends” (whom Jenison interprets to mean Sibbes himself), Sibbes demanded that Jenison’s “our owne nation” be changed to “neighbour nations” and “forbidden mariages wth women Popishly affected” be changed to “unfortunate” marriages with them.31 Though these were the only alterations, and relatively minor ones, they delayed the publication of the book and were deemed a nuisance to Jenison, who writes “the times I knowe are dangerous, yet yf I might have advised, no such alterations should haue been made.”32 Milton discusses this case as an example of “benign censorship” of controversial works exacted by Sibbes in a programme aimed at sanitizing “potentially volatile discussions,” particularly of church government and ceremonies.33 The wonder to scholars must be that such specific, minute, and cosmetic changes were demanded in such a comprehensive anti-papist invective. As negotiations for the Spanish match continued, some preachers grew less rather than more circumspect, directing specific criticisms against Spain, or more generally harking back to known Catholic conspiracies of universal monarchy. In March 1621, Chamberlain reports the fate of three such preachers. First was Samuel Ward, preacher of Ipswich, released from prison “for having a picture of the Spanish fleet in 88 with the gun-powder treason, and some other additions of his owne invention and hand . . . which his friends say had lien by him at least

29

30 31 32 33

These proclamations, issued 4 December 1620 and 26 July 1621, are printed in Stuart Royal Proclamations, ed. Larkin and Hughes, I, 495–6, 519–21. Whiteway records in his Diary that the intent of the proclamations was to prohibit discussion of both domestic and foreign policy (p. 33. [3 January 1620/1]). Birch, II, 233 [1 March 1621]. Bodleian MS Tanner 73, fo. 29r. See Jenison 2.9.111 for the latter. Bodleian MS Tanner 73, fo. 29r. Milton, “Licensing,” 630–1. Milton cites part three of Robert Jenison’s The height of Israels heathenish idolatrie for its general comments on marriages with idolaters, and its anti-Spanish remarks. The comment about “unfortunate” marriages occurs in chapter 9 on “Devillish and Popish policies for the corrupting of the will, affections and outward senses” (p. 106). Foster cites Jenison’s treatment at the hands of Arminian Bishop Neile as “a good illustration of Neile’s long-suffering, patient approach to puritan clergy” and his readiness to “strain every sinew to stretch the meaning of ‘conformity’, at least in his own diocese, if not in London” (“Archbishop Richard Neile Revisited,” pp. 170, 174).

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John Knight and the Jacobean Pulpit, 1620–2 seven or eight yeares, and not looked into till now” (II, 350).34 Popular interest in this picture was intense, evidenced by the fact that Mead – who admits he has not seen the picture – nonetheless describes it in great detail: “The Pope sits in a council with a cardinal on one hand, and the devil on the other; and some layman with a feather in his cap. The Parliament House is pictured, and Fawkes therein with his lantern, very busy about his work. Over it in heaven is a great eye (signifying Divine Providence) which darts its beams down into the cellar, where Fawkes is; all is adorned with verses, and such like devices. The other is the flying of the Spanish fleet, and ours pursuing, and such like.”35 Ward’s petition for royal clemency to the king denies any intention of meddling in the king’s secret affairs, of which, he says, he was “altogether ignorant.”36 By 31 May 1622, Ward is still petitioning to be reinstated, mentioning his wife and eight children living in want, and asking permission to preach until his case is determined. The petition was apparently granted, Ward being found “conformable,”37 but Walsham’s point is pertinent here: the timing rather than the content of this print explains much of its impact. At the same time, Chamberlain reports the case of Dr. Everard of St. Martin’s in the Fields, imprisoned for “glauncing on Sonday was sevenight at the Spanish match, and discifring the craft and crueltie of the Spaniards in all places where they come specially the West Indies” (II, 350).38 Mead’s account reveals that while the sermon was not concerned primarily with the Spanish match, the digression against the Spaniards was sufficient to arouse the “lords of the council” and commit him to the Gatehouse. Fortunately for Everard, he was the chaplain of Henry Rich, Lord Kensington (and future Earl of Holland), whose patronage ensured that his prison stays, though frequent, were brief. When Everard’s sermons were published in 1657, he was presented as a man of conscience, for “he was the onely man that opposed, preached against, and held it out to the utmost against the late Kings matching with the Infanta of Spain, when others durst but whisper their consciences and thoughts: he chose Texts on purpose, to shew the unlawfulness, and the great sin of matching with Idolaters.”39 Even when examined by the High Commission, Everard stated clearly that he had “well advised and considered” his pulpit pronouncements. Everard’s sermons, we are told, barely escaped “the Bishops fingers,” and are contrasted with sermons by men busy “sowing pillows under the Elbows” of those Everard had criticized. Patronage also explains the fate of Theodore Price, who was likewise imprisoned for “glauncing at somwhat in his sermon at Otelands.” Mead reports the details of Price’s offence, noting that Price was committed for a sermon touching particularly on “Rochelle, the Palatinate, and the Spaniard.”40 Despite the king’s 34

35

36 37 38

39 40

Ward’s “impertinent cartoon” in memory of England’s deliverance is reproduced and discussed in the context of anti-Catholic providentialism which even if “entirely conventional” was potentially inflammatory (Walsham, “ ‘The Fatall Vesper’,” 70–5). Apparently, Ward’s print “inspired many copies and adaptations, including at least two in embroidery” (74, n.92). Birch, II, 226. In a subsequent letter, we are informed that Mead has been able to ascertain a copy of the picture, which he forwards to Stuteville. PRO SP 15/42/76. PRO SP 14/130/127. Though Mead records the name as Dr. Evans, his account of the sermon on Genesis 49:5 corresponds to Chamberlain’s description of a sermon to show the Spanish cruelties in the West Indies. Everard, sig. A2v. Birch, II, 265–6.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis threat to “hang Price,”41 Mead reports that Price was not restrained long, being “the prince’s chaplain.”42 The political specificity of the sermons by Ward, Everard, and Price, provoked by the crisis conditions described earlier, resulted, not surprisingly, in imprisonment and surveillance. These preachers were treated more as personal irritants to James than as criminals, the harshness of the penalties being economic as much as religious. Ward, in particular, suffered, as did his wife and family, for his outspokenness, suggesting that these premeditated gestures of free speech held important symbolic significance. As Chamberlain observed to Carleton in August 1621, the proclamation against “lavish and licentious talking in matters of state” caused difficulty among the common people who “know not how to understand, nor how far matter of state may stretch or extend; for they continue to take no notice of yt, but print every weeke (at least) corantas with all manner of newes . . . ” (II, 396). The State Papers for the period abound with examples of subjects examined for alleged indiscretions regarding matters of state. Not all of these examinations involve ministers, but one of the most incredible depositions is that of Samuel Phillips, recorded 13 November 1621.43 Apparently, Phillips, minister of St. Mary, Staines, and Lecturer in Paul’s Church, preached at St. Paul’s against the marriages of protestants – whether princes or subjects – with papists, because most papists were idolaters. In his deposition, Phillips defends his doctrine, saying that it was taken from scripture, alleging the examples of Solomon and Ahab, and Theodora the Empress and wife of Justinianus. Phillips’s examiner, George Montaigne Bishop of London, seems disinclined to prosecute Phillips, and extenuates the charges. He observes that Phillips had named no prince in particular, “but spoke yt he did of Princes in generall. & further that he neuer knew of any treaty twixt his matie & the King of Spaine concerning any mariadg for the Prince wth a daughter of Spaine.” Given the public furore over the Spanish match, this deposition seems incredible, but Phillips relies on his “intention,” saying that since he knew of no treaty, he could not have meant Prince Charles in his sermon. And he reinforces this defence by insisting on the general nature of his observations, a common strategy in the period designed to avoid the literal requirements of the censorship laws. Phillips seems to believe that by saying he has named no particular prince, his topical statements will be rendered legally innocuous. Phillips’s examination and deposition suggest that despite their suspicions, most authorities were reluctant to proceed further against those, like Phillips, who invoked the authority of scripture, and whose innocent intentions could be credibly allowed. James’s ecclesiastical authorities were not anxious to make martyrs out of anyone defending such a popular, anti-Spanish position, and in fact we hear nothing further about Phillips or his sermon. In the early months of 1622, clerical criticism of the perceived alteration in religion boiled over. At Oxford, where the Spanish match was generally disapproved, Richard Randes of Trinity College wrote and distributed some Latin verses entitled “Ad Hispaniam,” for which he was forced to recant. Wood says the recantation was “a full acknowledgement of the offence he had given to the King, by abusing his confederate, and his Embassador.” But the section Wood cites is entirely unapologetic, suggesting that Spain should match with Rome, and adding that if 41 42 43

Ibid., II, 266. Ibid., II, 267. PRO SP 14/123/105.

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John Knight and the Jacobean Pulpit, 1620–2 it does not approve of the women there, it can ask the pope miraculously to change sex.44 In this charged atmosphere, orders were sent to the universities that outspoken preachers cease meddling with such matters. Godly preachers obeyed the orders to “preach nothing but court divinitie,” yet by the “very choyce of their texts, and the very teares in their eyes” they spoke their consciences.45 Learned preachers were still authorized to refute popery, “the Text leadinge them thereunto,”46 but when Thomas Winiffe, one of the prince’s own chaplains, compared “the surprisal of the soul to Mr. Spinola’s usurping of the Palatinate,” he was committed to the Tower. It was the application of the text that undid him; the analogy between Spinola/ the Prince of Darkness as the usurper of the Palatinate/soul offended precisely because Winiffe was believed to have intended that “Prince” to stand for Spinola’s “Prince,” the King of Spain. Notwithstanding Winiffe’s claim that he intended the Prince of Darkness rather than the king of Spain,47 he was released only upon petition to the Emperor’s ambassador. Chamberlain’s comment upon the affair is telling: “though he made otherwise an excellent sermon and much applauded, yet this needlesse comparison was so yll taken that on Sonday he was committed to the Towre” (II, 432). KNIGHT’S CASE: CONTROVERSY So uncertain was the preaching climate in April 1622 that, as Chamberlain reports, John Hales, former chaplain to Dudley Carleton, “desired to be spared, as pretending nothing but to live quietly, and therfore was willing to resigne his roome to some that had more ambition to shew themselves” (II, 433). In the same letter, Chamberlain tells the story of John Knight of Oxford, apparently committed for “overreaching” in a sermon with the doctrine that “yf kings grow unruly and tirannical they may be corrected and brought into order by theire subjects.” This doctrine, Chamberlain says, is so “extravagant” that the king threatens to have it publically burnt as “hereticall” (II, 434). Knight’s sermon, preached 14 April, was said to have commented generally on Romans 13:1, using 1 Kings 19 to discuss the persecutions of the prophet by King Ahab.48 As a result of this exegesis, Knight, “an ingenious man,”49 was imprisoned, along with two students of Broadgate (i.e. Pembroke) who had apparently seen the sermon before it was delivered. Following the burning of Pareus’s books and the reforms brought into place by the University, the students, Herbert and Code, were released. Knight remained in the Gatehouse for two years until he was freed through the intervention of the Earl of Oxford. Upon his release, the Lord Keeper Williams “gave him many good words,”50 new clothes, and money. He accompanied the Earl of Oxford to the Netherlands, but died shortly afterwards. 44 45 46 47

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Wood, II, Book 1, pp. 340–1. Tom Tell-Troath, Somers Tracts, III, 472. BL Add. MS 72275 [Castle Correspondence], fo. 129v. [29 March 1622]. Ibid., fo. 137r. [11 April 1622]. Castle believed that the Spanish ambassador pressed for punishment for his master’s identification as “Prince of Darkness” more than the Emperor’s ambassador did for Winiffe’s naming Spinola as a usurper. “Let every soul be subject to the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God”; “What doest thou here, Elijah?” Wood, II, Book 1, p. 341. Ibid., I, 348.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis The incident involving Knight reverberates throughout the public records as a highly-charged moment in the history of preaching, and one that Cogswell rightly sees as the efficient cause of James’s Directions several months later.51 In his life of Laud, Heylyn puts this sermon in the context of the Spanish match and the sudden ending of the parliament, “which much encreased the Audaciousness of the Papists, and the discontents of the Puritan Faction.”52 In fact, Heylyn sees Knight’s sermon as participating in an organized puritan project that had simply broken out a little before its time. James’s handling of this incident suggests that while criticism of his foreign policy, however distasteful, might be tolerated or punished mildly, a theoretical justification of the citizen’s right to challenge tyrannical rulers, justified in part by the king’s own authority, went beyond the limits of tolerance.53 James seemed determined to strike at the root of the disturbance, notice of which was brought to his and the prince’s attention by Laud on 16 April.54 The works of Pareus were ordered publicly burnt at Paul’s Cross, a measure so radical as to be ineffectual. Chamberlain writes: “I know not what goode yt can do to burne a few bookes here when they are current all Christendome over,” and the observation is just, although its focus on the practical misses the symbolism of the action. Moreover, the severity of the measure leads Chamberlain, who was sympathetic to the charge that Knight’s sermon was “scandalous,” to comment that the official solution had the appearance of smashing a mosquito with a sledge hammer. Chamberlain says that “for ought I heare there is but one 13th chapter that is so offensive” (II, 439). What is at stake in this incident appears to be control of the public sphere, but, as Chamberlain’s observations illustrate, James erred in allowing such symbolic significance to accrue to this sermon. The appearance of tyranny created by James’s measures made Knight’s theoretical point about resistance to tyrants all the more pertinent, and the parallel was not lost on contemporaries. Analysis of this event’s repercussions suggests that the extensive reporting of Knight’s sermon, more than anything inherently subversive in the sermon itself, led to James’s efforts to silence such preaching and to enforce conformity at the Universities. In fact, the burning of Pareus’s works is reported in every news source of the period.55 The Acts of the Privy Council indicate that the “extravagance” of Knight’s sermon was matched by the extravagance of the official response to it. Privy councillors who had not themselves read Pareus’s commentaries recalled the book for burning because they had been “given to understand” that it contained “very daingerous and false doctrine concerning the deposeing of soveraigne princes.”56 An order was given to search not only the houses, shops, and storehouses of the 51

52 53 54 55

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Cogswell, Blessed Revolution, p. 31. So too did Beaulieu who wrote to Trumbull that “Knight who hath bein clapt up close three moneths for such a busines [i.e. “meddling any way in matters of state”] is like to suffer further punishment for it” (BL Add. MS 72254, fo. 132v [Beaulieu Correspondence]. [2 August 1622]). Heylyn, Cyprianus Anglicus, p. 95. Gardiner, History, IV, 297. Laud, Works, III, 138. The Venetian ambassador reported on 13 May that some preachers who attacked the king rashly, “sowing the evil seed of grave seditions” had been imprisoned (CSPV, XVII, 319) [13 May 1622]. D’Ewes records the event in his Diary for 27 June, noting specifically that the doctrine in question had to do with subjects “rebelling for religion” (pp. 82–3). Yonge reports the incident in his diary and makes the dangerous application to a prince who tried to compel his people to idolatry “or offer violence against them in that case, as Rochelle doth” (p. 62). Acts of the Privy Council, VI, 232.

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John Knight and the Jacobean Pulpit, 1620–2 stationers for copies, but also private libraries and studies. Castle reported to Trumbull that “for the indiscretion of that foole,” sixty of the commentaries upon Romans “did lately suffer martyrdome” at Oxford University.”57 Only after these acts of search and seizure were the measures justified by a panel of the “cheifest and most reverend bishopps of this kingdome,” who, not surprisingly, found the doctrine to be “seditious, scandalous, and contrary to the Scriptures.”58 Finally, on 31 May, a letter was sent to the vice-chancellors, heads of colleges, and the public readers at both universities, requiring them also to seek out copies of Pareus’s books, and to burn them publicly. Moreover, the university authorities were required to warn divinity students of any “late authors” living in unsettled states who teach that sovereign kings can be resisted and to see that students interpret the scriptures, fathers, and primitive councils according to “those things which are sett downe by publicke authoritie within this kingdome, as namely the Articles of Religion, the Homilies, Catechismes etc., approved by Convocacion and the writinges of many grave bishopps and other learned men, which have written with greate commendacion in this Church.” Knight, whose sermon had provoked this flurry of official activity, is dismissed as “an unadvised young man.”59 Gardiner was right to say that presenting four garbled propositions to the universities’ students requiring them to swear that they would never adopt the arguments of Pareus at any future time was an act “as injudicious as it was tyrannical.”60 As the details of the incident emerge, it is possible to reconstruct the discursive context in which Knight’s sermon was interpreted and the public sphere that it represented. James was firing on all fronts to ensure that this piece of ground not be conceded. University authorities, privy councillors, bishops, preachers, and other officials and their agents were enlisted in the cause. Knight himself escaped martyrdom, but that honour went to Pareus’s books, and was so perceived by contemporaries. This scapegoating of Pareus was James’s one concession to popular opinion. Oxford University adopted it unanimously, hoping to restore its reputation by condemning Pareus’s doctrine as “false, seditious, impious, and destructive of all Civil Government.”61 The fiction that Pareus was to blame for the whole affair, however, was punctured by Knight’s statement to his examiners, where he said that he chose Pareus because of his reputation in sermons and disputations, but that reputation did not prevent wholesale efforts to eradicate Pareus from the public sphere of religious debate.62 Knight’s imprisonment and the public burning of Pareus’s books ought to have had a greater effect than they did. Shortly afterwards, Edward Hurd, fellow of Corpus Christi College, preached at St. Mary’s, Oxford, “certain offensive speeches tending to the breach of the peace and disgrace both of the Church and the University, and also in the same Sermon to speak certain words of personal invective, contrary to the Laws of the Church.” Wood suggests that Hurd might have been nettled by the severe proceedings against Knight. Ordered either to be 57 58 59

60 61 62

BL Add. MS 72276 [Castle Correspondence], fo. 3v. [9 August 1622]. Acts of the Privy Council, VI, 234. Ibid., VI, 237; Milton, Catholic and Reformed, notes that these proceedings indicate a revival of the Schoolmen’s reputations in the academy, a respectability not welcome to moderate Calvinists, such as Prideaux (p. 292). History, IV, 299. Heylyn, Cyprianus Anglicus, p. 96. PRO SP 14/130/138.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis banished or to recant, he chose the latter, and did so on his knees in a Convocation held 25 June, the same Convocation at which Pareus’s doctrines were condemned as seditious.63 When a Mr. Lucy preached a sermon “totally for Arminianism” at the Cambridge Commencement in 1622,64 the contrast between the partiality of his treatment and that afforded Knight did not go unnoticed. Despite the efforts of some in the town to have him censured by the vice-chancellor, Lucy was in fact admitted as a bachelor in divinity against the next year, “though this be a favour not ordinary for every one to have his grace before this year.”65 Noting cynically that Lucy was the Marquess of Buckingham’s chaplain, however, D’Ewes makes a direct comparison with Knight’s treatment, a political application which must have occurred to many citizens: “yett was hee not at all questioned though poore Knight weere at Oxford for saiing that if the King of France weere slaine before Rochell walls it weere an execution but not a murther, but in truth the Marquesses shadow was not to bee trodd upon.”66 Especially in the months preceding the Directions, official state machinery, insofar as it operated, aimed at avoiding inflammatory, controversial, or seditious sermons rather than endorsing a particular doctrinal or confessional orthodoxy. Particular preachers might be prosecuted or spared depending on the “extravagance” of the doctrine preached, the degree to which they had “overreached,” the intervention of their patrons, or their personal impact on James, who took a serious interest in sermons, in interpreting biblical texts, and in maintaining public order. The exemplary public book-burnings and imprisonments clearly had some effect, if only in establishing a sermon discourse acutely sensitive to the rhetorical situations in which conformity was enacted at this historical moment. SERMONS SURROUNDING THE “KNIGHT” CASE The furore created by Knight’s sermon operates within a complex discursive context illuminated by contemporaneous sermons preached by William Laud, Walter Curll, Christopher White, and Richard Gardiner. These are by no means the only sermons on obedience preached in 1622; nor do they comprise an official “response” to Knight’s sermon. But, whereas Knight’s sermon had highlighted what could not be said on the subject, these sermons offer a counter-discourse suggesting how univocal authorized sermons might be. Three of these sermons were preached and published within a month of Knight’s sermon, suggesting that their message was either commissioned or found highly acceptable in the wake of that public relations fiasco. However, a sermon preached before James in March 1622 by William Laud – before Knight’s sermon – establishes the terms of an official discourse of obedience by conjoining topical application of the text to James with extravagant gestures towards his policy of peace and his authority as moral exemplar.67 Throughout the sermon, James serves as Laud’s primary example of the “blessings” of his scriptural 63 64 65

66 67

Wood, II, Book 1, p. 348. Birch, II, 319–20. Birch, II, 320. The following January it was paralleled by a similar sermon in Oxford, preached by Gabriel Bridges. Unlike Lucy, Bridges was summoned before the vice-chancellor and ordered to read a public submission (Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, pp. 74–5). D’Ewes, Diary, p. 84. Laud, A Sermon Preached At White-Hall.

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John Knight and the Jacobean Pulpit, 1620–2 text. Laud invokes the authority of the Holy Ghost to justify describing a king in this way, rather than by his “Humane infirmities, such as all men have” (p. 5), and supplies his audience with the proper response to this blessing, namely “Praise, and Thankes, and faire interpretation of Princes Actions” (p. 7). To illustrate this practice of “faire interpretation,” Laud assures his audience that the king’s status as blessing depends on his possession of true religion and holiness, but is marked by the king’s human imperfections: “But they [the blessings] are strain’d Per eum, through him, through the Man, and therefore must relish a little of the Strainer, Him and his Mortality” (p. 21). This in itself might pass as orthodox, but Laud’s comments on the “Malecontents” (p. 23) stirring in these times go beyond conventional criticisms of religious factionalism. Laud warns that “if any attempt to displace him, to plunge him into griefe, to make him struggle with difficulties; it is a Kinde of Deposing him” (p. 27). Significantly, the treason is in the “attempt” to stand between God and the king’s joy, the language strongly condemning those who “make him [the king] struggle.” Critics are now on a par with papist assassins and rebellious insurgents. After such provocative language, Laud’s assurances that “no Prince hath euer kept more firme to Religion” (p. 34) ring hollow, especially when accompanied by the vaguely threatening “assurance” that the king is an immovable rock upon which “insolent waues dash themselues in pieces of all sides” (p. 35).68 James, then, becomes the most perfect example of a king who is both blessed and a blessing to his people. His many deliverances from danger prove the former, and the blessing of peace which he currently provides, the latter. Never mind that, to many, this blessing of peace seemed an incomprehensible turning to idolatry and coldness in religious leadership. Laud has sounded every note imaginable from one whose rhetoric was at the service of James’s authority. Additionally, the sermon sheds light on Laud’s Arminianism at this date, indicating why Arminianism was popularly connected with absolutist support of James. On the question of David’s individual assurance, for example, Tyacke takes Laud’s suggestion that God might forsake David to suggest the non-perseverance, even of the elect, which although broached warily, is still daring so soon after the English had supported the Calvinist resolutions of the Synod of Dort.69 Tyacke also notes that Laud cites the semi-Pelagian, Cassian, approvingly, and sees in the sermon as a whole “a declaration of Arminian sympathies.”70 With its total identification of church and state, the sermon epitomizes the conformist political theology of the Jacobean pulpit in its most uncompromising form. Preaching at Whitehall not long after Knight’s Oxford fiasco and a month after Laud’s Whitehall sermon urging obedience, Walter Curll, Dean of Lichfield and future Laudian bishop, also focuses attention on the mutual duties of peace and holiness, taking as his text Hebrews 12:14.71 The sermon was published by special 68

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Hacket, p. 88, describes Knight’s sermon in similar terms, noting that Knight exchanged “the Divine’s Cap” for “the Judges Coif ” when he “derogated Much from the safety of Regal Magesty” and “broke a Sermon against this rock.” “Archbishop Laud,” p. 60. Ibid. “Follow Peace with all men, and Holinesse, without which no man shall see the Lord.” McCullough, Sermons at Court, includes Curll among those “Arminian” preachers who received the majority of James’s commands to print. The others included Andrewes, Buckeridge, and Laud (p. 138). Milton, Catholic and Reformed, describes this sermon as an outspoken attack against anti-papal extremism in the context of a “general distaste for religious controversy per se” (p. 63).

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis command and is a detailed defence of James’s pacifist foreign policy against the rising popular clamour for intervention in the continental war. Interpreting his text to mean that peace is the consequence of holiness, Curll defines peace as obedience and discipline in both church and state. The contemporary church Curll describes, however, is filled with “Faction and Faction, Schisme and Separation” (p. 10). Even Religion, he laments, “is in a maner lost in the quarrels and questions of Religion” (p. 11). To redress this situation, Curll suggests that there be fewer books of controversies written and published, proposing that the end of religion, salvation, may be achieved though a man “neuer reade, or study controuersies” (p. 12). Curll’s discussion of peace in the church is premised on civil peace, a state that belongs properly to princes and authorized public persons, and is not the domain of private citizens. Having said this, he praises James for his “blessed, and christian care of the Common peace, whatsoeuer the successe be” (p. 18). Private persons, he says, have a responsibility to pray for the peace of states, and “neuer was there more need of this prayer, then in this fearefull combustion, and confusion of the Christian world, wherein there is nothing but warres, and rumours of warres” (p. 19). Unlike many preachers who chose to concentrate on the sufferings of their continental brethren and the security of the English public, Curll celebrates instead the blessings of peace England enjoys. Those who weary of this continued pattern of blessings are likened, in that familiar analogy, to the Israelites who surfeited on manna and grew weary. The fountain and sustainer of this peace, King James, is duly praised; in addition, Curll warns his audience of the dangers of “innovation” brought on in this state by those “who out of their glorious, vaineglorious humour of popularity” (p. 22) trouble the waters. A sermon by Christopher White, preached in Oxford on 12 May 1622, ups the ante in its explicit handling of the topic of resistance.72 The text he chooses is Romans 13:1, and he opens with an unequivocal articulation of the doctrine of obedience to kings. “In vaine doe Christian Princes beare the Sword if their subiects conscience may question their power” (p. 1), White begins, commenting on how this text has become a site of interpretive contention, particularly among those “who secretly labour to curbe Kings” (p. 5). White warns that “we must not frame fancies, and then fit the Scripture to them by translation” (p. 5), an abuse that he charges to those who argue that these words apply to every magistrate, bailiff, and constable. While the “higher powers” of White’s text receive the narrowest of interpretations (Christian princes only), “every soul” is interpreted quite broadly to include everyone, the pope as well as the clergy. Furthermore, this subjection must be both inward and outward, encompassing both body and soul. And here, in direct response to Knight, White states that, despite their vices, obedience is required, even to wicked kings. White does concede that in the case of a king who is trying to extirpate true religion, obedience to God takes precedence; but even here only non-violent forms of resistance are allowed. Pastors may resist with the word of God, telling the prince his faults discreetly, and inferior magistrates may defend the commonwealth lawfully. White concludes that if subjects cannot escape a tyrant by flight or ordinary means, they may lawfully defend themselves with arms. What appears to be a concession to resistance, however, is offered in contrast to 72

“Let every soul be subject to the higher powers: for there is no power but of God.” Like Curll’s, the sermon was printed by royal command.

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John Knight and the Jacobean Pulpit, 1620–2 the Jesuit teaching that subjects may take arms against the supreme power in defence of religion (p. 20). As White goes on to show, neither primitive Christians nor Christ himself resisted the outrages practised by idolatrous tyrants. White concludes by saying that he must still show “the medium betweene disobeying God, and resisting the King” (p. 27), but placing prayer as the mean between obedience to God and resistance to the king offers little ground on which to stand: “Hee that in this defence wounds his persecutor, is a rebellious murtherer, not a lawfull executioner. Remember that he is still thy Prince, and since thy conscience may not yeeld to his command, shew thy selfe his subiect in yeelding to his punishment” (p. 29). Finally, in a sermon preached in Oxford on Act Sunday 1622, Richard Gardiner answers Knight’s incendiary call for resistance to tyrants with a classic sermon on obedience on Genesis 45:8. The sermon is his first publication, and in his dedication, Gardiner describes the “torture of publike Censure” upon which he has fallen (p. 3). He identifies the source of this public censure as the “turbulent Puritans” (p. 3) and suggests that he has been commanded to preach in response to their threat to public order.73 Specifically, he is supporting King James’s maxim, “No Bishop, no King,” arguing that it is a short step from challenging episcopal authority to undermining monarchy. Against these “State-wormes” Gardiner asserts that “it is not lawfull to resist supreame Rulers, though they swarue from the line of iustice; for it pleaseth God sometimes to punish his people by a Tyranous hand” (p. 26). The sermon takes Joseph as the “Standard of examples” (p. 1), whose pattern of “digesting iniuries, and recompensing good for euill” (p. 29) qualifies him as the perfect counsellor against “intemperate spirits, and contentious dispositions” (p. 29). In working for the public good, Gardiner explains, Joseph fulfilled God’s plan for the preservation of the church. In the course of the sermon, Gardiner also comments on the goodness of Pharaoh (!) in choosing such a good counsellor and compares him to James, “our Royall Solomon, the second, the wisest since the first for politike wisdome, [who] hath notwithstanding his sage Counselors for aduice, and information” (p. 19). The wisdom of choosing wise counsellors leads naturally to a discussion of wellordered government, and here Gardiner articulates the doctrines of degree and hierarchy that Knight’s sermon had challenged only a few weeks before. “In all wel ordered Gouernments,” Gardiner pronounces, “there are degrees, & these by God’s appointment” (p. 22). Gardiner opposes this doctrine to that of the Anabaptists, who dream that after Christ’s coming there will be no rulers or authority, and to the doctrines of those “truly called Puritans, which oppose virulently the flourishing state of our Church” (p. 23). These puritans he dismisses as “brainsicke, undisciplin’d Disciplinarians, those seditious medlers in our discipline Ecclesiasticall, and by consequence Civil, who make religion their Stalking-horse to all impieties” (pp. 23–4). As he insists “If the powers that be are ordain’d of God, then also are they constant, and stable, and not to be resisted” (p. 23). Gardiner speaks specifically against the view that tyrants can be resisted, calling the holders of such tenets “mere Popes,” (p. 25) thereby invoking the entire tradition of bloody resistance to monarchs that structured the anti-papist prejudice. Furthermore, Gardiner 73

Both Gardiner in this sermon (challenging any “ridiculously affecting that Scar-Crowe title of Martin Mar-Prelate” [dedication]) and Samuel Burton in his assize sermon refer to this new crisis in the discourse of religious controversy in terms of the Elizabethan Martin Marprelate controversy (p. 17).

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis equates puritans with Jesuits, both extremists, “for the one no lesse than the other, vnder colour of zeale, and pretense of holy discipline” corrupt youth with “that detestable and traitorous instruction incouraging subjects to resist their supreme Rulers” (p. 25). The sermon ends with a call for more severe application of both spiritual and temporal authority, and while it contains no new interpretation of the obedience of subjects, it offers a clear refutation of the doctrine expounded by Knight in Oxford some weeks before, and it is no wonder that it was published soon after it was delivered. By contrast with clearly conformist sermons, such as those by puritan Thomas Gataker, these sermons, with their unapologetic absolutism, mark a move towards increasingly controversial political debates and growing tensions even at the conforming centre of the English church. Only two years earlier, Gataker had tackled one of the fundamental texts supporting divine right theory, Psalm 82:6–8,74 moving it perceptibly from the conventional absolutism of the sermons cited above through its rhetorical performance of an obedience that is neither “blind” nor “passive.” Gataker’s dedication to Hobart states his intention to inculcate “godly regard and holy obedience” (p. 69), but to do so in the context of God’s rebuke of earthly judges for their “corrupt cariages” (p. 72) in judicial matters. And, whereas Laud enlists the Holy Ghost’s authority to deflect discussion of the human infirmities of rulers, Gataker argues that the Spirit of God does not exempt judges from their frailty and mortality, nor deprive God of his sovereignty over them. Gataker’s discussion of the dignity of rulers could be quoted to suggest unqualified absolutism; only when modifed by the sermon as a whole do his comments become clear. Gataker certainly holds that rulers – including heathen kings – are divinely constituted, “not in regard of nature or naturall descent, but in regard of honour, authority and power conferred vpon them from God” (p. 74). Further, their public face restrains their liberty and taxes their discretion to resemble the person they represent, God. Those who live under judges have a corresponding duty of subjection to them, but Gataker does not leave this sermon without commenting on the frailty of these “Gods.” They live like Gods, but die like men. “Some litle worme may doe as much by them, as they can doe to any man. A flie or gnat strangled that proud Pope our Countreyman, that made the Emperor stoope to hold him his stirop. And, I say not, a litle fish-bone, an haire, or a crumb of bread onely going downe the wrong way, may endanger, yea may choake and make an end of the mightiest Monarch in the world” (p. 84). And when they die, they too are subject to God’s judgments and will be judged for their abuses of power. Gataker’s parting words demonstrate his attitude to the respect due to princes: “Let vs reverence them in God, and God in them; but not equalize them with God, nor preferre them before him” (p. 93). Gataker’s statement of the duties of subjects, framed between discussions of the duties of magistrates and the frailty of princes, offers a full meditation on the conscientious objections to obeying tyrannous “Gods.” The structure of Gataker’s sermon provides rhetorical shading to the dazzling subject of absolute obedience and must have seemed a warning not only to subjects, but also to the “Gods” themselves, to fulfil the roles imposed on them by their great offices with vigorous justice. A second sermon discourses on the pattern of ideal rule provided by God who is at once judge, lawgiver, and king, and the contrast with earthly examples of these 74

Gods Parley with Princes. “I have said; Yee are Gods etc.”

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John Knight and the Jacobean Pulpit, 1620–2 offices provides the substance of Gataker’s discussion. Earthly kings, for example, may make laws, but all these must be “grounded vpon and agreeable to Gods Law, or else they are no Lawes, or as good as none” (p. 97). Moreover, unlike God, earthly kings “receive power from their people” (p. 99). “It is their subjects shoulders that beare them vp; as the lower stones in the wall doe those that lye aloft over them: take these supporters away, and they will lie as low as the lowest” (p. 99). When justice fails, however, private persons cannot seek revenge, but must pray to God for redress and wait patiently for the final judgment by Jesus, the Lord Chief Justice. The unequivocal and consistent message of this sermon is that those in authority have been called Gods by office, not by nature, and that their actions will be judged severely by the Judge of Judges. In 1620, such sermons were arguably “conformist” and were subsequently printed; the contrast with the sermons surrounding Knight’s case suggests that this designation might no longer be applied. Knight’s sermon had proven that the pulpit was a viable forum for public debate on even the most dangerous matters. Despite the official response, which included Knight’s lengthy imprisonment, the sermon had provoked considerable reaction, including a spate of sermons answering the claims he had made for resisting tyrants in matters of religion. The abrupt dissolution of the 1621 parliament had effectively eliminated that avenue for offering advice on sensitive matters of foreign and domestic policy. When the Directions to Preachers were issued only a few months later, they marked a crucial stage in this battle for control of the public sphere. Donne’s defence of the Directions on 15 September needs to be read in relation to the range of pulpit discourse on the topics proscribed by the instructions, specifically anti-papist invective, personal slanders and crude labelling; controversial preaching on predestination and the finer points of Reformed theology; and matters of state. These specific prohibitions, in turn, need to be read within a larger hermeneutics of interpretation highlighting differing conceptions (from the prophetic to the administrative) of the doctrine of callings, the conforming boundaries of zealous preaching within a state church, the status of controversial preaching, the matter of war with both religious and political enemies, and, finally, an understanding of the Church of England in relation to both papist and separatist extremes, and to other reformed churches. INTERPRETATION AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE In the administrative sphere, power to control speech inhered in laws, court procedures, and penalties. In that part of the public sphere inhabited by sermons, power inhered in controlling interpretation of controverted issues. Increasingly in this period, published sermons foreground issues of interpretation, especially the faulty interpretive practices of opponents. This interpretive self-consciousness formed the ground for much of the controversial rhetoric that the Directions sought to curb, and many preachers recognized that control of controverted points between the Roman and Reformed churches depended on seizing interpretive authority. Some preachers, like Ward, resented this competition, claiming that certain “truths” were so apparent as to be beyond controversy. He comments bitterly that “It is become a disputable Probleme, Whether the Pope be Antichrist, Rome a good Church; . . . whether election bee of foreseene 53

John Donne and Conformity in Crisis faith; whether the true Beleeuer may Apostatize? Shortly, I think, whether the Scripture bee Scripture, and whether there bee a God, or no?” (p. 30). Ward’s exasperation was not peculiar to him. Almost all anti-papist rhetoric, for example, assumed that the errors of the Roman church were founded on the perversity of papist scriptural interpretations. In a visitation sermon, Sanderson establishes the orthodoxy of his own, essentially Calvinist, theology – and its long pedigree – by illustrating how the Roman Church perverts the orthodox doctrine of the Fathers, to the detriment of the Reformed churches. The Doctors of the Church, he says, preach “sound, and true, and comfortable, and profitable, and necessary doctrines.”75 These include “the effectuall concurrence of Gods will and power, with subordinate Agents in euery, and therefore euen in sinfull actions; Gods free election of those whom hee purposeth to saue of his owne grace, without any motiues in, or from themselues; The immutabilitie of Gods Loue and Grace towards the Saints, and certaine perseuerance therein vnto Salvation; The Iustification of sinners by the imputed righteousnesse of Christ, apprehended and applyed vnto them by a liuely faith; without the works of the Law” (p. 57). Romish detractors, however, speak “as we made God the author of sinne: as we would haue men sinne and be damned, by a Stoicall fatall necessitie; sinne whether they will or no, and be damned whether they deserue it or no: as if we opened a gappe to all licenciousnesse and prophanenesse; let men beleeue, it is no matter how they liue, heaven is their owne cock-sure: as if we cryed downe good workes, and condemned charity” (pp. 57–8). Papist sophisters are masters at separating intentions from ends, a practice that allows them to rationalize a host of pious frauds, ranging from counterfeiting miracles to murdering princes and blowing up parliament houses.76 It isn’t far from slanderous misinterpretations to murder, Sanderson suggests. Prideaux’s stated interpretive goal is a reading that does not stretch the literal unduly, thereby serving an extreme or singular agenda. In matters of deep doctrine, such as the manner in which Christ took on human nature in his Incarnation, for example, Prideaux warns his readers that “in such profundities it is dangerous venturing further than the text inlightens vs” (p. 13).77 Preachers often deride papists’ inventive extrapolations from scripture to prove doctrines for which there is no literal foundation – such as purgatory. However, slavish adherence to the “dead letter” is equally disparaged. The extremes show the extent to which interpretation was publicly contested. John Wing, for example, notes that some men stumble over assurance of their election because the words of the Bible seem to be directed personally to Abraham and David, but not to themselves.78 He describes those who stick at such particulars “name-sick” (p. 107), calling it spiritual silliness to say that if God did not specifically name a person, that person was not intended. Donne describes this over-literal condition as being “Sermon-proofe,” asking “Is not thy name Simon Magus, if thou buy and sell spirituall things thy selfe? . . . Is not thy name Cain, if thou rise up against thy brother? . . . ” (VI, 219–20). 75 76

77 78

Two Sermons, p. 57. Likewise, Bedford constructs his anti-papism to counter their licentious interpretations. Of the Jesuits, he says that when we hear their glosses on scripture “we shall imagine that we heare not men, but Bellies speake, which have sworne to defend their erronious positions, whatsoeuer become of the truth of the Scriptures” (p. 42). A Christians Free-will Offering. Iacobs Staffe to beare vp, the Faithfull.

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John Knight and the Jacobean Pulpit, 1620–2 Like Donne’s, Sanderson’s sermons demonstrate an explicit concern with interpretive issues.79 A sermon preached ad populum at Saint Paul’s 4 November 1621 exposes the Corinthians’ corrupt interpretation of their calling to the Christian faith as exemption from the duties of other callings. In a sermon ad clerum, Sanderson endorses a principle of interpretation that expands rather than shrinks boundaries. In this case, he says that “where there are two senses given of one place, both agreeable to the Analogie of Faith and Manners, both so indifferently appliable to the words and scope of the place, as that it is hard to say, which was rather intended; though there was but one intended, yet to make vse of both” (p. 52). But, as preachers were aware, interpretive styles and choices had controversial consequences. A Paul’s Cross sermon preached 31 December 1620 by John Andrews explicating the meaning of the brazen serpent raised by Moses in the wilderness walks the minefield between literal and metaphorical interpretations of that sign, foreshadowing what would become one of the major interpretive battlegrounds of the late Jacobean pulpit. Whereas typically the extravagant metaphorical excursions of papists were criticized for their doctrinal consequences, Andrews opposes their overly literal and material interpretations of scriptures to support their superstitious view of ceremonies and signs. Andrews is in no way typical as a preacher, however. He opens the sermon by insulting his congregation, saying that for such a supine audience, it is sufficient to “blunder out any tolerable dudgeon Diuinitie out of these words” (p. 5). So much for the public sphere! And yet, even these comments reveal a rhetorical urge to anger rather than to flatter, and, in the process, to engage his congregation in the Reformed understanding of signs, sacraments, and ceremonies. Andrews’s message is that God’s ordinances are to be valued because they are God’s will, not for their outward show. The Reformed churches, accordingly, do not make the sacrament a bare and empty sign, but God’s means of conferring grace. Bread and wine in themselves would be feeble instruments, unless ordained by God, just as the serpent of molten brass is. Equally, Christ chose the brazen serpent to signify his passion and his incarnation “For none so simple, but could vnderstand, that a Brazen Serpent hanging on a pole, had not in it selfe any power at all to cure the poysonfull bitings of liuing Serpents,” and so they would know that it shadowed forth “some deepe Mysterie that was to come” (p. 22). Reading this sermon, one senses that idolatrous, superstitious, material interpretations abound, and that conversion of such a congregation will require education in interpretive practices as much as in dogma. The sermon also suggests that the identity of the reformed English church will be established wherever balance between literal and metaphorical interpretations of the scriptures can be achieved. CONTROVERSIAL PROFESSIONS The contest for interpretive authority in the public sphere became increasingly the purview of professional preachers, conscious of their local responsibilities to parishioners, but aware of their participation in a larger community of divines competing to establish their version of the English church. In the battle for control

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Twelve Sermons.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis of this medium, preachers highlighted questions of authority and decorum in the pulpit, focusing on the responsibilities of both preachers and hearers in this sphere. This drive for interpretive authority fuelled controversies that led in many directions, ranging from puritan claims to prophetic authority, to reproofs of ministers who used their public position to undermine order in the state. At a basic level, preachers appealed to the common cause against Rome as the most compelling reason to resist pulpit controversy among protestants. The sermons of Prideaux, Calvinist conformist par excellence, are paradigmatic of this perspective. In two reprinted sermons on Matthew 5.25, Prideaux laments the growing numbers of controversies and litigations in contemporary society.80 Solidarity against Rome provides a common cause and is modelled by Prideaux in his systematic refutation of their chief interpreter Bellarmine. Prideaux makes short work of their doctrines of venial sin and purgatory. Moreover, he ridicules their sophistical abuse of language, by which they rename sins as virtues, so that drunkenness is now to be sociable, swearing is a note of resolution, gulling of good wit, and “damnable dissimulation of a notable headed polititian” (p. 48). His refutation of Bellarmine’s ten scriptural quotations proving the existence of purgatory shows how to vie for interpretive control and illustrates the extent to which the identity of the English church was defined by a majority as “not-Rome.” A sermon by Bezaleel Carter, preached at Clare in Suffolk in 1621, bears many of the marks of the internal divisions wrought by religious controversy. The sermon is driven by Carter’s perceived need to defend himself against the charge of having a “turbulent spirit,” a false report he says that has travelled widely and that he hopes to quell by presenting the sermon in print (sig. A3r). Aware that his detractors might observe that the printed sermon is not a verbatim transcript of the original, Carter claims that he wrote out what he had delivered, “without takeing away or adding: onely I haue added somewhat to the sixe and twentyeth verse” (sig. A3v). This sermon is only the most extreme example of religious divisions burgeoning on the parish level and creating a factious and censorious climate for preachers.81 Carter’s sermon reveals all too clearly how much the effectiveness of a sermon’s message depended on a congregation’s willingness to accept the preacher. This particular sermon, we learn, had been planned for one auditory, but riding through Clare, Carter had been asked by a local pastor to fill in for the scheduled sermon. His decision to accept this assignment spawned accusations that he had come among “such as are called professors” [i.e. puritans] (sig. A3v) as an enemy. Having landed among a predominantly puritan congregation, Carter targets several enemies in the sermon, including papists, hypocrites, Anabaptists, and warmongers. Puritans, in particular, however, would have taken offence at his elision of puritans with Anabaptists, and his suggestion that many hearers are “hypocriticall white skinned professors” (p. 71) whose hearts are “full of all vnrighteousnesse, 80

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Christs Counsell For Ending Law Cases. “Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison.” In The First Fruits of the Resurrection, Prideaux’s text (1 Corinthians) allows him to develop an analogy between the Corinthians and his present factious and censorious audience. The Corinthians, he notes were “great Critikes, prone to factions and emulations” who preferred adjudication of controversial matters by a foreign jurisdiction than “quietly to haue matters composed among themselues” (p. 2). Prideaux wastes no time in making the application to his own audience, “where Knowledge, and Humours abound” (p. 5).

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John Knight and the Jacobean Pulpit, 1620–2 wickednesse, couetousnesse” (p. 72). Carter’s discussion of the seditious murmuring of men against the many blessings they enjoy is also provocative. The sermon illustrates that the fit between preacher and congregation was an important aspect of the interpretive control that preachers sought as the foundation of their calling. Sanderson’s visitation sermon in Boston articulates the vocational crisis exacerbated by the preacher’s responsibility to preach according to his conscience.82 Sanderson has to look no further than to the windows and walls of the church in which he is preaching to find an issue: “You may reade it in the disfigured windowes and wals of this Church: Pictures, and Statua’s, and Images: and for their sakes the windowes and walles wherein they stood, haue been heeretofore, and of late pulled downe, and broken in pieces and defact without the Command, or so much as leaue of those who haue power to reforme things amisse in that kind” (p. 83). What is at stake for Sanderson is the lawfulness of this means of suppressing idolatry, and, more important, his responsibility to preach against this defacing of images, despite the unpopularity of his position. As to the first issue, he concludes that “If things be amisse, and the Magistrate helpe it not; private men may lament it, and as occasion serueth, and their condition and calling permitteth, soberly and discreetly put the Magistrate in minde of it: But they may not make themselues Magistrates, to reforme it” (p. 85). Nor may such actions be justified by the examples of God’s heroes in the Bible, who did many things by the secret motion of God’s holy spirit that were good in them but not lawful for others to imitate. So Phineas’s hurling a javelin through the copulating couple as an act of immediate retribution cannot justify the usurpation of magistracy, any more than David’s act can justify bloody duels, or Moses’s, secret slaughter, or Samson’s, self-murder, or Eliah’s, private revenge (p. 87). As to the second question, Sanderson justifies his decision to preach on this specific issue to a congregation not his own as a matter of conscience in a preacher. Sanderson is acutely aware of his rhetorical dilemma. Some “popish” preachers might abuse the opportunity by taking too much liberty in their applications. On the other hand, refraining from pointing out particular errors for fear that he shall lose the good opinion of some cannot be a consideration. “The Minister is not come,” he argues, “into the Pulpit, as a Fencer vpon the Stage, to play his prize, and to make a faire flourish against sinne . . . but rather as a Captaine into the Field, to bend his forces specially against the strongest troupes of the enemy” (p. 91). Furthermore, he says, rising to the charges that he anticipates to his intervention, if men want liberty and plainness for themselves, they must allow it also to those with whom they disagree. Anxieties about the reception of sermons on contentious issues in the divided congregations of England are evident in the frequency with which congregations are reminded of their responsibilities in hearing sermons. Henry King’s 25 November 1621 Paul’s Cross sermon, for example, effectively attacks the appetite for sermons as entertainment, rather than for their spiritual benefits. Those who are insatiable for such sermons are gluttons, King says, who go not so much to feed as to satisfy that “wanton itch of hearing” (p. 3). King is clearly directing his criticism to puritans, but does so by aligning their idolatry of sermons with popish obsession with tradition and indifferent things. Continuing the papist/puritan identification, King compares the puritan who counts his lectures to the papist who counts his 82

Two Sermons.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis paternosters, reinforcing James’s inclination to see puritans and papists as united on the church’s margins. Like Sanderson, King also understands the difficulty of preaching God’s judgments. “They that will please these times, must steepe their words in oyle, sooth and flatter,” (p. 24) King observes, rather than, like Amos, denounce God’s judgments, for the people will “banish such words from our ears as Amaziah did the words of Amos, when he foretold Jeroboams death, and Israels captiuitie” (p. 24).83 In these sermons addressing contentious issues in factious times, the defensive note, often satirically expressed, underscores a deep-seated uncertainty about the professional authority of the preacher in an unstable religious communion. ANTI-PAPIST DISCOURSES Although Milton has reminded us that confessionally-driven anti-papism was a prominent but not the dominant discourse in early-modern England, virtually every sermon published in the period immediately preceding the Directions, of whatever doctrinal stripe, attacks Catholicism, in glancing remarks, digressions, or full-blown refutations of its doctrines and activities. In the public sphere created by a burgeoning homiletic discourse, it had the capacity to unify congregations against a common enemy at the same time as it could bully, shame, or cajole recalcitrant papists into conformity to the Church of England. For some time, anti-Catholic commentary had been a conventional means of displaying one’s Reformed credentials, although, increasingly, preachers wanting to distinguish themselves from more extreme anti-Catholics – puritans, for example – developed alternative anti-Romish discourses. But, the anti-papist label alone is not sufficient to explain the temper of the Jacobean pulpit in the years immediately preceding the Directions. It needs to be measured against anti-puritan, anti-sectarian, and anti-Calvinist comments, as these competed for dominance. By far the greatest number of homiletic attacks is on the Church of Rome, particularly as defined by the Council of Trent and promulgated by the Jesuits. These sermons take as their theme the perils of idolatry, the dangers of relapse, and in particular the political and moral dangers of security, often in opposition to more moderate pleas for peace and stability. The sheer weight of surviving sermon evidence demonstrates that the topic of Rome, particularly the dangers of a possible relapse to Roman Catholicism, aroused the passions of even the most sedate ministers. James’s own writings, which excluded only the most extreme theological beliefs (those of papists and nonconforming puritans) from his religious consensus, encouraged and enabled another tendency in English pulpit divinity: to define doctrine in opposition to other religious views. As Ferrell has demonstrated, James’s policies “isolated and neutralized potentially destabilizing religious extremism”84 by example as much as by edict. This is certainly the governing rhetoric in sermons preached and published in the period immediately preceding the Directions, although extremism was generated as well as exposed by this method. John Hughes, 83

84

This allusion appears as a common refrain in sermons. Donne preaches at court that there must be some of “our owne Amos, as well as our Amasias” to speak of God’s judgments even at court (II, 349). This theme is the focus of an entire sermon by Chaloner in which he laments: “Vnhappy Ieroboam, in whose Chappell Amoses are silenced; and in whose Courts Prophets are proscribed and banished the Verge” (Naioth or The Vniuersity Charter, pp. 57–8). Ferrell, Government by Polemic, p. 11.

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John Knight and the Jacobean Pulpit, 1620–2 for example, preaching on the subject of “good” but not “quiet” consciences, concludes that this kind describes “the Recusants in both kinds, Catholiques and Catharists, Papists and Puritans, who are no lesse offended, the one with an egge on a fasting day; the other with a Cap, Crosse, or Surplesse, then with some hainous offence” (p. 10). Hughes’s use of the term “Recusants” to apply equally to papists and puritans is part of the evolution of a term that only a few years later (in reference to the “recusants” of the forced loan in 1626) would come to mean any resistance, regardless of doctrinal belief.85 Similarly, in a Paul’s Cross sermon preached 8 July 1621, Buggs labels those who will not hear their sins described in sermons as having an “impatient and gun-powder humour” (p. 36), the consummate act of Jesuitically-inspired treachery becoming, like recusancy, a metaphor for spiritual obstinacy. This way of speaking illustrates how anti-papist rhetoric was deployed against nonconformists, also depicted as “novelists”86 undermining the peace of church and state. While anti-papist comments, then, were the most wide-ranging, attacks on nonconformists and sectarians, deriving mainly from fears of disorder and the break-up of church and state, issued from the same pulpit. Arguments, analogies, and historical applications made in Prideaux’s published sermons are typical of an old-fashioned anti-papism that still flourished in the late Jacobean pulpit, but would diminish under Charles. Prideaux’s sermons on the anniversaries of Catholic conspiracy demonstrate that among mainstream conformists rejection of papists was political as much as doctrinal. Reading his sermons also explains why James was reluctant to have questions of authority too much debated in public pulpits or the press, even by his supporters. As the sermons surrounding the Knight case reveal, even unequivocal supporters of the king’s authority and of the doctrine of passive obedience would be led into labyrinthine considerations of the proper response to religious tyranny. Such discussions could take a surprising turn, and logic could lead where common sense would never stray. Moreover, despite James’s public statements regarding papists, preachers were never sure of the limits of anti-papist commentary. Prideaux’s dedication to anti-papal causes and his connections with Calvinist divines in Oxford, where he was Regius Professor of Divinity, are well documented.87 Prideaux openly attacked papists in his sermons, but because of his unwilling exploitation by the Laudian establishment to support their positions, he frequently had to resort to coded language – what Milton calls “elliptical antiLaudianism” – to make his anti-Arminian views known as well as to reassure his puritan friends of his religious credentials.88 The value of mainstream conformists such as Prideaux to both Laudians and puritans is evident from efforts to enlist them in their polemical discourses. Prideaux’s awareness of this contest made his statements in the public sphere all the more significant.89 85

86 87 88 89

Roger Manwaring made the analogy clear by contrasting godly puritan “recusancy in temporalls” with the loyalty to the king of many Catholics (p. 31). Ferrell, Government by Polemic, p. 152. Milton, Catholic and Reformed, p. 33. Milton, “Licensing,” 649. Ibid., 646. Milton observes that “much of the rationale of Laudianism relied upon seeing more radically Protestant doctrines regarding popery, the nature and succession of the Church, and the value of ceremonies, as inherently subversive and the preserve of an oppositionist radical puritan fringe.” Milton goes on to show how Calvinists like Hall, Morton, and Davenant (and, I would add, Prideaux) were struggling to keep these very puritans within the “established, orthodox” Church of England (646).

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis Two sermons by Prideaux on the anniversaries of the Gowry and Gunpowder conspiracies (5 August and 5 November) offer clear examples of the mainstream anti-papist rhetoric typical of these anniversaries.90 The Gowry sermon, which tells of Sheba’s treachery against King David, reminds kings not to rely on those who are “of none, or a suspected religion” (p. 9). Prideaux wastes no time in applying this maxim to “our treacherous fugitiues, and home-bred Papists . . . whom no benefits can winne, no allegiance binde, no hazzard deterre from attempting (on the least aduantage) the vtter ouerthrow of their Prince, and Countrey” (p. 11). Given what these papists believe, Prideaux argues, James’s deliverance from their treasonous plots has been miraculous, and Prideaux doubts that their “poore conformitie,” yielded for a time, can be trusted (p. 12). The traditional litany of papist treachery ensues: crucially, they not only conspire to kill monarchs, but justify their rebellion as lawful with the conceit “that a lawfull King, and his liege people, may be in any case parted; or, that kingdomes are from the peoples choyce, and not from Gods appoyntment made hereditary” (p. 22). Prideaux’s Gunpowder Anniversary sermon for 1621 also exposes the political consequences of treacherous papist doctrines, most vividly illustrated in the Gunpowder conspiracy. Once more, he denounces the perfidy of “our Italianated fugitiues [who] passe ouer the powder-plot, by terming it onely the rash attempt of a few poore unfortunate Gentlemen” (p. 10), and, even more reprehensibly, ransack and distort scriptures to justify their practice of king killing. In fact, the concluding paragraph of Prideaux’s sermon reveals precisely what pulpits could achieve in their anniversary remembrance of the Powder Plot and in their continued cautions against the toleration of recusants: “At the mentioning of our Church or King, at the beholding, or remembrance of our Parliaments, and chiefe places of Iustice, let the villany of the Powder-project be neuer forgotten” (p. 26). In the end “none can bee an absolute Papist, but (if he thoroughly vnderstand himselfe, and liue vnder a Christian Prince that hath renounced the Popes authoritie) must needs, being put vnto it, bee an absolute traytour” (p. 17). Prideaux’s Ephesus Backsliding underwrites most of the arguments against toleration of Catholics, both doctrinal and political.91 The “spiritual pride, and carnall security” (p. 1) of the Ephesians, their coldness in devotion, carelessness in preaching, and slackness in performing charitable deeds, are compared to England’s dangerous complacency, evidenced by the inexplicable lenience towards papists that corrupts the church. Embracing the warning to the Ephesians, Prideaux cautions that “no marriages must be made betweene them and Gods people” (p. 22), citing the example of Samson. In addition, he cites the ill effects of toleration in Polonia and reminds his hearers that the Roman church “prouideth powder, and poysoned 90 91

Gowries Conspiracie; Higgaion and Selah. Ephesus Backsliding. Despite the apparent topicality in 1621 of Prideaux’s comments on marriage and the political threat posed by Rome, it is important to remember that this sermon was first preached in Oxford in 1614, well before the crisis over the Spanish Match negotiations had reached its peak, and before the outbreak of the Thirty Years War in 1618. Cogswell finds Prideaux’s comments on the Pope as Antichrist notable “as late as 1621” when James was intensifying negotiations with Spanish Catholics and the Pope himself for a bride for Charles (Blessed Revolution, pp. 29–30). Cogswell says that in this sermon Prideaux could “confidently boast” that his university audience would scarcely doubt that the Pope was Antichrist, implying that this attitude was common in 1621. In fact, Prideaux in 1614 is exhorting his listeners against such doubt: “Fathers and brethren, is this a time to make a doubt, whether the Pope be Antichrist or no, seeing his hornes and markes are so apparently discouered?” (p. 36).

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John Knight and the Jacobean Pulpit, 1620–2 kniues, where she is not manacled” (p. 25). If the Church of Rome is not to suffocate the Reformed church, husbands will no longer be able to suffer their children and wives to be recusants. Nor may magistrates remain luke-warm in prosecuting the penal laws. Prideaux concludes by urging his hearers to hate the abominations of popery, as does their king, who is “so able and resolute to withstand Popery!” (p. 37). Prideaux was no doubt less sure of James’s constancy than this sermon suggests, and yet, his publicly expressed confidence is calculated to pressure James to assume the leadership imputed to him by mainstream conformists. Prideaux’s unequivocal and intolerant anti-papism is balanced by a direct call to further reform within the church. Such reform need not extend to “wrangling about ceremonies” or “the vilifying of faulty Ministers,” preoccupations that prove that “zeale may runne without discretion, and doe more hurt than good” (p. 28). Yet in keeping with the first Reformation which was a “refraining” rather than a separation (p. 12), Prideaux notes that “moderate spirits . . . who perchance approue not all our ceremonies, yet runne not to Amsterdam, as holding such a remedy more dangerous than the cause” (p. 15). Prideaux’s priorities are certainly established in opposition to Roman corruptions, but he distinguishes these as different in kind from the “dislikes” (p. 9) that can be amended without separation. As Prideaux’s sermons exemplify, religious toleration for papists was one of the most hotly contested issues in the pulpit and acted as a lightning rod for related doctrinal and political questions. One such question was that of communion with papists, a topic that became exceedingly controversial over this period, not only for extreme nonconformists whose communion within the English church was already fragile, but for mainstream conformists as well. In certain contexts, the doctrinal issue had profound political implications as well. Perhaps the most explicitly political application of this anti-papist doctrine occurs in a sermon preached by James Ussher, Calvinist Bishop of Meath 18 February 1621, before the Commons in parliament, on the subject of communion with idolaters.92 Chamberlain reports only that it was a lengthy, dry sermon “that kept them so long, that yt was very neere two a clocke before they had all don” (II, 347). Taking as its text 1 Corinthians 10:17, the sermon has two purposes: to encourage subsidies to defend Christian states besieged on the continent, and to urge execution of the penal laws against recusants in England. The entire sermon uses a discourse of knitting and severing to figure the processes by which “moderate and peaceable minds” (p. 6) can distinguish between those who are of one body, and those who worship idolatrously. The communion in which members of the Commons participate at the opening of the parliamentary session marks their shared beliefs. Not to communicate is divisive and destructive of the bodies politic and ecclesiastical. Nonetheless, Ussher’s first priority is to maintain truth without compromising it, first, by appealing for control of the pulpits so that “not euery wanton wit be permitted to bring what fancies he list, into the Pulpit, and to disturbe things that haue been well ordered” (p. 6). Extension of the public sphere from the national pulpit to the continent leads to Ussher’s appeal that they be sensible to the calamities afflicting their co-religionists, or suffer the curse of Meroz. The issue before the Commons is no

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The Substance of that which was delivered in a Sermon. “Wee being many, are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread.”

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis less than the deliverance of God’s church, and Ussher concludes with a warning that requires no application: “If wee hold our peace and sit still at this time, deliuerance shall arise to Gods Church from another place: but let vs looke that the destruction do not light vpon vs and ours. . . . The season of the yeere is approching, wherein Kings goe forth to battell: the present supply and offer of your Subsidie was done in a time most seasonable” (pp. 10–11). Ussher moves in his sermon from the “knitting together” (p. 26) of those of the same body with their fellow members and their head, Christ, to the dissevering of those who are not in the same communion. Here, Ussher warns against communion with idolaters on the basis of national security. Although James has tried to “put a difference betwixt a seditious and a quiet-minded Romanist” (p. 48) by the Oath of Allegiance, Catholics of a “furious disposition” (p. 43) continue their armed campaign to cast down kings. Ussher ends his sermon by exhorting that “In the meane time, they who sit at the Helme, . . . must prouide by all good meanes, that God bee not dishonoured by their open Idolatries, nor our King and State indangered by their secret trecheries” (pp. 49–50). Ussher’s sermon expresses clearly the extent to which sermons were being used in the construction of the public sphere. Speaking before the Commons, a group dominated by but not solely comprising anti-papist puritans, Ussher must have known and measured the effects of his injunctions against communion with idolaters and in favour of stricter execution of the penal laws and control of the pulpit. His protestations that he does not intend to exasperate his audience against these persons are belied by the calculated effects of his anti-popery. So while he ends by saying that he leaves judgment of what he says to the wise men who comprise his audience, the point of his sermon has been clear from the beginning in its campaign to stamp out popish infiltrators from the “communion” of parliament. Ussher’s sermon on communion with idolaters takes on sharper political definition in the context of a sermon preached later that year, on 16 October 1621, by Donne’s chaplain at Lincoln’s Inn, Edward Maie, for which he was dismissed. Milton notes that Daniel Featley, the licenser, had struggled in vain to insert more categorically anti-papist language into Maie’s discussion of the Eucharist in this controversial sermon.93 According to Featley, Maie had omitted the normal caveats against the superstitious doctrine of transubstantiation to balance his incautious reference to ministers as “makers of Christ his body.”94 In fact, Maie’s is primarily a sermon against factionalism and sectarianism. In it, Maie identifies schism with the Devil, the “first schismatique” (p. 4), urges dispute, prayer, preaching, and persuasion to bring the church to unity, and concludes with a prayer to Jesus the prince of peace “to put an end to these warres and dissentions of his Church, and that he would hasten, to take out of his kingdome (according to his promise) all that doth offend” (p. 24). Maie’s sermon is unique in its plea for a Christian unity that would encompass even converted papists into the true church. Clearly, Maie disliked sectarian disorder more than papist subversion, but even this entirely mainstream perspective acquired an unwanted edge by the suspicion that Maie was too willing to accommodate papists and too critical of those who would separate from such a contaminated body.

93 94

Ibid., p. 70. Ibid., p. 199.

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John Knight and the Jacobean Pulpit, 1620–2 These two sermons on the communion of saints, both preached in 1621, epitomize the subtlety of the differences between the two communions, and the difficulty for modern readers of registering the homiletic conventionality of the positions expressed. Ussher’s sermon argues forcefully against communion with papists, urging those in authority to use the penal laws and the pulpit to contain idolatry. Maie, on the other hand, in choosing to emphasize Christian unity and the dangers of sectarianism, is ultimately dismissed for not being anti-papist enough, for what Milton calls “negative popery.” The difference might be one of emphasis rather than of positive doctrine, and Maie’s dismissal explained as the prerogative of the puritan audience of Lincoln’s Inn (and the efforts of Daniel Featley, Abbot’s chaplain). The point may be simply that, at least in 1621, controversial sermons directed solely against sectarians (or that blurred the distinction between puritan and sectarian) were less acceptable than those against the more common enemy, the papists. Milton describes the sermon as “vehement in its anti-Puritanism suffused with outspoken sacramental and sacerdotal utterances as extreme as anything published at the height of the Laudian decade.”95 Daniel Featley, as censor, apparently agreed. And Richard Sheldon recorded the entire controversy in the introduction to one of his sermons, thereby illuminating some of the crucial issues exposed by Maie’s sermon and its crypto-papist comments on the Eucharist. As Milton notes, the “official climate” for anti-papal works was so hostile after August 1622 that Sheldon prefaced his tract with a lengthy apologia for any sections that might seem too “tart and pregnant” against popish errors. Nonetheless, despite the hostile climate, Sheldon managed to publish this one, and to recycle its contents on more than one occasion. In a prefatory section, Sheldon touches on the controversy created by Maie’s proposition that priests are literally the makers of Christ’s body and details the careful corrections and qualifications that Daniel Featley, the censor, had required.96 Incredibly, Sheldon reports, Maie ignored these instructions, even in the second impression, and did not comply with the spirit of the changes until threatened with the suppression of his sermon. Sheldon pays particular note to the effect that even small words, such as “up” and “onely,” have on Maie’s popishly intended meaning. Maie is also accused of slandering preachers and lecturers, calling them by the “bitter and tart nick-name scrubbers.” Sheldon discredits Maie’s arguments as “dubious, loose, and ill sounding positions,” motivated by personal spleen, offering himself instead as a model whose discourse will not seem harsh “to the Intelligent Reader.” The details of Maie’s sermon, Featley’s censorship, and Sheldon’s commentary do, as Milton suggests, warn us against assuming that a licenser’s signature represents approval of a text.97 Nor does it necessarily signal careless licensing. What the story does emphasize is the degree to which homiletic discourse was sensitized by immediate controversial circumstances, and the complexity of the pressures brought upon the public sphere by the collision of censorship and religious controversy. The battle for control of the public sphere that I have been documenting has pitted conflicting players from within the English church against each other, but 95 96 97

Milton, “Licensing,” 628. Christ, On his Throne. Milton, “Licensing,” 629.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis usually through the intercession of some version of the papist “other.” Catholics, of course, were largely excluded from these debates, and could not defend against or qualify the caricatures of themselves constructed for polemical purposes in the pulpit. The conflict for control of this sphere is nowhere better illustrated than in the sermon preached by Henry King in defence of his father’s reputation and dedicated to Prince Charles, whose own father James was being similarly slandered. Both puritans and papists, the malignant margins of James’s ecclesiastical polity, had a stake in the alleged “conversions” of both John King and King James. Increasingly in sermons and informal communication networks, puritans had rumoured James’s conversion to Catholicism. Catholics, encouraged by the moderation of John King’s sermons, had claimed him for their own after his death. It is in this context that Henry King exclaims: “A little lesse preaching, and some more praying would doe well” (p. 7). Most of the sermon, however, is an extended anti-papist disquisition. King’s purpose in discrediting the claims of the papists, of course, is both doctrinal and personal, a defence both of the orthodoxy of the church and the reputation of his dead father. The pope is one of King’s prime targets, caught up in a sweeping historical indictment with which King concludes. The Catholic defamation of John King after his death is King’s most trenchant example of papist lies, the “frontlesse imputations” used by priests and Jesuits “to darken the glorious truth of our Church and Religion” and to “build vp their own rotten cause” (p. 48). In the company of such famous reformers as Luther, Bucer, Calvin, and Beza, King argues that his father furnishes a “sad example” of the kind of defence required against such slanders, before the rumour “like a snow-ball by rolling is growne greater” (p. 51). In the end, King says his father’s reputation improves by that fact that two religions strove for it (p. 59). The personal apology for John King and his constancy in the Church of England rehearses all of the signs by which his commitment should be measured: his frequent preaching, his taking of the sacrament, the manner of his dying. In John King’s example, the sermon’s imperatives for Christian practice and order against puritan and papist abuses are clearly embodied.98 ANTI-RHETORICS: CONTROVERSY OVER RELIGIOUS IDENTITY Increasingly, the anti-papist sentiments expressed in sermons across the spectrum were allied with a measure of anti-Arminian rhetoric, marking the association between Arminian doctrines of universal grace and the Catholic emphasis on human will in salvation. As intense as anti-papist rhetoric became, it could not match the vitriol of anti-Arminian slurs. Griffith Williams’s sermons refute “Pelagius, Hermingius, Huberus, and all the rest of the Arminian broode touching the doctrine of vniversall grace” (p. 6). Buggs attacks the Church of Rome for holding too high an opinion of man’s perfection, allying it with the Arminians who 98

Henry King’s father, John King, Bishop of London, was a known enemy of papism. In a sermon regarding reparations to St. Paul’s, John King contrasts God’s mercy with the papist Babel of Merit. “And I haue read of a Mercy-seat, in the Temple of God; but I neuer heard of a Stoole of merit, but in the Chappell of Antichrist” (p. 15). This slogan became well known, and was quoted by Daniel Donne in his August 1622 sermon: “As a reuerend religious Prelate of our Church hath observed, wee may read of a Mercy-seat in the Temple of God, but never heare of a Stoole of Merit, but in the Chappell of Antichrist” (p. 18).

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John Knight and the Jacobean Pulpit, 1620–2 have licked up the vomit of the Arch-heretic Pelagius and have added to his errors the doctrines of merit and that “monstrous bastard with sixe fingers on a hand, workes of supererogation” (p. 20). While more restrained rhetorically, Prideaux contributed a great deal to the construction of “Arminian” as a negative category. In a sermon preached to the king at Woodstock in 1621, Prideaux challenges Arminian doctrine on the subject of God’s secret and revealed wills by considering the message delivered to Hezekiah in his sickness by Isaiah in which God appears to reverse his earlier sentence of death, and at Hezekiah’s insistence, to deliver both him and the city from the hands of the King of Assyria. Isaiah, he says, might have been disconcerted by this change, “But Isaiah was no Arminian, he knew, it was no manners for him to make a question of Gods doings” (p. 17). Nor does Prideaux countenance Arminian slander of the English church’s distinction between God’s two wills. As Prideaux explains, the distinction is not between two contradictory wills in God, but “diuers formes of speaking, concerning the acts and effects of the same will” (p. 17). These very charges, he notes, had been answered at the Synod of Dort, whose resolutions were still awaiting endorsement in England, while recusants are being fed with the textual corruptions of the Council of Trent and Catholic expositors. The direct attack on Arminian doctrine in this sermon defending and praising royal authority complicates the view that Arminian and royalist interests always coincided in the 1620s. Doctrinally, at least, many of the king’s chaplains still supported the decisions of the Synod of Dort, and many, like Prideaux, supported moderate controversy among reformed preachers, and an almost total rejection of Catholic doctrine and interpretation. More common in the period was the apotheosis of the term “puritan” as a rhetorical pejorative. James himself had identified puritans by their view that religion equalled two sermons a day,99 and Whiteway’s diary for 9 March 1621 offers a specific example of the power of this polemic, noting that “Mr Shepheard a Burgesse is excluded the house for casting upon another Burgesse the name of Puritan.”100 James’s treatment of the puritan John Preston also confirms that while he might admire the skill of puritan sermons he was not “reconcilable” to puritans, and would not appoint them as chaplains in his court. John Davenport, too, in his effort to achieve preferment in the church, wrote to Secretary Conway that he had been falsely accused of puritanism, equated specifically with factious and popular preaching. Davenport denied the charges, arguing instead that he had always preached obedience and conformity. In fact, in answering the charge, he explicitly defines puritan in a political rather than a doctrinal sense. He says, for example, that if a puritan is one opposed to the present government, both his subscription and his practice of using the sign of the cross in baptism and wearing a surplice testify to the contrary. Furthermore, he adds, if “puritan” means “one that secretly encourageth men in opposition to the praesent Government,” then on this score, too, he can claim that in both his “publick sermons, and priuate discourses” he has always aimed to persuade men to give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.101 His response is a model of conformity. He paraphrases Romans by saying that his 99 100

101

PRO SP 14/165/61. Whiteway, p. 154, is concerned with general consequences of an atmosphere of polemical labelling, adding that “Many have been excluded the house for being Papists.” PRO SP 14/173/42.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis sermons preach that every soul should submit itself to the higher powers, adding that souls should submit not only to the ordinances of men for the Lord’s sake, but also to those governors whom he appoints, both ecclesiastical and civil. In the end, through the good offices of Conway, Davenport was appointed as vicar of St. Stephens, Coleman Street in London.102 Contemporary defences against the “puritan” label have led to a nominalist scepticism about the validity of the term “puritan” as referring to a coherent ideology and set of practices and, as Lake has demonstrated, have left historians to the mercy “on the one hand, of contemporary fashions in humour, abuse and caricature and, on the other, of the self-images, self-dramatisations, in short the collective mythology of the godly themselves.” Nonetheless, these rhetorical/polemical labels and self-definitions, while no sure key to “puritanism” itself, propel the discourse that constructs their religious identity.103 Sanderson’s 1621 visitation sermons handle this topic in some detail, conceding, on the one hand, that the name of puritan “is sometimes fastened vpon those that deserve it not” (p. 39), but, on the other hand, noting that when men appropriate to themselves the names of “Brethren, Professors, Good men, and other like; as differences betwixt them and those they call Formalists” (p. 39) they are encouraging others to think “that they have a Brotherhood and Profession of their owne, freer and purer from Superstition and Idolatry, then others have” (p. 39). In that case, the name applies, Sanderson observes, although in a marginal note he adds (some years before Montagu) that English Arminians lately have “got the tricke” to label as puritans “all orthodoxe Divines that oppose against their Semipelagian subtilties, of purpose to make sound truth odious, and their owne corrupt novelties more passable, and plausible” (p. 39).104 Anti-Arminian and anti-puritan rhetoric, as violent as it was, was directed towards those within the Protestant communion of the Church of England. Antisectarian comments, while never as sustained or extensive, occur in published sermons along the entire spectrum. The sermons of John Reading, minister at St. Mary’s, Dover, published in 1621, for example, are remarkably free of attacks on other religious positions, except against nonconforming sectarians. As Reading reminds his own readers, “Gods Church like Jacobs flocke consisteth of spotted sheepe, saints, but full of blemishes” (p. 41), but the separatists “looke for a Church not on earth to be found” (p. 41). Griffith Williams makes the same point in a sermon originally preached at Paul’s Cross during parliament (2 December 1621). Though the godly must dwell among the wicked in this world (epitomized in Rome), he argues, this does not justify the “pestilent broode” of Donatists, Brownists, or Barrowests who leave the church because of its imperfections and run away to lawless places (pp. 47–8). The sermon for which Edward Maie was dismissed is also an attack on the “itch” to hear schismatical doctrine and to separate because of church government by bishops. He speaks specifically against separatist conventicles, the wooden discipline of the Zwinglians, the cup discipline of the Brownists, using these accidental aspects of religious practice to stand in for the beliefs of the entire group.

102 103 104

PRO SP 14/173/42, 43, 44, 47. Lake, “The Problem of Puritanism.” Lake, “Serving God and the Time,” 85, n.12, observes that this passage, from a 1619 sermon, was omitted altogether from the 1657 edition.

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John Knight and the Jacobean Pulpit, 1620–2 Examples of polemical labelling can be multiplied, but, in fact, the Directions subordinate the issue of personal slanders and name-calling to the larger, more comprehensive, restriction of controversial preaching on the finer points of Reformed theology. And yet, proportionally few extant sermons preceding the Directions actually engage in controversial divinity of the type forbidden. Several sermons, it is true, set out the fundamental doctrines of election, reprobation, and predestination, topics that by August of 1622 were considered too controversial and better avoided in favour of more homely and catechetical piety. It seems unlikely, for example, that Crakanthorp’s sermon, titled A Sermon of Predestination (preached in [late] 1620 in Oxford), was intended as one of these factious, overzealous sermons. It is a straightforwardly conformist, Calvinist exposition of 2 Peter 1:10, an exhortation to the brethren “to make your Calling and Election” sure. Crakanthorp does not avoid the difficulty of so necessary a topic, commenting that if “over-modest” preachers contented themselves with the bounds set by scripture rather than prying into God’s “most hidden Counsels” they would be in no danger (p. 2). The sermon itself handles three main points – election, assurance, and the means of assurance – and discusses each point logically in turn, setting out the standard positive doctrines and refuting opposing arguments. Clearly, Crakanthorp is persuaded that his learned auditory can handle the logical twists of this predestinarian argument, and that knowledge of this doctrine and refutation of all objections outweighs any possible misinterpretations. By August 1622, such preaching was contentious, particularly when handled by a university divine rather than a pastor. MATTERS OF STATE: AUTHORITY The Directions also sought to proscribe discussion of matters of state and public policy from the pulpit. As we have observed, sermons immediately preceding the Directions reveal public anxiety about questions of authority and obedience, often articulated in terms of the preacher’s duties and the boundaries of his calling. James himself as an ecclesiastical authority was occasionally invoked. Moreover, sermons commented, sometimes explicitly, sometimes obliquely, on matters of public concern that might be construed as matters of state: specifically the miseries of co-religionists on the continent, questions of war and peace, and increasing papist treachery at home. Sermons of this period reveal intense interest in questions of authority. The issue of interpretive authority has already been discussed, especially in relation to the contested public space opened up by censorship, anti-papism, and religious controversy in general. The legal and moral authority of the state to prosecute papists was another aspect of anti-papist discourse best exemplified by two assize sermons indicating what many preachers expected the legal ramifications of this anti-popery to entail. Assize sermons typically expressed concern for the body politic, and in the 1620s, in “increasingly pointed assize sermons the more radical local clergy reminded the judges of their oath and their mortality, and condemned partiality in the judicial office.”105 A 1621 Assize sermon by Robert Bolton

105

Cockburn, pp. 231–4.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis addresses questions of authority, sovereignty, and obedience,106 arguing for the spiritual sovereignty of all government, and challenging popish assaults upon this view. The sermon provides a clear, because unnuanced, example of the degree to which some preachers supported James’s absolute sovereignty in public assemblies (p. 2). Taking as his text Proverbs 29:2, Bolton derives a doctrine of passive obedience, even when civil authority’s commands run counter to God’s. Bolton uses this doctrine of authority to confute the underminers of regal power, mentioning in passing the “phranticke bedlam Anabaptists arguments . . . for abolishing Magistracy” (p. 14), but focusing on refutation of papists since they are “a more subtile and plausible adversary in the point, and in that regard more pestilent” (p. 14). Specifically, he attempts to expose papist wickedness in using excommunication to “tumble downe into the dust the Imperiall Crownes of Orthodox Princes” (p. 21). This villainy is exceeded only by their treachery in killing kings, a trade taught by their most learned professors and approved by their “transcendent Doctour,” (p. 27) the pope. It is astonishing, he says, that such an “intollerable generation” should “by allowance, toleration, connivence, or remissenesse, be suffered to receive increasement and multiplication, both in number and insolency, to the great dis-honour of GOD Almighty, the continuall vexation of GODs Children and good subjects, and the most certaine hazzard of the whole Estate, and the peaceable succession of the Kings posterity” (pp. 28–9). This outburst is followed by an exhortation to magistrates to exercise the just and holy penal laws against them. The sermon is a classic statement of orthodox attitudes to authority and government mandated by King James for the pulpit. Bolton is careful to praise the government of all kings, even of tyrants, and to attack the most common enemy of kings, the papists. The Anabaptists, deemed to be a lesser threat (at least in England), are not refuted in detail.107 In addition, Bolton draws upon many conventional anti-papist images, particularly the persecution of protestants under Mary, and the Catholic complicity in the assassination of monarchs, including the Gunpowder Plot. King James’s writings are quoted extensively in this refutation of papism, thereby authorizing Bolton’s own views, and the passionate rhetoric instils an apocalyptic fervour in his warnings against relapse into popish errors. Samuel Burton’s sermon preached at the Warwick Assizes in 1620 confronts the vexed problem of the duty of Christians to the civil law by distinguishing between “subjection” and “obedience.” The text shows that we must be subject without exception; however, we must be obedient only in those things that are good, excepting those things “plainly and directly forbidden in the Word” (p. 8). Like Donne, Burton argues that once the state has commanded certain ceremonies by

106

107

“When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoyce: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourne.” A sermon by Thomas Sutton, delivered to the Assize Judges at Southwark, 5 March 1621/1622, extracts the duties of magistrates from an exposition of Jethro’s counsel to Moses in Exodus 18:21. At the heart of the sermon is a critique of papist restrictions on Judges in spiritual matters. Chaloner, in Judahs Preogatives, also refutes the pernicious doctrine of the Anabaptists and libertines, specifically the miserable effects Anabaptism brought in Germany, particularly in Munster. Some English parishes seem to welcome this anarchy with ministers whom Chaloner thinks are “halfe way at Munster, and fitter to be Iohn of Leydens Chaplaines, then Pastors in a well gouerned Church, or a ciuill Common-wealth” (p. 183).

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John Knight and the Jacobean Pulpit, 1620–2 authority, they cease to be indifferent, and in this respect, Burton’s position is unequivocal: the fifth commandment binds obedience to magistrates commanding lawful things. Burton’s discussion of obedience extends to the requirement of speaking dutifully, an instruction with serious consequences for the pulpit. The age, he says, is addicted to vices of flattery and railing, both examples of a disobedient tongue. As proof of these claims he cites the proliferation of libels and satires such as those by the “scurrilous and dul” Martin Marprelate, which disappear from the booksellers’ shelves faster than they can be printed, some two thousand of them being sold in the space of eight or ten weeks (p. 17). Burton’s comments on the disobedient tongues of satirists and flatterers are especially pertinent because they suggest that the arrows they shoot are difficult to anticipate, deflect, or control. The pressures of censorship brought to bear on an age not simply “addicted” but “wholly given ouer” (p. 15) to disobedient speech would most certainly be insufficient to suppress these disorders, and would drive men to more inventive ways of expression. Robert Harris’s 1621 Paul’s Cross sermon continues the theme of order and good government by urging magistrates to act zealously for the public good in punishing evil doers.108 In this sermon, Harris frames discussion of the common good in terms of the body politic. The body, the household, and the state are paralleled, the common term being that each element in these communities lives and works for the happiness of the whole. “Happy,” he says “that State, wherein the Cobler medles with his last, the Tradesman with his shop, the Student with his booke, the Counsellor with State, the Prince with the Scepter, and each Creature lives in his own Element” (p. 8). In the army of the heathen, by contrast, all will be captains, and none soldiers.109 Achieving the health of this body necessitated warnings against internal dangers to the foundations of church and state, especially those constituted by papists who had proven their treachery time and again, and who justified it on religious grounds. In attacking these home-enemies, certain biblical examples and texts became conventional. An assize sermon by Edward Gee on the curse of Meroz is only the most fully developed discussion of this biblical text in a period when the topic was frequently mentioned especially in application to church-papists.110 Gee’s brothers, who published the sermons posthumously, call these days the days of “contention and libertie, . . . when euerie man is almost become an Interpretor to himselfe” (sig. A2). Gee himself seems concerned to apply the text directly to England and its religious crisis. The text of the sermon, Judges 5:23, is Deborah’s curse against the Merozites for failing to help their brethren, and was intended to 108 109

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Harris, Gods Goodnes and Mercy. Andrewes preaches a sermon contemporary with this one that dresses this doctrine in a faintly contemptuous critique of those who try to get above their betters. The flood of religious writing provokes the following comment, remarkable for its narrow nationalism. These men “meddle . . . and in Church matters specially – there soonest of all; and print us Catechisms and compose us treatises, set out prayers and new psalms, as if every foreigner were free, and might set up with us” (III, 396). Andrewes supports this view with the inevitable analogy to the natural body “wherein the spirit, blood, choler, and other humours are to keep and contain themselves, to hold every one in his own proper vessel; as blood in the veins, choler in the gall” (III, 392). The Curse and Crime of Meroz. Gataker applies the curse to Englishmen who do not relieve Bohemia and the Palatinate (A Sparke, pp. 37–8). Milton, Catholic and Reformed, notes that the titlepage of Thomas Beard’s Antichrist–the Pope of Rome bears the same text from Judges (5:23) (p. 101, n.22). Milton notes several important sources for discussion of this text (p. 401, n.84).

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis instruct the Israelites to root out the idolatrous Canaanites. A good governor removes all pestilent weeds, all “naughtie and incurable persons” (p. 1) from the garden of the commonwealth, but the Merozites forgot and “made an impious truce with the cursed Canaanites, whom for a little tribute they suffered to liue quietly in the middest of their land” (p. 2). Application is made to the situation of recusant papists in England who for payment of penal fines are allowed to exist untroubled. Gee’s exhortation is to both the minister and the magistrate to reinforce heaven’s curse “the one by exhortation, the other by execution” (p. 6). The biblical text also leads to the argument that “security” is sinful. Just as Esther interposed herself as mediator between her countrymen and the king, so should the Merozites have acted. And by analogy, so should the people of England act, particularly God’s ministers who reprove the sins of ordinary men, but whose hearts faint before the great men of the world. Gee has no patience with such “politique Neuters” (p. 16), stating unequivocally that “in matters of Religion and execution of Iustice, neutralitie is alwaies execrable” (p. 17). Once again, application to the present is clear. Gee says that if we look we shall see that the Canaanites abound and “lie secretly in ambush” (p. 19), a fact that makes clear that “it is high time to take the nayle of the Lawes into your left hand, and the hammer of execution into your right, and to pierce the head of Popish Siseraes” (p. 22). A sermon delivered 5 May 1622 by John Denison promotes the view that curiosity is allied closely with heresy, papism, and insurrection, and is therefore relevant to the discourse of obedience described above. When the Directions were issued only a few months later, it was precisely the “frothie curiositie” (p. 94) of homiletic disturbers of the peace that they sought to curb. Curiosity in religion dominates public discourse, Denison says, and his sermon demonstrates that it is the source of civil disruption as well as heresy. In religion, curiosity at both extremes of the spectrum, whether about God’s secret will (resulting in the “desperate disputes about Predestination” [p. 55]) or about papal sovereignty, is a sign of “Luciferian arrogancie” (p. 58). Worse than this, “Curiositie hath beene the author of heresie,” (p. 90) of Arminius’s “quiddities,” Vorstius’s “horrible blasphemies,” and the “lamentable gulfes” of error attributed to Brownism, Anabaptism, and Arianism (pp. 90–1). Denison claims that “there is scarce so meane a Mechanicke, or silly rusticke, but is ready to censure the Church, the King, the State” (p. 86). Such mysteries of state, he claims, should be outside their scrutiny, but these men feel that they must pry into God’s secrets, despite the fact that Hell was made for curious inquisitors. Denison’s sermon is a fairly straightforward exhortation to support the status quo in church and state by stifling hellish curiosity. Coming as it did almost immediately after the Knight sermon in Oxford, it is not surprising that Denison felt obliged to make these specific points in the hearing of James, who was becoming daily more insecure about his ability to keep the curiosity of a nation in check. TOPICAL APPLICATION: WAR, PEACE, AND THE MISERIES OF THE PRESENT AGE Certain topics acquired an unwelcome political valence in 1622. To some extent, the disastrous consequences of religious sectarianism initiated a discourse of war and peace that could easily stray into dangerous political territory. Gataker, for 70

John Knight and the Jacobean Pulpit, 1620–2 one, preaches the distinction between zeal and sectarian fervour.111 The key to Gataker’s sermon is his understanding of the church as encompassing all Reformed believers, both in England and on the continent, and his concern that English Christians pray for their suffering brethren. Underlying this message is an apocalyptic current: “The last houre is now a running. And wee are those on whom the ends of the world are fallen” (p. 43). Gataker charges the present age with a complete lack of zeal, asserting that what he observes is “not a luke-warmnesse, but a key-coldnesse, not a bare numnesse, but a meere deadnesse” (p. 44). To most, the afflictions of God’s people are interesting only as matter of “newes and noueltie, to furnish discourse, or to feed their itching Athenian-like humors withal” (p. 45). Gataker judges harshly the negative Christianity of those who call themselves good Christians because they are “neither Papists, nor Puritans, Heretickes, nor Schismatickes” (p. 48). Throughout, the image of the Christian church as a body with Christ as its head and “quickened by the self-same soule” (p. 57) is crucial to his argument that it is inhuman not to feel the sufferings of these members of Christ’s mystical body. Those who have no feeling are at the best “but as glasseeyes, or silvernoses, or Ivory teeth, that stand for a shew in the face, or the mouth, but afford little use, and partake not in paine, because they partake not in life with the rest of that body, which by Art onely they are set in, or fastned vnto” (p. 60). Unless they open up their hearts to suffering co-religionists, men risk becoming mere “carkasses of Christians” (p. 65), both literally and spiritually. Ending conventionally with the curse of Meroz, Gataker’s sermon relies for its effects on the forceful image of the body of believers, challenges hearers to express their zeal and courage by sorrowing for their foreign brethren, and, by implication, chastises James for his failure to intervene in their support. As Gataker’s sermon indicates, questions of authority often involved discussions of peace, a subject that became more topical as tensions over internal, domestic wranglings in church and state and tensions over war on the continent increased. Many preachers, lamenting the unprofitable controversies that threatened the English church, but eager to avoid the horrors of the continental wars of religion, sought to define and delimit the legitimate position of controverted divinity and challenges (implicit or explicit) to the state in the pulpits.112 Cogswell marshals many examples of preachers who leapt to James’s defence against dissenters in order to forestall potential rebellion.113 Among these is John Denison who delivered two sermons on the blessedness of peacemakers before the king in 1620. From the beginning, Denison preaches specifically against disruptions within the Church of England (and only secondarily within the state) caused by ceremonial nonconformity and religious controversy. Although he has been taxed with “too much tartnesse,” he says, by criticizing “those who dissent from our Church and gouernment, and for ranking them with Peace-breakers” (sig. A4), Denison justifies his criticism by his text (“Blessed are the peacemakers”). Like Gataker, Denison speaks of the Church in its largest sense as “one soule in so many bodies” (p. 15). Wars of religious contention between national Churches are lamented. Furthermore, England itself, like the “factious Corinthians” (p. 35), is not immune from such “Machiauelian Peace-breakers” (p. 42). Denison’s 111 112 113

A Sparke. Cogswell, Blessed Revolution, pp. 27–30. Ibid., pp. 29–31.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis sermons on peacemakers are typical of mainstream conformist evangelism in their call for an end, first, of papists and secondly, of factionalism within the church. In all such sermons, however, it is necessary to observe that peace-making does not include charitable interpretation or tolerance of those identified as extremists, on the margins. It is always acceptable, for example, to slander the Anabaptists and Brownists for their failed experiments with communism, and to label enemies “puritan” as a way of discountenancing their views. As historians have noted, this label was used against many preachers who were not, in James’s definition at least, concerned with sabotaging order in either church or state. This danger of sectarian factions within the Reformed church is forcefully expressed in Prideaux’s Ephesus Backsliding, with its castigation of those who “make a Schisme in the Church, in regard of some dislikes, which might, and should be amended” (p. 9). Prideaux distinguishes their disorderly separation into conventicles from the orderly and lawful “refraining” from Rome at the Reformation. As Milton has shown, Prideaux’s is the classic Jacobean conformist articulation of the break with Rome, marked by moderation and restraint and intended to counter separatist justifications.114 It is debatable, of course, whether Henry VIII’s separation was either “legal” or “orderly”; Prideaux’s point is that the reformers who broke away from the Catholic Church were never the pope’s subjects as they were Elizabeth’s and now James’s, that their connection to the pope was a matter of courtesy, rather than legal duty. Rather than nonconformist separatism, Prideaux applauds the actions of “moderate spirits” who “perchance approue not all our ceremonies, yet runne not to Amsterdam, as holding such a remedy more dangerous then the cause” (p. 15). In fact, Prideaux takes it as a sign of religious vigour in a church that errors arise which provoke reformers to write. So in the primitive church Pelagius’s wilfulness urged Augustine to sift and discover the frailty of man’s free will; the monks’ absurdities set Luther to work; and in recent years “our Harding yeelded vs a Iewell, our Campion an Humfryes, our Stapleton a Whitaker, our Martin a Fulke, our Hart a Rainolds” (p. 17). Prideaux’s attitude is that such challenges occasion farther clearing of error, and hopes for more settled truth when “Socinus blasphemies, Arminius subtilties, Vorstius nouelites, Bertius quiddities” (p. 17) are met head on. The last appeal is to reformers themselves, who “disable themselues through faction, to doe good in greater matters” (p. 27). Prideaux’s sermon seeks to interpret religious dissent as an energy within the Church of England rather than as weapon against it, framing his discussion of that battle precisely in terms of war waged in the public sphere of dispute. TOPICAL APPLICATION: KING JAMES AS EXEMPLAR King James himself is occasionally invoked as exemplar in sermons, many of which, preached on court anniversaries – accession day, the Gowry conspiracy, the Gunpowder Plot – draw upon the authority of his example. John King, for example, calls attention to the (unusual) presence of the king in the audience at Paul’s Cross, and constructs James as the personal and ethical centre of the sermon, his attendance not a private or even explicitly political act but one “of religion and piety” (p. 50). The financial appeal for the reparation of St. Paul’s that 114

Milton, Catholic and Reformed, pp. 325–7.

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John Knight and the Jacobean Pulpit, 1620–2 is at the heart of this sermon is grounded on a connection between the physical church and the “Communion of Saints” (p. 4) it embodies, and James’s presence there is a sermon to his congregation, who “cannot resist the power of his voice & religious charming” (p. 37). The entire sermon is important as a gauge of what sermons preached before the king, and at his request, might normally entail. King’s praises of James, focused specifically on his royal patronage of this project to renovate Saint Paul’s, reverberate throughout the sermon, making the appeal for funds much more than a logical or even ethical appeal to Christians to maintain the temple of God. James’s selection of the preaching text as well as the personal appeal which closes the sermon (indicating he was prepared to fast with bread and water so this church might be rebuilt [p. 56]) leaves no doubt that a renewed church building is James’s personal request to these hearers, and one they can not refuse. No controversial matter, apart from one small anti-papist digression (on building “a Babel of Merit” [p. 14]), is handled in the sermon, which appeals as much by its praise of England, London, and this church, as it does by its historical sense of the importance of the Temple of God to the life of a Christian nation. Another use of James as symbolic middle ground embodying the essence of the Church of England is in a sermon by Isaac Bargrave, often described as a spokesperson for the royal, absolutist view on religious doctrine and discipline.115 This sermon offers a traditional view of the middle ground held by “our” church. “Most happy is the temper of our Church, who as in the rest, so in this, is medium Contradictionis, partaking no more of either extreme, then conduceth to perfect verity. Words are women, deedes are men, say the Italians, wee marry them both together. . . . and this coniunction is like the sacred vnion of the houses of Yorke and Lancaster: so long as these were diuided, our fruitfull vine became empty, and no sooner were they vnited, but instantly our empty vine became fruitfull” (p. 24). James as the royal stock in which both branches continue to be united becomes Bargrave’s mythic emblem of a via media both political and religious, but the reality of the church in 1621 was certainly more complicated, less unified and moderately reasonable than this analogy suggests. James’s example could be invoked to support a number of more particular, less moderate-sounding courses, however. A sermon by Christopher Swale, one of James’s chaplains in ordinary, preached before the king and prince in late September 1621, for example, promotes the anti-sectarian view from the perspective of James’s own practice and commentaries. In stressing the modesty of Jacob’s petition in his biblical text (he required only food, raiment, and the protection of God), Swale cites James’s commentary on the Lord’s Prayer in which we pray only for our daily bread (p. 7). Similarly, in stressing the duty of thankfulness that all Christians owe God, Swale mentions James’s weekly Tuesday exercise as a religious vow paid weekly, and concludes that there is no better pattern than James’s religious example (p. 13). James remains the pattern of religious and political righteousness throughout the sermon. Swale ends with a wish that parliament were as willing as its religious and royal head to consider his grievances seriously and to enact some law for “the honour of God, the aduancement of his Church, the peace of their owne conscience, and the relief of the poor Clergie” (p. 27). Other topical issues, specifically marriage and the Church of England’s position regarding ceremonies, became more prevalent in the months following the 115

A Sermon Against Self-Policy.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis Directions. However, by August 1622, political crises, religious controversies, and specific pulpit incidents had created a climate in which James’s Directions to Preachers (and John Donne’s public defence of them) would intervene in the final years of James’s reign. The intertwined discourses of polemical religion, official pronouncement, anti-rhetorics (anti-papist, anti-puritan, anti-Arminian, antisectarian), each struggling for interpretive control of biblical authority, find expression in the sermons delivered and published. If these competing discourses can be said to be struggling for “definition” of the Church of England, then the construction of that church, as an institution, a communion of believers, and a context of piety, is the prize to be won for that control.

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Chapter 3 “THE FISHING OF WHALES”: JOHN DONNE’S SERMONS, 1620–2

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LTHOUGH not published in his lifetime, a number of sermons preached by John Donne in the crucial period from 1620 to August 1622 have survived. These sermons span the period during which Donne was Reader at Lincoln’s Inn, and after November 1621, Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. They offer an important single case of the responses of a perceptive and complex preacher to the political climate registered in historical studies, and represented in the sermons already examined. Donne is a key figure for several reasons. It was Donne who was commissioned to defend James’s Directions at Paul’s Cross on 15 September 1622. There, the pressures wrought by censorship upon pulpit discourse are both inscribed and addressed. Donne’s homiletic response to these restrictions is paradigmatic of the kinds of obedient counsel that could be practised in the pulpit. In it, Donne interrogates the boundaries of the public sphere and of his commitment to state institutions and authorities, and models for his hearers an actively engaged conformist identity. His sermons provide the most complex and most fully documented examples of such discreet conformity operating within the prevailing conditions of censorship and controversy.1 They reveal the fault lines within the English church, but, more important, they reveal the integrity of Donne’s spirited religious imagination. Donne’s activities in 1620–2 after his return from the continent with the Doncaster embassy need to be reassessed in light of circumstances affecting preaching and controversial expression of any kind in the months leading up to the Directions.2 It is by no means clear that Donne’s selection to preach the sermon defending the Directions was the inevitable consequence of his reputation as an apologist for the Jacobean ecclesiastical administration.3 Donne’s reputation as a conformable minister, however, cannot be doubted. On 23 April 1621, for example, Donne was authorized to judge the conformity of one Anthony Hunt,

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The phrase “discreet or religious” is used by Abbot in his letter accompanying the Directions (in Visitation Articles and Injunctions, ed. Fincham, I, 214) to clarify that James does not intend to discourage “obedient” and orderly preaching. Donne quotes the phrase to stress that “heere is no abating of Sermons, but a direction of the Preacher to preach usefully, and to edification” (IV, 209). Donne’s participation in the Doncaster embassy is treated in Sellin. Donne had defended James’s Oath of Allegiance in Pseudo-Martyr (1610); however, whereas Donne’s Catholic background had enhanced the ethical appeal of that work, that same background could have weakened his effectiveness in September 1622, especially in light of puritan fears that the Directions were intended to curb puritan sermons and encourage toleration of Catholics.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis although he was never called upon to perform the assessment.4 Later that year on 16 October 1621, Donne’s chaplain, Edward Maie, was dismissed by the Benchers for his controversial sermon on The Communion of Saints.5 Because Maie had been Donne’s chaplain at Lincoln’s Inn for several years, Bald concludes, with reason, that Donne “must have at least acquiesced”6 in the dismissal, although there is no record of his having taken a part in the proceedings. The sermon itself, while entirely consistent with Donne’s views on salvation through the established church, must have jarred with his views on the extent to which the communion of saints could accommodate even the decrees of the Council of Trent.7 Donne’s silence in the proceedings against Maie is also consistent with his dislike of satiric personal attacks and religious controversy in sermons. Donne’s standard regarding satire in sermons is “nearenesse” (III, 142) rather than direct, personal attacks, because the latter are uncharitable, ineffective, even dangerous. Donne probably agreed with Maie’s disdain for the “itch” to hear schismatical doctrine currently infecting congregations.8 Moreover, Maie, like Donne, firmly rejects heretics, schismatics, and apostates as outside the communion of saints; however, Donne distinguishes fundamental doctrine from less important issues more judiciously, and avoids the wrangling over labels current in controversial writing. In fact, several sermons from these months distinguish between controversial sermons (which Donne rejects) and edifying sermons, primarily in terms of their audience. In a sermon tentatively dated during Donne’s term at Lincoln’s Inn, he says he preaches “not in a Chaire, but in a Pulpit, not to a Congregation that required proofe, in a thing doubted, but edification, upon a foundation received” (III, 293). And on Easter Monday 1622 at the Spittle, Donne expresses gratitude for an auditory of “such spiritual and circumcised Ears, as come not to hear that Wisdom of Words, which may make the Cross of Christ to none effect; much less such itching Ears, as come to hear popular and seditious Calumnies and Scandals, and Reproaches, cast upon the present State and Government” (IV, 91). It also causes him to remember that Saint Paul urged Christians not to scandalize “the false and infirme church, by refusing to communicate with them,” recalling the days in the beginning of the reformation when the injunctions of princes forbade these “odious names,” particularly the name of “heretic” (III, 176). Donne’s sermons are casuistical rather than absolutist in their rhetoric, the consequence of Donne’s attitude to authority. Fundamental to Donne’s casuistry, and one of his most profound challenges to a rhetoric of absolutist prerogative in the sermons, is his belief that human actions operate with reference to some clearly 4 5

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Bald, p. 368. The sermon was controversial for several reasons, primarily for its proto-Laudian statements about sacraments, but also for its mock dedication to an unnamed bishop and its attack on anti-episcopal separatists in the congregation. See Chapter 2, above. Bald, p. 370. In a sermon preached 16 June 1619, Donne had said that “the knowledge which is to salvation, is by being in Gods house, in the Houshold of the Faithfull, in the Communion of Saints” (II, 353). On the church as the means to salvation in this period, see also IV, 106. Donne’s rejection of the decrees of the Council of Trent, however, remains consistent throughout his career. In fact, despite a preference for restraint, the “itch” for zealous sermons on predestination was the one topic on which Donne was drawn to comment satirically, remarking of those dissatisfied with his pulpit style: “you are here now, hearing me, and yet you are thinking that you have heard a better Sermon somewhere else, of this text before; you are here, and yet you think you could have heard some other doctrine of downright Predestination and Reprobation roundly delivered somewhere else with more edification to you” (III, 110).

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John Donne’s Sermons, 1620–2 articulated law: divine law as evidenced in the scriptures, natural law, or human and positive law. God’s word in the scriptures is his contract with men, a faithful saying, and an everlasting covenant. As Donne reiterates throughout his sermons, “he hath made a conditionall contract with us, so as that if we performe our part, he will perform his, and not otherwise” (I, 297). “Gods ordinary working is by Nature, these causes must produce these effects; and that is his common Law; He goes sometimes above that, by Prerogative, and that is by miracle, and sometimes below that, as by custome, and that is fortune, that is contingency” (III, 229). Along with the casuistical thrust of Donne’s sermon rhetoric, the puritan leaning of Lincoln’s Inn, and the fact that Donne was preceded by Thomas Gataker and succeeded by John Preston as Reader there has never been sufficiently emphasized. Clearly, Donne’s special relationship with that congregation and his good reputation with Gataker (who reports favourably on a sermon he heard Donne preach there) suggest that Donne was acceptable, both in doctrine and reputation, to that congregation. Connections between puritans and parliament should not be overlooked either. Annabel Patterson has demonstrated that Donne’s associations with parliamentarians such as John Hoskyns, Robert Phelips, and his longtime friend Christopher Brooke, strong oppositionists all in the 1614 Parliament, challenge the caricature of Donne as apologist for absolutism created by Bald, and reinforced by Carey and others.9 Donne’s letters to Buckingham in this period, particularly those related to his preferment to the deanery of Paul’s, do not contradict this assessment. The letters thanking Buckingham for the promotion engage in the rhetoric of status appropriate to such missives, but there is no evidence that Donne was associated intimately with Buckingham, or anything but peripherally connected with his patronage. Bald cannot conclude that Donne actually purchased his appointment as Dean.10 More interesting for the light it sheds on Donne’s political activities during this period is a detailed letter of 30 August 1621 to Donne’s weekly correspondent Sir Henry Goodyer, in which Donne describes the “circumferrence” of his social and political connections. Donne writes that he has “been some times with my L. of Canterbury, since [‘my] accident,[’] to give you his own words. I see him retain his former cheerfulnesse here and at Croydon, but I do not hear from Court, that he hath any ground for such a confidence, but that his case may need favour, and not have it. That place, and Bedington, and Chelsey, and Highgate, where that very good man my Lord Hobard is, and Hackney, with the M. of the Rolls, and my familiar Peckham, are my circumferrence.”11 The information about Donne’s familiarity with Abbot is significant, as is evidence of his close friendship with Hobart (Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas) and Sir Julius Caesar (Master of the Rolls). Donne’s close connections with Lord and Lady Danvers (at Chelsea) and his relations with his in-laws in Peckham and Beddington are documented by Bald. Historians who have included Donne in the company of avant-garde conformists such as Andrewes, and by implication with Laud, Neile, and the Durham House group, however, need to reconsider the implications of this familiarity with 9

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Detailed, alternative readings of biographical information from Donne’s pre-ordination period and, consequently, more nuanced interpretations of Donne’s politics than those urged by Bald or Carey are offered by Norbrook; Patterson, “All Donne” and “John Donne, Kingsman?”; and Cain. Bald, pp. 377–8. Letters, p. 158.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis Abbot, not in great favour in 1621. They also need to read this friendship in the contrasting context of an oblique, and I would argue, inconclusive connection between Donne and the anti-Calvinists discussed by Tyacke, or the avant-garde conformists discussed by Ferrell.12 Through Abbot, Donne, as a convert, may have been enlisted to appeal to recusants and occasional conformists; equally, Abbot may have seen usefulness in appealing to “soft” protestants to maintain their conformity to the Church of England. Fincham posits a group of evangelical prelates, including John King and Robert Abbot, “linked by ties of friendship and a common devotion to proselytizing,” as a Calvinist counterpart to the Durham House group patronized by the anti-Calvinists, Neile and Buckeridge, but including Arthur Lake, and Donne’s long-time associate Thomas Morton. While it is unwise to interpret Donne’s theology or politics solely through the prism of his friends, it is at least plausible that this group surrounding Abbot found discursive space if not consensus in their connections, whereas there is no documented evidence that Donne chose to debate theological issues with the antiCalvinists associated with Neile and Buckeridge. There is also a significant body of information, primarily from Donne’s letters but also from accounts of his activities with the Doncaster embassy to the continent, that indicates his support for international protestantism, a notable feature of Abbot’s primacy.13 Donne’s participation in an official cipher is also significant. He is mentioned as one of eleven men to whom such a cipher (dating from 1615 or 1616) was entrusted. Among the others were Archbishop Abbot, Secretary of State Ralph Winwood, William Trumbull, and George Hakewill, strong supporters of continental protestantism, and challengers to anti-Calvinist and Laudian elements in the late Jacobean church. The cipher seems to have continued for some years, since to it has been added a number meant to designate the King of Bohemia, a title that could not have been used until at least 1617. Bald underplays the significance of this network, conjecturing that Donne was employed to correspond with agents abroad on affairs affecting the welfare of the church, but not attributing great political or religious significance to such activity. However, Donne must have been working directly under Abbot in this service. Moreover, these activities, about which we know far too little, apparently went on for many years, since in January 1623, Wotton sent from Venice to Sir Albertus Morton, “a large cipher, whereof I entreat you to consign a fair copy to the Dean of Paules.”14 Despite this weight of evidence of Donne’s intimate connection with Abbot, however, Bald cites a perfunctory business letter from Abbot to Donne, also dated 1622, to suggest that the nature of their relationship cannot be determined.15

12

13 14 15

The term “avant-garde conformist” was introduced by Lake, “Lancelot Andrewes, John Buckeridge, and Avant-Garde conformity”, and applied to Donne by Ferrell, “Donne and his Master’s Voice,” 62–3. In a recent essay, Guibbory has taken issue with my earlier claim that there was no documented connection between Donne and the anti-Calvinists, citing Donne’s gift to Izaak Walton of Montagu’s New Gagg (437). She is right to counter my absolute language (“no documented connection”), but wrong, I think, to suggest that Donne’s possession of that book is stronger evidence for his Arminian sympathies than the “circumference” of social sympathies with which I was contrasting it, based on the letter cited above. See Fincham, “Prelacy and Politics,” and Questier, “John Gee.” Donne’s associations with Morton, in particular, are well documented (Bald, pp. 202–12, 282). Fincham, “Prelacy and Politics,” 63. Bald, pp. 314–15 and 569–70, where the document is printed. Ibid., p. 440.

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John Donne’s Sermons, 1620–2 In fact, in these years immediately preceding the Directions we find Donne engaged with Archbishop Abbot, the Earls of Carlisle, Southampton, and Kent, and his long-time friend Sir Robert Ker, later Earl of Ancrum. Among his ecclesiastical connections we know certainly of his longtime friendship with the Calvinist Bishop John King, who died in 1621, and with King’s sons, particularly Henry, a prebendary of St. Paul’s, who became Donne’s executor in 1631, and to whom Donne bequeathed the gold medal struck to commemorate the Synod of Dort, given to him for his part in the Doncaster Embassy in 1619–20. We have no comparable evidence of his friendship or political involvement with Laud, Andrewes, Neile, or Buckeridge. If anything, Donne’s political and perhaps his doctrinal leanings in these years were with Abbot, with the Calvinist consensus reached at the Synod of Dort (where another of his close friends Joseph Hall had been a delegate), and with Lincoln’s Inn rather than with the anti-Calvinist bishops and divines with whom Donne is occasionally connected. Certainly, in the months immediately preceding Donne’s appointment as Dean of St. Paul’s, his letters express his ambivalence about promotion within the church at such a time. He writes to Goodyer on 11 October 1621 that “truly all things that are upon the stage of the world now, are full of such uncertanities [sic], as may justly make any man loth to passe a conjecture upon them; not only because it is hard to see how they wil end, but because it is misinter[pre]table and dangerous to conjecture otherwise, then some men would have the event to be.”16 These lines position Donne clearly outside the hermeneutic circle created by “some men” and unwilling to project his conjectures onto an already unstable situation. There could be no more challenging time to seek promotion in the church. Nor should it be assumed that preaching a sermon defending the Directions was the most obvious path to advancement. Donne’s sermons, then, provide an unusually full treatment of many of the topics being discussed in the months leading up to the 4 August Directions. In the broadest sense, his extant sermons for this period document a political and religious sensibility attuned to current events, but filtered into the public sphere through the medium of biblical exegesis. They reveal several things: the hermeneutics of interpretation, not only of scriptures, but also of the actions of public authorities in church and state; the rule of law in both spiritual and civil matters, including the doctrine of callings, the duties of preachers, and the relative authority of both church and state; discussions of peace within both the church (including Donne’s attitudes to religious controversies, personal slanders, and libels) and the state (including the matter of war with religious as well as political enemies); and, finally, Donne’s positioning of the English church within boundaries defined by papist and separatist recusancy, and in relation to other Reformed churches. THE HERMENEUTICS OF INTERPRETATION Donne’s fitness for the sensitive task of defending James’s Directions derives, I believe, from the interpretive inclusivity that he brought to the pulpit.

16

Letters, p. 199.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis This breadth of political and religious vision is marked in Donne’s sermons by his self-conscious preoccupation with the right uses of interpretation. In practice, this means that he regularly brings issues of interpretation to the foreground by discussing the principles by which he interprets scriptures, and by which he applies his texts to present occasions. In both exegesis and application, Donne demonstrates leadership by taking interpretive initiative in the interest of a broadly conceived and tolerant spirituality, and by modeling this interpretive process for his congregation. Donne’s interpretive initiative is tested to the limits in his 15 September sermon defending the Directions, and in a Paul’s Cross sermon two months later, but a better understanding of his typical approach to interpretive issues can illuminate the textual strategies and the spiritual focus of these sermons. Donne’s method and style of interpretation is to focus on the middle course. In doing so, Donne rejects the controversial thrust of sermons by preachers along the entire religious spectrum as spiritually and politically dangerous, for in Donne’s view the healthy conscience does not see the world in exclusive terms. Following from this flexibility is his rejection of the rhetorical style of either-or, of separation and division. Donne’s middle course, in fact, seems to strive for the greatest possible inclusiveness, for an interpretive style that analyses both scriptures and the political world in constructive terms.17 One of Donne’s strategies for achieving inclusiveness is to strive for perceptual wholeness, a way of comprehending that modulates from the letter to the spirit by enlarging the literal sense rather than pitting it against the metaphorical. Characteristically, Donne walks a middle path between what he terms “left-handed” and “right-handed” (III, 74) interpretations of scriptures. Though both are not equal, because not equally according to the letter, both can be useful, and Donne is careful not to discard what might prove edifying, or what might charitably be salvaged even from an imperfect sense.18 These comments are made in a sermon considering “blessedness,” in which Donne negotiates between those who interpret the word in a temporal sense and those who argue for a spiritual interpretation. Donne admits that temporal blessedness may be naturally “weaker” and “more imperfect” than spiritual blessedness. However, the “interpretation” of these blessings as spiritual is equally imperfect in “strength” and “evidence” because it is “not according to the letter.” Donne uses the same metaphor of right and left-handed interpretations to describe extreme positions far distant from the knowledge of Christ, which, for Donne, is at the heart of true religion. So, “There is a sine Deo, a left handed Atheism, in the meer natural man, that will not know Christ; and there is a sine Deo, a right handed Atheism in the stubborn Papist, who is not

17

18

Various readers have discussed the “middle nature” of Donne’s rhetoric, epistemology, and religious views. See Sloan; Sherwood, Fulfilling the Circle; Scodel; and my “Donne on Discretion.” In addition, discussions of Donne’s casuistry have demonstrated how casuistical habits of thought and language contributed to and enabled Donne’s politics. See works by Slights, Brown, and my “Donne’s Protestant Casuistry” and “Politics of Quotation.” Brown adduces the inadequacy of literal application of laws to define the tradition of reformed casuistry in which she situates Donne (pp. 5, 80). In both places, she cites Hall’s warnings about interpreting according to the letter. Donne’s respect for the scriptural letter, however, is consistent throughout the sermons, and derives from his belief that the letter of God’s word (and therefore of his law) is flexible and can be broadly construed, and from his observation of the doctrinal and political excesses that result from “singular” interpretations.

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John Donne’s Sermons, 1620–2 content with Christ” (IV, 131). In Donne’s moral economy right-handed and lefthanded are equally limited, both are sine Deo, and, insofar as both one-handed men are unbelievers, stopping short of or going beyond Christ, their hands fail to embrace their salvation. Frequently, in fact, Donne figures interpretive infirmities as perceptual handicaps, literally as “imperfect sense[s]”: hearing with only one ear” (VII, 74), or seeing things with a “squint-eye” (III, 229). These perceptual flaws commonly produce interpretations that are “singular,” both in their limited focus and in their one-sided distortion of truths.19 Characteristically, Donne associates far-fetched expositions of scriptural texts with papist exegesis, which often induces an “extraordinary” rather than an “ordinary” sense, and, which is worse, makes these “left-handed” interpretations the “right-handed” ground for resolving controversy. By contrast, Donne cites approvingly the method of the Church of England, which goes “a middle and a moderate way” (III, 143) by following Augustine’s rule that “when the Scripture may be interpreted, and Gods actions well understood, by an ordinary way, it is never necessary, seldome safe to induce an extraordinary” (III, 141). Consequently, he sees the English church as a fit instrument for interpretation following its Reformation into health. Moreover, the Church remains healthy, and expresses that health in ceremonies that leave the Church “neither in a Dropsie, nor in a Consumption; neither in a superfluous and cumbersome fatness, nor in an uncomely and faint leanness and attenuation” (IV, 106). It is for this reason that “we shall not need any such re-Reformation, or super-Reformation, as swimming Brains will needs cross the Seas for” (IV, 107).20 Many of Donne’s sermons continue to foreground issues of interpretation in an effort to steer a course between left- and right-handed divinity and to achieve the most broadly inclusive middle ground of conformity. Donne had in common with Jacobean conformists such as Gataker and Preston a concern not to use the Bible as a collection of scattered prooftexts for support of political and theological positions. The advice of such divines to seek the “whole rule” of the Bible21 was congenial to Donne, who even in his preface to Biathanatos rejected the polemical politics of quotation practised by many controversialists and pamphleteers. There he satirizes weak interpreters of scripture by writing: “If any small place of Scripture, misappeare to them to be of vse, for iustifying any opinion of theyrs, then (as the Word of God hath that precious Nature of Gold, that a litle quantity thereof, by reason of a faithfull tenacity and ductilenes, will be brought to couer 10000 tymes as much as any other Metall) they extend it so farre, and labor, and beat it to such a thinnesse, as it is scarse any longer the Word of God, onely to giue theyr other Reasons, a litle tincture and colour of Gold, though they haue lost all

19

20

21

Donne’s rejection of “singularity” has been a preoccupation of mine for some time. See “Donne’s Protestant Casuistry,” 56–62; “Pulpit Crisis of 1622,” 11–13; “Labels,” pp. 138–42. See “Speaking Openly,” for a discussion of the metaphor of hearing with one ear in the context of Donne’s comments on predestination. See Sermons VII, 83; V, 105; VIII, 50; VI, 83. Milton, Catholic and Reformed, notes that this argument, that “the cause of separation from Babylon [i.e. the Church of Rome] lay in the ‘plagues’ which threatened to infect those who remained within her,” was entirely conventional among conformist divines within the Church of England wishing to stress the lawfulness of that separation (p. 323). Eusden, pp. 24–5, cites John Preston’s “Exact Walking”: “First, looke to the whole rule, he that lookes but to a part shall never do a business exactly . . . you must have respect to all the commandments, to all the precepts that runne thorow the booke of God” (Sermons, p. 109).

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis the weight and estimation.”22 This is the same intellectual habit of the casuist who finds authority for practical moral decisions in the “most probable” expositions of commentators rather than in the legalistic appeal to “any” authority.23 The significance of Donne’s method lies not simply in his refusal to reject anything potentially useful to salvation, but in his refusal to acknowledge the absolute authority of any commentator. Donne finds material for salvation in the writings of the Catholic fathers and expositors of the ancient church, as well as in the opinions of Luther, Calvin and the reformers. Consequently, trying to determine Donne’s religious alignments by the sources of his quotations doesn’t work. Donne’s sermons are evidence that he can salvage saving doctrine from a variety of sources, however unlikely. His only caution is to avoid “singular” interpretations. In general Donne has a commonsensical regard for accumulated wisdom on any issue, on the value of public “opinion.” A view frequently aired in the sermons is that “The generall opinion, the generall voyce, is for the most part, good evidence, with, or against a man.” As he explains, “One man may deceive another, and be deceived by another; . . . [but] no man ever deceived all the world, nor did all the world ever joyn to deceive one man” (IV, 155).24 In a sermon preached in Trinity Term at Lincoln’s Inn,25 Donne contrasts such moderate interpretation with the way of the Roman Church, which not only admits “left-handed” or weaker interpretations, but makes them the ground for resolving controversy. Donne’s example is telling. Papists say that St. Peter was at Rome, and all moderates agreed with that. “But when upon S. Peters personall being at Rome, they came to build their universall supremacy over all the Church, and so to erect matter of faith upon matter of fact, then later men came to deny that it could be proved out of Scripture, that Peter was at Rome” (III, 316). In particular, Donne rejects the interpretations of the Council of Trent, which, he says, advanced “mischievous” doctrines upon moderate positions of “former reverent men” (III, 315), and by corruption of these senses forced reliance on the literal, if men were determined to pervert other, less authoritative senses. 22

23

24

25

Donne, Biathanatos, ed. Sullivan, p. 110. In his 1620 Trinity Sunday sermon, Donne comments on God’s justice by comparing it to gold. “As gold whilest it is in the mine, in the bowels of the earth, is good for nothing, and when it is out, and beaten to the thinnesse of leaf-gold, it is wasted, and blown away, and quickly comes to nothing; But when it is tempered with such allay, as it may receive a stamp and impression, then it is currant and usefull: So whilest Gods Justice lyes in the bowels of his own decree and purpose, and it is not executed at all, we take no knowledge that there is any such thing; And when Gods Justice is dilated to such an expansion, as it overflowes all alike, . . . but when God’s Justice is so allayed with his wisedome, as that we see he keeps a Goshen in Aegypt, . . . then we come to a rich and profitable use of his Justice” (III, 148–9). In both passages, the value of the gold is in its “currency,” a feature that Donne places between two forms of unprofitable wasting of the precious raw material. This metaphorical habit shows clearly how Donne places virtue in use and interpretation and application, more than in doctrine, and aligns his exegetical “mediocrity” with justice. For discussion of “probabiliorism” as a defining feature of protestant casuistry see Slights, Casuistical Tradition, pp. 13–15. The appeal to any authority, however singular, is “probabilism.” Donne often contrasts opinion with faith, but while he positions opinion between ignorance and knowledge, he does not discount it entirely (Sermons VI, 317): “S. Bernard proposes three wayes for our apprehending Divine things; first, understanding, which relies upon reason; faith, which relies upon supreme Authority; and opinion, which relies upon probability, and verisimilitude.” On 24 June 1622, he said: “Vox Populi, vox Dei, the generall voyce is seldome false” (V, 155). Potter and Simpson argue plausibly for dating this sermon during Donne’s tenure as Reader at Lincoln’s Inn. The latest possible date for the sermon would thus be 1621. However, their arguments for dating it in 1620 or 1621 rather than earlier, based on its “maturity of thought and richness of tone” (III, 28) are untenable.

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John Donne’s Sermons, 1620–2 Donne’s 1621 Christmas Day sermon elaborates further on the dangers attending interpretation: either it goes too far in “wresting in divers senses into a word, which needs but one” (III, 352); or it doesn’t go far enough, in that it misses the essential point. For Donne, the literal is always the safest, most important ground of interpretation, then, although often it is useful to present interpretations that raise and exalt devotion. Balancing these interpretations is Donne’s constant effort. His Easter Day 1622 sermon,26 for example, balances those unmerciful men who stress God’s reprobation with those overmerciful men who argue that even the souls in Hell can be saved. Clearly, the extremism of either view does not accord with Donne’s interpretation of the letter of his text. Similarly, in a sermon preached on 23 June 1622, Donne argues for a moderate interpretation of John the Baptist’s austere life, one that counters both the papist arguments for the merits of such works of mortification, and the puritan denial that such mortifications of the body are ever efficacious. To explain his view, Donne employs a political analogy, suggesting that the biblical interpretation is similar in kind to the political one with which he illustrates it. “Moderate disciplines subdue the body, as under the government of a King, a father of his people, that governs them by a law. But when the body comes to bee subdued, by paines, and anguish, and loathesome diseases, this becomes a tyranny, a conquest; and he that comes in by conquest, imposes what lawes hee will” (IV, 153).27 The “middle nature” of Donne’s pulpit divinity, which can find edifying matter in both the left-handed and the right-, in good grammar and in bad, in the direct rather than the squint-eyed vision, is continually reflected in Donne’s interpretations. In two sermons believed to have been preached late in 1620,28 both on the topic of scandals and offences, Donne argues that eschewing extremes is the only way to rectify abuses and initiate reform. As he says, it is certainly a woe to be “too [my emphasis] inquisitive into the proceedings of the State, and the Church, out of a jealousie and suspicion that any such alterations, or tolerations in Religion are intended or prepared.” This he calls a “seditious disaffection to the government, and a disloyall aspersion upon the persons of our Superiours.” But not to be sensible of offences, not to see that “the Caterpillars of the Roman Church, doe eat up our tender fruit, that the Jesuites, and other enginiers of that Church, doe seduce our forwardest and best spirits” is also an offence (III, 167). The duties of those entrusted with public responsibilities are clear. The pastor must not slacken his 26

27

28

Potter and Simpson date this sermon in 1622 because it is the only undated Easter sermon for Donne’s tenure as Dean of St. Paul’s, and we know that Donne was required by statute to preach on Easter Sunday (IV, 29). Strier raises the interesting question of “how one determines what the political context of a text is” (p. 93), although he rejects the use of political analogies to determine the politics of a text. In “Afterword,” Annabel Patterson aptly exposes the incongruity of Strier’s position on Donne’s “characteristic practice of describing the activities and demands of the Christian God metaphorically, as the dealings of a secular monarch and juridical state” (223). “Strier’s position is, roughly, that particular instances of this practice either support the view that Donne became an obedient Jacobean prelate, or, when they might seem to suggest Donne’s unease with Jacobean policies, that they are only metaphors, and hence have no status as evidence of Donne’s political or religious opinions” (224). I continue to argue that Donne’s metaphors point cumulatively to an attitude toward government, authority, and judicial processes that informs his theology and his politics. Potter and Simpson date these sermons in late November 1620, when the first news of the defeat of the Elector Palatine had reached London, based on internal evidence; however, they could have been preached in Lincoln’s Inn at any time between Donne’s return from the Doncaster embassy in 1620 and his appointment as Dean of St. Paul’s in 1621.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis pulpit duty, nor must the magistrate weaken in the execution of those laws left in his power. However, for private members of his auditory, Donne cautions that while it is inexcusable “Jealously, suspiciously to mis-interpret the actions of Superiours”, so too is it “not to feel how the adversary gains upon us, and not to wish that it were, and not to pray that is [sic] may be otherwise” (III, 167). The rhetorical posture Donne adopts in this sermon on offences is amplified in a second sermon on this text, also preached at Lincoln’s Inn. Crucial to its doctrinal foundation is Donne’s elaboration of the “passive scandal,” which Donne applies specifically to those who are faithful in good times, but scandalized when persecution comes. The weakness of interpretation characterized by this scandal is one that most engages Donne, and measures the impatient frustration of many of his auditors, as well as their uncertainty about James’s policy of peace, his refusal to commit wholeheartedly to the defence of his daughter and son-in-law in Bohemia, and his apparent indifference to the success of counter-Reformation forces on the continent. Such a person, Donne says, “stays not to give God his leasure, whether God will succour his cause to morrow, though not to day. Hee stays not to give men their Law, to give Princes, and States time to consider, whether it may not be fit for them to come to leagues, and alliances, and declarations for the assistance of the Cause of Religion next year, though not this” (III, 179). Clearly, Donne is advocating patience, not only because the national good depends on giving the benefit of the doubt to those legally responsible for deciding these causes, but also because, he suggests, the reports of Catholic victories may very well be Jesuit propaganda. As he says, “as soon as a Catholique army hath given a blow, and got a victory of any of our forces, or friends, or as soon as a crafty Jesuit hath forged a Relation, that that Army hath given such a blow, or that such an Army there is, (for many times they intimidate weake men, when they shoote nothing but Paper, when they are onely Paper-Armies, and Pamphlet-Victories, and no such in truth)” (III, 179). These forged rumours in the public sphere lead to dangerous conclusions: that God is not powerful, that God does not take wise courses, that there is no God. Consequently, Donne offers a trinity of rules for the interpretation of the actions of kings: faith in divine matters, hope in state matters, and charity in civil matters. The patience Donne recommends in this sermon extends to domestic peace as well. Donne criticizes the “corrupt easinesse” of misconstruing that leads one to think “nothing done, if all bee not done; that no abuses are corrected, if all be not removed; that there’s an end of all Protestants, if any Papists bee left in the world” (III, 182). Donne rejects this either–or perspective, arguing that abuses in church and state do not justify laying blanket aspersions upon these institutions and that the inability to accept institutional imperfections leads to greater corruptions. As Donne puts it, “It is the chafing of the Lion, and the stirring of the Viper, that aggravates the danger; The first blow makes the wrong, but the second makes the fray; and they that will endure no kind of abuse in State and Church, are many times more dangerous then that abuse which they oppose” (III, 184). Here, Donne contrasts humans with Christ, who alone could becalm the tempest. A good Christian, he says, rides out the storm, and is not scandalized by that church or state of which he is a member for the abuses that are in it. Comparing present conditions in England with a tempest and English institutions with Noah’s ark confirms that Donne is more concerned to survive the storm than to enjoy the journey, and he advises his overzealous hearers to adopt this view. “The Arke is 84

John Donne’s Sermons, 1620–2 peace, peace is good dispositions to one another, good interpretations of one another; for, if our impatience put us from our peace, and so out of the Arke, all without the Arke is sea; The bottomlesse and boundlesse Sea of Rome, will hope to swallow us, if we dis-unite our selves, in uncharitable misinterpretations of one another” (III, 185). Donne’s “mediocrity” in interpretation is more than a rhetorical posture; it is a habit of mind and an epistemological lens well illustrated in a series of sermons attempting to “reconcile some such places of Scripture, as may at first sight seem to differ from one another” (II, 325). On 30 January 1619/20, Donne preached in the morning and again in the evening on texts which juxtapose two sayings of Christ: “The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment to the Son” and “I judge no man.” Potter and Simpson note that such paradoxes fascinated Donne and infer from the manuscript tradition for these two sermons (copied together in four manuscripts) that his Lincoln’s Inn audience were interested in such a series (II, 41). This pair of sermons on the topic of judgment turns on two main interpretive issues: the nature of the judge, in the first, and the nature of his judgments, in the second. In each sermon, Donne’s interpretive focus allows him to make important distinctions that rest, finally, on the Christian (rather than the divine or the human) character of the religious experience of his hearers, framed in a legal discourse appropriate to his Lincoln’s Inn audience. Consequently, while the Father’s delegation of his judgment to the Son is Donne’s topic, his edifying purpose is to illuminate how the three great judgments – election, justification, and glorification – are executed. God “out of his abundant goodnesse hath established a judgement, and ordained a Judge upon earth like himself, and like our selves too” (II, 319), Donne says, emphasizing that God has provided judges who are the “image of the invisible God, and so more proportionall unto us, more apprehensible by us” (II, 320). Though the Fathers differ among themselves as to whether this judgment proceeds from Christ as he is God or man, Donne finds the impasse “easily reconcil’d”: “God hath given Christ this Commission as man, but Christ had not been capable of this commission if he had not been God too” (II, 321). In the inseparable union of divine and human nature, however, “Though he be in our humane flesh, he is not the lesse able to doe the acts belonging to the Godhead, but per carnem, by the flesh instrumentally, visibly, he executes judgement, because he is the Son of man, God hath been so indulgent to man, as that there should be no judgement given upon man, but man should give it” (II, 322). As a consequence, in the three main judgments, the instrumental workings of Christ are visible in the human experience of these judgments. Because Christ executes the judgment of election, therefore,“I enquire not what God did in his bed-chamber, in his cabinet counsell, in his eternall decree, I know that hee hath made Judicium electionis in Christ Jesus” (II, 323). This decree of election is expressed entirely in terms of conformity to Christ, and assurance of it is achieved only after careful self-examination and personal application of Christ’s death: “And if I do that, there I finde my Predestination, I am a Christian” (II, 323). In the second judgment, of justification, the judgment of Christ is expressed in his ordinances: his word preached and his sacrament. This judgment is achieved “not in keeping the conscience of an honest man, in generall, but in using well the meanes ordain’d by Christ in the Christian Church” (II, 324). Finally, the judgment of glorification shall be given “for things done, or omitted towards him [i.e. Christ]” 85

John Donne and Conformity in Crisis (II, 324). All three judgments are expressed entirely in reference to Christ to emphasize Donne’s point that, as important as morality and conscience are, “justification” is achieved only through Christ and the means he has instituted in his church. The paradox in the second text inheres in the disclaimer regarding judgment that appears to contradict the universality of Christ’s judgment Donne has painstakingly constructed in the previous sermon. It turns out, however, that Christ rejects only particular modes of judgment that offend against justice, charity, and faith, judgments for which Christ had no commission. These include civil or criminal cases, false imputations against another, or judgments that induce despair. Christ’s example in all three cases contrasts distorted political, secular, or legalistic versions of such judgment: the pope’s arrogation of civil power in deposing kings; the calumnies of informers or our own countenancing of calumny from others; despairing judgments against ourselves. Donne’s editors find these sections digressive, but, in fact, they are at the heart of Donne’s application of the text.29 They cast interesting light on pressing social and political concerns, and particularly on the culture of the Court of Rome and the Court of England.30 Perhaps the most significant judgment Donne considers, however, is the judgment that distorts good impulses (fear of the Lord and horror of sin), using these to construct an obdurate wall that bars entry of God’s general mercies. In fact, the sermon presses home its main point – a point that counters the rigours of rigid Calvinist predestinarianism – that salvation is impossible only to those “who are utterly fallen away into an absolute Apostasie, and infidelity, that make a mocke of Christ, and crucifie him againe” (II, 333). Specifically, they display their “absolute Apostasie” in that they “undervalue, and despise the Church of God, and those means which Christ Jesus hath instituted in his Church for renewing such as are fallen” (II, 333).31 This sermon concludes with a summary of points that resolves the paradoxes Donne has uncovered, and that leads to a balanced sense of Christian religious experience as levered by both justice and mercy. This justice is stated in the unequivocally Calvinist point that “he was infinite generations before that [i.e. before the general creation], in the bosome of his Father, at our election, and there in him was executed the first judgment of separating those who were his, the elect from the reprobate” (II, 334). This mercy is expressed in Christ’s sealing “all those in the visible Church with the outward mark of his baptisme, and the inward marke of his Spirit, and those whom he calls so, he justifies, and sanctifies, and brings them to his third Judgment, to an established and perpetuall glory” (II, 334). Donne’s often iterated point that religion must be tried by the whole tenor and scope of the scriptures finds expression in this pair of sermons. Two sermons on the resurrection of the body comprise a second pair in the series reconciling apparently contradictory texts, and are dated 1620, probably in the Lent or Easter season (III, 7). As with the earlier pair, and with scriptures as a whole, Donne works from the principle that “whatsoever is true in it selfe agrees 29 30

31

Potter and Simpson, II, 42. See Milton, Catholic and Reformed, for discussion of protestant rejections of the post-Tridentine Roman Church on the grounds that “The corrupt doctrines of a faction had now been established as necessary to be believed as articles of faith, whereas in the medieval church dissent had still been possible. The Court of Rome had now become the Church of Rome” (p. 229). My argument here is that this interpretive habit is consonant with Donne’s concept of a flexible and evolving middle way. The formulations are often as un-Arminian as they are un-Calvinistic.

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John Donne’s Sermons, 1620–2 with every other truth” (III, 132). In this case, the interpretation turns on the meaning of “flesh” and in the final paragraph Donne reconciles the two: “Jobs argument is but this, some flesh shall see God, (Mortified men here, Glorified men there shall) Pauls argument is this, All flesh shall not see God, (Carnall men here, Impenitent men there, shall not)” (III, 132–3). In the course of achieving this meaning, however, Donne spends considerable time demonstrating his interpretive principles. One principle is to range thoroughly across expositors rather than selecting only authorities who support his view. So in his survey of expositors on Job, Donne establishes its authority as a text referring to the resurrection by considering that Rome, Luther, and Calvin all interpret this text so. Furthermore, this survey leads to a second interpretive principle already alluded to: the rejection of “singularity.” While Donne frequently argues against singular interpretations, however, he balances that caution with respect for the reputation of particular interpreters. In this case, Calvin is “singular” in interpreting Job to refer only to “restitution, and reparation in this life” rather than to the resurrection of the body after death. Donne, however, is loathe to denigrate Calvin’s view, however singular, in part because Calvin is one “to whom we all owe much, for the interpretation of the Scriptures” (III, 101). Nonetheless, Donne concludes with the “whole Christian Church” (not divided into reformed sects or excluding even the Roman Catholics) that this text from Job is proof of the resurrection.32 Donne’s interpretive middle course allows redefinition of terms that further establish the Church of England’s status as “a true Church” (III, 132) against a “false” church, characterized by its “manifest works of the flesh” (III, 132). In the second sermon, this church is clearly the Church of Rome. Their heresy is embodied in “the whole new Creed of the Councell of Trent, (for, if all the particular doctrines be not Hereticall, yet, the doctrine of inducing new Articles of faith is Hereticall” (III, 132). Their Idolatry is “the peoples practise . . . in the Adoration of the Sacrament” (III, 132). They threaten England’s church both spiritually and carnally, Donne argues, urging his hearers to “be firmer in our selves, and the carefuller of our children, and servants” (III, 124). The more this-worldly concerns of the sermon derive in part from Tertullian who takes this text to refer to our “religious resurrection” by grace in this life (III, 125). This emphasis on the operations of grace within a national, institutional, and personal kingdom of God allows Donne to stress that in this life that kingdom is “Peace in the State, peace in the Church, peace in the Conscience” (III, 127) and is achieved by inheritance. “Inheritance” is a legal metaphor implying election that Donne contrasts specifically with other forms of ownership or right offered by papists. The kingdom of God, then, is not earned by purchase (“mine own merits,” “my former good disposition, nor Gods fore-sight of my future cooperation with him”), by covenant, by works of supererogation (martyrs’ gifts and relics), or by courtesy (“in the right of my wife . . . that I have a Catholique wife, or a Catholique child to pray, and merit for me”). As Donne’s definitions by what is not indicate, the kingdom of God is defined by contrast with papist and neo-Pelagian formulations. While this pair of sermons emphasizes the limitations of an exclusive focus on the fleshly and carnal (most often exemplified by the Roman Church), Donne is careful in other 32

I continue to contrast Donne’s use of Calvin with that made by Montagu and other Arminians not to prove that “Donne remained a Calvinist” (Guibbory, [427, n.39]), but that he was not “anxious to denigrate him,” an attitude Milton demonstrates in the polemical uses of “Calvin” (Catholic and Reformed, [p. 427]).

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis sermons to adjust the perspective away from an exclusively spiritualized and disembodied religious experience. An important pair of sermons, undated by Potter and Simpson, takes a different interpretive approach. The Lincoln’s Inn series defined terms so that difference modulated into sameness. So, contradictory texts were brought into alignment with the analogy of faith. This pair of sermons interprets the same text from points at apparently opposite ends of the spectrum, concluding by bringing these interpretations into conjunction to focus on the heart of the text: the distinction between “reformation” and “separation.” Donne takes as his text Ezekiel 34:19.33 The first sermon describes the corruptions and abuses of the Roman Church, and includes a thorough catalogue of the pressures that led eventually and inevitably to the Reformation and the break with Rome. The second sermon, anticipating an analogy between the English Reformation and current separatist moves within the English church, distinguishes between contemporary separatists and the early English reformers. Both sermons focus on the Reformation and its causes, but each approaches the event from a different angle to conclude that the Reformation was not a departure that justifies separatists, whether papist or puritan. “Christ Jesus hath commanded us to gather together, and recommended to us the Congregation; as for the separation, he hath reserved it to himself, to declare at the last day, who are Sheep and who are Goats” on the authority of his “expresse written Word” (X, 176). Donne handles the controversial topic of the Reformation, then, by distinguishing between these two forms of departure, and by stressing the degree to which accommodation of troublesome features is required before separation is justified. God’s sheep ate indigestible food rather than starving, remained a flock rather than wandering. The Reformers, he argues, “staid Gods leasure, and lived long upon this ill diet” before departing. Consequently, their departure “can be no example, no justification of their [English separatists’] departing from us” (X, 160). The crucial question is what distinguishes one departure from another. As for the Reformation, Donne says, “We departed not from them then, till it was come to a hot plague [not simply an ‘ague’], in a necessity of professing old opinions to be new articles of Faith; not till we were driven by them, and drawn by the voice of God, in the learnedest men of all nations” (X, 174). Contemporary English separatists, offended by “too much binding to the orderly, and uniforme service of God in his Church” (X, 175), separate themselves, according to Donne, peevishly, for matters of opinion “in questions that are not fundamentall” (X, 175). Donne intends by separatists here not those who are troubled by doctrinal matters, and not even those who are troubled by but conform to ceremonial practices within the Church, but only to an extremely small number of radicals, hardly even a group, since “scarse a dozen meet together in one confession” (X, 176). Departure from Babylon is not to be confused with this “civill warre.” Both departing from the Church of Rome and communicating within the Church of England produce the same result: “integritie of Religion” and a “true Church” (X, 177). Donne’s interpretive middle way is a fully engaged exercise of eye, ear, and hand to compensate for singular, “imperfect” senses and to achieve “integritie of

33

“And as for my flesh, they eate that, which yee have trodden with your feet, and they drink that which yee have fouled with your feet.”

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John Donne’s Sermons, 1620–2 Religion.” Adjusting for biases in interpretation, figured as perceptual handicaps, means that Donne’s middle way is flexible rather than fixed, a decision that takes place in the fully engaged spiritual space between left and right hands, eyes, ears. To rely on “imperfect senses” – a punning allusion to the action of impaired human senses on the interpretation of scriptures – is to fail spiritually. In rhetorical terms, it is an attempt to express eternal truths, and to comprehend salvation both whole and as a sequence of actions in time. Donne’s sermons embody working definitions, deeply dependent on occasion and audience for their resonance and application, that allow his hearers to experience edification as a process of building the temple of God, and salvation as a chain of cause-and-effect worked out in time but focused on eternity. In an historical sense, Donne’s middle way redefines what it means to be Christian in the fragmented aftermath of the Reformation. Donne imagines and articulates a specifically English institution in which interpretations of doctrine and experience of salvation are mediated equally through sacramental and homiletic means. And in that middle way Donne hopes to build (or edify) Christians who hear with both ears, see with both eyes, and hold with both hands the verities of a religion founded on scripture, but established in the consciences and the communities of his hearers. CIVIL AND SPIRITUAL LAWS: AUTHORITY AND CALLING The “middle nature” of Donne’s interpretive stance corresponds to the central distinction he draws between the prophets, who were commissioned to punish and rebuke kings, and modern preachers, who are not. The zeal of the former is not appropriate to the latter, because their commissions differ substantially: “But upon Imprecations of this kinde, wee as private men, or as publique persons, but limited by our Commission, may not adventure neither” (III, 309). The examples he cites of overvehement zeal, particularly Moses and Paul, appear frequently. And yet, Donne is well aware that conveying rebukes is part of the preacher’s responsibility. Doing so as preachers rather than prophets, however, requires discretion, and Donne compares imprinting a sense of sin in another’s conscience to “the fishing of Whales; the Marke is great enough; one can scarce misse hitting it; but if there be not sea room and line enough, and a dexterity in letting out that line, he that hath fixed his harping Iron in the Whale, endangers himselfe, and his boate” (V, 199). A preacher thus engaged in being a fisher of men must allow himself “sea room and line enough,” it is true, but must retain enough of the prophet Amos’s temerity in proclaiming God’s judgments, even at Court, to counter the timid Amasiah “in his owne bosome, a little wisperer in his owne heart, that tels him, This is the Kings Chappell, and it is the Kings Court” (II, 349). In a Lincoln’s Inn sermon, Donne interprets the example of Paul’s preaching to the Colossians to reiterate that the preacher must not engage in “servile humouring,” but neither should he be “negligent of their opinion of him, with whom he is to converse” (III, 336): “God forbid that a man should build a reputation for zeale, for having been called in question for preaching of a Sermon” (III, 337). In the same sermon, Donne speaks against those preachers who by “intemperate, and scandalous zeal, or pretence of zeal, extort a chastisement from the State.” As Donne states, “if I exasperate the Magistrate and draw an affliction upon myself, this stoln suffering, this forced suffering, is not passio mea, it is not mine, if it should not be mine” (III, 344). 89

John Donne and Conformity in Crisis Donne’s sermons of this period contrast the excessive zeal of those who would reform abuses outside the law with the normal processes available for such improvement. Many of the analogies he uses reinforce his sense that the legallyconstituted institutions of England, in both church and state, are the only legitimate means through which to effect further reform. A sermon preached in Trinity Term in the early 1620s discusses judicial processes by distinguishing between the church and the state, clarifying what for Donne must have been the crucial issue of conscience regarding his vocation at this time: “There is a power above the Priest, the regall power; not above the function of the Priest, but above the person of the Priest” (III, 298).34 This kind of rhetorically ambiguous distinction is crucial to Donne’s sense of the balance of power between civil and spiritual authorities. Kings have civil power over the “person” of the priest, but no spiritual power over the “function” of the priest.35 In the same sermon, Donne also specifies the legal and orderly means of redress appropriate to church officials dissatisfied with state actions affecting religious worship, and traces them to “the practise of the Primitive Church” (III, 310). Different faults incur different penalties, and are referred to different jurisdictions. “Impugners of the Supremacy are excommunicated, and not restored but by the Archbishop: Impugners of the Common prayer Booke excommunicated too, but may bee restored by the Bishop of the place: Impugners of our Religion declared in the Articles, reserved to the Archbishop: Impugners of Ceremonies restored when they repent, and no Bishop named: Authors of Schisme reserved to the Archbishop; maintainers of Schismatiques, referred but to repentance; And so maintainers of Conventicles, to the Archbishop; maintainers of Constitutions made in Conventicles, to their repentance” (III, 310). This passage is remarkable for the information it affords, both about ecclesiastical administration and about Donne’s intimate knowledge and support of such processes. The passage also reveals something of Donne’s conformity to established procedures, despite his personal comment that “maintainers of Schismatiques,” whom Donne rebukes often in his sermons, must do nothing “but” repent, in lieu of some harsher action. Clearly, even within ecclesiastical jurisdiction, “There was ever, there is yet a reserving of certaine cases, and a relaxation or aggravating of Ecclesiasticall censures, for their waight, and for their time” (III, 310). All of these cases are covered by ecclesiastical law, interpreted at the discretion of church officials. Although many of Donne’s legal analogies are not developed fully, they indicate his sense of due process and hierarchies of authority. Contrary to what recent studies of Donne’s use of the divine analogy argue, Donne does not always employ the analogy to glorify kings and their authority. For example, in a 1620 Trinity Sunday sermon, Donne contrasts God with earthly kings, observing that, unlike earthly rulers, God admits expostulation, even rebukes from his servants, as the example of Jacob who wrestled with God proves. If anyone were to suggest a former drowsiness of government, a former slumbering of the laws, a disestimation upon the nation, Donne says, any prince would be indignant against such a petitioner. 34

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Donne goes on to say that “in extraordinary cases, God raysed Prophets above Kings” (III, 298), but, generally, Donne does not equate ministers with prophets (II, 303–4). See especially Donne’s discussion of obedience to the king “in those things, which are, in their nature but circumstantiall, and may therefore, according to times, and places, and persons, admit alterations” (IV, 255–6).

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John Donne’s Sermons, 1620–2 God, on the other hand, is long-suffering and patient, even obedient and humble, and we can learn from his example. Kings are not only contrasted with God, but also compared, to their discredit, with popes. Just as the pope’s errors may be rectified by a Council, so may a king’s error be rectified by God. Only God’s judgments admit of no appeal “from God not throughly informed, to God better informed, for hee alwaies knowes all evidence, before it be given” (III, 148). Virtually all of Donne’s sermons in these controversial times articulate a doctrine of callings focusing primarily on their spiritual as well as social necessity. A calling accompanied with “the wisdome, and discretion, and understanding of a serpent, necessary for those courses” (III, 71) is the greatest riches God can bestow on a person. It is the fruit of faith, the works that ripen justification into sanctification (III, 273). Men without callings Donne describes as “chippings of the world,” “fragmentary and incoherent men, [who] trespasse against the Son, against the second Person, as he is Wisdome” (III, 329). Donne’s insistence on a public calling as testimony to a working faith is expressed in his statement that “This life is not a Parenthesis, a Parenthesis that belongs not to the sense, a Parenthesis that might be left out, as well as put in” (III, 288). Nonetheless, Donne cautions his hearers not to make the circumstances and offices of their callings the occasion or excuse for their sins. This is perhaps nowhere more pointedly applied than in a sermon preached on 8 April 1621 on Proverbs 25:16.36 As Gifford has demonstrated, reading this sermon in light of parliamentary discussions attacking Sir Giles Mompesson and Sir Francis Michell, as well as the 14 March allegations of bribery against Lord Chancellor Francis Bacon, gives bite and urgency to Donne’s comments on temporal covetousness. Gifford describes Donne’s style as “a curious mixture of specificity and generality” that allows Bacon’s case, in particular, to surface for his courtly audience. Gifford’s point – that Donne is expressing the anxieties of his audience of courtiers through his grisly digestive and appetitive imagery – is supported not simply by the coincidences of context Gifford has delineated, but by his careful attention to intertextuality and biography. Donne’s statement that rising to any height “must be a winding stair” (III, 234) may be proverbial, but finds its way only three years later into Bacon’s revised essay “Of Great Place.” Equally, Gifford notes the rumour that Donne was about to become Dean of Salisbury the day before this sermon was preached, and suggests that this text might have offered “spiritual ballast”37 to Donne’s own expectations of advancement. The metaphors Donne uses to depict the preacher’s calling suggest what preachers ought not to be, thereby defining by contrast what function they serve. In a 1620 Trinity Sunday sermon, Donne distinguishes between the depth, wit, and eloquence of the preacher, inessential vocational trappings figured here as “the greatest Starres,” and his “nearnesse,” figured as the “Moone,” which although less than the stars, is more beneficial “because she is nearer to us” (III, 142). Donne’s 1622 Easter sermon takes up the same problem, namely judging the effectiveness of a preacher by the quality of his eloquence and wit. Just as the Israelites benefited from the pillars of cloud as well as the pillars of fire, so can God’s children in the church benefit from “Preacher’s of inferiour gifts” (IV, 83), those with clouds 36

37

“Hast thou found honey? Eat so much as is sufficient for thee, lest thou be filled therewith, and vomit it.” Gifford, 394.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis in their understanding, their elocution, their aspects, and their fortunes. The testimony of this calling, in the conscience, must “also shine in our tongues, preach” (IV, 110). In three sermons on John 1:8, Donne articulates more fully the ways in which preachers bear witness to that light.38 Most pertinent to this discussion of vocations, however, is Donne’s sermon preached in 1622 on the nature of John the Baptist’s commission.39 The sermon is divided into two parts: John the Baptist’s person (including his title to the office and his commission), and his office. Of good family and extraction, and born miraculously to the barren Elizabeth, John the Baptist knew the ground on which he bore witness. This knowledge distinguishes him from Roman priests who have given their lives and separatists who have taken a voluntary banishment, because “The Papist hath not the knowledge of his Doctrine from any Scripture, the Separatist hath not the knowledge of his Discipline from any precedent, any example in the primitive Church” (IV, 148). Knowledge of one’s purpose in the world is intimately tied to vocation. One must not pass out of the world like a hand that “passes out of a basin of water, which may bee somewhat fouler for thy washing in it, but retaines no other impression of thy having been there” (IV, 149). An effective preacher also brings to his vocation a good reputation and here Donne reinforces his view that a reputation for goodness with good men is a sign of an honest and competent witness. Most important, however, Donne stresses the requirement that competent preachers have a commission authorizing their testimony. Here, Donne distinguishes those truly authorized from those “without any calling” who gather men into conventicles for the purposes of singularity, schism, and sedition; those who come with an “outward” calling, who preach to impress their auditors, to achieve fame, or to impress with their eloquence; and those of the Jesuit mission who come unlawfully to undermine the king’s supremacy. The sermon ends by considering the many ways in which John the Baptist was called, beginning with the call before he existed and ending with his call to death and judgment, but focusing on the ways in which calling into the world was manifested not in the wilderness but in public action. Not to be a “limbe of the body of this world” is to be nothing but excremental nails and hair. The institutional means that enable the preacher’s witness and the hearer’s conversion are also Donne’s focus in his sermons of the early 1620s. Several sermons urge patience in the face of present imperfections in the church or state (III, 185). Salvation, for Donne, is best accomplished using those means, preaching and the sacraments, within the institutional structure, the church. This view is explicitly anti-sectarian. As Donne says, “Sects are not bodies, they are but rotten boughes, gangrened limmes, fragmentary chips, blowne off by their owne spirit of turbulency, fallen off by the waight of their owne pride, or hewen off by the Excommunications and censures of the Church” (III, 87–8). So, Christ must be sought “in the Church, . . . where hee hath promised to bee found . . . in his 38

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Nancy Wright discusses in detail Donne’s rhetorical use of John the Baptist as testatis or martyria as inartificial proof to encourage others to bear witness to Christ. Sherwood’s sustained discussion of Donne’s vocational self informs this reading. “The emerging picture of Donne as a moderate, forceful, but subtle critic of royal and parliamentary issues [and, I would add, of theological controversy] suggests a mature vocational sense of duty. Such counsel is ‘labour’ in his lawfull profession; the risks taken by conscience are ‘crosses’ shouldered in that role” (“Donne and the Vocational Self,” 105–6).

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John Donne’s Sermons, 1620–2 Ordinances, and means of salvation in his Church” (V, 250). Similarly, Donne stresses that we are not asked to seek God in “his unsearchable decrees” but through “Christ Jesus speaking in his Church, and applying his blood unto us in the Sacraments” (II, 319). Typically, then, Donne preaches specifically to believers within this Church, not to God’s doctrinal enemies, including atheists, idolaters, and deniers of the Trinity; not to his disciplinary enemies, including papists and “non-Conformists,” and not to his sacrilegious enemies who come to despoil God’s house. Despite many references to the codes governing effective pulpit discourse, Donne’s attitudes to the relative authority in church and state are difficult to discern. However, several of the analogies that he uses glance obliquely, but discerningly, at government and suggest some priorities. Donne is well aware, for example, that sermons can never be as effective as legal means of motivation. As he wryly notes “As long as a Sermon is not a Sentence in the Starre-chamber, that a Sermon cannot fine and imprison him, hee hath no roome for any good effect of a Sermon” (III, 236). Even in a sermon ostensibly celebrating a marriage, Donne imagines the perfect harmony of the eternal marriage between our souls and the Lamb in terms that suggest that earthly things as they stand are imperfect forms of this heavenly unity. There, he says, “I shall see a divorce between Princes and their Prerogatives, between nature and all her elements, between the spheres, and all their intelligences, between matter it self, and all her forms” (III, 254). For the time being, however, human marriages must accept the earthly laws of the natural world, of which his political example is only one kind. Respect for the rule of law does not mean an inordinate fear of it, however, and Donne offers the example of Esther who overcomes her fearfulness of the proclamation of the king, because it was directly, indisputably against the manifest will of God (III, 280). Donne is careful to show that Esther’s resistance was limited to this place and time, and that she had used all preparations before resolving that “If I perish, I perish.” This was not a desperate undertaking, he asserts, but done with a rectified conscience and in the well-established opinion that either the Law was not intended for her, or that the king was not rightly informed in his bloody command. Esther exemplifies acting according to conscience rather than captivating it to the traditions and inventions of men (as the papists do, for example). Still, in the same sermon, Donne comments on those who think that the power governing the world results from the tacit consent of the people rather than from God. Clearly, Donne does not want to suggest that the power of the king is ordained by the people, even though he is careful to emphasize the due processes and ordinary means by which his power is disseminated.40 In a sermon preached on Ascension Day 1622, Donne further distinguishes between the spheres of state and church, indicating, as he does so, just how he uses analogy to offer political commentary when he considers it indiscreet, even unprofessional, to do so openly. Donne says that the warning in his text to “Come not after them” would afford a good note for the public and the magistrate “if [my 40

Slights, Casuistical Tradition, p. 137, finds the casuistical purposes and methods in this sermon “unique” arguing that “the sermons, for all their learning and wit, are primarily directed to move the apostate will, not to enlighten the conscience.” I have examined this sermon and a 1629 sermon preached on the Conversion of Saint Paul to elucidate how Donne challenges excesses of both zeal and discretion, thus enlarging the application of casuistical principles in the sermons.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis emphasis] we were to reflect at all, which we always avoid, on publick things” (IV, 139). However, the analogy to a body is explicit. “That which is proverbially said of particular Bodies, will hold in a Body Politick, in any State” (IV, 140). Even when Donne explicitly denies conducting his sermon in the public sphere, however, the principle of analogy extends his meaning there: “this is not our sphear, the Publick, the State”, he says, “but yet States consist of Families, and Families of private persons, and they are in our sphear, in our charge” (IV, 140). All of these are part of the sense of the phrase as Donne interprets it. “With Idolaters in the State, with Underminers in thy House, with sins in thy Soul, be still beforehand, watch their dangerous accesses” (IV, 141). “When Donne cautions his hearers to “Keepe it, where I intend it, in that which is my spheare, the Conscience” (IV, 55), then, the appeal to intention suggests that other meanings apart from the intended meaning could be derived from Donne’s application, and the warning serves to highlight rather than to obscure the other applications. Donne’s comments on authority provide little evidence for the view that Donne was fascinated by power or awed by the ways in which kings in their prerogative imitate the power of God as he is Lord of Hosts.41 In a sermon preached on Trinity Sunday, for example, Donne comments on the power of God’s mercies, his “power to erect and settle a tottering, a dejected soul, an overthrowne, a bruised, a broken, a troden, a ground, a battered, an evaporated, an annihilated spirit” (III, 270). This is an act of might that requires the assurance and presence of God. Similarly, in another sermon preached in Trinity Term, Donne comments on the power of gentleness: “There is not so violent a thing as gentlenesse, so forcible, so powerfull upon man, or upon God” (III, 326). This gentleness is what conforms us to our pattern, Christ, for “there is no such Bullet, as a Pillow, no such Action, as Passion, no such revenge as suffering an injury” (III, 327). “This is the warre of the righteous man,” he says, “to conquer by yeelding” (III, 327). “MATTER WITHOUT CONTROVERSY”: WAR, PEACE, AND THE PULPIT In the months preceding the Directions, questions of authority often involved discussions of peace, a subject that became more topical as tensions over war on the continent and domestic wranglings in church and state increased. Although Donne seldom comments on the continental wars in his sermons, peace within the church is a subject that, for Donne, falls legitimately within the purview of his authorized ministry, and many of his sermons comment on the limits of controversy. A Lent sermon preached before the king at Whitehall on 16 February 1621 finds Donne voicing one of his fundamental beliefs about the place of controversial preaching. Donne distinguishes between Christ’s plain doctrine, which exercises faith, and the “curiously disputed” doctrines of men, which exercise the understanding. The evidence for salvation, Donne insists, is “matter without controversie” (III, 210). Donne’s sermon on this text (1 Timothy 3:16) rehearses many of the features of his opposition to controversial handling of scriptural mysteries. The sermon is constructed according to a fundamental distinction between “Christs plaine doctrine” (the “Text” of the Bible) and “curious disputations” on 41

See Carey, John Donne, pp. 122–5; Shuger, p. 169; and my “Politics of Quotation,” pp. 386–90 for the evolution of this claim.

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John Donne’s Sermons, 1620–2 that text (the “interlineary glosses, and the marginal notes”) (III, 208). In the Bible, and only there, is “truth without controversie” and “common Salvation” (III, 209). And yet, Donne acknowledges, this truth, paradoxically, is a mystery that cannot be discerned by the eyes of nature and learning. It can only be seen by the eyes of faith, and then only “organically, instrumentally, by the Church” which “proposes all that is necessary to my salvation, in the Word, and seales all to me in the Sacraments” (III, 210). Donne construes the doctrine of salvation as a syllogism, thereby elevating the logical status of the foundational Christian belief in the Trinity. The rest of Donne’s sermon expounds the means by which this doctrine of salvation is manifested, demonstrating at every step how the mysteries of godliness are accommodated to Christians through the church and its ordinances. Donne’s belief that the doctrine necessary for salvation is without controversy leads him in another Lincoln’s Inn sermon to preach against controversialists disguised as preachers. Donne contrasts these men, overactive in doctrinal things, with those (for whom they express contempt) who stay within positive divinity and articles confessed by all churches. According to Donne, such zealots (particularly in matters of predestination) transgress the wisdom of the Son, abjuring “Gods revealed Will, his Acts of Parliament, publique proclamations,” in favour of “his Cabinet Counsailes, his bosome, his pocket dispatches” (III, 330). Donne characterizes conflicting interpretive and rhetorical practices in pastoral terms: “To rest in Positive Divinity, and Articles confessed by all Churches, To be content with Salvation at last, and raise no estimation, no emulation, no opinion of singularity by the way, only to edifie an Auditory, and not to amaze them, onely to bring them to an assent, and to a practise, and not to an admiration. This is but homespun Divinity, but Country-learning, but Catechisticall doctrine” (III, 330). So the preference of “these high-flying men” for the “Cabal” rather than the written “Law” of Moses, leads these men to seek “another kinde of Predestination, then that which is revealed in Scriptures, which seemes to be onely of those that beleeve in Christ” (III, 330). When Donne asks “May not a man be saved, though he doe not, and may not a man bee damned, though he doe performe those Conditions, which seeme to make sure his salvation in the Scriptures?” (III, 330), he is parodying the arid, disputatious style of certain preachers, not necessarily all those who preach predestination, but those who divorce their doctrine from its implementation through Christ and his ordinances. For Donne, our proximity to Christ in the Christian church enacts a “personall marriage” consummated “in the comming of Christ, in establishing a reall presence of himself in the Church” (III, 319). If this “real presence” excites controversy, it is a controversy with extreme predestinarians who deny the efficacy of this presence rather than with Catholics who imagine its materiality too literally. Donne is nonetheless clear that as a rhetorical approach, disputation in sermons ought to be avoided: “many times by altercation and vehemence of Disputation, the truth of the literal sense is indangered: and therefore we should rather content our selves with positive and necessary Divinity, then entangle our selves with impertinent controversies” (IV, 114). The point that excessive prying into God’s mysteries of election induces despair is made even more clearly by way of several effective analogies in Donne’s 1621 Christmas sermon. The true searching of the Scriptures, he says, is “to finde all the histories to be examples to me, all the prophecies to induce a Saviour for me, all the Gospell to apply Christ Jesus to me” (III, 367). This is to search the Scriptures, “not as though thou wouldest make a concordance, but an application; as thou wouldest 95

John Donne and Conformity in Crisis search a wardrobe, not to make an Inventory of it, but to finde in it something fit for thy wearing” (III, 367). Donne observes that interpretation of scriptures depends on the intention of the interpreter, and urges his hearers and other preachers to be clear that they are looking for salvation rather than controversy in God’s word. Donne’s anti-sectarian comments cited above extend their reference by their location within the larger context of a generally positive assessment of the peace, plenty, and health which England enjoys under a monarch who is both a peacemaker and a peace-preserver. In this sermon, the ultimate peace is the unanimous consent of the people in matters of religion. However, Donne does not refrain from noting that while Christ is called the Prince of Peace, this is not such a peace as brings security against war. Donne’s typical move, once again, is to cast a middle way between enjoyment of the blessings of peace, and falling into security. Donne notes that if God casts a firebrand of war upon a state accustomed to peace, it burns the more desperately by its former security, a caution that reveals Donne’s own ambivalence about the matter of England’s participation in a continental war of religion. DESPAIR AND PRESUMPTION: DONNE AND THE PURITAN–PAPIST EXTREMES Donne addresses both thematically and rhetorically in his sermons one problem that he felt was exacerbated by controversial polemic that, in practice if not on principle, quoted selectively from the scriptures to advance its arguments. That problem was despair. Though it may proceed from what is good in itself (“feare of God and the hate of sin”) (II, 332), this state of “inordinate dejection” (III, 303), aggravated by calamities, is deemed far more crippling, spiritually, than presumption, its antithesis. In fact Donne notes in a 1628 sermon that for every presumptuous soul, there are seven despairing (VIII, 249). Locating the source of despair – leading to dejection – in extreme or partial responses to scripture, Donne reiterates that the full impact and application of the scriptures requires an awareness, first, that they offer a contractual view of the human relationship with God, and, second, that that contract is conditional. “In this, beloved, consists our comfort, that all God’s vae’s and Amens, all judgments, and all his executions are Conditionall. There is a Crede & vives, Beleeve and thou shalt live; there is Fac Hoc & vives, doe this and thou shalt live; If thou have done otherwise, there is a converte & vives, turne unto the Lord and thou shalt live; If thou have done so, and fallen off, there is a Revertere & vives, returne againe unto the Lord, and thou shalt live” (III, 165). Donne’s remedy against despair is to examine scriptures in their entirety: “the written Word of God is light of light too, one place of Scripture takes light of another” (V, 39). Such an interpretive practice mitigates partial readings that “agree to thy particular tast and humour,” “for the Scriptures are made to agree with one another” (V, 39). The corollary of Donne’s view that places in scripture take light from one another, however, is that people should be content to read “those parts of Scripture, which are cleare, and edifie, and perplex not thy selfe with Prophesies not yet performed” (V, 40). If Scripture is figured as honey, “Too little, or too much of this honey, of this reading, and of this hearing, may be 96

John Donne’s Sermons, 1620–2 unwholesome: God hath chosen waies of mediocrity” (V, 40). If preaching is God’s instrumental means, the preacher is cautioned to preach “matter of faith,” that is, the gospel, characteristically interpreted by Donne as a place of “mediocrity.” It is “the Gospel onely, and not Traditions of men” and it is the gospel only, that is “all the Gospel,” “for as the Law is, so the Gospel is, Res integra, a whole piece” (V, 259). The consolatory nature of God’s conditional contract is obscured, if not erased, Donne argues, in controversial sermons on the “doctrine of downright Predestination and Reprobation” (III, 110). This was one of the most heated topics controverted from the pulpit and press in 1621/22, and one of the few topics specifically proscribed by the Directions. Donne alludes satirically to this itch for zealous sermons on the subject at Lincoln’s Inn where he comments on those who are present, but “not here” because they are seeking more edifying supralapsarian Calvinist doctrine than Donne himself delivers. Such absolutist language, however, runs contrary to Donne’s thinking. Donne rejoices that the kingdome of God is a kingdom and not a tyranny; “we come not to a God that will damne us, because he will damne us, but a God that proposes Conditions, and enables us to performe those conditions, in such a measure as he vouchsafe to accept from us; A God that governs us by his Word” (III, 125). For Donne, then, there is no condemnation without sin; God wants faith, but he will have it by deed of gift, in works: “God judges according to the worke, that is, Root and fruit, faith and worke” (III, 286), the whole tree. The fascination with predestination is mentioned in another Lincoln’s Inn sermon in which Donne rebukes those who “must needs seek a Predestination, without any relation to Christ; a decree in God for salvation, and damnation, before any decree for the reparation of mankind, by Christ” (III, 338). Searching after God’s unrevealed decree to Donne seems to miss the point. Paul knew that it was more important to reach the fundamentals of religion before venturing into the deep points (III, 338). Donne notes that even when justification by faith and predestination have aroused controversy, that which concerns obedience, holy life, and good works has been embraced on all sides. For Donne the predestinarian controversy is not and should not be placed at the heart of Reformed spiritual life. If it is, then its core is expressed in Donne’s own sermon on the subject, tentatively dated by Potter and Simpson as preached on Whitsunday 1622, on Romans 8:16.42 Donne’s principal aim is to resolve the controversial issue of how we can know with certainty that we are God’s children: “herein is our assurance, an election there is; The Spirit beares witnesse to our spirit, that it is ours; We testifie this in a holy life; and the Church of God, and the whole world joynes in this testimony” (V, 74). A Candlemas Day sermon, tentatively dated 2 February 1621/2, describes the relationship between the doctrines of justification, works, and election in a metaphor that avoids the linear discourse of causation that Donne saw as contributing to doctrinal controversy. Donne takes Romans 12:20 as his text,43 and describes the entire Epistle as a circular ring: “for this precious ring, being made of that golden Doctrine, That Justification is by faith, and being enameled with that beautifull Doctrine of good works too, in which enameled Ring, as a precious stone in the midst thereof, 42 43

“The Spirit it selfe beareth witnesse with our spirit, that we are the children of God.” “Therefore if thine Enemy hunger feed him, if he thirst give him drink; for, in so doing thou shalt heap coales of fire on his head.”

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis there is set, the glorious Doctrine of our Election, by Gods eternall Predestination” (III, 377). Individual elements of that ring or circle may be the focus of any particular sermon (as this one falls “in that part, which concernes obedience, holy life, good works” [III, 377]). Nonetheless, Donne’s practice is to adopt the Reformed terminology so as to naturalize and accommodate it to the practical moral requirements of his hearers. The moral imperative to alleviate the despair induced by rigid predestinarianism is also the focus of Donne’s ingeniously explicated sermon on John 5:22. There, Donne stresses that God’s deputation of judgment to the Son means that Christ executes God’s judgments visibly, instrumentally. So his predestination, his justification, and his glorification are all informed by a fundamentally Christian perspective, inasmuch as Christ does all things that the Father does but in carne, through the means provided to men by God. Donne’s sermon preached on Easter Monday 1622 further accommodates Reformed predestinarian doctrine to his audience, in this case an audience “of such spiritual and uncircumcised Ears” as come for edification rather than to hear controversial matters disputed. In this sermon, Donne uses the more inclusive term “creation” to stand in for election, the term “vocation” rather than sanctification, and the term “glorification” to express the fulfillment of a process begun with creation. These terms are intended to counter atheism rather than error, the “left handed Atheism, in the meer naturall man, that will not know Christ” and the “right handed Atheism in the stubborn Papist, who is not content with Christ” (IV, 131). As in the Candlemas Day sermon, Donne’s circle returns his exegesis to Christ who is mentioned in the verse immediately preceding his text, and whose generous circumference can hold those who are not merely or stubbornly outside its reach. The despair induced by rigid predestinarian theology, based on partial consideration of the biblical evidence, and delivered in controversial polemic, gives added point to the anti-Catholicism of his sermons in these crucial months. Donne’s sermons, like many published in these months, register popular fears of the doctrinal and political dangers posed by papists. They do so, however, in a manner that, characteristically, points out deceptions of post-Tridentine Catholicism while allowing for a reformed version of Catholic doctrine and an appeal to a fundamental, living Christian faith. In his sermon for Easter Monday 1622, for example, Donne compares papists to Syrians, who are constantly thinking of ways by which to gain the advantage over God. When he frustrates their rebellions, they try excommunications, then invasion, then supplantations, then fire. They think they can fool God because he is not the God of equivocations, but he sees all of their actions and imaginations. For Donne, the object is to preach to them who are “at Rome” (IV, 110) in their hearts, because God can transmute even a papist into a protestant, as he can make a moral man a Christian. The differences, he suggests, are of degree rather than of kind. Donne’s Ascension Day sermon for 1622, preached at Lincoln’s Inn, explicitly applies its text to an anti-Catholic agenda in a context of intense anxiety produced by James’s relaxation of restrictions on entry of foreign priests. In this sermon, anti-Catholicism is the subject as well as the means, not a rhetorical digression. Ostensibly a sermon for “ascension” day, this sermon opens with a definition of the term that includes not only “ascending” but “standing,” and specifically ascending to an abolition of idolatry and standing firm against relapse. The words of the text (Deuteronomy 12:30), as Donne interprets them, are a warning not to 98

John Donne’s Sermons, 1620–2 slide back into idolatry, a warning particularly resonant during negotiations for a Spanish match, and the apparently haphazard enforcement of laws against recusants. To make this case, Donne divides his sermon into two parts: an explanation of the sermon’s primary inhibition against relapse (focusing on the dangers of security and the requirements of vigilance); and an elaboration of the particular dangers against which his hearers must guard (specifically following idolaters and inquiring into their religion). The sermon concludes with a call to belief in God (rather than in man or his traditions) and obedience to lawful authority. The first part of Donne’s sermon establishes both an historical and a contemporary context within which to interpret the anti-Catholic impetus of his exegesis. Historically, “They were able (as we are told there) to put the Canaanites to Tribute, but not to drive them out; to make Penal Laws against them, but not to deliver the Land of them” (IV, 134–5). The contemporary analogue is to England where “it hath been declared to be Idolatry towards God, and declared to be complicated and wrapped up inseparably in Treason towards the King and the State. Our Schools and Pulpits have destroyed it, and our Parliaments have destroyed it” (IV, 135–6). Donne takes seriously the danger of security and devotes a large section of Part 1 to explaining precisely the kind of religious diligence demanded. “It is not enough that the State and the Church hath destroyed Idolatry so far as we said before; still there are weeds, still there are seeds” (IV, 137). Adopting James’s polarizing puritan–papist rhetoric, Donne explains what it means to take heed. Most important, the inhibition is private – to each individual – rather than public, an inhibition “to take heed, to watch plots of circumvention, and to heed to thy self, that is, to all under thy charge, for thy danger is not evident” (IV, 138). This latter injunction is a recurrent distinction in Donne’s sermons. Donne makes the same point in the Gunpowder Plot sermon for that year when he urges his congregation to be vigilant within their authorized spheres and to leave the king to his. So, though he urges the congregation to leave the doors of the country to the king to do as he sees fit (an obvious reference to the relaxation of penal laws against recusants, the release of priests from prisons, and the general increase of freedoms for Catholics in England), the sermon redresses the balance by urging its hearers to shut fast their own private doors: “A theife that is let out of Newgate, is not therefore let into thy house. A preist that is let out of prison, is not therefore sent into thy house. Still it may be felony to harbor him, though there were mercy and benignity to let him out” (1528–34; IV, 263). The mutual responsibilities of magistrates and citizens are outlined clearly in this sermon. Donne issues “Caveats for Princes”: “Take heed that the Idolater do not kindle a Rebellion . . . [or] sollicite an Invasion; take heed of publick and general dangers” (IV, 138). But more important are the snares of which private citizens must take heed: sending sons to foreign universities, indifference to the faith of servants or wives. Though invasions and plots have not succeeded, Donne argues, there is danger that “we our selves, and our own concupiscences” (IV, 139) shall separate us from God. Marotti is right to suggest that Donne, particularly in his attitudes to Jesuits, is engaging in the politics of anti-Catholic paranoia common in this period. However, there is nothing paranoid about Donne’s descriptions of the known workings of the Jesuits, and his fear of their ability to undermine the Reformation was probably founded on his own experience and that of the Catholic nobility 99

John Donne and Conformity in Crisis with whom he retained close ties of friendship and honour. Neither was public fear of invasion, or terrorism, or other forms of rebellion without foundation. Donne was aware not only of their political networks, but also of their underground operations and of their published, casuistical treatises justifying dissimulation and lying for their cause. The second half of this sermon explicates two ways of falling into this danger: following them and inquiring into their religion. As in the first half, Donne touches on advice to the magistrate (in this case advice to maintain vigilance against Catholics) but immediately withdraws, claiming that “we always avoid” (IV, 139) reflecting on public things. He can then go on to make the analogous point for the sphere of families rather than of states, saying that his hearers must be vigilant against idolaters in their homes or the habitual sins which they idolize in their hearts. The last part of the sermon treats the danger of inquiring after their Gods, and here Donne has some interesting distinctions to make concerning forbidden knowledge and the concomitant offences against “curiosity” that Donne says are implied by his text. Coming from a person who made it his study in youth to digest the whole body of controversy between the English and the Roman Church, this interpretation seems self-contradictory, even hypocritical. However, in context, it appears that Donne is, once more, suggesting a choice between “unnecessary enquiring into impertinent controversies” (and the adjectives are important) (IV, 143), and informing oneself to address religious scruples. Certain matters, such as the doctrine of purgatory, are difficult enough for men who have made the study of the Scriptures their whole profession. Donne’s advice is not to inquire “further then thy capacity enables thee, further then thy calling provokes thee” (IV, 144). The attitude that the sermon encourages is to “embrace Fundamental, Dogmatical, evident Divinity” (IV, 144) as expressed in the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Commandments, the ascension that is both climbing and standing. Donne’s anti-Catholicism enjoins worship of the true God without idolatry, and obedience (rather than idolatrous subservience) to the lawful authorities that administer religion. It is anti-Catholic in its claim that Catholicism confuses and ensnares, and is bound up with treason and political rebellion. Underlying the whole sermon is Donne’s premise that Catholicism is no longer a matter of doctrinal difference but of political danger. Treason is, for Catholics, an article of religion, as are the pope’s powers and the traditions of men authorized at Trent. Donne’s sermons following his return from Doncaster’s embassy and leading to his public defence of James’s Directions express his sensitivity to controversial doctrinal and political issues heightened by a series of external factors that put great pressure on both his conscience and his speech. Many pressures shaped the public sphere in which these sermons emerged. These included political events both domestic and foreign: the acrimonious dissolution of the 1621 Parliament, negotiations for a Spanish match for Charles, relaxation of penal laws against Catholics, proclamations against certain strains of political speech, war on the continent. Ecclesiological and doctrinal factors were also crucial in shaping Donne’s discourse: instructions regarding preaching, doctrinal and disciplinary disagreements within the Church of England (brought to a head, perhaps, by English participation in the Synod of Dort), and fundamentally differing views of the function of sermons within the economies of salvation established along the religious spectrum in the Church of England. In addition, we see Donne’s 100

John Donne’s Sermons, 1620–2 sermons expressing the pressure exerted on his conscience to edify his congregations, to conform to established doctrines of the Church of England, to satisfy his own beliefs and principles, and to communicate with Christians not only within England but internationally as well. Donne’s sermons contribute materially to a discourse of Reformed Christianity in the Church of England that articulates the conflicts, the compromises, but also the consensus of its institutional identity.

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Chapter 4 “FAIRE INTERPRETATION”: THE DIRECTIONS AND THE CRISIS OF CENSORSHIP

FAULT LINES IN CONFORMIST SERMONS

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HILE THE Directions for Preachers were issued on 4 August, their official interpretation had to wait for Donne’s sermon almost six weeks later. This 15 September sermon was Donne’s most important homiletic intervention in the public sphere. Preached by royal command, it was published shortly afterwards, and soon moved into three issues (IV, 15–16). Neither the sermon’s publication nor its royal authorization, however, are the chief reasons for according it this significance.1 Its influence derives primarily from Donne’s specific role in interpreting the momentous and controversial change in public policy anticipated in August and September of 1622 in terms that would satisfy political and ecclesiastical authorities as well as the internally divided audience for sermons in the Church of England. Donne’s mediation of the crisis of censorship that precipitated the Directions would have significant consequences for the identity of the late Jacobean church. While it is unlikely that Gowry anniversary sermons for 1622 were responding to the Directions, sermons by Andrewes, Purchas, and Daniel Donne, all subsequently published, establish parameters for interpreting the Directions. Andrewes delivers an “ultraconformist” performance on the theme of nolite me tangere;2 Purchas, puritan chaplain to George Abbot and John King, delivers a diatribe against all the demons of Jacobean culture, including papists, Jesuits, the powderplotters, anarchy and disorder, the Scots, and the Irish. Daniel Donne, at Paul’s Cross, delivers an equivocal sermon on the dangers of religious extremism. All three sermons demonstrate the preoccupation of the pulpit with questions of obedience, authority, and order in the summer of 1622.

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Although it is Donne’s first printed sermon, it was not the most widely circulated; more manuscript copies exist of his “Sermon of Valediction,” for example, preached in 1619 before his departure with the Doncaster embassy. The impact of scribal “publication” is only beginning to be appreciated. See works by Woudhuysen, Love, Beal, and Marotti’s Manuscript, Print. Donne’s 1622 Gunpowder Plot sermon exists in both manuscript and printed forms, enabling comparison of the differences between the two versions. See Shami, “Donne’s 1622 Sermon on the Gunpowder Plot.” Manuscript sermons by Stoughton, Abbot, Winniffe, and Loe will cast important light on the emerging public sphere following the Directions. We have already seen the impact of manuscript sermons by Simpson and Peacham in Chapter 2 above. Ferrell, Government by Polemic, calls this theme the “leitmotif of ultraconformist sermons after 1610” (p. 104).

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The Directions and the Crisis of Censorship Andrewes’s sermon continues his pattern of outlining the duties of obedience and reverence subjects owe to their kings. David’s vehement opposition to violence against Saul’s person, extending even to the fragment of Saul’s garment that David cuts with his knife, becomes for Andrewes the exemplary pattern of the duties owed to God’s anointed kings. Modern readers have reproached Andrewes for his condemnation “without any nuance and without appeal, of any form of revolt against the legitimate power of the prince.”3 And it is true that the sermon uncompromisingly opposes resistance, by arguing that the parallels between this case and the Gowry conspiracy are so exact that their resolution ought to be identical: “as Saul was the first King, so this was the first case that ever was, wherein the making away of a King was put to the question. So the leading case, as they call it, to all the rest. Resolved here by David, and we cannot resolve ourselves by a better; and resolved once, resolved for ever” (IV, 157). Andrewes devotes most of his energy to refuting the pernicious suggestion made by David’s men that it was not only lawful to kill Saul (a professed enemy delivered into his hands), but a matter of conscience to do so. This is no new thing, he observes bitterly, “to kill Kings by divinity” (IV, 160). But whereas David’s men were moved by Saul’s words about the Lord’s anointed, “Men’s breasts are now made of a tougher metal, the words meet with harder hearts in the cloister now, than here they did in the camp. Some men’s hearts now leave not striking them, till they have stricken Saul to the heart” (IV, 173). Andrewes allows little room for interpretation, jabbing sarcastically at the argument from conscience as seditious and self-serving, and the sermon as a whole reinforces precisely those attitudes of obedience and reverence for the person of the king that James saw as one of the chief functions of the pulpit, and which the Directions would, theoretically at least, buttress. While Purchas wishes to absolve himself of “King-pleasing flatterie” (p. 6), his Gowry sermon meditates on the metaphor of the king as a tower of salvation. He confirms the king’s authority as the head of the body politic by observing that “A body with many heads is a monster; there can only be one” (p. 48). The king’s authority is further embodied in his “masculinity,” a quality that Purchas discerns not only in James, but in Elizabeth as well. Her “masculinity” is affirmed by comparison with biblical kings and demonstrated by her taming of the invincible armada in 1588 and by global explorations.4 All that can be added in describing James is that “Those things which God gaue by Queene ELIZABETH, hee hath confirmed, and made more mature, setled, masculine, by King IAMES” (p. 55).5 With such a “singular, masculine, reall, regall, absolute ouer his owne, and independent of any ouer him” monarch (pp. 58–9), Purchas argues, it is blasphemous to claim that the king is a creature of man’s creation (p. 59). And since “Anarchie is the worst Tyrannie” (p. 62), Purchas carries the political point of non-resistance to its limit, urging that, even if the king countermands the laws of his king 3 4

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Lossky, p. 289. Purchas says that in conquests Elizabeth is another David; in peace another Solomon; in justice Jehosaphat; in Reformation, Hezekiah; in restoring law, Josiah. James is praised for his success in bringing Scotland and Ireland within his orderly government. However, it is unlikely that either James or his Scottish courtiers were pleased with Purchas’s celebration of the fact that “those bordering Harpies (monstrum, horrendum, informe) and their nests, and ayries of spoile, are gone; which but bordered on the confines of Humanitie, and in humane shape, were rauenous beasts, to whom Theft and Murther were vertues” (p. 56). Similarly, he rejoices that under James, Ireland “groweth euery day English” (p. 88).

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis (Christ), the only response is suffering. Assaults on kingship are associated with Jesuits, who “make it tolerable, nay lawfull, nay commendable, nay meritorious of Heaven, to kill the Kings of the Earth” (p. 70). Both of these sermons, though preached from widely divergent doctrinal positions, are “ultraconformist” in their unnuanced theological justifications of the political authority of kings. Nor did one need to be a royal chaplain (as Andrewes was) to espouse a clearly royalist message, especially on the days commemorating deliverance from what many saw as treasonous terrorist attacks. The similarities between these two sermons, however they might differ in rhetorical sophistication, challenge the view that “puritan” preachers were categorically oppositional. These two sermons taken together suggest that a fundamental respect for authority and order (however motivated) was a common feature of conformist discourse across a broad spectrum. Daniel Donne’s 4 August sermon is timed to reveal the temper of this moment in the most important London pulpit. The sermon is dedicated to John Ramsay, Viscount Holderness; to Henry Hobart, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas; and to John Donne. John Donne’s correspondence places Hobart within the “circumference” of Donne’s intimate social circle. No biographical connection between John Donne and Ramsay is known, but dedication to this Scotsman credited with James’s rescue from the Earl of Gowry would have been appropriate for a sermon preached the day before the anniversary of that rescue. In the epistle to the reader, Daniel Donne notes that the sermon as preached is “word for word” as it is printed up to p. 52, but that the remainder develops the last point, which the original occasion did not allow. In fact, the sermon is more than twice its original length, and is an extended examination of the penalties awaiting those trees that do not bring forth good fruit (they are hewn down and cast in the fire, to be precise). The sermon handles several matters restricted by the Directions, but does so within the anti-papist, anti-puritan discourse sanctioned by James. Donne inveighs against both papist idolaters and those “Apish professors and Mocke-Christians” who “would seem by the precisenesse of their habit and behaviour, to be truly mortified to the world” (p. 34). The “menstruous and rotten rages of our owne righteousnesse” (p. 28) that Donne associates with the papist “stool of merit” are no different, it seems, from the “outward vine or skin” (p. 15) of Pharisaical piety, “full of filthy soyly embers, and stinking ashes” (p. 15). The intense, anti-papist strain of this sermon is strongest in the first half of the sermon, the portion most closely resembling what was preached. Succinctly put, “most blasphemous is the practice of the Papists who both in Pulpit and Presse so stiffly contend to enthronize the imperfect, impure workes of sinnefull man in the Chaire of Merit, in which nothing by right but the holy and perfect obedience of the Sonne of God can sit” (p. 27). The vehemence of Donne’s rejection of merit marks a clear contrast with “good fruit.” But if the papist doctrine of merit is rejected, so too is salvation through the word preached, unless that preaching produces fruits. It is not enough to be frequent hearers of the word, unless we be doers as well, not like “Proud Pharises” who stand “vpon the tiptoes of our owne goodnesse” (p. 28). As Donne explains, in a statement applicable to church-papists and puritanical hypocrites, no “outward conformity to the seruice of God, will preserue vs from the wrath to come” (p. 107). Nor do we have “reason to thinke, that praying vnto God in the Church once a weeke, the hearing of a Sermon once a moneth, a strict obseruation of the Saboth once a quarter, a Receiuing of the Sacrament once in sixe moneths, 104

The Directions and the Crisis of Censorship a Feasting of the poore once a yeare, will serue the turne. No, God will not be satisfied with such a Barren and Dwarfing Obedience” (p. 113). Donne’s sermon also touches on the “horrible security of many” (p. 71), and in particular, those great men who think themselves exempt from the penalties for those trees that fail to produce good fruit. Unlike Andrewes and Purchas, Donne considers the responsibilities as well as the prerogatives of the Lord’s anointed. “God hath an unresistable power ouer the most Commanding Princes” (p. 77); even “the mightiest monarchs must lay downe their Crownes and make their appearance before his most dreadfull presence, submitting themselues to be censured and sentence and suffer according to their demerits” (p. 77). As he concludes, “the most powerfull Monarch is but as a Potters vessell, easily broken into sheards and shiuers with the least touch of Gods yron rod” (p. 80). Significantly, almost the entire discussion of God’s powerful justice over monarchs occurs in the section that Donne amplified for publication rather than in the section preached at Paul’s Cross, suggesting that he deemed this application more suitable for the cooler medium of the press. The fault lines in pulpit discourse that will come under increasing pressure in the months to come are exposed in these three sermons. The sermons by Andrewes and Purchas read like efforts to close down the discussion of obedience and authority opened up and publicized by Knight’s sermon. Andrewes, in particular, wants to eliminate arguments from conscience to justify resistance. Daniel Donne’s Paul’s Cross sermon, while it offers a more nuanced reading of the current state of religion, sounds what is still a conventional note in its even-handed and deliberate positioning of the Church of England between papist and puritan extremes, its disquisition on the dangers of security, and its sympathy for the cause of Reformed religion on the continent. All three sermons reveal that competition for control of the pulpit by preachers with conflicting visions of the identity of the English church will continue to dominate the public sphere in the wake of the Directions, and that this competition will be waged under the banner of obedience, conformity, and orthodoxy. ANTICIPATING JOHN DONNE’S SERMON: CRISIS OF CENSORSHIP IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE A sense of impending crisis in the pulpit haunts the historical record for these months. Speaking vaguely only a month before the Directions on 5 July, George Abbot writes to Trumbull that there is reason of “forbearance of letters, till some things bee settled, whereunto I pray God to give a good ende, to the strengthning of the Gospel, and comfort of those who truly love religion and their countrey.”6 The reason for these heartfelt wishes becomes evident in correspondence after the Directions in which Abbot expresses embarrassment at his involvement but sends Trumbull, and others, copies of the Directions as well as letters explaining the king’s reasons and instructing bishops to enforce these Directions in their dioceses. John Howson’s letter accompanying the Directions in the Oxford diocese specifically requires ministers to publish them at morning services the Sunday after they are received. Churchwardens are charged to observe whether any form 6

BL Add. MS 72242 [Abbot Correspondence], fo. 93r.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis of preaching, lecturing, or catechizing is practised other than what the Directions prescribe, and to inform the Bishop immediately. Parishioners are also entreated to inform on transgressors so that “a more religious and peaceable forme of preaching and catechising be setled amongst you.” Churchwardens’ presentments are required quarterly from Michaelmas term onwards, to better render account on these matters.7 Abbot’s September letter urges his auditors not to put “ill construction to that, which may receave a faire interpretation.”8 At issue seems to be the popular perception that the Directions intend to restrain both the number and the content of sermons. Abbot offers James’s reasons for issuing the Directions, noting first the king’s determination that sermons have contributed to increasing defections to popery and Anabaptism, especially sermons by preachers who consider abstruse points of divinity, who preach to flaunt their own wits, who meddle in state matters, and who rail against the persons, rather than the doctrines, of their opponents. In addition, Abbot notes that placing these matters in the care of civil magistrates is evidence that the king does not wish to discourage “solid preaching, or discreet or religious preachers.”9 These reasons, as well as the Directions, are to be written in every Register’s office, made available to every preacher of whatever denomination, and exhibited in every parish at the visitation of the bishop or archdeacon for a fee of two pence. The Directions must also be measured by the order, two days earlier (2 August), that all Jesuits, priests, and refusers of the Oath of Allegiance be liberated from prison.10 This point is made clearly in a letter from Beaulieu to Trumbull in which he summarizes the main points of the Directions and links them to a second order for freeing papists imprisoned for matters of conscience (he lists refusing the Oath of Supremacy, hearing Masses, discussing books).11 Despite instructions from Bishop Williams, recently Lord Keeper, explaining that only recusants in religion, and not those whose recusancy appeared to be “meerly & totally Ciuill & Politicall”12 were to be liberated, such a move fuelled popular fears that the Directions were part of a broader policy of toleration of papists, and a general slackening in the Reformed religion.13 Chamberlain’s report to Dudley Carleton indicates, however, that the distinction between civil and religious recusancy was not straightforward; he writes that priests, Jesuits, and other papists are to be set at liberty even if they have refused “the oath of allegeance or supremacie” [my emphasis] (II, 449).14 An ill-timed sermon by John Everard on Hosea 12:1 (“Ephraim is fed wth the wynde”) illustrates the kind of exegetical excesses the Directions were designed to 7

8 9 10 11 12 13

14

Directions, I, 211–14. A more thorough examination of churchwardens’ accounts is needed; however, there seems to be little evidence of compliance at the local parish level with the instructions to inform on and punish offenders. Directions, p. 213. Ibid., p. 214. Cogswell, Blessed Revolution, p. 33. BL Add. MS 72254, fo. 138r-v [Beaulieu Correspondence]. BL Add. MS 72364, fo. 2r. On 26 August, the Venetian ambassador, Valaresso, writes to inform the Doge and Senate of orders forbidding preachers to attack the Roman faith and reports the rumour that preaching, “which is now so frequent through the week,” will be confined to Sundays. CSPV [1621–1623], XVII, 397. Yonge, for example, easily connected relaxation of the penal laws against recusants and the Directions, noting in his diary on 19 August 1622 that “There is a report that Papists shall have a toleration here in England, and that the Protestant ministers shall preach but once a Sabbath” (p. 64).

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The Directions and the Crisis of Censorship curb. According to Castle, Everard “tooke occasion to distinguishe the wynde into a spirituall, and into a pollitiq wynde.” He applied the first to the doctrine of the Church of Rome and reserved the latter to their policy, which he said he would treat on the following sabbath. James forbade him to preach the second sermon, Everard’s notes were seized, and he was sent for, by the king himself, to court. James apparently used this example to threaten bishops to hold their preachers “more naturally to their texts, [or] he will returne them to their old readinge of the Homilyes again.”15 Records of the Old Archdeaconry of St. Albans indicate the sequence of events by which the Directions were implemented.16 The records include general instructions from the Bishop of London to the Chancellor of London, Henry Marten, regarding dissemination of the Directions, leaving details to local administrators. The Archdeacon is instructed to call the clergy of the diocese together, and, in fact, each of them is summoned personally to appear before Marten on the morning of 12 September. This date seems timed to coincide with Donne’s official defence of the Directions at Paul’s Cross only three days later. One can conclude from these documents that the Directions were not immediately implemented, but that after an official engagement with them, offenders would suffer exemplary consequences. Many surviving reports focus on Donne’s sermon preached by royal command on 15 September justifying the Directions from the Paul’s Cross pulpit. The appropriateness of Donne’s selection for this politically sensitive task has never been questioned; nor has it been adequately explained. Norbrook has suggested plausibly that Donne was selected because of his wide connections, and because he was not identified as an enemy to either of the aggrieved parties: the papists or the puritans.17 Papists were well aware that Donne’s mother, an elderly woman and a devout Catholic, was living with her son, and remained in his care until her death in the deanery in 1631. In terms of family, education, and connections Donne’s catholicity of belief, coupled with his condemnation of the corruptions of the post-Tridentine Roman church, would have inspired trust among some recusant believers. To the more zealous puritan reformers, Donne’s status as Dean would have made him acceptable, since he was untainted by the prelatical ambitions that rendered the words of James’s bishops suspect. Add to that Donne’s reputation as a frequent and impressive preacher and defender of sermons, and it is a testament to James’s political acuity that he chose Donne for this sensitive task. But what exactly was Donne supposed to do on 15 September, and to what extent did he accomplish what was intended? Several contemporary accounts cast light on this performance from both before and after the event, leaving no doubt that the occasion was anticipated as a defining moment for the pulpit. D’Ewes records in his diary that he went to bed “timelye” on the 14th “because I would

15 16

17

BL Add. MS 72276 [Castle Correspondence], fo. 3v. These records are discussed briefly in Peters. The actual documents are located in the Hertfordshire Record Office, among four volumes of miscellaneous papers catalogued as “Records of the Old Archdeaconry of St. Albans,” specifically IV, 241–7 and described by H. R. Wilton Hall. Strier (p. 94) dismisses Norbrook’s suggestion as “doublethink,” paraphrasing it as follows: “James chose Donne to expound his policies in the most visible London pulpit because James knew that Donne was not wholly committed to these policies” (p. 94). Strier, however, has no evidence to contradict Norbrook’s suggestion. He takes on faith Cogswell’s assertion that Donne “regularly stressed the importance of obedience” in sermons of this period without examining what such obedience might entail or what Donne had to say about it.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis heere Doctor Dunn, whoe was to preach at Paules Crosse toomorrow and upon whom was great expectation.”18 Mead also reported that Donne was to preach the next day at Paul’s “either to that purpose, to give satisfaction, or, as the Londoners talk, to teach men how to preach hereafter.”19 Mead’s letter reveals that Donne’s sermon would be interpreted in contrast to notorious sermons by Sheldon and Clayton, both of whom “went beyond the usual limits” and were “checked” for their efforts. Clayton’s fault was to tell “a tale of a great murrain of sheep in Edward the Sixth’s days (I think); the reason whereof was, as he said, the coming of scabbed sheep, out of Spain; and he bade them look for it in “ ‘Stowe’s Chronicle’.”20 Many of Clayton’s hearers shouted “Amen” at the mention of the Spanish murrain, expressing their application of the image to the present marriage negotiations with Spain. Nonetheless, Clayton was soon freed by Sir John Ramsay, Earl of Holderness, whose chaplain he was.21 Sheldon erred in miscalculating the extent to which anti-papist rhetoric would be tolerated, preaching an impassioned sermon on Revelations 14:9.22 This is likely the sermon at St. Paul’s referred to on 23 September by Valaresso in which “the preacher neglecting the rules prescribed, inveighed against the Holy Roman Church before a large congregation.”23 Most likely, the size of the audience was as provocative as the substance of the sermon. Mead’s richly detailed letter confirms the significance of Donne’s sermon and illuminates those topics and strategies of exegesis deemed dangerous. Historical analogy was a common tactic within the hermeneutics of censorship, one sufficiently practiced to insure that Clayton’s reference to Stowe’s Chronicle was not enough to obviate the historical parallel to present Spanish approaches. Similarly, Sheldon’s rabidly anti-papist interpretation of his text was another breach of the Directions that could not be easily overlooked. Sheldon’s sermon in particular tests the limits of acceptable preaching. Sheldon was a renegade priest and a convert from Catholicism who published a treatise on the lawfulness of the Oath of Allegiance as well as several tracts against Catholicism. He became royal chaplain to James, but as negotiations for the Spanish match produced greater toleration for papists, the pressures of censorship meant that his zeal against his former religion became distasteful. For this sermon, Sheldon received a severe reprimand, and apparently never regained royal favour.24 In light of the Directions and the softening of anti-papist rhetoric that it enjoined, Sheldon’s sermon is clearly outside the margins of the tolerable.25 The sermon delivers a vicious diatribe against the “Man of Untruth [the pope]” (sig. A2v), in clear contravention of the Directions, which while they did not forbid anti-papist rhetoric, did forbid “bitter invectives” against “the persones of 18 19 20 21

22

23 24 25

D’Ewes, Diary, p. 96. Birch, II, 329. Birch, II, 330. D’Ewes, Diary, p. 94. This is the same John Ramsay to whom Daniel Donne had appealed in the dedication to his sermon. “If any man worship the beast, and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture in the cup of his indignation.” CSPV [1621–1623], XVII, 604. A Sermon Preached at Pavles Crosse. It is surprising that the sermon was published at all, given the notoriety that it achieved. Milton says the sermon had to wait for the “blessed revolution” of 1624–5, when war with Spain was on the agenda, to be published (Catholic and Reformed, p. 60).

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The Directions and the Crisis of Censorship eyther papists and puritans.”26 Sheldon justifies his anti-papism by saying that he has followed his text closely and attempted to “open the genuine sense of the Holy Ghost therein contained: in the prosecution whereof, if some bitter and tart speeches against the Beast &c. do occur; from the Lord they are” (sig. A3v). The sermon offers a direct, if vitriolic, condemnation of the Antichristian state intended by the image of the beast, and castigates “neutralizers” who argue that there is no fundamental difference between Rome and the Reformed churches (p. 30). In Sheldon’s interpretation, the marks of the beast represent all of the superstitious and contentious ceremonies rejected by the Reformers. Moreover, Sheldon grounds his interpretation on “that, which his most Excellent Maiesty hath in a few lines most solidly and Christianly objected in his most Christian Praemonition (a praemonition worthy eternall memory) to Christian Princes; to weet, That the Papall State, is the very State of the Beast: My interpretation and exposition then, of this Text, in this place, and at this time, may not come vnwelcome, which cometh countenanced, by such an Authoritie; Great is Truth, and it will preuaile” (p. 40). However, Sheldon miscalculated in thinking that a one-line quotation from King James, appended to a lengthy, unrelenting, anti-papist exposition of the marks of the beast, would suffice to render his sermon acceptable on this text, at this place, at this time. All three of these parameters had changed significantly within the last month. Nor was James willing to allow his patronage of Sheldon to extenuate this obvious indiscretion. No doubt Sheldon was relying on the popularity of his subject, James’s unwillingness to legitimate public challenges, and citations of the writings and example of James to protect him from the consequences of his unremitting anti-papism. Sheldon’s miscalculations indicate how quickly the preaching climate was changing, and how difficult it was to gauge the boundaries of allowable public debate. The media hype preceding Donne’s sermon on 15 September confirms that contemporaries had come to expect public policy debates (as well as pronouncements) from the pulpit. The refractory pattern emerging from recent sermons is the subject of D’Ewes’s unusually lengthy diary entry for 1 September: “Our sermons begann now to grow famous and Paules Crosse to be the theater of many passages.”27 Like Chamberlain and Birch, D’Ewes records Clayton’s sermon on the Spanish sheep; Ward of Ipswich’s continuing troubles; Everard’s latest imprisonment; and Sheldon’s rabidly anti-papist sermon of the previous Sunday. D’Ewes, along with “all our ministers here,” believes Sheldon’s sermon conforms to the Directions,

26 27

Directions, p. 213. D’Ewes, Diary, pp. 94–5. An intriguing reference in D’Ewes’s diary for 6 October 1622 mentions a sermon preached by Dr White on the text “Remember Lot’s wife” in the context of the Directions. Apparently, White preached “both exceeding plainlye and boldelye, upon which Doctor Dunns sermon was commanded and hee commended, though others thought he would have been committed” (p. 101). It is unclear exactly what is being revealed in this entry. White’s sermon, and the text he chose, would have incensed officials who were trying to curb criticism of the Spanish match. Exactly one year later, in fact, Dr. Whiting is punished for preaching on the very same text at Hampton Court. However, the confusion of pronouns in the diary entry makes any interpretation uncertain. It seems unlikely that all of the pronouns refer to Donne since there is no reason to think that Donne had said anything meriting commitment. On the other hand, the pronouns could refer to White if they mean that he was commended for his boldness even though others thought he would have been committed. What does it mean that Donne’s sermon was “commanded?” Is it possible that Doctor Donne’s sermon, which had encouraged preachers to preach their consciences according to the opening allowed by their text, was invoked to justify White’s exegesis?

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis both in its choice of a text “directlye against poperye” and in its application to the present state of religion in England. He interprets Sheldon’s conclusion that the Directions would be “of great force and good use for the beating downe of poperye” and his comments on “preaching in the afternoone upon the points of the Catechisme” as evidence of Sheldon’s conformity. As Sheldon’s imprisonment indicates, however, D’Ewes’s interpretation did not accord with James’s. Given this state of crisis, those who attended Donne’s sermon were quick to “read” the performance. D’Ewes “hasted thither” in the morning “and by great good fortune and little cost, stood close by him [Donne] within the Crosse, and ther wrote as much as I desired. . . . The most parte of the afternoone and a prettye [while] after supper I spent in noting it out, soe that I did not partake of our whole Temple sermon, heere at night.”28 Writing to Trumbull four days later, Beaulieu reported that “there was a Declaration made at Powles Church by Dr Donne the Deane of Powles, of H.M.s mynde & intention aboue the late order made by him concerning Preachers, for the jealousie wch H.M. perceiued was apprehended thereof amongst the People as though he had had an intent, whiles he was enlarging the libertie of the Papists to abridge that of the Protestants in th’exercise of their Religion. Wherein the D. Deane did fully cleare H.M.s mynde, & further added a solemn protestation in His name, whereof he said he had a good & speciall warrant from him, that if he had a thousand liues he would liue & dye in no other Religion then that wherein he was borne, & brought up & wch he had hitherto confessed and defended both by his tongue & writings.”29 Chamberlain’s report is more equivocal. Donne, he says, preached at the Cross, “to certifie the Kings goode intention in the late orders concerning preachers and preaching, and of his constancie in the true reformed religion, which the people (as shold seeme) began to suspect; his text was the 20th verse of the 5th chapter of the booke of Judges, somwhat a straunge text for such a busines, and how he made yt hold together I know not, but he gave no great satisfaction, or as some say spake as yf himself were not so well satisfied” (II, 451). Apparently, then, Donne was expected to do several things. Foremost was his task of persuading the congregation of James’s good intentions in issuing the Directions and of James’s constancy in the Reformed religion. Chamberlain felt that this task had not been adequately fulfilled (although Beaulieu’s letter offers a much less tentative appraisal). However, another, equally important task, was to model the kind of sermon that could be preached at Paul’s Cross in the wake of the Directions and of the sermons of Sheldon and Clayton. Donne was in fact being asked to perform the limits within which discreet and religious preachers would be allowed to operate. In this regard, the verdict is more equivocal. Chamberlain found Donne’s choice of text “straunge for such a busines” and could not say for certain how Donne made it hang together.30 His final comment on the performance is the most intriguing. Donne apparently “gave no great

28 29 30

Ibid., p. 97. BL Add. MS 72554, fo. 152.v [Beaulieu Correspondence]. Achtzehner (p. 8) suggests that part of the strangeness might lie in Donne’s choice of a text from the period in the Old Testament when God ruled through Judges rather than through Kings. “Such a choice undermines Donne’s own application of the text to his contemporary situation, in which the accepted ‘order’ was that the king was God’s representative.”

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The Directions and the Crisis of Censorship satisfaction,” a statement that contradicts Donne’s exhortation to obedient compliance with the Directions (which should have satisfied James), as well as his passionate assertion that James was not slackening in religion (which should have satisfied the auditors). No doubt the incompatibility of these claims contributed to the effect Chamberlain describes. The dissatisfaction appears to lie in the impression conveyed to at least one of Donne’s hearers that “himself were not so well satisfied.” How Donne created this impression is difficult to imagine, although we know his reputation as a compelling preacher well able to use gestures to express his messages.31 Then, too, there is his choice of text, which was strange enough for Chamberlain, not a great follower of sermons, to comment upon, but which passed unremarked by a much more experienced sermon-gadder, Simonds D’Ewes. Even after the sermon, however, popular opinion was uncertain how to interpret the significance and intent of the Directions, or more generally, the state of true religion in England. Lord Keeper Williams, writing on 17 September to the Earl of Arran, notes that the common people are not able to penetrate the actions of the king regarding the release of recusants. Williams explains that the king does not favour popery, but that he could not mediate successfully for protestants in France and Germany while remaining rigorous towards papists at home. Williams also points out that his 2 August letter to the judges was merely explanatory, delineating only the classes of recusants to be spared, but excluding priests, seducers from religion, and those who cast aspersions on government.32 Chamberlain’s letter of 25 September notes several circumstances that could only exacerbate popular misgivings about the intention of the Directions to soften the official anti-papist stance: the Countess of Buckingham’s relapse into popery; the reconciliation of Toby Matthew (whose recusancy had seriously embarrassed his father, the Archbishop of York) to the king; the papal dispensation for the match between Prince Charles and the Spanish Infanta. People seemed justified in fearing that papist influence was increasing and might eventually come to dominate reformed religion in England (II, 450–3).

“ACTIVE DISCRETION” AND “PASSIVE OBEDIENCE”: DONNE’S SERMON DEFENDING THE DIRECTIONS Donne’s sermon defending the Directions continues his exegetical practices designed to achieve “nearenesse” without sacrificing personal safety, conscience, or professional reputation as a willingly conforming divine within the Church of England. Many things about this sermon are finely balanced, beginning with its printed dedication to the Duke of Buckingham. Donne names Buckingham as his means of disseminating the sermon to the world, hoping that by acquiring Buckingham’s approval, he can also claim to have spoken as the king intended. A potential conflict between the intentions of the Holy Ghost and those of James is “resolved” by Donne, by separating exegesis from application, conscience from

31

32

Mr. Hinton, 1 June 1630, attests to Donne’s “powerfull kinde of preaching by his gestur & Rhetoriquall expression.” See Crosfield, p. 43. PRO SP 14/133/20.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis the authority of Buckingham.33 The strategy requires his readers, as it must have done his hearers, to think of these intentions as distinct, despite Donne’s claims to be uniting the Church both in itself and with the godly designs of James. Perhaps the uneasy dichotomy between these dual intentions helped produce the vague feelings of dissatisfaction recorded by Chamberlain. The text of the 15 September sermon itself signals the kind of exegetical position inhabited by the preacher. Perhaps the strangeness noted by Chamberlain resided in the choice of an equivocal text, one in which the application was not transparent or preordained.34 Gosse, for one, assumed that Donne was aligning James with Sisera,35 a suggestion illustrating how little control a preacher had over the interpretations opened by his text. Edward Gee had given Sisera a specifically papist application in a sermon preached a few months before Donne’s performance. There he had argued against the sinfulness of “security” occasioned by the refusal of ministers, “politique Neuters,” to reprove sin in great men.36 Gee is offended by the leniency with which laws against recusants are enforced, and urges that “it is high time to take the nayle of the Lawes into your left, and the hammer of execution into your right, and to pierce the head of Popish Siseraes” (p. 22). By 1624, the text has become an emblematic accompaniment to the assembled spiritual order of the kingdom depicted on the frontispiece of Thomas Scott’s Vox Regis, perhaps as a consequence of Donne’s selection and exegesis of the text in that Paul’s Cross sermon, and its subsequent publication and reissue. The modern perception of this sermon as an exercise in unconscientious conformity lacks historical support. Annabel Patterson, for one, notes that Donne qualifies his praise of James’s pacifism, calls attention to the unpopular forced loan that he had been asked to pay in 1622, and dwells on the domestic political ideal of moderation in the sermon, no doubt aware of the contradiction involved in explaining “from the pulpit the pulpit’s repression.”37 Nancy Wright observes that by clearly separating scriptural from secular authorities, Donne leaves 33

34

35 36 37

Cogswell observes that “some ministers opposed to royal policy made their point by simply drawing attention to the fact that they were being muzzled” (Blessed Revolution, p. 33). He cites Everard’s practice of adopting “two stage sermons” that divided discussion of the text into spiritual and political halves (only the first of which Everard handled, promising to discuss the political part on the following Sunday). Mead writes to Stuteville (28 September 1622) of another minister who ended his sermon abruptly after the exegesis, before application could be made, saying “he was not ambitious of lying in prison” (Birch, II, 334–5). While Donne does not avoid applying his text, he attempts to separate spiritual from civil duties in this sermon. Morrissey, “Rhetoric, religion and politics,” p. 27, observes that Donne’s text was not a commonplace text used to defend preaching in Paul’s Cross sermons. Further, she points out that Donne selects the Vulgate translation of Judges 5:20 to allow his emphasis on order (p. 39). II, 161. Two Sermons, p. 16. Patterson, Censorship, p. 99. Strier (p. 95) says that this contradiction “is conjured by the critic,” pointing out that the Directions did not “forbid” preaching, though they did attempt to prohibit preaching on “incendiary political topics.” But Patterson says nothing about “forbidding” preaching. As for “repression” of preaching, there is a wealth of contemporary evidence that many people interpreted the Directions as restricting both the number of sermons and their content. To cite just two examples: Heylyn reports in his biography of Laud how “much they [the Directions] were misreported amongst the People, and misinterpreted in themselves” (Cyprianus Anglicus, p. 99). According to Collier, “These Directions were look’d on as a Reflection on the Discretion, and an unusual Restraint of the Clergy.” Williams’s letter, already cited, was to “take off this imputation of Rigour, and explain the King to a more inoffensive Sense” (Collier, II, 723–4).

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The Directions and the Crisis of Censorship unresolved the nature of the “obedience” enjoined by his “ambiguous” prooftext.38 Morrissey finds in this sermon a strong commitment to preaching that compensates for particular restrictions. She demonstrates that “Donne takes the Directions to demand complete silence of ministers on the politics of the Spanish Match, but he interprets their details in a way that minimises their impact on preaching in general.” Donne achieves a “quietist” politics, she argues (p. 29), by focusing on the theme of order. The early part of the sermon immediately confronts the popular conceptions of James’s pacifist foreign policy that have led to the issuing of the Directions. Donne’s avowed purpose is to calm those who suspect “Gods power, or Gods purpose, to succour those, who in forraine parts, grone under heavie pressures in matter of Religion” (IV, 183). This part of the sermon is based on an avowed sympathy for the plight of James’s daughter Elizabeth and her husband Frederick. Donne reassures his audience that God does “much with little,” though not always “by our appointment.” The second part of the text, that which supposedly satisfied James’s intentions, is the occasional application of this text to preachers who, as stars, must fight orderly and decently against God’s enemies. Donne is clear that the spiritual war must still be fought, that there is no reconciling Christ and Belial. “It is an opposition against God, . . . to reconcile opinions diametrally contrary to one another, in fundamentall things” (IV, 193). So while day and night may join, light and darkness cannot. Donne’s statements about the importance of preaching are also trenchant: “That warre God hath kindled, and that warre must bee maintained, and maintained by this way; and his way, and his Ordinance in this warre, is Preaching” (IV, 194). Even the example of Chrysostom, who kept his lamp burning by him at all times, is interpreted by Donne as evidence that he preached in the afternoon (something expressly forbidden by the Directions), and that the Directions do not intend an abatement of preaching. The section ends with a firm statement of the value and authority of preaching: “Preaching then being Gods Ordinance, to beget Faith, to take away preaching, were to disarme God, and to quench the spirit; for by that Ordinance, he fights from heaven” (IV, 195). The duty to preach ordained by heaven is Donne’s next theme, and he is careful to note that preachers who silence themselves out of laziness, ignorance, or indiscretion invoke a heavy penalty. Donne stresses that the Directions speak specifically against personal revilings, rather than against contrary opinions, and contemporary evidence indicates that this is how James intended the Directions to be interpreted.39 Immediately following this point, Donne places the “order” of preachers in the context of the political order of the commonwealth determined in parliaments, courts, and pulpits, contrasting it with disorderly proceedings in the Roman Church which acts outside the rule of any temporal law, but subordinating the secular “head,” King James, to God. Donne spends most of this section 38

39

Wright, 302. The text could be interpreted as a statement of obedience to God, but whether that obedience were primarily to God’s scriptural word or to a divinely appointed king remains uncertain. Morrissey (ibid.) shows how Abbot’s interpretation, which Donne adopts, minimizes the restrictions they place on preaching, “both on the subjects allowed in sermons and on the allowance for Sunday sermons” (p. 44). In putting a “decidedly pastoral emphasis” on the king’s actions (p. 45), both Donne and Abbot choose “the interpretation which can be reconciled most readily with a higher opinion of preaching and which can be presented as part of a consolidation, rather than a reformulation, of the role of preacher within the Church of England (p. 467).

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis considering whether James is innovative in his Directions, and concludes that he is not, largely due to the open and fair means by which the Directions were issued and publicized in the registers’ offices. In fact, Donne urges his hearers to become interpreters for themselves by examining the Directions and judging their intent. The practice of catechizing, the foundational authority of the Thirty-Nine Articles and the Book of Homilies is explained; within each, Donne finds room for both positive and controverted divinity. Donne notes in particular those articles and homilies dealing with predestination and idolatry, thus pointing specifically to texts that would enable disciplined discussion of proscribed or controversial topics across the religious spectrum.40 Chamberlain’s puzzlement as to how the sermon hung together should alert readers to the complexity of Donne’s exegesis. The sermon was published, going soon into three editions. But in many ways the sermon is really two sermons: on the one hand, a call to active and zealous preaching, within the terms of the Directions; on the other, an assertion of monarchical power to restrict controversial preaching. It afforded both an explanation and a model for preaching in the months to come.41 Most important, it demonstrated the extent to which, under the pressure of censorship, the pulpit had become part of a complex public sphere in which the controversial underpinnings of the Church of England’s identity could be challenged and interpreted. Donne’s own remarks on the sermon, in a letter written only four days later to Sir Henry Goodyer, follow detailed commentary on the affairs of the Palatinate. Donne’s views on the continental situation seem clear, his statement that “The Palatinate is absolutely lost” ringing with the frustration of the losses that he enumerates.42 In fact, the personal tone with which he discusses the political fate of the Palatinate contrasts markedly with the detached perspective he takes on his sermon. As Annabel Patterson has noted,43 the passive voice and impersonal, conditional constructions serve to distance Donne from the event (e.g., “they received comfortable assurance of his Majesty’s constancy in religion”), an effect at odds with the king’s judgment that the sermon “was a piece of such perfection, as could admit neither addition nor diminution . . . concerning highly his service.”44 Another letter to Goodyer, dated 25 September, reports the “extreme cruelties” with which Heidelberg has been taken. Here, we observe Donne’s frustration that these momentous events are no longer alarming a people demoralized by their leadership and numb to bad news. Donne says that while the king thinks the

40

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42 43 44

Morrissey (ibid.) comments that Donne’s two examples for the orthodox range of positive divinity are themselves “highly controversial, presenting a range of topics within the preacher’s reach which are not just metaphorically miles apart” (p. 47). “By presenting the Thirty-Nine Articles, the catechism and the Homilies as the scope but not the sum of the English church’s divinity, and by preaching about them rather than repeating them, Donne shows the extent of the freedom left to preachers. By building his sermon on a word not in the authorized translation of the text, Donne shows that, even while insisting on order in the Church, he does not derogate from the preacher’s role as interpreter of the Word. Most importantly, by following the division of material practiced by preachers at Paul’s Cross, Donne effectively divides the matter which is directly commanded by Scripture from matters of government or “order” in the Church, and so he insists the Directions take nothing from the necessity of preaching” (Morrissey, “Rhetoric, Religion and Politics,” p. 49). Letters, p. 230. Censorship, p. 99. Bald, p. 435.

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The Directions and the Crisis of Censorship Spanish ambassador needs a guard, following the loss of Heidelberg, Donne does not; nor does the Spanish ambassador, who obviously goes about without fear. Donne says, “but I do not see, that he seems to need it [protection], in his own opinion, neither in truth does he; the people are flat: or trust in God, and the Kings ways.”45 Donne’s reportorial tone, his comment on the flatness of the people in apposition to their trust in God and the king’s ways, and the detachment of his observations, suggest that Donne does not include himself in the views expressed. He does not celebrate the people’s flatness, or the confidence it lends to the ambassador, whom Donne seems able to read more clearly than can James. Only four days before this letter, on 21 September, Donne was dining at Croydon with Abbot, whose support for the Directions was not unequivocal. If Donne was apologizing for James’s Directions in his 15 September sermon, he does not seem to have been entirely sympathetic with their implementation and popular effect. On the same day as Donne was justifying the king’s Directions at Paul’s Cross, his friend, fellow satirist, and self-proclaimed moderate, Joseph Hall, had the equally difficult task of preaching before the king at Theobald’s. If Donne’s qualifications for the task of preaching on this occasion included his acceptability to a wide range of persons of varying doctrinal persuasions, Hall, too, was an effective choice, largely because he spoke for no one party. In his long career, his rhetoric of moderation ensured that he was distrusted by both puritans and anti-Calvinists alike, denounced by the former as a “flashy, proud, self-dramatizer,”46 and suspected by Laud, who sent spies to report on his conformity.47 Hall’s sermon deals entirely with standards of judgment, applied first to the negative imperative of his text (judge not according to the appearance) and then to the positive standard (but judge righteous judgment).48 The greater part of Hall’s sermon exposes the faulty judgments made according to appearance. This emphasis is necessary, Hall explains, because “it is needful to unteach error ere we can learn truth” (V, 147). The negative part of this text, the “judge not,” follows upon Hall’s exposition that “There is nothing more uncertain than appearance” (V, 148). The results of this exposition lead straight to the Directions. “Every man makes himself a justice itinerant, and passeth sentence of all that comes before him; yea, beyond all commission of all above him; and that many times not without gross misconstruction, as in the case of our late directions” (V, 149). In fact, like Donne, Hall deflects his criticism of this method of judgment by attributing it to papists, arguing that their “holy frauds,” the “weepings and motions of images, the noise of miraculous cures and dispossessions . . . could not gull men if they did not judge according to appearance” (V, 150–1). To illustrate the deceptions that might pass for truth, Hall provides a catalogue of fair hypocrites and foul saints whose actions would most certainly be misinterpreted if judged by appearance. “Balaam prophesies Christ, Judas preaches him, Satan confesses him: when even an Abraham dissembles: a David cloaks adultery with murder, a Solomon gives at least a toleration to idolatry” (V, 155). The “false appearance” of a “toleration of idolatry” intended by Great Britain’s Solomon leads Hall to declaim against “false religion” with its “hierarchy mounted above kings,” its 45 46 47 48

Letters, p. 211. Corthell, 251. Kirk, 34. Hall’s text was James 7:24: “Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.”

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis “pompous ostentation of magnificence,” its “garish processions,” its “canonizations.” And for all his claim that Solomon’s toleration of idolatry is a “false appearance,” Hall can only “blush and weep and bleed, to see that Christian souls should, after such beams of knowledge, suffer themselves to be thus palpably cozened with the gilded slips of error!” (V, 155). To justify his criticisms, Hall exhorts his hearers to the standards of “righteous judgment,” cautioning them against applauding the actions of the great, no matter how they sin. Such flatterers, he argues, are the true traitors, and in time show their colours, as Judas did against Christ, Delilah against Samson, and Jael against Sisera.49 The examples are cautionary, and deliberately ambiguous, but Hall’s point seems to be that the godly must not fear to judge the powerful. To his audience of courtiers, Hall also warns that while appearances cannot be trusted completely, they cannot be neglected by godly judges either. The ambiguity of Hall’s examples is appropriate to the multiple audiences for this sermon, which enjoins righteous judgments to penetrate surface appearances at the same time as it warns evil courtiers that they can and will be seen. Hall’s sermon, like Donne’s, interprets the Directions generously, but not in a flattering or unequivocal fashion. The very syntax of his text allows for, even demands, double-edged advice, and his comments on appearance and judgment cut both ways. Yes, the people are to judge generously, but yet, they are to judge, and to judge by what they see. Equally, flattery may be treacherous, but it may also be necessary against God’s enemies. Both Hall and Donne are walking a careful line, asserting the claims of conscience, but promoting discernment and judgment in their audience. However, while Donne’s sermon is directed to his congregation at large, Hall seems to be addressing his courtly audience more specifically to remind them that they are being judged, and that such interpretation of public figures is inevitable and right. INTERPRETING THE DIRECTIONS Contemporary and later seventeenth-century assessments of the Directions can tell us much about local responses to restrictions on the pulpit. Conflicting assessments of their intention, their substance, and their impact provide the raw material for particular conclusions about the consequences of these Directions for preaching, and for general conclusions about the emergence of a public sphere in late Jacobean England. Depending on the perspective taken by the reporter, then, evaluation of the Directions reveals conflations, distortions, and polemical constructions of the history of the pulpit. They show preachers developing strategies for complying with the Directions that mitigated their literal force by focusing on the space for interpretation they provided. Contemporary reports also reveal that the instructions had discernible effects: restoring order to a disorderly pulpit; suppressing controversial predestinarian preaching; opening a space for anti-Calvinist preaching; and allowing rapprochement with Catholics. 49

Hall’s grouping of these examples, however, is confusing; Jael’s flattery might be construed as politic and holy against the tyrannical Sisera (the very “error” against which Donne was preaching at that moment at Paul’s Cross), whereas Judas and Delilah clearly betrayed their lords, and could not be construed as popular heroes in any sense.

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The Directions and the Crisis of Censorship Modern interpreters of the Directions ask three questions: who was responsible for them, what impact did they have, and how do they compare with other censorship initiatives? In some respects these are the same questions as those asked by contemporaries, but answered from the vantage point of historical distance and from a foundation in documentary evidence. Together, contemporary and modern assessments of the impact of the Directions confirm that they were not able to satisfy the administrative needs of James’s government, although they succeeded in shifting homiletic discourse from a literal to an increasingly metaphorical interpretation of scriptures, and to a more circumspect application of texts to events. In a letter to Trumbull accompanying the Directions, Beaulieu expressed a general lamentation for the state of reformed religion that reverberates throughout all contemporary accounts. He writes that he “can returne nothing at this time unto you but the mournefull echo of yor owne Lamentations for the generall & ouerflowing calamities ouer the whole Bodie of or Profession throughout all Christendome; wch cannott but deepely affect & approue any true Member of the same, as you haue euer truely expressed the quicke & passionate feeling wch you haue thereof.” The excess of Beaulieu’s lamentations, even expressed in such general terms, elicited a “friendly warning” from Trumbull and suggests the degree to which even the private communication of dissatisfaction in letters had consequences in the public sphere.50 Contemporary reports suggest that the intentions of the Directions spawned considerable speculation, although little agreement. In fact, Heylyn mentions this flurry of “interpretation” as one of the most negative effects of the orders.51 Reports close to the event, understandably, presented garbled or distorted versions of what was actually being required of preachers. On 19 August in Devonshire, Walter Yonge, conflating the Directions with the instructions concerning release of papists, writes that “Papists shall have toleration here in England, and . . . Protestant ministers shall preach but once a Sabbath.”52 Based on the report of Yonge’s vicar, Mr Hall, these details – and Yonge’s interpretation of them – suggest an oversimplified but probably widespread opinion that the Directions were intended to procure a dangerous and unwelcome toleration for papists, and restrictions on puritans, particularly with regard to the number of sermons authorized. The Venetian ambassador reads these events from a pro-Catholic, anti-Spanish viewpoint, attributing them to King James’s foreign policy. He speculates that James’s demonstrations in favour of Catholics (which had immediately preceded the Directions) did not proceed from any hope of completing the negotiations for the Spanish match, “but in order that after he has done everything that can possibly be expected of him, the dishonest proceedings of the Spaniards may be exposed the better, and his wrath against them justified.”53 Valaresso continues to

50 51

52

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BL Add. MS 72254, fo. 147.r [Beaulieu Correspondence]. 23 August 1622. Heylyn, Cyprianus Anglicus, p. 99, comments that “such Interpretations were put upon them, as neither could consist with his Majesties meaning, nor the true sense of the Expressions therein used.” Yonge (ed. Roberts, 1848), p. 62. In his 25 August entry, Yonge records the restraint on “marginal notes” to the new translation of the Bible, the allowance of recreations on the Sabbath as a means of drawing recusants to church, the restriction of lectures to ministers in their own cure, the restriction of lectures or sermons in the afternoon, the substitution of catechizing for Sunday afternoon sermons, and finally leniency towards papists both for their doctrine and even for their refusal of the Oath of Supremacy (p. 65). CSPV [1621–3], XVII, 398.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis read the main points of the Directions politically, stressing primarily the instruction not to “meddle with affairs of state touching his Majesty’s prerogative,” but secondarily, the specific restrictions on preaching contained therein. Preachers, he reports, are forbidden to preach damnation or cry out against the pope but are enjoined to preach simply upon faith and works. This point conflates the instruction not to inveigh personally against papists, except as allowed by the text; the instruction not to deal with the deep points of predestination, election, and reprobation; and the catechetical thrust of the Directions. Valaresso also reports on restriction of sermons to Sundays, although the Directions themselves say nothing about abolishing lectures and weekday sermons. Even with the benefit of hindsight, seventeenth-century historians of the early Stuart church range in their interpretations from sympathetic reports grounded on a royalist political ideology, through moderate accounts of the issues at stake for both government and pulpit, to clearly anti-Stuart accounts. As Spottiswood observed, “every one made the construction whereunto their humors did lead them” (p. 543). These historical accounts also divide along confessional lines, although rarely are the doctrinal implications raised above political considerations of royal authority, social order, and public policy. Most of these histories, written in the early 1650s, at the height of civil unrest in England, reflect that decade’s tensions and contradictions and seek the causes for that unrest in James’s reign. The puritan Arthur Wilson’s History of Great Britain was dismissed by Heylyn as a “most infamous pasquill” and classed with Anthony Weldon’s “scurrilous memoir.”54 Wilson’s puritan interpretation of the Directions focuses on the deleterious effect of James’s overt toleration of papists and Jesuits at Court, and the breach between puritans and other protestants fomented by the papists and Laud. According to Wilson, this papist influence was most apparent in the growing Arminianism of the pulpit and the labeling of orthodox divines as puritans. Wilson charges that “Arminius’s Tenets flew up and down from Pulpit to Pulpit, that indeed preaching was nothing but declamation, little tending to Edification (such Orthodox Ministers, as strove to refute these erronious Opinions being looked on as Puritans, and Antimonarchical) which continual rubbing one against another, begot so much heat, as might have turned into a flame not easie to be quenched” (p. 198). Wilson’s greatest objection is to the way in which labels were polemically applied, although his own rhetoric is studded with them. To this “high-grown-Arminian-popish party,” he claims, all were “puritans” who held the doctrine of the Reformed churches, or who practised according to the doctrine publicly taught in the Church of England (p. 201). “Protestants” now included many whom Wilson clearly would not include: church-papists; protestants tainted with Romish opinions; indifferent men who embraced any religion commanded by authority; neutrals who cared for no religion. The conflict that emerged is characterized as a battle between “Regians” who preached to the King “the Almightines of his power” (p. 202) and Republicans who opposed this practice. In particular, the Directions are seen in the context of the “daily information” that James obtained on the pulpit’s opposition to the Spanish match (p. 198), a remark that confirms the public impact of sermons.

54

Woolf, p. 251.

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The Directions and the Crisis of Censorship William Sanderson’s point-by-point rebuttal of Weldon’s Court and Character and Wilson’s History challenges many of Wilson’s claims, but, in fact, corroborates Wilson’s view that the Directions were intended by James to quell the opposing dangers of Arminianism and puritanism.55 Both of these, he claims, were “offensive to the State,”56 and Sanderson applauds “the wisdom of the State” in suppressing “the invectives of the Pulpits.”57 Like Wilson, Sanderson sees the office of Lecturer, established to circumvent episcopal control, as one of the key targets of the Directions.58 Rejecting Wilson’s description of papist labeling of puritans as the fantasies of “arrant Rebels” such as Wilson,59 Sanderson offers a defence of the Directions in the context of James’s foreign policy, including his intercessions for toleration of protestants in Sweden, France, and the Palatinate. All of James’s writings and actions, including the Directions, are interpreted as evidence that James was “an Orthodox resolved Protestant”; his “tender favour” to papists was simply an inducement to better behaviour.60 Like Wilson, Sanderson is engaged in “construction” of the times and comes down heavily on the side of monarchy and order. Royalist conservative John Spottiswood also frames his discussion of the Directions in the context of James’s polemical division of his enemies into papists and puritans: “Papistry was a disease of the minde, and Puritanisme of the brain, and the antidote of both a grave, settled and wellordered Church in the obedience of God and their King.”61 As Spottiswood shows, rumours of toleration of popery and liberty of conscience were rife in Scotland, but these increased with the Directions. Most believed that they intended “a discharge of preaching, at least a confining of Preachers to certain points of doctrine, which they called a limiting of the Spirit of God, and as people will ever be judging and censuring publick actions.”62 Like Sanderson, Spottiswood says that “The better and wiser sort, who considered the present estate of things” considered the leniency to papists politically necessary. Similarly, this sort esteemed the Directions both “necessary and profitable” considering the indiscretions of many who substituted “ostentation” for “learning,” or who attempted to achieve popularity by meddling in controversies they scarcely understood and with matters exceeding the capacities of most of their auditors.63 The most partisan, ultraconformist (pro-Laudian) interpretation of the Directions, however, belongs to Heylyn in his biography of Laud. For Heylyn, preaching was at the root of the troubles in church and state in 1622, and his explanation of the Directions paraphrases the major recommendations of those orders: a) that students by reading modern writers and “ungrounded” divines broached unsound and seditious doctrine, b) that conversions to popery, Anabaptism, and separatism could be traced to this kind of preaching, c) that many preachers were soaring in points too high for their congregations, d) that others meddled ignorantly in civil matters, having enjoyed peace for too long, e) that many sermons railed indecently not only against papists and puritans in general, but against 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63

William Sanderson, p. 531. Ibid. Ibid., p. 533. Ibid. Ibid., p. 534. Ibid., p. 535. Spottiswood, p. 542. Ibid., p. 543. Ibid.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis particular persons, and finally, f) that people were not being properly instructed in the Catechism and so were ripe for picking by papists, Anabaptists, Brownists “and other puritans.”64 Some historians debate whether or not the pulpits were in a state of “disorder” in 1622, suggesting that James may have been creating rather than responding to a crisis, for his own political purposes. Clarendon, for one, thought that reports of disorder were greatly exaggerated. These were times, he said, when “the Indiscretion and Folly of one Sermon at White-Hall was more bruited abroad, and commented upon, than the Wisdom, Sobriety, and Devotion of a hundred.”65 Clarendon concedes that sometimes sermons were preached of “Matter very unfit for the Place, and very scandalous for the Persons, who presumed often to determine things out of the verge of their own Profession.”66 He concludes, however, that “if the court sermons of those times were collected together and published, the world would receive the best bulk of orthodox divinity “since the Apostles time.”67 Clarendon’s account of a largely orthodox “court” pulpit, however, is contradicted by John Hacket, who puts the Directions in the context of the satirical excesses particularly of Lecturers, “Banding their Discourses either under the Line, or above the Line, against the quiet settlement of present Government.”68 To Hacket, it was clear that the Spanish match had dragged many preachers into seditious wranglings from the pulpit. As evidence of a disordered pulpit, Hacket reports attempts by those who understood nothing of the subject to “baffle out they knew not what about Regal Authority.”69 These preachers quoted the Pauline injunction to be subject to the higher powers while at the same time saying that active obedience to laws and edicts was local and therefore various. Fallout from the participation of English divines at the Synod of Dort provides another explanation of the doctrinal disorder the Directions were intended to curb. Hacket notes that at this time both learned and unlearned began to conflict in the pulpits on the issues of God’s eternal election, the efficacy of grace, and perseverance “with much Noise, and little Profit to the people.” In response, the king apparently commanded silence on both sides, “or such a Moderation as was next to silence,” Hacket’s phrase happily conflating the possible constructions that might be put on these Directions.70 One of the most thorough discussions of the Directions, their intention and impact, is found in Fuller’s Church History. Fuller, a royal chaplain of moderate sympathies who opposed the ejected puritan zealots as he did the ultraconformist anti-Calvinism of a man like Heylyn, places the Directions firmly in the context of James’s increasing leniency towards papists and the fear that James intended a general toleration of religion. The Directions were issued on the advice of informers that the pulpit was “sick of a Sermon-surfeit and other exorbitances” (V, 552). Some meddled with state matters and generally “the people’s duty was preached to the King at Court, the King’s to the People in the Countrey” (V, 552). Controversial sermons, preached by partisans, had deteriorated into satires against nonconformists 64 65 66 67 68 69 70

Ibid., p. 97. Hyde, I, 60. Ibid. Ibid. Hacket, p. 99. Ibid., p. 87. Ibid., p. 89.

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The Directions and the Crisis of Censorship or had lost themselves in the fine points of theology, a situation Fuller blames on the Synod of Dort, which had exported useless controversies to England. Fuller’s discussion of the Directions is important for the light it sheds on contemporary interpretation of these attempts to control pulpit utterances. They focus historical attention not only on the literal requirements embodied in these rules, but also on the way in which they were perceived, especially by puritan preachers and lecturers.71 Like Donne’s sermon, Fuller’s account acknowledges objections and proposes answers that stress the interpretive liberty allowed even within the Directions’ limits. Fuller constructs a double-columned chart outlining the main objections to the Directions and the answers given to justify them (V, 558–60). By focusing only on negative interpretations of these orders, this method of reporting highlights popular dissatisfaction. However, Fuller attempts an even-handed, non-partisan assessment of their impact, and, in the process, reveals a great deal about the anxiety and conflict they produced. The first objection to the Directions was that no man should forbid Christ’s ordinance of preaching. Perhaps alluding to Abbot and Donne, Fuller distinguishes between a “total prohibition” and this “prudential regulation of preaching.” Although Fuller admits that some “over-active officials, more busie than their Bishops, tied up Preachers in the Afternoon to the very letter of the Catechisme, questioning them if exceeding the questions and answers therein, as allowing them no liberty to dilate, and enlarge themselves thereupon,” he does not report a decline in the number of sermons available from either pulpit or press (V, 560). To the next objection – that one sermon per day would starve souls – the response was that milk (the term used for catechetical doctrine) was best for babes, who made up the majority of the audience for sermons. It is hard to believe that this was the view intended by the Directions. Nonetheless, it is clear that the Directions embodied a back-to-basics, catechetical impulse. Donne’s sermon had stressed, instead, that even in catechetical doctrine there was room for both controverted and positive divinity. This point is in fact the response to the third objection: that licensed preachers should be entrusted to choose their own texts and not be restrained to the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments. To the fourth objection – that the prohibition on preaching about predestination made that doctrine the forbidden fruit – no response is given, except to say that while predestination handled well was an article against despair, ignorant preachers turned this cordial to poison. The Directions did instruct some preachers to avoid the “deep points” of this topic in “popular” congregations in sermons devoted wholly to controversial topics, but the question was one of emphasis. Many sermons after August 1622 discussed predestination. But the evidence suggests that few sermons took the doctrine as their main topic, or as a provocation to controversy. A fifth objection was to the assumption that only “cathedral men” (i.e. bishops and deans) had the discretion to handle deep points of controverted divinity. The answer, like Donne’s, places the doctrine in the context of the fitness of preacher and auditory. Fuller explains that bishops and deans were believed to be of age, experience, and learning requisite to their office. It was also thought that 71

Webster makes the point that in such instances contemporary perceptions are more important than definitive statements about the motives of the principals involved (p. 144).

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis cathedral auditories were of a middle nature beneath the university, but above the common city and country congregations, and so fitter to hear these high points. A sixth objection was that in prohibiting personal revilings against either papists or puritans, these two groups were put in the same scale, and the papists first to show that the king wanted to protect them. This is, to say the least, an eccentric, even paranoid, interpretation of the Directions, and speaks to the widespread belief that, despite attempts to present the instructions as non-partisan inducements to order, the Directions were intended primarily for puritans. This particular objection also indicates just how carefully these Directions were read and analyzed, the literal sense allowing a wide range of interpretations. The final objection was that lecturers were deprived of ministerial function by the strict licensing restrictions in the Directions. Donne had not handled this objection in his sermon, but the answer provided was that lecturers contributed to the growth of nonconformity. The Directions were clearly intended to control the licensing of lecturers, but contrary to the objection raised, these instructions led to further regulations requiring lecturers to accept benefices with cure of souls if such were available in the communities in which they preached. The belief that lecturers contributed to nonconformity, however, was behind the Directions, as was the charge that they were a new growth, and not traditional within the Church of England.72 The practical impact of the Directions on the pulpit is difficult to document. While Clarendon underplayed the disorder in the pulpits, he admitted that the Directions – and the threat of imprisonment or confinement – were able to prevent the “most bold Opposers” from commenting on the Spanish match. The danger of such penalties, however, while it could prevent “plain downright blows,” could not prevent commentary altogether. Censorship, in fact, only induced preachers to be more careful, so that “if they cunningly, and subtily, could glance at the misdemeanors of the Times, and smooth it over metaphorically, it would pass current, though before the King himself.”73 Such a comment confirms that our strategies for reading and interpreting Jacobean sermons must consider the more oblique means by which preachers could speak, even on proscribed topics. Wilson, in fact, provides an eye-witness report of a sermon by one of James’s chaplains preached at Greenwich on Matthew 4:8.74 The preacher’s exegesis of the power of the devil led him to show how the devil managed his affairs in the world through his servants. When the preacher came to describe the devil’s treasurer, he apparently fixed his eye on the Lord Treasurer, Cranfield, emphasizing that that man who makes himself rich and his master poor is a fit treasurer for the devil. Wilson claims to have been present at the scene. Significantly, while Cranfield sat with his hat pulled over his eyes, ashamed to look up, the king who sat just over him, smiled “at the quaint Satyr so handsomly coloured over.”75 Fuller observes 72

73 74

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Heylyn, who published a refutation of Fuller (Examen Historicum), did not share Fuller’s opinion of the moderate intention of the Directions. Although Heylyn allows that Fuller is at least an historian, he castigates him for his errors, omissions, faulty sources, faulty uses of evidence and his biases. “No protest Puritan, no cunning Non-conformist, or open Separatist comes upon the Stage, whom he follows not with Plaudites and some fair Commends, when as the Fathers of the Church and the conformable Children of it are sent off commonly in silence, and sometimes with censure” (sig. A3r). Hyde, I, 151. “And the Devil took Jesus to the top of a Mountain, and shewed him all the Kingdoms of the World, saying, All these will I give &c.” (Wilson, p. 152). Ibid.

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The Directions and the Crisis of Censorship that by their selection of texts preachers could comment indirectly on forbidden subjects, even if they did not make particular application to these topics.76 Modern interpretations of the Directions begin with a view of who was responsible for framing them, and who ultimately benefited by them. On these issues scholars are divided, although they agree that despite Abbot’s official endorsement of the Directions, he was embarrassed by them and attempted to mitigate their potential rigour by his emphasis on order rather than doctrine. Seaver observes that while many sermons of the 1620s were seditious and scandalous, James did not intend the outright suppression of preaching because he was reluctant to lose the pulpits as a propaganda vehicle.77 Following Heylyn, he attributes the Directions to Laud,78 concluding that these Directions presented serious practical difficulties for government administrators. No real sanctions existed against those who preached or lectured on Sunday afternoons rather than catechizing. Restricting subject matter in sermons also presented severe substantive and procedural difficulties. The substance of sermons was left interpretable – as Donne’s sermon pointed out – and sanctions could only be invoked after the sermon had been delivered.79 Fincham argues, however, that while the provisions of the Directions could be read as a victory for Arminian opinion, there is no positive proof that the Arminian court bishops helped to frame them. He challenges Heylyn’s view that Laud was one of the authors, offering Andrewes as a more likely candidate.80 Like Seaver and Tyacke,81 Fincham concludes that James’s methods were largely ineffectual, basing this view on the sustained campaign against the Spanish match that continued to issue from both press and pulpit. To support differing views of the character of the late Jacobean pulpit, both White and Davies follow Hacket in arguing that Williams, rather than Laud or Andrewes, was responsible for the Directions.82 Contesting Tyacke’s sense that the Directions marked a doctrinal shift to Arminianism in the Church of England, authorized by James himself, White stresses, instead, their function to moderate pulpit controversy in the aftermath of the Synod of Dort in England. This view is supported by W. Patterson who finds the policies outlined in the Directions “consistent with the instructions to the British representatives at Dort.”83 Among modern historians, Cogswell is one of few who write of the Directions as severe, striking at “the taproot of evangelical faith,” the sermon.84 He comments in particular on the prohibition of preaching on Sunday afternoons and says that the only option open to preachers was to read out of one of the sermons in the Book of Homilies, which were reissued in 1623 for catechizing children. 76

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Fuller observes that the following Biblical texts were used by persons against the feared toleration of papists: “Thou shalt not plow with an ox and an ass” (Deut. 22: 10); “God’s children must not speak two languages, Ashdod and Hebrew” (Neh. 13:24); and “We must not do evil that good may come thereof ” (Romans 3:8) (V, 552). Seaver, p. 57. Ibid., p. 231. Ibid., pp. 241–2. Fincham, Prelate as Pastor, p. 213, points out that Laud had been absent from London for a month when the Directions were issued, and that Andrewes, a privy councilor, was present when the Directions were promulgated. Anti-Calvinists, p. 103. Peter White, p. 213; Julian Davies, pp. 130–1. W. B. Patterson, pp. 281–2. Cogswell, Blessed Revolution, p. 32.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis For Cogswell, the Directions were a strategic error but a tactical success.85 They did halt the most extreme examples of meddling in matters of state, but their effects were short-lived. Cogswell argues that the atmosphere grew less tense after the summer of 1623 when it appeared possible that the Spanish match would not go ahead. Conway, one of Buckingham’s clients, secured rights for preaching ministers (i.e. Preston) and prevented Montaigne from examining London preachers too closely, earning him lavish encomia from John Davenport, a future separatist. With Buckingham making a tactical tilt towards godliness, the result was mild persecution of Catholics, lavish favours to traditional Protestants, and a remarkable popularity with Buckingham among the godly.86 The most thorough investigation of the terms of the Directions, by Morrissey, qualifies the view that they were restrictive, without dismissing their impact altogether.87 According to Morrissey, it is true that the first order restricting the application of a preacher’s text to matters of faith laid out in the Thirty-Nine Articles (except on special occasions) limited the introduction of contentious doctrinal issues and the discussion of contemporary events. Morrissey also seems to agree that the second part was a direct ban on afternoon sermons, although the direction does allow preaching on the catechism, and does not apply to funeral sermons. The third direction, aimed at contentious speculative theology in the pulpit, needs to be read as preventing only “deepe points” of predestination, she argues, and did not prohibit the “pastoral aspects of this doctrine – the comfort of assurance and the perseverance of the saints.”88 According to Morrissey, articles one and three “assert a hierarchy in the Church both in administrative functions and in preaching by restricting by whom and to whom speculative issues might be addressed”:89 speculative areas to the schools, “applicable” parts to all clergy. The fourth article bans all discussion of monarchical authority, while the fifth article forbids personal invectives against particular adversaries (whether papist or puritan), although it does not prevent defences of the Church of England from aspersions cast by either. Morrissey’s discussion emphasizes James’s intention – that “nothing be said from the pulpits which would embarrass him in his negotiations with Spain”90 – and its consequences – the suggestion that fewer sermons might be preached, “contrary to apostolic injunctions to preach the truth fearlessly and constantly.”91 Donne’s sermon, of course, confirms this perception as it addresses both the necessity of continued preaching, as well as the increased pastoral effectiveness of orderly sermons. It remains to be seen, then, how the pulpit responded to Donne’s interpretation of these Directions. Charles’s 1626 proclamation governing preaching, with its provisions against interpretation, sheds some light on pulpit practices that the Directions had clearly not handled. It mandated that no man, in print or in the pulpit, could put his own sense on any article, but should take it in the literal and grammatical sense. One implication of this provision is that such a declaration was necessary precisely because preachers had used interpretation to circumvent the Directions. And, as 85 86 87 88 89 90 91

Ibid., p. 33. Ibid., pp. 91–3. “Rhetoric, Religion, and Politics,” pp. 33–8. Ibid., p. 34. Ibid., pp. 34–5. Ibid., p. 35. Ibid., p. 37.

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The Directions and the Crisis of Censorship comments of contemporary historians indicate, the culprit in interpretation was metaphor, which gave license to preachers to take meaning much further from the literal, and still to support their critiques with the full authority of scripture. IMMEDIATE IMPACT OF THE DIRECTIONS The consequences for the public sphere of these Directions can be measured partially, but only imperfectly, by specific incidents surrounding their implementation. The most feared consequences – toleration of popery and reduction of godly sermons – did not materialize, at least not yet, or as imagined. Nor did lecturers disappear. And yet, it would be misleading to suggest that the Directions had no effect on what was said in pulpits or published by authority. The attempt as much as the ability to control sermons moved public preaching into a new space, in which increasing subtlety of exegesis and application was exercised, and in which controversy was either radicalized or sublimated into different forms. Preachers certainly became more self-conscious about their sermons and more skilled in complying literally (if not in spirit) with these demands. Evidence of greater restrictions on preaching continues in these late months of 1622. As the lead item in his letter of 28 September, Mead reports to Stuteville the startling details of a case that illustrates just how rigorously the Directions could be applied. The story begins with the Bishop of London taking the unprecedented measure of asking the preacher for a copy of his sermon before it was preached.92 The message was apparently not passed on, provoking the bishop to send for the preacher an hour before his sermon. Mead reports that the bishop “began to give him good counsel, that he should take heed that he spake nothing which might be distasteful, or unfit for the present times.” Upon discovering that the preacher planned to preach on Galatians 1:6–7,93 the bishop apparently “struck his hand upon his breast, swearing that the text was not allowable for these times.” A chaplain standing nearby confirmed that the “text is not tolerable for the present times.” However, the preacher refused to change his text, at which point the bishop warned him that if he spoke anything unpleasing, the bishop would break his neck and his back. An offer from one of the bishop’s chaplains to preach in his stead was refused. Gallingly, the preacher then reported the entire sum of these proceedings to the congregation before beginning his sermon, offering the interrogation as an excuse for his lack of preparation, a development that “much displeased the bishop” who no doubt wanted his influence to appear less visible. Mead reports that “the whole sermon contained nothing but, in general, a discourse of the damnable condition of those who should forsake the faith they had received.” The final sentence of this section of the letter, however, is revealing: “Only he concluded, that they might expect some application, but he was not ambitious of lying in prison; and so ended.” The incident, whether or not it occurred exactly as reported, is revealing. First it indicates that following Donne’s sermon defending the Directions, the Bishop of 92 93

Birch, II, 334–5. “I marvel that ye are so soone removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ.”

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis London exercised his authority directly in ensuring that the pulpit did not oppose the king’s stated policies. The counsel offered by the bishop indicates that notions of what was suitable were changing, and that the preacher’s choice of text was the measure by which suitability could be determined before the sermon was delivered. The bishop’s vehement denunciation of the text, his enlisting his chaplain both to support his view and to preach instead of the scheduled preacher, and his threats of violence suggest both his desire not to prosecute, and possibly his fear that he would be held responsible for disorderly preaching in his diocese, as the letter from Abbot to Williams had implied. Finally, the preacher’s decisions to preface his sermon with the actual circumstances of his interrogation by the bishop and to conclude it with specific mention of his non-existent application indicate ways in which preachers could circumvent the restrictions on preaching without actually incurring the official displeasure of the authorities. Just two weeks after Donne’s Paul’s Cross sermon defending the Directions, Elias Petley preached a sermon at Paul’s Cross dedicated to Donne. Only three sermons dedicated to Donne are extant, and two of them were preached within two months following the issuing of the Directions.94 Bald notes that Petley was a country clergyman, rector of a Lincolnshire parish, and that this trip to Paul’s Cross was the only known event of his career.95 But the sermon’s text and thematic structure suggest that Petley preached here, possibly on Donne’s recommendation, and that its contents reflect sympathy with Donne’s views.96 In fact, the sermon suggests that Petley and Donne shared similar views on a number of controversial issues, and illuminates Donne’s own use of the Hezekiah story in his Devotions late in 1623. Cogswell mentions Petley as a supporter of the Spanish match who catered to James by promoting the blessings of peace, but surely there is more going on here.97 The question is what the example of Hezekiah has to teach Petley’s auditory, and in particular what this sermon has in common with the paradigm of discreet and religious preaching offered by Donne at Paul’s Cross two weeks before. The sermon, Petley intimates, had its infancy there. Petley’s sermon begins with a statement of the frailty of kings: “Yea, true it is, gods they are, but fraile, mortal, mutable gods: gods not in respect of their nature, but in regard of their power; gods not by humane constitution, but by diuine institution” (p. 2). Yet, Hezekiah is for Petley an “admirable and loyal pattern” of “godly behauiour” (p. 1) in kings despite his human imperfections. His turning of his face and his silence express his moderate and “courteous” acceptance of the prophet Isaiah who spoke to him “in doune right and peremptory termes” (p. 7). Isaiah’s message, if not his unmannerly deportment, is also exemplary. 94 95 96

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The third, by Thomas Adams, was preached in October 1623. Bald, pp. 394–5. Bald concludes without evidence that Petley dedicated the sermon to Donne in the hopes of a city living, possibly through a connection with Peter Petley who was a minor tenant of the Dean and Chapter (ibid., p. 395). Petley, in fact, suggests that Donne was chosen as a “charitable Guardian” against “the broad abuse & open prejudice of the iniurious & capricious Age” (sig. A2r). Cogswell, Blessed Revolution, p. 42. Petley’s discussion of peace comes as part of a lengthy discussion of the kind of heart God requires. In particular, there can be no concord between God and Belial, so a divided heart, one divided into tenements in religious matters, is not acceptable. The perfection of the heart, he says, depends upon attainment of peace. But the peace that Petley urges is of a Heart “established” (p. 41), of conscience supported by a life without contention, and does not seem to refer at all to James’s foreign policy in the way suggested by Cogswell.

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The Directions and the Crisis of Censorship Modern preachers, Petley points out, fear preaching the truth, basely preferring to sow “pillowes vnder elbowes, laying cushions for dogs, healing the hurts of Gods people with sweet words” (p. 9). Petley urges preachers not to entangle themselves in “snares of flatterie” (p. 10), but also to beware “That Sermons be not Satyrs to vent a priuate spleene in a publike audience, . . . to ayme at the Churches disgrace through the loynes of some mens personal offenses, to diue beyond sobrietie in to the secrets of Gods scrutiny” (p. 11). As with Donne’s sermon, the abuse is in reviling persons rather than sins. Similarly, Petley takes up another of the Directions by cautioning against “tampering twixt the hammer and the Anuill, matters of state, as far fro- the text as our calling” (p. 11). Petley’s characterization of the seditious pamphlet with its “Couie of wicked vses” identifies his target as largely puritan or separatist, although the “silly women” who are led by them could as easily refer to those other “separatists,” the recusants. Hezekiah’s turning his face to the wall occasions a disquisition on prayer. Like Jesus, who also went aside to pray, Hezekiah prepared for his meditations and engaged his devotions through this action. Against the papists, Petley urges the king to be his own chaplain, arguing that even if everyone else in the kingdom were praying for him, he should perform his own devotion, lest in serving God “by his Atturney [he] shall goe to heauen by a Proxie” (p. 16). Against the rigid predestinarians, Petley urges that although God does not change his decree, he can change his sentence. The source of Hezekiah’s troubled mind is “the fickle estate of Religion which along time afore him was far-worne and ouergrown with Idolatry and superstition: now but awhile afore his sicknesse imperfectly reformed and newly restored to the primitive dignity of Moses institution” (p. 20). Hezekiah fears that this religion is not yet sufficiently established to prevent idolatry because some will interpret Hezekiah’s sudden death as a punishment from God. The message is clear: “The misconstructions of preiudicate opinions conceiued by suspicious idolatrie, when they doe forestall, banke, and stop the currents of good attempts, before they come to a full perfection, not onely derogate from godly endeauours, but cast a scandall and obloquie on the vndertakers” (p. 21). Petley’s application of his text to the present occasion stresses what must have seemed clear to most of his Paul’s Cross audience: idolatry and security in England have endangered its relationship with God, but God labours to express his will to his people through examples such as Hezekiah’s. Hezekiah as governor of the Church is Petley’s next consideration, and affords him a sustained application to James: “in his [Hezekiah’s] Church gouernment obserue his deforming the worship of the false gods, reforming the worship of the true God, with what courage, zeale, and magnanimitie dissolued the forgeries of superstition crept into the Church” (p. 32). In James’s church government observe his restoration of church goods and wealth, his establishment of a ceremonious divine service, and his expression of Christian truth by “his frequencie in prayer, his patience in trouble, his confidence in danger, his perseuerance in faith” (p. 33). With particular reference to the Sunday afternoon catechetical sermons, Petley asks his hearers to “witness that vniforme reformation for preaching fundamentall points of truth on Sabboth afternoones, the most direct and happiest course for aduancement of the truth which is according to godlinesse” (pp. 35–6). Throughout the sermon Petley finds in Hezekiah a pattern of the devout and religious king. The sermon establishes themes and metaphors that Donne introduced 127

John Donne and Conformity in Crisis in his Directions sermon and that he expands in his 1623 Devotions: the importance of preaching, the distinction between “peace” and “security,” James’s contributions to the settling of the Church of England, the church as a place between schismatical/papist extremes, the preeminence of conscience, the importance of charity. In late September 1622, Petley’s discussion of Hezekiah allows a thorough examination of the deportment of a religious king, and the dangers of idolatry and security to present-day England in a reading that is neither disobedient nor flattering, but that establishes a pattern of right action for both king and people. Donne likely approved of this public sermon, remembered it in the construction of his private devotions, and applied what were current discussions of royal deportment in his own analysis of the physical and spiritual crisis figured in his fevered body. By contrast, a sermon preached only ten days later by royal chaplain William Loe before the king at Theobald’s advances just those absolutist views commonly attributed to Donne, but which are much less judicious than the views expressed by Donne.98 The full weight of Loe’s sermon falls on those Edomites of his text who are to be trodden on by the King’s shoe. Loe interprets his text according to the double aspect of the topic of obedience in the Book of Homilies: “The one vpward in the kings obedience vnto his God, the king of kings. The other downewards reflecting vpon the people in their obedience, and euangelicall allegeance vnto the king their naturall Leige Lord, and Soueraigne” (p. 3). In the course of the sermon, Loe argues that there are no exceptions to this duty of obedience or to the absoluteness of regal power no matter what “seditious Papists, and tumultuous Anabaptists, and other Sectaries” say. The sermon reads like a litany of absolutist proverbs: subjection is proper, not only if kings be good, but also if they be sullen and disorderly (pp. 22–3); God has not only forbidden treasonous violence of hand or tongue, but giddy thoughts as well; the power of the king is from God and invested in the king’s own person; all inferior delegates derive their authority personally from the king’s person; what may appear to be the king’s will only, may in fact be exquisite skill in mysteries of state; any power that resists the regal power is the power of darkness (p. 26). Throughout the sermon, Loe contrasts the methods of false interpreters with his own exegesis, which is “as cleere as the day” (p. 6). Papists, he notes, abuse this text to claim unlimited power from the pope to trample on the necks of kings and others of God’s anointed. He also finds it difficult to use the Talmudists’ interpretations “for they are as some others now adaies will be tampering and preiudicing kings affaires, which God-wot they eyther fowly mistake or no whit vnderstand” (p. 5, margin). Loe contrasts the papist powers claimed by this text, with those legitimate powers of King James, and in particular his Directions, paraphrasing Calvin to make his connection. Calvin says truly “That the Directions, and Edicts that come out from the Power, Wil, and Skill of a king are somewhat more then humane traditions to be accompted of for that they haue not only their foundation vpon the generall Commandement, but also they haue their warrant from the mouth of Christ himselfe” (p. 27). Several of Loe’s political observations refer directly to evil counselors, whom Loe holds responsible, along with willful and headstrong governors, for alterations in governments (p. 33). Naturally, Loe contrasts all of these bad examples of statesmanship with that of the present king who makes sure there is justice in 98

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The Directions and the Crisis of Censorship the land, and who has appropriated as his counselors “hearty Gileadites, manfull Manasses, and wise Ephraimites to be his fauourites, Chieftaines and Counsellors.” Loe pictures sovereignty as a rightful power daily besieged by Edomites close to the king, Edomites who must be trampled down. Whether Loe intended this sermon to warn the king against evil counselors at court or to remind his hearers of the king’s power to crush such advisors, the sermon as a whole reveals a king under siege, “dayly encumbered with an exceeding waight and world of occurrences, affaires, and deep designes, all of surpassing, and especiall care, singular skill, exquisite cunning, and important consequence” (p. 16). The instruction to trample the Edomites rings as much with urgency as with confidence that God will advance the purposes of those who obey their kings. The sermon ends with an exhortation to “let our King O God kicke them [the “profane race of Edomites, Esauists, Iebusites, Iesuits”] out of his court, Church, Citties, and countries” (p. 44). In the weeks following the Directions, popular fears of James’s relapse into popery were exacerbated by reports of the reversion to popery of Buckingham’s mother as well as reports of the greater freedom with which priests and recusants moved as negotiations for a Spanish match intensified. John Donne’s third sermon on John 1:8, preached during these weeks, offers some perspective on his urgent concern with the duties of the preacher to both king and conscience in the public sphere, culminating in the claim that God’s word and the divine commission of the preacher must supersede and if necessary transgress legal ordinances.99 The problematical question, for Donne, is why the light of Christ required testimony, why preaching is required to interpret Scriptures, when they contain sufficient light for all men’s salvation. Donne’s conclusion is that preaching is needed for those who are weak in understanding, faith, and practice, and for the ignorant who hear but do not believe, who come but do not practice, who practice but relapse (IV, 211–12). Donne makes the point using a legal analogy. Certain scriptures are the revealed will of God, manifesting all that he requires. Despite this clear manifestation of the law, Donne argues, we need the testimony of men called as interpreters: “It is not a bare reading, but a diligent searching, that is enjoyned us. Now they that will search, must have a warrant to search; they upon whom thou must rely for the sense of the Scriptures, must be sent of God by his Church” (IV, 219). And because we need the testimony of men, Donne argues, we must admit only those senses that are generally agreed upon by those commissioned by God rather than by private readers. Donne’s point simultaneously supports the puritans, who felt restricted by the Directions to read from the Book of Homilies rather than to preach, and rejects the singularity of their private interpretations. Specifically, Donne notes that we must not accept those senses that derogate from God, or make him false, impotent, or cruel (IV, 218). Donne’s trinity of adjectives poises his argument exactly where it was most touchy, on the issue of predestination. Those opposed to the doctrine argued that it produced a God who was false and cruel. Those in favour of it said that any other view rendered God impotent. Donne typically steps back from either extreme. His example is Paul who did not give credit to light rumours against the Corinthians or to clandestine whisperers, but who did not stop his ears against competent witnesses either (IV, 220). 99

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis Donne goes on to say that inevitably some things are impossible to discern, even by those authorized to search the scriptures. His conclusion is that in clear and evident places, his hearers should be their own interpreters; but in dark places, they should go to men authorized by the church, acknowledging even as they do this that some things may remain uninterpretable. Donne’s comments on the authority of conscience in this sermon are equally enigmatic as he tries to balance private interpretations with the opinions of men. Accordingly, he says that it is vulgar not to care what the world says as long as one’s conscience stands clear. That we should care for the testimony of good men, as Christ did of John the Baptist, is clear even in law, where it is not enough in cases of defamation that a man purge himself by oath, but he must also have compurgators to swear that they believe he swears the truth. A conscience, he says, that admits no search from others is seared, stupefied. Donne agrees that it is a sin to go against one’s conscience, but argues that it is a greater sin not to devist that conscience of its scruples by seeking the advice of those authorized by God. Such seeking of advice is comparable to consulting a physician for the body, or a lawyer for lands. In the second part of his sermon, Donne compares John the Baptist to an ambassador, commissioned by God with specific instructions, but endowed with discretion in negotiating. Once more, Donne’s language embraces a fundamental respect for and obedience to foundational laws, but allows, even demands, a discreet application of these to his hearers. This was the argument of his 15 September sermon defending the Directions, and he returns to it here in his exegesis of John the Baptist’s function as God’s ambassador. Specifically, the Baptist’s commission was to prepare the way of the Lord, to render inexcusable those who relied only upon private inspirations. Furthermore, Donne distinguishes between the Baptist’s commission and his instructions, noting that princes often vary these instructions to their ambassadors. Here, Donne’s rhetoric moves skillfully between debaters on both sides of the predestinarian divide, stressing the inviolability and mystery of God’s will (and its concomitant necessity that some will not be saved) but simultaneously arguing for the way of repentance that brings assurance of salvation. The point is not that repentance moves God to change his will, but that without repentance, no one will possess the certainty of salvation. Donne ends the sermon with a specific, but discreet, application of John the Baptist’s example to his congregation. In particular, he urges his hearers not to be suspicious that the offer of grace to all excludes them (as the hotter kind of Protestants might allow). He urges his hearers to believe that it is never too late for repentance, and asks them not to discredit God’s evidence offered through his minister. Though he does not speak specifically of predestination, the sermon shows him modifying the strict predestinarian message, by stressing, like John the Baptist, the testimony that works give to faith. Donne’s 5 November sermon on the Gunpowder Plot anniversary marks his return to the Paul’s Cross pulpit, and extends the public interpretation of the Directions begun in his 15 September sermon. The occasion of the sermon, and Donne’s attitude towards it, are revealed in a letter to Sir Thomas Roe, Ambassador to Constantinople,100 in which Donne explains what he could do in 100

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The Directions and the Crisis of Censorship a sermon when left “more to mine own liberty.” Donne’s comments about his sermons follow a lengthy discussion of the “thorns of calumny” that public servants must bear. Donne is speaking of Roe’s new ambassadorship, but his words apply equally to his own case: “Outward thorns of Calumny, and mis-interpretation do us least harme; Innocency despises them; or friends and iust examiners of the case blunt or breake them.” Donne’s introduction of the matter of this sermon comes after an intriguing metaphor describing the events of the past few months. He comments that “the Astronomers of ye world” are most exercised when there arises “a new, and irregular meteor” in the skies. Donne goes on to say that many such meteors have been produced “in or firmament, in or diuinity” by these marriage negotiations. His own view of the furore caused by this projected match is that the “Astronomers” are “measuringe publique actions, wt private affections.” The problem, as Donne sees it, is in the illogical leap from the “Maior proposition” (the Spanish match and some civil acts in favour of papists) to the conclusion (“tepidnes in very high places”) without a minor premise to support such a conclusion. Donne laments the move, arguing that “to conclude ye worst, upon ye first degree of yll, ys a distillinge wt too hot a fire.” Since Donne does acknowledge that things have come to “ye first degree of yll,” it is significant that he chooses to preach his Gunpowder anniversary sermon on a disputed text, a book not recognized as distinctly canonical by the Council of Trent. This choice is one aspect of Donne’s “liberty.” Another aspect of this liberty is that the text can be interpreted either historically, of the death of the good King Josiah, or prophetically, of the bad King Zedekiah. Since Donne chooses to dwell on the conflict of interpretation, the sermon becomes a flexible medium that plays between rather than fixing upon either of these alternatives. On the surface at least this sermon should have been acceptable to James. Its underlying premise and overt political message is that all kings, even bad kings, must be preserved – a doctrine James had expounded with an admirable instinct for self-preservation in his writings. Donne’s argument is that, good or ill, kings are “to be lamented, when they fall into dangers, and . . . preservd by all meanes, by prayer from them who are private persons, by Counsayle from them, who haue the great honor and the great chardge to be near them, and by support and supplie from all of all sorts, from fallinge into such dangers” (142–9; IV, 239). What is particularly challenging in this sermon, though, is Donne’s parallel application of the text to both good and bad kings, an application he presents as a problem of interpretation for his audience. Although he insists that present application can be made only to the good king, Josiah, he notes parenthetically that the text is more ordinarily and probably interpreted to apply to the bad king. And although he assures his audience, and the king, that the case of the bad King Zedekiah is merely hypothetical, and that it reinforces the case for preserving the good king, the comparison and its obvious application to the present dissatisfaction in the kingdom would have been only too apparent to the audience at Paul’s Cross. In voicing the people’s fears, Donne continues to take the sermon beyond conventional absolutist apologies. Donne’s approach to the subject of the sermon is twofold. He has much to say about the duties of a people to a bad king, but does so by way of a direct attack on the political theology of papists who have made treason an article of religion. In addition, Donne’s application of the text complicates the discourse of absolutism not only by calling attention to the conventions of interpretation by which kings 131

John Donne and Conformity in Crisis are to be judged, but by his advice to his hearers regarding their own religious responsibilities. With the Directions only three months old, Donne confronts openly the political threat posed by Roman Catholicism (a topic expressly limited by the Directions, although expressly enjoined by the conventions of Gunpowder Plot rhetoric) at the same time as he directly engages popular dissatisfaction with the king. Donne’s conclusions may be absolutist, but in the process of reaching them, he reveals the complex ambivalence of his attitudes. Donne’s final paragraph addresses his hearers directly, advising them what they can do even if they are dissatisfied with James’s religion. Just as the hypothetical consideration of good and bad kings ended finally with an exhortation to interpret according to their consciences, so his hypothetical allowance of James’s coolness in religion leads ultimately to practical advice grounded on good sense and self-preservation. He says “let not a mis-grounded and a disloyall imagination, of coolenes in him, coole you, in your own families” (1501–3; IV, 263). And in a direct allusion to recent relaxation of the penal laws, Donne warns family leaders not to be indifferent to papists, as if papist and protestant were simply different callings. Moreover, while Donne allows the Prince the liberty to open and close the doors of the kingdom “as God shall put to his minde” (IV, 263, not in ms.), he does not think that this means a relaxing of religious vigilance in the nation’s households. Their responsibility remains despite the new lenience towards papists. “A theif that is let out of New-gate, is not therefore let into thy house; A preist that is let out of prison, is not therefore sent into thy house: still it may be felony to harbor him, though there were mercy and benignity, to let him out” (1528–34; IV, 263). As others have noted, a conjunction of circumstances made this occasion particularly difficult for Donne: Paul’s Cross and its public function as an official pulpit, the annual anti-Catholic invective unleashed on 5 November, the popular opposition to the Spanish Match, and the official church policy on the subject of royal authority, as defined in the Book of Homilies. Donne in fact was handed an anti-Catholic occasion and asked to defend the policies of a monarch who seemed to many all too pro-Catholic, a situation Donne handled by shifting the sermon’s focus from religious to political dimensions, emphasizing the plot as an assault on the person and authority of the king, rather than on religion or the nation.101 The sermon undoubtedly stresses the importance of order and stability to a nation’s foreign policy (a united front at home, as it were), but, in it, Donne still offers ways of dealing with internal grievances, by focusing on the role of family leaders in guarding their homes, while leaving the ports and doors to the kingdom in the hands of the monarch.102 A sermon by Robert Willan, preached at Westminster Abbey before the judges on the same day as Donne was preaching at Paul’s Cross, provides an important 101

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Wall and Burgin, 19–30, argue that Donne was paraphrasing the Book of Homilies on prayers for kings, although they are less convincing when they claim that only things supportive of the king saw print, or when they ignore the fact that James, in fact, did not order this sermon published. It is also difficult to concur with the conclusion that Donne is undercutting the arguments of James’s protestant opposition in this sermon by associating them with the disobedience to royal authority manifested by the Gunpowder Plotters. Daley positions this sermon as well as Donne’s translation of Jeremiah’s lamentations in the context of “private expressions of grief over the fall of Heidelberg, consonant with similar efforts by Constantijn Huygens.” The sermon, she argues, is a “discreet but pertinent attack on the political schemings of James” (38).

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The Directions and the Crisis of Censorship basis of comparison with Donne’s sermon. From the beginning, Willan’s purpose in the sermon is to defend James’s Directions and to connect those disgruntled by this new test of obedience with the Gunpowder plotters, who were willing to destroy the entire foundation of government to assert their liberty. Judson discusses Willan’s sermon as a sermon by a royalist, notable for the extent to which he proclaimed the king to be above the law.103 Willan chooses as his text Psalm 2:1–4, a text that provided encouragement to the Apostles when they were forbidden to preach and which comforted Luther when the world was opposed to him. It is a Janus-like text, Willan argues, one that looks back to revive the memory of the Gunpowder conspiracy, but forward to the present “tumultuarie” times when other parts of Christendom are being persecuted (p. 2). When Willan turns his attention from “the Propheticall conspiracy against CHRIST our King” to his text as history (“the Historicall faction against King Dauid”), he seizes the opportunity to observe that “[f]or people in any estate to grumble against the gouernours is not nouelty” (p. 17). Moreover, the prevention of conspiracy requires the twin pillars of government: “Direction, in the Superior; Obedience, in the Inferior. . . . When these meet, the State is successfull” (p. 24). Good laws are the “bands” of this text, and the “yoke” is religion. Religion, he says, tames the stubborn nature of man and makes him “yeelde due obedience. . . . It is the cyment of societie, and strongest Pillar of Gouernment” (p. 25). Laws in this commonwealth are like the cords that hold up the tent, humbling the wild and underpropping the weak. Princes are the only exception: “Lawes were not written for them; Lawes do not, like death, equall the Scepter with the spade” (p. 26), although the humility of princes should respect the law. Given the audience for whom Willan’s sermon was preached – those very judges whose function, at least nominally, was to uphold the laws of the state, without exception – the contrast with Donne could not be more complete, despite a superficial similarity in doctrine. The rhetoric of obedience, of superiors and inferiors, of princely prerogative, conveys a message much different from Donne’s extended application of his text to the bad King Zedekiah, and his stripping away of the grounds of interpretation of royal actions. In this context, Willan’s overt recommendation of the royal directions, a subject Donne does not even mention in his sermon, takes on a repressive tone, especially as they are imbued with heavenly and not merely earthly authority. As Willan argues, “By his last heauenly directions, which followed well, may place Religion where it is not, and settle it where it is already entertain’d,” conspiracy will be foiled (pp. 31–2). The point could not be clearer: “He who is not moued by his [James’s] example, nor instructed by his works, nor wonne by his clemency [in the relaxation of the penal laws], nor obseruant and pliable to his direction, I doe not say resists, but argues and makes doubts, fearing where no feare is.” This man is a “plaine rebell to CHRIST in heauen, to Dauid on earth. For when Gods precept thunders, and that is when the voyce of his Deputie speakes, we must submit and not dispute or els the yoke is cast off ” (p. 32). Where Donne had chosen to emphasize the political and earthly nature of the Directions, as well as their temporary application to present circumstances, Willan apotheosizes them into heavenly and universal instructions, part of the larger

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Judson, p. 200.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis pattern of unthinking obedience that alone can prevent the tumults of history from being reenacted. The differences from Donne are a matter of degree rather than of kind. But the differences need to be registered if we are to comprehend both the conscientious independence of Donne’s point of view as well as the unequivocal obedience demanded by Willan who concludes that “we must submit and not dispute.” In the end, unlike Donne, Willan does not extenuate James’s popular reputation; he does not even acknowledge it. Nor does he instruct his hearers in the ways of interpretation or in the private means by which the king’s mysterious lenience to Catholics for the sake of foreign policy can be offset at home by religious diligence. Superficially, the messages of the two sermons are similar, but rhetorically, they demand quite different responses from their hearers. Traditionally a high-point for preaching in the liturgical year, the Christmas season for 1622 bears the marks of conflict and tension that the Directions had only highlighted. McCullough reminds us, for example, that Christmas 1622 marked “the only instance of James’s interrupting a preacher in the pulpit.”104 The sermon does not survive; however, extant sermons by both Andrewes and Donne for 1622 exist. A comparison of Donne’s Christmas 1622 sermon at St. Paul’s with that preached by Lancelot Andrewes at Whitehall indicates how very different these two preachers were, both in theology and in rhetoric, and how the Directions both highlighted and exacerbated such differences. The sermons also indicate why Donne’s star, which had begun to rise in August of 1622, was destined to separate from those who followed the “starre in the East” represented by the churchmanship and ecclesiology of Andrewes.105 Andrewes takes as his text Matthew 2:1–2.106 The sermon concerns the errand of the Magi, which was to worship Jesus, and Andrewes focuses almost entirely on the public nature of their profession, the way in which their faith was expressed in their works. They did not stand gazing long on his star, and Andrewes contrasts their readiness to embark on such a great journey with the present fashion “to see and see again before we stir a foot, specially if it be to the worship of Christ. Come such a journey at such a time? No; but fairly have put it off to the spring of the year, till the days longer, and the ways fairer, and the weather warmer, till better traveling to Christ. Our Epiphany would sure have fallen in Easter week at the soonest” (I, 258). The necessity of seeking leads Andrewes to conclude that there is a proper place where Christ may be found, and that he will not be found outside these boundaries. By the same token, proper worship of him cannot be fulfilled inwardly. The text enjoins “outward visible worship,” and so it is not enough to worship in our hearts only, or in a “privy conventicle” (I, 259). The sermon is typical of Andrewes’s emphasis on the beauty of holiness, and on the ceremonial nature of

104

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McCullough, Sermons at Court, p. 129. Delivered by James’s new Almoner, George Montaigne, Bishop of London, the sermon apparently displeased James, who, Chamberlain reports, “grew lowed, and the bishop was driven to end abruptly” (II, 470). Chamberlain also suggests that perhaps Montaigne was trying too hard to be “smooth and plausible” (II, 470); courtiers thought the sermon might have been too long, and that Montaigne suffered by comparison with James’s favourite preacher and former Almoner, Andrewes (McCullough, Sermons at Court, pp. 153–4). McCullough, Sermons at Court, p. 147, reminds us that to contemporaries, Andrewes was “Stella praedicantium” who held a “virtual monopoly” over court sermons preached on principal feast days. “Behold there came wise men from the East to Jerusalem, Saying, Where is the King of the Jews That is born? For we have seen this star in the East, and are come to worship him.” Works, I, 249–64.

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The Directions and the Crisis of Censorship proper religious worship: “a reverent, ceremonious and uniform public worship of God.”107 Andrewes’s focus on “outward visible worship” allows him a thorough disquisition on the requirements of faithful worship on the exemplary model of the Magi: confessing their faith freely, grounding it thoroughly, hastening to Christ, enquiring diligently of him, and worshipping him devoutly (I, 263). Donne’s Christmas 1622 sermon, on the other hand, a sermon that marked the beginning of his first published volume of sermons in 1640, must be contrasted to Andrewes’s arid intellectual performance, belying the claims for a metaphysical and witty style (and a concomitant theology) shared by both preachers.108 First, it is important to note that, unlike Andrewes, Donne never preached on and rarely mentioned the Babe of Bethlehem in his Christmas sermons. Of the seven that survive only one expands on a text from the infancy narratives of the Gospel and its theme is mortality. As Haskin argues, “Rather than showing his perversity, Donne’s chosen texts provoke reflection on our need to make intelligent, imaginative choices about what we read and how we read. . . . The sermon for 1622 begins by inducing self-consciousness about interpretive practices and by proposing hermeneutical criteria. Donne insists on the care with which the particular text for the sermon must be read and suggests that every biblical text is a ‘place’ within a circuitous ‘journey’ of reading that needs to be plotted out in relation to the map offered by the whole Bible.”109 This focus on the hermeneutics of interpretation, I have argued, intensifies in sermons preached in the fall of 1622, and distinguishes them from ostensibly similar sermons by other preachers. The structure and development of the sermon recapitulates some of the characteristics noted already in Donne’s sermons earlier in the year: his resistance to singular or one-sided interpretations; his careful discriminations between apparently opposed points of view; the constructive inclusiveness of his exegetical observations; the advocacy of a middle course both in interpretation and in action. The hermeneutical principles outlined in the beginning of the sermon focus on the role of reason in matters of religion. Characteristically, Donne presents a double instruction: a) that we are not bound to accept matters of religion without all reason, and b) that while the scriptures are the source of rational inference, they can lead us only so far, after which we must conclude in God’s will and pleasure. The “generall doctrine,” then, is “That reason is not to be excluded in religion, but yet to be tenderly and modestly pressed” (IV, 285). As in earlier sermons of 1622, Donne is careful to balance the claims of reason and faith in discussing controversial questions, particularly the question of why God should love men better than his own son, or why God should love me better than other men. The latter question is one way of framing the doctrine of predestination, a doctrine continually controverted in sermons, and which the Directions were 107

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Lake, “Lancelot Andrewes, John Buckeridge, and Avant-Garde Conformity,” 128. Lake observes that while Andrewes did not go as far as Buckeridge in making ceremonies necessary rather than indifferent, nonetheless “his defence of outward reverence and uniformity in general and of ceremonies such as kneeling in particular transcended the claim that they represented a legitimate use of a lawful authority over things in themselves indifferent” (p. 130). Haskin comments that opening LXXX Sermons (in 1640) with this sermon “may actually have made it attractive to the opponents of Archbishop Laud.” The sermon’s “climactic pronouncement against the prospect of reconciliation between the Protestant Church of England and the Church of Rome” could have served to recommend Donne even to the newly dominant Puritan forces in the Church (“Donne and the Cultural Contradictions of Christmas,” 142). Ibid., p. 152.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis intended to suppress. What marks Donne’s approach is his coupling of this question with the unusual observation that God’s grace, at least to human perception, manifests a greater love for men than for his son. This alone is sufficient to mark out for Donne’s audience the mysterious love of God, and to allow it to remain mysterious, a move consistent with Donne’s reluctance to engage in dispute on an issue he believed was beyond human understanding. The first question of the two, then, prepares the way for toleration of the possibility that the second question, the question of election, might also be a mystery, and more important, that it might also be the wrong question. Donne’s discussion of Christ as the person who redeems leads him into topical applications that also distinguish his pulpit oratory from Andrewes’s. The overflowing sin that he describes and which Christ redeems records the predominance of suspicion, misinterpretation, and contention in religious matters, even pointing to its political consequences. The sinful eye conspires in the defamation of others, the sinful ear concurs in plots to supplant and destroy others, and the sinful tongue speaks freely and seditiously against church and state government (IV, 286). Christ, whose calling is to redeem us from this overflowing sin, combines the zeal of contention and liberty with knowledge, the truth of an upright conscience with discretion. More important, as Donne is here concerned to emphasize, he involves himself in powerful administration of his church, which Donne compares to the Exchequer where the coin new-minted in Mary’s womb is issued. The church is that place “where his merits should be applied to the discharge of particular consciences” (IV, 288). Exegesis of the text that Christ made peace through the blood of his cross leads Donne into a discussion of war and peace that also resonates topically in the atmosphere of political dissatisfaction with James’s foreign policy and his domestic efforts to curb controversy in the pulpit. The irony of making peace through blood is duly noted by Donne, as is the unusual fact that this war does not have two sides: God, the Devil, and we are all in the same army bent on our destruction. Donne goes on to say that a man must not think himself included in this peace because he feels no effects of this war. The time of apparent truce, he says, is simply an imaginary security. “So any State may be abused with a false peace present, or with a fruitless expectation of a future peace” (IV, 293). Whether Donne’s hearers would have interpreted these comments as critical, even contemptuous, of James’s hopes for a universal peace in Christendom through a marriage alliance between his son and the Infanta of England’s mortal enemy, Spain, is difficult to determine. However, this discussion of blood as the way to peace, and ultimately to reconciliation with God, this stress on Christ’s passion rather than on his birth and Incarnation, is one that his audience might have found strangely incongruent with the day’s celebration. Perhaps, as Haskin has argued, Donne’s Jacobean audience, not burdened with sugary nineteenth-century reinventions of Christmas, would have found Donne’s sermon all the more thought-provoking and therefore more suitable to the times than a discourse stressing the happy birth of the infant king, which we have come to associate with celebrations of Christmas.110 The final section of Donne’s sermon returns to the application of the peace earned by Christ’s death in the church. Once again, Donne takes up the theme of

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Ibid., pp. 151–2.

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The Directions and the Crisis of Censorship reconciliation in language that shows the necessary rhetorical accommodation of all viewpoints with those of the official church, “one body in the Communion of Saints” (IV, 300). Andrewes’s sermon for the day makes no such accommodation. In fact, his detached, faintly satiric references to “conventicles,” his uncompromising focus on the particular demands of ceremonial worship, the coldness of his communion, are in marked contrast to the tenderness and modesty that Donne urges in his sermon. For Donne, “There is a heavenly zeale, but if it be not reconciled to discretion, there is a heavenly purity, but if it be not reconciled to the bearing of one another’s infirmities, there is a heavenly liberty, but if it be not reconciled to a care, for the prevention of scandal, All things in our heaven, and our earth are not reconciled in Christ” (IV, 301). But even in this broadly tolerant appeal for an end to religious controversy, Donne warns against going too far, against trying to reconcile things in heaven and earth with hell. There is no mixing of God and Belial, true religion with false. Donne’s distinction at this point is crucial to an understanding of how he conceived the proper relations with papists. He says, first of all, that for the adhering of persons born within the Church of Rome to the Church of Rome our law says nothing to them if they come. That is, papists born within the Church of Rome are welcome, by law, to the Church of England. But for reconciling to the Church of Rome by persons born within the allegiance of the king, or for persuading of men to be so reconciled, “our law hath called by an infamous and Capitall name of Treason, and yet every Tavern and ordinary is full of such Traitors” (IV, 301). Donne ends the sermon with an ironic prayer for reconciliation within and between papist adversaries (Dominican and Jesuit, French and Italian, Jesuits and secular priests), and in so doing points to the contradictions that make their call for other churches to reconcile with them incongruous. Though Potter and Simpson dismiss this sermon in one line as “not particularly noteworthy” (IV, 38), it is important for the light it sheds on Donne’s doctrinal and political concerns in late 1622, and in particular for the contrast it provides with Andrewes’s Christmas sermon of the same year. Though Donne had defended James’s Directions, he finds means, nonetheless, to dismiss absolutely the possibility of reconciliation between Reformed and papist religions. Equally, he finds occasion to use the example of Christ to argue that the ordinary means for religion in England is the established church and to state unequivocally that those who seek an excessive liberty and purity, and whose zeal is not tempered with discretion, risk alienating themselves from the general reconciliation manifested in Donne’s text for the day. Donne’s increasing political visibility and the “middle nature” of his doctrinal and rhetorical positions attest to his fitness for the task of “professional” preacher defending James’s Directions. Of the seven sermons preached at Paul’s Cross from 4 August to 5 November 1622, in fact, four are directly connected to Donne.111 From one perspective, these sermons mark his ascendancy as a model of pulpit leadership. And yet, despite this, 1622 did not mark a decisive upward turn in Donne’s career. In fact, these months might be viewed as a turning point for Donne in a different direction. Contemporary reports, and Donne’s comments, suggest that the 15 September performance was as much a political test as a

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The two sermons not by Donne are those by Daniel Donne and Petley cited above.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis public honour. Donne himself felt constrained by the occasion, and preached more equivocal sermons when left to his “liberty,” especially when measured against the more conventional sermons of Robert Willan and others. Certainly, after 5 November, we find no more special commissions for Donne in the pulpit. Nor is Donne promoted either by James or by Charles to the bishopric that the “absolutist” reading of his politics predicts. By selecting Donne to defend his Directions, James, as some have suggested, showed political astuteness in offering the people a preacher both doctrinally and rhetorically satisfying. It is also possible that James was trying to rein Donne into public service rather than allowing him to maintain independent views, or, more dangerously, a powerful silence. James was always aware of the importance of co-opting powerful preachers to serve his own ends. By making John Preston the prince’s chaplain, James had already shown his acuity, depriving the puritans of Preston while ensuring that he did not function as a court preacher. A similar case might be made for James’s selection of Donne. It seems clear, however, that following the November 1622 sermon, Donne was less sought after, less eager, perhaps, to engage in pulpit controversy. Whatever the reasons, the last months of 1622 mark the limits of Donne’s professional ambitions, and challenge the modern image of Donne as royal spokesman.

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Chapter 5 “WISE AS SERPENTS, AND INNOCENT AS DOVES”: ZEAL AND DISCRETION IN THE PULPIT, 1623–5

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LTHOUGH fewer sermons were challenged following the Directions, those that survive bear all the marks of anxiety, tension, and pressure that the Directions had identified. To begin with, the Directions had proscribed virulent anti-papism, and yet anti-papist rhetoric continued to dominate the pulpit. What had changed were the uses to which this rhetoric was put, the particular aspects of Roman iniquity that were stressed, and the polarizing effect this rhetoric produced within the church. While the Directions had sought to contain the divisive effects of controversy (by forbidding personal attacks, labeling, and controversy), extant sermons suggest that it had entirely the opposite effect. “Puritan” and “Arminian” emerged as wellunderstood enemies, while the perceived crisis of religion in England (mirroring the advance of counter-Reformation forces on the continent) was exacerbated by political events in both places. Ongoing negotiations for a Spanish match for Charles, pressure to intervene in the Thirty Years War on the continent, and sectarian threats from the margins of the established church provoked intense public debate. Whereas in the period immediately preceding the Directions, very few controversial sermons had been published, the period following shows an increase in controversial topical application of scriptural texts. And where the Directions had sought to prevent discussion of matters of state, preachers in the late Jacobean years commented obsessively – if more obliquely – on questions of authority and jurisdiction, the duties of their callings, and the application of their texts to present crises, including war and peace, the miseries of continental co-religionists, and the religious and political leadership of their ailing monarch. To the topical matters handled in sermons before the Directions were added a large number of sermons dealing with marriage. This chapter surveys late Jacobean sermons in preparation for a methodological shift in the remaining chapters to “moments of crisis” in the English church. Five such flashpoints will be spotlighted: the prince’s departure for Spain in early 1623; his return in October 1623; the parliamentary session of early 1624; completion of negotiations for a French match in late 1624; and the death of James and accession of Charles in the first half of 1625. Each of these moments will provide a lens for viewing the battle for the public sphere conducted in the pulpit. And each will demonstrate the degree to which controversial questions of doctrine moved outward from the private sphere of conscience into a public institutional domain. The fault lines observed will not yield their full cataclysmic potential in these years, but they will make its emergence in the 1630s more understandable. And what of John Donne? Having delivered the sermon both defending the king’s Directions and modeling the discretion required from preachers, he 139

John Donne and Conformity in Crisis preached substantially fewer sermons in these years.1 In part, this was due to his sickness in late 1623, in part, to his dislike of pulpit controversy. Nonetheless, extant materials from the last years of the Jacobean reign show Donne handling some of the most important political and religious issues of his day, culminating in his first sermon preached before Charles, Donne’s manifesto to the new reign, and his commentary on the old. The rest of this book is the story of increasing polarization of religion (as of politics) and the efforts of many clergymen, but especially Donne, to construct a place of doctrinal consensus and communal devotional practice within an explicitly national church. The English church he imagines is one disposed to embrace all but the most recalcitrant separatists – whether papist or sectarian – by engaging in dialogue among its own members and also with international reformed churches. But it is a church that achieves unity through orderly processes of doctrinal debate, and through conformity to those means of salvation available in the English national context. INTERPRETATION AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE As players in the religious debates vied for interpretive control of their common authority – scriptures – Donne continues his unusual practice of emphasizing that his “interpretations” of controversial religious matters are merely interpretations. Donne is not alone in arguing that the fundamental controversy with papists is not, ultimately, over substantive doctrinal issues, but over corrupt interpretive practices. In a sermon preached 26 October 1623, Thomas Adams offers a clear indictment of Romish interpretive practices. The way of Rome, he says, is to pick darkness out of the sun, particularly in its interpretation of parables, which can be forced to warrant conclusions never intended. As Adams explains “A Parable is not like a Looking-glasse, to represent all formes and faces: but a well drawn Picture, to demonstrate that person whereof it is a counterfeit.”2 Richard Sheldon, well-versed in papist habits of thought and dedicated to exposing their interpretive abuses, lays down as his first rule that “the sacred Scriptures are euer literally, according to their plain sense, to bee vnderstood and interpreted . . . when-as the literall and plaine sense of the same is neither against faith nor good manners, nor seemeth to affirm any absurdity or impossibility.”3 Donne, of course, aware of the controversial 1

2 3

Despite Donne’s prominence in preaching in the last half of 1622, there is surprisingly little published evidence on which to evaluate his religious preoccupations from the beginning of 1623 until Easter 1624. We have an uncertainly dated Candlemas Day sermon for 1622/3 and two tentatively dated sermons in the first half of 1623. We also have the report of a sermon preached to the Sergeants Inn in the fall of 1623. Certainly dated sermons survive for the First Friday in Lent, Easter Sunday 1623, and Ascension Day 1623 (dedicating the Lincoln’s Inn Chapel). Beginning at Easter 1624, the record is fuller. Following the Easter sermon are three sermons preached at St. Dunstan’s-in-theWest in April and May 1624, a sermon preached to the Earl of Exeter in June 1624, and a Christmas 1624 sermon. We then have a sermon preached on New Year’s Day, 1624/5 at St. Dunstan’s, a sermon on the feast of the conversion of St. Paul of that year, a Whitehall sermon in March 1624/5, and Donne’s first sermon preached to King Charles, 3 April 1625. The Barren Tree, p. 4. Christ, on His Throne, p. 7. Sheldon’s sermons can be characterized, in fact, by the degree to which they are obsessed with correcting papist distortions in exegesis. In A Sermon Preached at Pavles Crosse, however, Sheldon locates the distortion in Romish fear of “the true mysticall sense of this place” and their refuge in an overly literal interpretation of the beast that the followers of Antichrist are predicted to follow (pp. 8–9).

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Zeal and Discretion in the Pulpit, 1623–5 abuses of other levels of exposition, endorses the unforced literal sense. In part, this preference for the literal is a reaction against the partisan interpretations associated with religious polemic, especially Catholic, and in part a reaction against the Catholic reliance on mysteries and miracles as the ground of faith. Many sermons from this period across the entire religious spectrum focus their anti-Catholicism on the errors caused when private interpretations oppose the scope of the whole scriptures. All heresies, Thomas Scott maintains, are the labour of public persons interpreting privately: “Man must not seeke a fortification in Scripture for his opinion: but he must be carefull to raise his opinion and Iudgement, out of the Scripture, euidently confirmed & explaned by it selfe, and by conference and coherence of the same with it selfe; and this is publique interpretation” (p. 18). Tied to this public interpretation was a principle that Donne also followed: that scripture interprets scripture, and that what distinguishes preaching from polemic is rigorous cross-referencing. That said, the partiality Scott and Sheldon attribute primarily to papists, making them misinterpreters by definition, is often evident in the bias of their own re-interpretations. This does not seem to be as true of Donne, who is remarkably impartial – although not thereby disinterested – in his acceptance of interpretive authorities. Donne carries forward in his sermons of 1623–5 the interpretive concerns that had emerged before the Directions. In them he develops a principled interpretive practice, based on a clear distinction between fundamental and indifferent matters, and a broad toleration for other interpretations founded on a literal unforced sense, and corroborated by supporting scriptural texts. Donne considers the nature of biblical interpretation, and particularly the primacy of the literal sense, in his sermon for Easter 1624. He begins this sermon on Apocalypse 20:64 by saying that whereas in Genesis there is danger in departing from the letter, in this book there is danger in adhering too closely to it. “The literall sense is alwayes to be preserved; but the literall sense is not alwayes to be discerned,” he explains, concluding that the literal sense is “the principall intention of the Holy Ghost,” but an intention that might be to express things figuratively. In this sermon, Donne’s deliberate complication of the literal sense – the sense that is the default interpretation of any biblical text in the Church of England – supports a complex and multiple interpretation that neither destroys the literal sense nor violates the analogy of faith. Working from the principle that “it is not evident in such figurative speeches, which is the literall, that is, the principall intention of the Holy Ghost” (VI, 63) allows Donne to consider four possible interpretations of this text, and particularly the words “first resurrection.” The “meridionall brightnesse” with which Donne concludes the sermon is midway between the “dawning” of the merely “morall” man (who refers all to nature), and the “twylight” of the “godly” man (who refers all to God), both of whom are straining for the light that is mediated to men only through Christ’s atonement. It is the “glorious noon” of the Christian man who “pretend[s] to no spirituall, no temporall blessing, but for, and by, and through, and in our only Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus” (VI, 80). And it is achieved through a flexible interpretation of the “literal sense” that negotiates between positions that diminish the centrality of Christ’s atonement – the first resurrection.

4

“Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first Resurrection.”

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis For Donne, all preaching “interprets” the strictly literal sense of Scriptures, a point consonant with a Calvinist emphasis on the word “preached” as efficacious.5 As Donne says “He is a perverse servant, that will receive no commandment, except he have it immediately from his Masters mouth; so is he too, that pretendeth to rest so wholly in the Word of God, the Scriptures, as that he seeks no interpretation, no exposition, no preaching” (VI, 102). In the same sermon, Donne stresses the circumstantial nature of interpretation: “Amongst drunkards, a sober man is a spy upon them; Amongst blasphemers, a prayer is a libell against them; And amongst dissolute and luxurious persons, a chast man is a Bridewell, his person, his presence is a house of Correction” (VI, 106). In foregrounding issues of interpretation, Donne encourages his hearers to interpret with glasses that can correct “squint-eyed” perspectives. Donne’s Gunpowder Plot anniversary sermon for 1622, as we have seen, presents a parallel application of his text to both good and bad kings as a problem of interpretation for his audience. Similarly, Donne’s Christmas 1624 sermon instructs his hearers how to interpret “signs” such as the actions of princes. However, his advice is double-edged; on the one hand, Donne cautions his hearers to “look upon the faults of Princes, with the spectacles of obedience, and reverence, to their place, and persons; little and dark spectacles, and so their faults, and errors are to appeare little, and excusable to them.” On the other hand, Donne compensates for the inadequacy of this human perspective by reminding his hearers that their diminution of the king’s faults will be balanced by a magnification in God’s perspective glass. Through this glass, God looks not only upon the harm that kings do at home, but also upon the harm they occasion abroad, “and through that spectacle, the faults of Princes, in Gods eye, are multiplyed, farre above those of private men” (VI, 172). Donne uses the occasion to bring both the spectacles of obedience and the spectacles of judgment into focus. The complexity of the process of perceptual correction is Donne’s signature move in connecting the subjectivity of a discourse of perspective to a broader standard of public religious accountability. This fundamentally casuistical application of general laws to particular cases governs interpretation in a sermon preached on the conversion of St. Paul. Here, Donne asks his hearers to apply Saul’s blindness, paradoxically achieved when he was struck by light, to their own cases. Donne defines this blindness by what it is not: not a “darknesse, a dimnesse, a stupidity in the understanding . . . not a lazy affectation of ignorance,” but “a sober and temperate abstinence from the immoderate study, and curious knowledges of this world” (VI, 215). Characteristically, Donne’s adjectives indicate the degrees by which good becomes evil. The fault is not in study and knowledge, but in “immoderate” study and “curious” knowledges. These degrees can transform a “holy simplicity” into a “stupidity” (VI, 215), and in Donne’s moral universe the differences between these are profound. Donne’s concern to mediate between extreme responses can be discerned in his characteristic tendency to doubt the exemplary value of those cases that, whatever other merit they possess, are too singular to be generally applicable. He demonstrates that such extreme cases are special, and that, as such, their actions cannot 5

Donne’s sermons argue for a quasi-sacramental understanding of the word preached, as in his reference to “the Word preached” as “the Sacrament of faith” (V, 262), or his repeated pairing of sermons and sacraments (e.g. IX, 367, X, 138).

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Zeal and Discretion in the Pulpit, 1623–5 evoke a general rule.6 One example to which Donne returns often is the repentant thief on the cross. Donne’s point seems to be that although God can and sometimes does use the singular example of such men to the profit of sinners, his hearers must be careful how they apply the thief ’s example to their particular circumstances. To his congregation at St. Dunstan’s he laments that “it is but a hard case, when a Theife must guide us and be our example” (VI, 203), and he warns his hearers at St. Paul’s that they must not presume upon God’s mercy by the examples of either Paul (who was converted suddenly) or the thief (who was converted finally). He explains: “One instance to the contrary destroys any peremptory Rule, no man must say, God never doth it; He did it to Saul here, He did it to the Thiefe upon the Crosse. But to that presumptuous sinner, who sins on, because God shewed mercy to One at last, we must say, a miserable Comforter is that Rule, that affords but one example” (VI, 208). In fact, deferring repentance upon confidence of such examples deludes their souls, because the exception may prove not to have been an example at all: “The Theife was not converted at last, but at first; As soone as God afforded him any Call, he came. . . . And to how many Cals hast thou stopped thine eares, that deferrest thy repentance?” (VI, 208). Even in considering a singularly good example (i.e. Christ), Donne recognizes that its very singularity renders it ineffective. We see this in a sermon on the text “Jesus Wept,” where Donne explains the difference between our affections and Christ’s by explaining that while we are dirty glasses that foul whatever enters us, Christ was a clean glass. And “as in a clean glasse, if water be stirred and troubled, though it may conceive a little light froth, yet it contracts no foulenesse in that clean glasse, the affections of Christ were moved, but so” (IV, 329); they did not decline towards “inordinateness.” Donne uses this analogy to caution his hearers that although Christ might exhibit vehement passion, they cannot imitate him in this respect because they have been infected by original sin, and so their passions, unlike Christ’s, are intemperate. He explains: “But then every Christian is not a Christ; and therefore as he that would fast forty dayes, as Christ did, might starve; and he that would whip Merchants out of the Temple, as Christ did, might be knockt downe in the Temple,” so we should recognize our infirmity and acknowledge that “it is not alwaies good to go too far, as some good men have gone before” (IV, 329). In his sermon dedicating the new chapel at Lincoln’s Inn where he considers reverence of worship, Donne comments on the inapplicability of the singular example of Christ to that topic, noting that “Christ slept in a storme; I dare not make that generall; let all doe so. Christ favoured himself in the Church; I dare not make that general neither: to make all places equall, or all persons equall in any place” (IV, 378). CALLINGS The institutional authority of preachers inhered in their claims to interpretive jurisdiction over scriptures, and in their willingness to bear public witness to their version of the true Church of England. The Directions had identified a hierarchy of authority, limiting controversial sermons to those above “the degree of a bishop, or dean (at the least).”7 Not surprisingly, then, sermons following the 6 7

See Masselink. Directions, p. 212.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis Directions expressed an increased concern with questions of authority and commission, partly in response to papist detractors, and partly in response to divergent notions of the preacher’s prerogatives and responsibilities. The reformed emphasis on preaching authorizes an urgent evangelical strain in public sermons that runs parallel to an equally urgent emphasis on order. A rousing sermon by John Traske illustrates many of the challenges facing preachers helping worshippers discover their election in “these frozen and benummed times” (sig. A3v). Traske preaches on Luke 4:32 (“For his word was with power”), employing the language of reformed Calvinist theology and the thematic and ideological concern with the word preached to argue the need in his own times for powerful preaching. Much of the sermon is devoted to the effects of powerful preaching, first on the reprobate, but finally on the elect. Of the reprobate, Traske says “they may be conuicted, terrified, humbled in some measure, restrained, reformed, and delighted by the power of the word” but, in the end, they cannot “set one foote in conuersion” (p. 32). So, Traske says, we should not think it strange that even where the word is powerfully preached, some are so “benummed that they euen fall asleepe ordinarily at the Preaching of the same; but also (to such as vnderstand) become apparantly more ignorant and sottish, more peruerse and peeuish” (p. 37). To the elect, the word has the power to open the eyes, to thoroughly wound sinners’ hearts, to break hard and stony hearts, to change men’s minds and affections, and to confirm the converted; feeling of these is the test for election: “by these thou mayest bee able to conclude with comfort, that thou art in the true way to eternall life, and without doubt ordained to euerlasting happinesse” (p. 44). Traske ends with an exhortation not to resist God’s powerful preachers: “It is hard kicking against the prickes, dangerous stumbling at this stone, fearefull falling onto his rocke; Men may rage at, and persecute such powerfull Preachers, but the word in their mouthes, is like fire, to consume all that dare touch them for hurt” (pp. 58–9). In this strong evangelical defence of the preacher’s calling, we hear a note that will be sounded increasingly by preachers, “meat” to add to the catechetical “milk” of the orderly Sunday afternoon exercises enjoined by the Directions. A sermon by William Jemmatt addresses itself to this topic of spiritual warfare, the dangers of security, and the duty of the preacher to sound as a trumpet to God’s people.8 Although preached as a sermon, the subject is handled in a lengthy treatise on the need to resist the “Grand Lier,” Satan (p. 103), rather than concentrating on worldly battles. At the same time, the sermon calls for resistance to the “strange imposition of new names” (p. 103) by which he calls vices virtue: “what now adayes is forwardnesse in religion accounted, but foolish giddinesse? And what luke-warme-nesse, but discreet moderation?,” he asks (p. 102). This lesson of resistance unfolds inexorably for almost three hundred pages before Jemmatt lays aside his trumpet. Preaching openly and trumpeting against dangerous security, however, come with their attendant dangers; nor is it likely that preachers such as Traske and Jemmatt would have persuaded any but the converted. In the years following the Directions, some preachers balance the calls for zealous denunciation of sin with emphasis on discretion, risking Jemmatt’s charge of “luke-warmnesse” but answering Featley’s call for this active virtue. Gilbert Primerose frames his discussion of 8

Jemmatt’s text is James 4:7: “Resist the deuill, and he will flie from you.”

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Zeal and Discretion in the Pulpit, 1623–5 the preacher’s vocation in these terms, advocating a course between timorousness and rashness.9 Primerose counsels “holy prudence” as the rule of the righteous man’s actions, and spends an entire sermon distinguishing between martyrs and fools. However, Primerose’s counsel of discretion does not admit cowardly motives. When the time comes to profess God’s word and preach it, worldly prudence must not fly from truth. The example to emulate is that of Amos who defied the king to obey God’s command that he prophesy; the negative example is Jonah who fled to Tarshish, a heinous fault in a prophet. In fact, however, the Bible shows many examples of men who fled to save their lives, culminating in the example of Christ as one who escaped unnecessary dangers, and Paul, who enacted a subtle yet lawful policy when he set the Pharisees against the Saducees and so escaped them. This discreet flight from worldly persecution is the highest expression of zeal, for “he that fleeth, leaving his goods and all that he hath among his enemies, forsaking his friends for Christs sake, seeking with a thousand incommodities, libertie of conscience among an unknowne people, hath a most heavy cross upon his shoulders, and not onely denyeth not Christ, but maketh knowne to all men his faith in him, his love to him, his zeale for him” (p. 198). Embedded in the religious persecution of continental co-religionists, of which Primerose had direct experience, this advice is not merely theoretical.10 Like Primerose, Donne characterizes all callings as requiring discretion. His own sermons and his professional conduct within the church are animated by his understanding of how these two forces energize and qualify one another. Donne outlines the duties of both preachers and congregations in three 1624 sermons preached before his new congregation at St. Dunstan’s-in-the-West.11 However, Donne’s celebration of the “calling” of St. Paul on the feast of his conversion in 1625 allows Donne to explain how to recognize and interpret God’s voice, a skill required in all callings. If we hear only “emergent contingencies,” “naturall accidents,” and “casuall occurrences” (VI, 217), we hear the noise of God’s judgments but not his voice. And if we hear the prince and the church, without Christ, we still do not hear a voice: “Princes are Gods Trumpet, and the Church is Gods Organ, but Christ Jesus is his voyce.” Characteristically, Donne challenges his hearers to go beyond the emergent, temporal interpretations of either church or state, to hear the living voice of the living word. Only in this way, by applying the scriptures specifically to themselves, can his congregation be said to hear and to turn to God, as Saul did in his conversion. In the same sermon, Donne turns to another point that precipitated the Directions: the naming of particular persons. Donne’s intention, however, is not to excoriate those who “name” others, but to depict a way of “naming” appropriate to sermons: the application of biblical names to the congregation’s sins. Here, Donne castigates the obduration of those who are “sermon-proofe” and refuse to accept judgments denounced upon them simply because they are not named “literally.” All men are Simon Magus, Gehazi, Cain, Zaccheus, Dinah and other sinners if the circumstances apply, Donne says, and there would be no need of 9 10

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The Righteous Mans Evils. Discretion is also the subject of two sermons by Scull on the preacher’s duty to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Matthew 10:16, “Behold, I send you as Sheepe in the midst of Wolves: be ye therefore wise as Serpents, and innocent as Doves.” See Chapter 8, below.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis naming if his hearers learned to apply the whole bible to themselves. Donne defines the minister’s calling here almost entirely in terms of application, the connection between the minister’s duty to “call” his hearers and their “naming” providing one of Donne’s most thorough meditations on the transforming power of God’s word (from Saul to Paul) preached to the congregation. ANTI-PAPISM AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE Despite the injunctions in the Directions against vehement anti-papism, particularly in sermons that personalized doctrinal differences, many sermons from both sides of the polemical divide were published in the last years of James’s reign as preachers competed for interpretive control of scriptures. The resulting power would determine just what kind of anti-papal (or post-Reformation) institution the English church would become. Cogswell’s argument that the tradition of vituperative anti-papal polemic could not thrive until the “blessed revolution” of 1624–5 when war with Spain was once more on the political agenda needs to be measured against the anti-papist commentary that was disseminated during this period. What exactly made a piece too “tart”? Printed sermons were careful to publish disclaimers and to direct their readers to their “intended” message, but, these disclaimers notwithstanding, the polemical wars that filled the pulpits and occasioned the Directions were not materially reduced, and, in fact, were exacerbated by the threat of censorship. One sign of the increasingly divisive rhetoric is the application of controversial labels to opponents. James’s own published rhetoric had cast papist and puritans (or, more accurately, recusants and non-conforming puritans) as polar opposites in order to separate extremists from the majority of conforming members of the Church of England. It was not uncommon for preachers of all persuasions to remind their congregations that such powerful names should not be applied lightly, evidence, if any were needed, that labels were being contentiously applied, and that the publicity battle was as important to win as the doctrinal one.12 Preachers along the whole religious spectrum continued their anti-Catholic campaign following the Directions. Such a rhetorical perspective was entirely common, as Edward Chaloner indicated in a sermon considering Rome as mystical Babylon.13 However, while we are accustomed to thinking of papists in the 1620s as “the common enemy,” a monolithic, identifiably coherent entity with headquarters in Rome and Spain and tentacles in recusant homes and outwardly conformist church members, contemporaries distinguished between varieties of papists, at least some of whom were the intended audience for their sermons. Moreover, the Church of England did not take a unified approach to papists. While many puritans and evangelical Calvinists sought mainly to vilify Catholics and to shun their influence, other preachers – some Calvinists, some proto-Laudian conformists, some

12

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Questier and Lake have developed a body of material that argues for an emerging public sphere in which conflict between protestants and Catholics was fought, in part, for propaganda purposes, to gain control of public opinion and the political power it was beginning to wield. See, in particular, “Puritans, Papists, and the ‘Public Sphere’ ” and The Antichrist’s Lewd Hat. Babel, or the Confusion of Languages, in Sixe Sermons, p. 52. Chaloner ends his sermon abruptly, tired of pursuing the “Common Aduersarie.”

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Zeal and Discretion in the Pulpit, 1623–5 anti-Calvinists – sought to pare away the corrupt extremes (represented by Jesuits) and to reclaim weaker, more confused, but essentially loyal, Catholics. As the work of Questier, in particular, has shown, the ecclesiastical establishment under Archbishop Abbot regularly employed converts from Catholicism for polemical purposes, including direct appeals to English Catholics.14 Sheldon, one of these zealous converts from Catholicism, distinguishes papists into three groups: atheists or semi-atheists; zealous papists but of wicked lives; and zealous papists but of more honest conversations and lives (p. 48). This third sort he calls the “more discreet Papist” (p. 48) who endeavours to believe the secrets of popish doctrine but is perplexed that he or she cannot. Both this kind of papist as well as mongrel “popishProtestants” comprise the intended audience of his sermon, he says (sig. A3r).15 Donne, himself a convert from Catholicism and one of Abbot’s circle, is less crude, certainly, in his divisions and labels, but often addresses Catholics in his congregation directly, including prominent and influential Catholics such as Queen Anne.16 Straightforwardly old-fashioned anti-papist sermons continued to be preached, particularly by establishment figures of the generation of Gataker, Prideaux, and Hall. Romish error regarding the doctrine of merit is the subject of a sermon by Gataker,17 a doctrine so “absurd and even sottish” (p. 32) that some of Rome’s chief champions seek to qualify it, “as Apothecaries doe poisons” (p. 32), and even flatly to deny it. Quoting Catholic expositors against themselves becomes Gataker’s chosen method of argument, primarily to support his contention that contemporary Catholics use the word “merit” differently from the ancients and their Catholic ancestors (pp. 32–54). Inter-Catholic squabbling allows Gataker to characterize these expositors as “sometime ashamed” of their doctrine, to the point of denying it, and to revel in the outright contradictions in which their arguments catch them. 14 15

16

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“John Gee.” Sheldon addresses hearers who are both “Papist-Protestant, that is, more Papist than Protestant; or a Protestant-Papist, that is, more Christian than Papist, yet in part popish” (sig. A3r). To either of these, he admits, his interpretation will be “altogether incredible,” until they peruse it impartially. As preparations for the parliamentary session of 1624 intensified, John Squire, vicar of St. Leonard in Shoreditch, delivered a sermon at Paul’s Cross directed specifically to “moderate Romish Catholike[s], and the vnsetled English Protestant,” on the issue of the worship of images (sig. A2v). Squire’s sermon establishes a mixed audience of Catholics and Protestants, distinguishes obstinate from malleable Catholics, and indicates, if we needed proof, how careful we should be to listen for the Catholic as well as the Reformed audience in sermons. Clearly, Squire believed that the antiCatholic agenda of the parliament licensed this open and thorough attack on the root evil of the Romish Church: idolatry. Moreover, the sermon indicates that the strategy with “vnsetled” members of the congregation was more likely to be hard-hitting anti-Catholic rhetoric than reasonable refutations of error or sophisticated intellectual distinctions. In fact, the bulk of this sermon turns on the plainness of his text against graven images, and against the “pretie colours of their nice Distinctions” (p. 43) that allows sophistical Catholics to justify their idolatry. The sermon addresses both “resolute” and “moderate” Catholics (p. 46). To the first, Squire directs his wish that, although they cannot be persuaded to give up their idolatry they, at least, would not hate Protestants. “Surely those Catholikes doe not well in hating vs, who are Gods Images because wee hate Idols, which are their Images” (p. 47). By a series of logical contortions, puns, and variations on the word “image” Squire connects image worship to the Gunpowder Plot, in the end asking nothing more than that they “abate, abate, as yee are men, abate this inhumane crueltie” (p. 48). To the milder Catholics, Squire urges a careful rereading of scripture to try their consciences by God’s words. Finally, Squire exhorts fellow-members of the Protestant congregation to shun images by invoking the threat of a visitation of the Turk on the nation that persists in idolatry. McCullough, “Preaching to a Court Papist?”; Shami, “Politics of Quotation,” pp. 401–3; Shami, “Anti-Catholicism,” p. 161. Jacobs Thankfvlnesse To God.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis In the end, Gataker’s point – that the doctrine is absurd – stands entirely on the strength of his intimate knowledge of Catholic controversial divinity. As his doctrinal enemies hang themselves, the auditors become spectators in this entertainment. Adoniram Byfield offers papists as the consummate negative example for the times revealing, as he does, just how splenetic anti-papist vitriol could be.18 A more militant anti-papist sermon urging the co-operation of preacher, magistrate, and believer in a holy war against Romish corruption was preached 19 June 1623 to the Gentlemen of the Artillery Garden by the puritan Thomas Sutton.19 Preaching on 1 Timothy 6:12, Sutton establishes spiritual warfare as the primary subject of his sermon: “Think neither of fleeing away, nor deferring the battell, nor of any treaty of peace, nor of any other thing but fighting” (sig. B4r). In fact “The Life of a Christian man is nothing but the ordering of a maine batell against the great and inuincible Armado of rebellious sinne” (sig. Cv). This call to arms indicates how a particular form of anti-Spanish anti-papism reached its zenith. Peace without religion will not last long, Sutton warns, and wonders “how wee sleep so quietly when our danger is so neer. It may bee, not from any forain Nation. What then? Yet from our alone sinne, the most secret plots, and treasonable conspiracies” (sig. Dr). More than a personal call to spiritual arms, the sermon is an effort to rouse the congregation, in metaphors suited to their own callings, against the enemies of faith in England, and particularly papists. Every good member of Christ must turn soldier and become a defender of the faith, a locution that suggests that England’s “Defender of the Faith” is inadequate to his task. The polarizing effect of such militant anti-papist rhetoric is well illustrated by Thomas Ailesbury’s sermon paralleling pagan and papal Rome. Puritans as well as conforming Calvinists seemed prompted by the religious ambiguity of James’s ecclesiastical and foreign policies to inveigh in their sermons against religious moderates. Their uncompromisingly militant rhetoric charged those who deployed a rhetoric of moderation with weak religious principles and timeserving. By using the language of war, these preachers tried to enlist their hearers in a firmer public commitment to Reformed religious beliefs. Equally, they branded those – like Donne, one supposes – who refused to be radicalized with betraying the Reformation. Ailesbury’s sermon, even more than Sutton’s, adopts an emotional, melodramatic discourse of fear, and like those of the convert Sheldon, warns his audience against sacrificing to devils or coming within the smell of a false religion. Ailesbury’s aim in this uninspired sermon is to use the rhetorical strategy of guilt by association to discredit the Roman religion, and to warn of the dangers posed by its superstitious idolatry. He reveals that despite the obvious corruptions of the Roman religion, there exist “Ambi-dexters, and halters betwixt two opinions” (p. 15) who toy with its superstitions. Moreover, the dissensions they cause among the faithful further encourage the work of popery: “our discord is their musicke; and our ruine would be their glory: learne to defie Rome, and Hell. Come not within the pale or sent of her Idolatry” (p. 19). There is nothing subtle about Ailesbury’s sermon. The title lays out his intention, and he develops the pagan pedigree of Roman Catholicism relentlessly. Coming so immediately after the 18

19

Byfield writes the sermon for these “prevaricating times, wherein Papists doe so fearefully decline the Word written, and runne vnto Traditions” to justify their “Antichristian Idolatry, and Superstitions” (sig. A2v). Not surprisingly, “Antichrist the Pope” is set up for particular attention. “Fight the good Fight of Faith: Lay hold of eternall life.”

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Zeal and Discretion in the Pulpit, 1623–5 return from Spain of Charles, and in anticipation of a war with that country, the sermon expresses many of the anxieties that negotiations for a match had produced. ANTI-RHETORICS: CONTROVERSY OVER RELIGIOUS IDENTITY Ailesbury’s papists, “who breathe in Italianated aire, and touch the very pomell of the Chaire of pestilence” (p. 18), are still a largely foreign enemy, although they breed insidious “ciuill dissentions” (p. 19). However, many late Jacobean sermons identify homebred enemies, variously named. Increasingly, polemical labeling connects “Arminians” with papists and “separatists” with puritans, both sides aiming to identify the enemies of the English church with radicalism at the margins. Some divines closer to the centre use the papist-sectarian way of framing those outside the Church of England in part to include puritans and even church-papists within the English communion, and in part to tar internal enemies with the brush of universally acknowledged threats to the true church. Understandably, puritans were the most vocal against the abuses of labeling. While the Directions had specifically restricted excessive anti-papist rhetoric, it had not constrained anti-puritan attacks, except within the general prohibition against personal slanders. Gataker, for one, observes at Lincoln’s Inn that the conventional behaviour of a good Christian has been re-interpreted and re-named to discredit it:20 “a man who lives more strictly than the looser sort doe, though not so strictly neither as his Christian profession requireth” is termed “a Precisian, a Puritane” (p. 118). “If he be conuersant in Gods word, and diligent in frequenting the ministery of it; he is a Bible-bearer, and a gadder vp and downe after Sermons.” If he reproves others for swearing, he is superstitious and straightlaced. If he will not be drunk or frequent brothels or playhouses, he is unsociable and melancholy: “These and the like censures must a man make account to vndergoe, euen among Christians, if he be carefull of vpholding and maintaining his Christian profession” (p. 19). Following the Directions, however, anti-separatist polemic began to dominate mainstream sermons, suggesting that anti-puritanism was being reconfigured to stress its separatist momentum. Richard Preston, for one, preaches the positive doctrine that God must be sought in the church. The point is directed specifically against separatists who “do flie from our Congregations, as if they were cages of vncleannesse” and popish recusants who refuse to come near the Church, “because they see their Images, their breaden and wooden Gods in our Temples” (p. 23). Collapsing the two categories, James Rowlandson applies his text (Haggai 2:17) to those who refuse to come to church, be they recusant papists or schismatics. As his metaphors indicate, however, all separation from the church has a papist inflection. We bring homage to God only when forced by affliction, his “Purseuant” (p. 22), these “crosses” being more powerful amulets to save us from “the euill of ensuing dangers” than Crucifixes worne in our bosomes” (p. 27). Abraham Browne’s 24 February 1623 assize sermon at Winchester also takes up this anti-recusant rhetoric. His primary target is the recusancy of those who crave the “pretended sacrifice” (sig. A3r) of the Mass, which he terms a “new inuented Religion” (sig. A4v). However, his description of the Church of God and his focus 20

Noaes Obedience, in Two Sermons.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis on its visible ceremonial characteristics indicate that he is as opposed to puritan as to popish recusants. But unlike Rowlandson’s sermon, which had gestured towards even-handed criticism of all recusants before targeting papists specifically, Browne’s sermon equates the two impulses. Browne’s challenge to both types of recusant is to “come to a common Church, where there will be common Prayers, Supplications, Thanks-giving for the King and for the Kingdome . . . The God is common to both, the Mediator common to both, yea the Lords Supper as common to both, as Baptisme is common” (pp. 21–2). The entire sermon, in fact, attempts to minimize causes of separation, but, primarily, it refutes ceremonial inducements to return to Catholicism, and in so doing, supports more radical puritan calls for the abolition of offending ceremonies. Particular occasions provoked some conformist preachers to stress the public dangers of papist dissembling, compared by Isaac Bargrave in a sermon preached to the House of Commons to the traitors in the Trojan horse, supported in their Machiavellian plots by the divisions among Protestants, particularly puritans and Calvinists.21 George Andrewe’s sermons of 1624 continue this attack on papists, exacerbated by fears that church papists constitute a vast unreformed cancer within the church, but identifying sectarian wolves in sheep’s clothing as well.22 However, with the emergence of home-papists or “Arminians” as the target of zealous sermons, preachers found that religious polarization was being fed by the growing ceremonial debate. Having momentarily suppressed controversial sermons on disputed doctrinal matters, the Directions had the unforeseen consequence of elevating ceremonial and disciplinary debates to the status of fundamental rather than indifferent matters. In the final years of the Jacobean church, these debates became a divisive wedge between conformists on the margins of the English church. This is expressed most conventionally in a sermon by Prideaux preached at the dedication of St. James’s chapel in Exeter College, 5 October 1624.23 Prideaux lashes out at both papists and puritans, both of whom have abused places of worship. Romish idolatry is figured as “the very itch of Rome, which raised the scabbes that to this day cannot be cured” (pp. 17–18). This initial “scab” was followed by all the superstitious practices, the crosses, holy water, burning tapers, and set prayers that came to be required for the spiritual consecration to take place. Puritans come in for attack as well, as Prideaux observes that public prayers and sermons were never seen to interfere with one another until the “itching humours of some men of late would needs set them together by the eares” (p. 27). One need not exclude the other, he argues, for churches are places for both word and sacraments, neither “cages for idolatry” nor “conventicles for factions” (p. 28). The polarizing effect of ceremonial discourse can best be illustrated by comparing two sermons preached at the dedication of chapels: one by the puritan Jeremy Dyke, the other by John Donne. The comparison shows once more how Donne articulates, even if he does not resolve, the most deeply embedded conflicts within the English church. On 28 October 1622 Dyke preached a sermon dedicating the chapel of 21

22

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A Sermon Preached Before the Honourable Assembly, p. 35. Thomas Scott referred to the “Trojan Horse laden with trumperies” that England’s sins had allowed to enter (The proiector, sig. A3v). Andrewe’s assize sermon on 20 July 1624 distributes this anti-papist language across the “sundrie Sects” (p. 49) that are “Sheepes clothing outwardly, and wolvish Ravening inwardly” (p. 49), although his primary target remains the Roman church that clothes itself with the universal name of Catholic when it is but a particular church. A Sermon Preached on the Fift of October 1624.

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Zeal and Discretion in the Pulpit, 1623–5 Epping in Essex. Well aware of the papist associations of chapels and dedicatory ceremonies, Dyke defends his sermon by observing that the chapel proves that good works continue even after the days of popery, and by reminding his congregation that this very chapel has been “the ancient place of your lecture” (sig. A2v). Dyke further limits the idolatrous possibilities of the dedication ceremony by stressing the scriptural authority of his text (Exodus 20:24). The earthen nature of the altar allows Dyke to comment on the “contemptible and despicable” (p. 6) estates of preachers in England, and on the sobriety of the sacraments (which he contrasts with Rome’s pompous ceremonies). Christ himself was an altar of earth in the eyes of the world, Dyke adds, just a carpenter’s son in outward authority, but a preacher whose “meeke simplicity” surpassed the “greatnes and outward glory” of the scribes (p. 8). Dyke also uses the ceremonial occasion to stress the efficacy of preaching. In fact, Dyke demonstrates that the Church of England’s ceremonies, its altars of earth, are its sermons, a move that enables him to contrast Rome’s ceremonialism with the Church of England’s reliance on “the earthen Altar of plaine preaching!” (p. 11). In a sermon ostensibly delivered at the dedication of a physical place of worship – a chapel – the metaphor allows him to deflect the discussion to recommend sermons full of substance for edification rather than ostentatious performances full of “froth” (p. 13). On Ascension Day, 22 May, Donne preached a sermon to dedicate the new chapel at Lincoln’s Inn. Donne handles this potentially divisive topic with typical tact and charity not least by rejecting a controversial rhetoric in favour of what he identifies as a controversial premise, “the whole body and frame of the sermon” being opposed to the “pestilent calumny” that the reformers had “cast off all distinction of places” (IV, 362). In it, Donne defends church festivals and obedience to the forms of outward worship enjoined by the church, because all festivals “are elemented of Ceremonie, but they [are] animated with Moralitie” (IV, 366). The morality of festivals, moreover, inheres in their participation in orderly obedience to God’s commandment in general rather than in their celebration of any particular occasion. Festivals ordained by the church should be observed because they participate in this “paterne of Holy dayes” (IV, 367). The dedication of this chapel as a “house of Prayer” allows Donne to respond to the papist claim that Lutherans and Calvinists use churches as places for sermons and sacraments, but not for prayer. Furthermore, Donne argues for the appropriateness of ceremonies in consecrated places, showing how Jewish ceremonies (founded in nature) were not excluded in the primitive church simply because they were Jewish. Daringly, Donne equates the “mass” with the common prayer in use in England, suggesting that Pope Hyginus’s requirement of a mass to consecrate each chapel means “nothing, to this purpose, but the Service, the Common Prayer of the Church, then in use, there” (IV, 375). The authority of the Church in these ceremonial matters indifferent is skillfully illustrated by Christ’s obedience to the seemingly superfluous obligation of an anniversary feast: “Christ himselfe contemnes not, condemnes not, disputes not the institution of the Church. But as for matter of doctrine hee sends even his own Disciples, to them who sate in Moses Chayre, so for matter of Ceremony, he brings even his owne person, to the celebrating, to the authorizing, to the countenancing of the Institutions of the Church, and rests in that” (IV, 376). The sensitive nature of the occasion is nowhere better expressed than in Donne’s careful exposition of the lay and ecclesiastical dedications called for that day. 151

John Donne and Conformity in Crisis Donne is well aware that “Layetie” and “Clergie” are problematic terms of distinction in the Reformed churches, and that Luther and Calvin may have justly rejected the distinction “when so much was over-attributed to that Clergie” (IV, 370). Donne removes scandal from the names by merging both clergy and laity as equal participants in Christ’s blood, and as two callings giving “an equall interest in the joyes, and glory of heaven” (IV, 371). In this sermon, Donne continues his practice of redefining controversial terms – in this case “mass,”“clergy,”“layety,” – in an effort to reduce scandal and rid them of their current polemical baggage. One could argue that both Dyke and Donne are engaged in the battle for interpretive control over ceremonies in the Church of England. Dyke, by deflecting attention from altars to sermons, fulfills a twofold mandate consonant with his confessional beliefs: speaking out against idolatry, and emphasizing that sermons are the most important “ceremony” of the church. Donne, by showing the continuity between the ceremonial dedication of this particular chapel and the ceremonies of both the Jews and the Christians of the primitive church, fulfills his own mandate: renovating polemical terms for irenic reasons; stressing the continuities between Jews, the primitive church, and the Reformed churches; endorsing on moral grounds the duties of obedience to established churches; and emphasizing the importance of the “means” ordained by God for salvation. By claiming the church for prayer, preaching, and sacraments, moreover, Donne achieves a moral authority that Dyke only approximates, and indicates why such an inclusive view of the Church of England was ultimately successful in purging narrower, more exclusive, perspectives. As preachers tested the allowable theological and rhetorical boundaries of controversy, however, it is possible to discern a shift in approach, especially among the conformist middle ground. Increasingly, beleaguered Calvinists lashed out openly against an enemy not simply defined as papist but, more specifically, as Arminian. In a Paul’s Cross sermon preached 4 March 1623 but not published until 1627, Humphrey Sydenham, a royalist divine, but in apparent defiance of the Directions, preached an ostentatiously predestinarian sermon on Romans 9:18, specifically on Jacob and Esau as examples of election and reprobation, respectively.24 This is an amazing text considering the prohibition against preaching on such matters, especially since Sydenham affirms that the text holds some analogy with the times, “fraught with no lesse subtilty, than danger” (p. 1). In particular, Sydenham preaches against the Romish “Factors” (p. 17), who want to make grace universal, election general, and Christ’s death propitiatory for the whole world. He connects these agents with Pelagians and their most recent incarnation as Arminians who argue for foreseen faith as the cause of election (p. 6). Relentless in its reduction of all arguments to power, mystery, and arbitrary will, Sydenham’s sermon treads right into the forbidden field, naming his doctrinal enemies in direct contravention of the direction against personal slanders. The most recent product of the skirmish between the Calvinists and the Lutherans, he says, is the Arminian, “a Sect as poysonous as subtill, and will no less allure than betray a flexible and yeelding iudgment” (p. 18). He compares these Arminians to cunning fencers whose most heinous fault is in “making our election generall, manifolde, indefinite” and in having Christ’s death “no lesse meritorious, than propitiatory for the sinnes of the whole world” (p. 17). The sermon calls for more charity in the pulpit, calling 24

Tyacke suggests that the printing of the sermon may have been intended as a contribution to the controversy aroused by Richard Montagu’s writings (Anti-Calvinists, p. 262, n.68).

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Zeal and Discretion in the Pulpit, 1623–5 “vncharitablenesse” “that foule disease of the times, and vs” (p. 38), but is itself uncompromising in its negative labeling of all those questioning the absolute double predestination he espouses. The anti-Arminian colour of anti-papism in this period is also illustrated in Theodore Hering’s Panacea Christiana.25 Hering’s larger theme is God’s providential care of the elect, a theme suitable to the times when “The Church of God goes to wracke abroad: many miseries and calamities press vs at home, & our sins threaten more and worse” (sig. A2v). Taking as his text Romans 8:28, Hering demonstrates how the overruling providence of God sways all things, both good and evil, to the good of the elect, even Edward Coke who has tasted this “bitter Cup” (sig. A3r) and to whom the sermon is dedicated. The infallible certainty of salvation evinced by this text, however, is obstructed by sin. And here, despite his own bitter experience of censure and sharp tongues, Hering castigates the Arminians, calling them a “Viperous generation lately sprung vp; an Egge of that Cockatrice Pelagius, . . . newly hatched” (p. 73). Hering refutes the “Sowre leauen” of their doctrine by expounding the theory of the perseverance of the saints, supporting his statements with the standard biblical texts (i.e. whom God loves, he loves forever; in him there is no shadow of change, etc.). That he names the Arminians particularly illustrates his sense that the Pelagian–Arminian–Roman axis of interpretation is largely responsible for the confusion of the godly. The effect that Hering hopes to achieve in his sermon goes beyond theoretical knowledge to a “setled perswasion of the heart,” an “experimental” knowledge rather than a speculative (p. 22). God’s power, for Hering, is shown by his ability to accomplish this experimental knowledge without working through “means” (p. 35). Donne, of course, stresses exactly the opposite point, that while God can work without means, his ordinary way is to use them, and the most important crisis facing non-conforming Christians (recusants and schismatics) is their alienation from the means of salvation and devotion, the ordinances of the established church. Rather than “means,” however, Hering adopts a language of “signs” and “seals” so comprehensive that even the gifts of reprobates and things that are evil in themselves, such as Adam’s original sin, advance the good of the elect. In Hering’s providential universe there is nothing – either internal or external – that does not conduce to the good of the elect.26 Despite the Directions, preachers continue to use the rhetoric of papist and puritan, Arminian and sectarian, to marginalize extreme nonconformity and heterodoxy, while a number of sermons deliver “position papers” on disputed theological points. However, several sermons after the Directions take up the more complex task of articulating and working out the theological implications of the controversial doctrines proscribed therein. As we have observed, the Directions had specifically targeted controversial preaching on the deeper points of reformed doctrine, particularly predestination. 25

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“For wee know that all things worke together for good, to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose.” Although conventionally anti-papist, a sermon by S. B. draws an uneasy balance – however unintentionally – between man’s actions and God’s apparent reactions. God, he says, knows how to “knit secondary causes, one vnto another” (p. 20). And so “diligence” and “repose in Gods prouidence” (p. 18) may stand together, as the example of Abraham in the sacrifice of Isaac demonstrates (p. 22). What the sermon enacts, however, is the uneasy tension between faith and works, grace and free will, and the preacher’s genuine effort to disentangle the chain of cause-and-effect that describes the state of the elect.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis However, this restriction did not apply to those above the rank of dean, and so Bishop Arthur Lake’s 1623 Paul’s Cross sermon is instructive for its analysis of the title “God’s own elect” given to the Church.27 Taking as his text Luke 18:7,8, Lake uses the opportunity to define election. He does so in terms not of God’s eternal decree, but of its manifestation in the church where men are inwardly elected to Christ’s mystical body and outwardly elected to the church congregation. Men, he reminds his hearers, especially the more extreme puritans, cannot distinguish between those who participate in both or only one act of election, and so Lake defines the “church” in the widest and most charitable sense of both. Lest he be charged with “negative popery,” however, Lake balances his criticism of uncharitable puritans with a vitriolic attack on the church’s enemies, defined specifically as papists. The marks of the church’s enemies, he explains, are deceit and cruelty, never more remarkable than in “Popish Equiuocation, and that which they call their Holy Inquisition, the very markes of the Beast; and by them they make their nearest approaches to that Father of Lies, and that ancient Murderer; sure I am they haue cut the heart strings of all both Ciuill and Ecclesiasticall true Policie” (p. 535). Because prayer is a duty in this state of siege, Lake urges his hearers, once more, against the puritan objection to set prayers established by the church, to perform the acts of prayer at set times and thus to support the communion of saints (p. 538). Such prayer, he assures his hearers, does not, with Rome, lead to the invocation of saints (p. 538). While Lake is careful to preach against popish abuses of prayer, however, he is also careful to preach against those who think that their election exempts them from God’s service. In fact, defining the “elect” broadly, Lake claims that no prayers are acceptable to God except those that come from the elect (p. 539). Once more, in contradistinction to the papist view, Lake reminds his hearers that the efficacy of prayer is moral rather than physical: “God is not forced by vs against his will, but out of his good will he yieldeth vnto us, as parents vse to be ouercome by the petitions of their children” (p. 540). Lake ends his sermon by arguing for Christ’s “indifferencie of Iudgment” to counter the self-interested judgments of confessional rivals, here figured as puritans and papists: “it is too much precisenesse to dislike some things in our Church, because therein wee follow the Church of Rome, as if all principles of reason and Religion were dead in them: as it is too much malice in the Romanists to dislike many things because they come from vs, though otherwise they cannot denie them to be reasonable” (p. 546). And as if to perform what he has preached, Lake ends the sermon with an exemplary prayer.28 27

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“A Sermon Preached at Paul’s Crosse. Anno 1623,” in Sermons, pp. 531–47. “And shall not God avenge his owne elect which crie day and night unto him, though he beare long with them? I tell you that he will avenge them speedily: Neverthelesse, when the Sonne of man commeth, shall he find faith on earth?” Lake’s even-handed treatment of controversial divinity on the topic of prayer must be distinguished from the irenic protestations of a sermon by Richard Montagu. Himself accused of Arminian opinions in this period, Montagu expanded a sermon into a treatise against the popish doctrine of the invocation of saints (Immediate Addresse Vnto God Alone). Montagu attempts to show that he has long held orthodox opinions on this subject. Further, he defends himself against charges of promoting controversy when he says that “In Pulpits, and in popular Sermons, I nor like it in others, nor Practise it my selfe; to meddle much or far with any Point of abstruse, or controuerted Divinitie. For common capacities, are made and fitted for matter of meane and ordinarie apprehension. Preaching is appointed to make men better in practique knowledge; and so was ever used of the Ancients: not acute and subtile for discourse and speculation, which is the ordinarie pietie of these times” (sig. 2v). The treatise, in fact, gives ample evidence for the charges against Montagu, largely based on his redefinition of controverted terms in a manner that might illustrate his “negative popery.”

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Zeal and Discretion in the Pulpit, 1623–5 The most compelling example of the practical and doctrinal challenges posed by religious division within the English church is arguably a sermon by John Phillips of Feversham, notable for its treatment of a suspected papist, Edward Lapworth, at his funeral. The dedicatory material includes the charges that were levied against the preacher by gossip-mongers; the published treatise, based on the sermon, is enlarged, but its burden – and ultimately Phillips’s justification for his sermon – is that salvation is only through the church. From the beginning, Phillips makes clear that preaching at the funeral of a conforming papist was the source of contention, and lays out the allegations against him. In all, seven charges were brought: that Phillips had commended the deceased party, a known papist; that his praise of Lapworth had been motivated by money; that the sermon had provoked even the profane to scoff to at it, saying that God calls people at the eleventh hour; that Phillips had shown too much respect to his enemy; that Phillips had excused Lapworth’s occasional recusancy; that Phillips had excused Lapworth’s failure to take communion in 1623 (a year in which Prince Charles went to Spain, and which Phillips reminds his readers “made many befoole themselues” [sig. B2r]); that Phillips had been with Lapworth at his deathbed. Phillips’s response to these charges – and especially the kinds of moral distinction this suspected papist forced him to make – is perhaps the best extant example of the practical pressures exerted on ministers, as well as the political and personal conflicts generated by unorthodox or differently-conforming parish members. It seems clear that the situation described by Phillips acquired heightened significance by its public, symbolic medium, a significance intensified by the printing of the sermon, Phillips’s last word on his subject. The sermon itself is a detailed analysis of the “true Church,” based on Acts 2:47.29 Phillips’s exposition of the text is entirely orthodox, beginning with a section proving that there is no salvation except in the church (p. 9). No doubt to calm accusations of papist sympathizing, Phillips employs freely the Reformed language of election, vocation, justification, sanctification, and glorification – the “golden chaine of mans saluation” (p. 8). But the salvation comprehended in this chain requires the means provided by God in his church: scriptures, preaching, sacraments, and prayer. Phillips’s detractors may have been offended by his insistence that even in a corrupt church there may be some who preserve the substance, though not the means, of true religion. They may also have found his charitable interpretation of forefathers who lived in the times of popery a sign of lukewarmness. Most damning was his belief that some papists, such as Lapworth, may lay hold of Christ in the simplicity of their hearts and be saved. Phillips’s sermon is important because it uses the occasion of the death of a popish, but generally conforming, member of the congregation to determine what constitutes membership in the true church. Phillips’s pastoral engagement with a papist, more than a theoretical concern with doctrine, is what motivates this sermon, and causes him to articulate his beliefs. Despite the twenty years in which Phillips has maintained peace as pastor at Feversham, his sermon speaks to the deep divisions and to the pastoral challenges wrought by religious differences. Like Arthur Lake, Donne adopted a “professional” interest in mediating between extremes and in articulating the doctrinal and disciplinary character of the reformed Church of England. Like Phillips, Donne believed strongly in the 29

“And the Lord added to the Church daily such as should be saved.”

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis true church as defined in Article XIX of the Thirty-Nine Articles, and in the soteriological and devotional efficacy of its ordinances. And, even more so than Phillips, Donne felt the pastoral pressures as well as the personal contradictions posed by the presence of recusants and occasional conformists in his congregation. It is not surprising that Donne’s rhetorical fondness for an interpretive middle ground would find James’s characterization of puritans and papists as doctrinal extremes in the Church appealing. In fact, throughout his career, even under Charles when the anti-papist pole of that opposition was weakening and the new enemy was seen as exclusively puritan, Donne follows King James in characterizing puritans and papists as doctrinal extremes endangering peace and order in the Church of England. This rhetorical strategy allows Donne the greatest inclusiveness, and focuses on the kinds of controversy that he saw as most destructive of religious identity. Donne associates sectarians and schismatics (not necessarily named as puritans) with the airing of doctrinal differences in the pulpit, and rejects this way of resolving differences. The point is made early in 1623 in a Candlemas day sermon, in which Donne characterizes those who are obsessed by God’s decrees of election and reprobation as “Those men who will needs be of Gods Cabinet Counsell, and pronounce what God did first, what was his first Decree, and the first clause in that Decree” (IV, 305). Although it is true that some Calvinist controversialists are the worst offenders, their primary fault is in publishing their disagreements, for “that, which sometimes it may concerne us to know, yet it may be a Libell to publish it” (IV, 305). Moreover, Donne objects to airing controversial disagreements in “every popular auditory” although he can see the need for such debate “in councels, and synods, and other fit places” (IV, 305). Donne’s careful distancing of his own position from those who debate God’s decrees of reprobation and salvation (“for some place it before [creation], and some after”), and his efforts to find common points of agreement, suggest his detachment from the polemical vanguard of doctrinal debate in this sermon, a position he embraces even more fully as the decade advances. On the First Friday of Lent 1622/3, Donne had remarked that Jesus’s tears over Jerusalem revealed that his judgments on that city were not only from his absolute decree. Had they been so, he would not have been displeased with his own act, or lamented what he had done (IV, 338). In March of 1624/5, Donne is even more direct regarding the doctrine of double predestination, observing that Christ did not refuse the young man when he came inquiring after salvation: “Christ doth not say, There is no salvation for thee, thou Viper, thou Hypocrite, thou Pharisee, I have locked an iron doore of predestination between salvation and thee, when he enquired of him, what he should do to be sure of heaven, Christ doth not say, There is no such art, no such way, no such assurance here; but you must look into the eternall decree of Election first, and see whether that stand for you or no” (VI, 229). Skillfully, Donne gathers up in his audience all but the supralapsarian Calvinists, drawing in those with “a generall zeale to his [God’s] glory” with a renovated notion of “assurance,” but gesturing to those who emphasize the young man’s response as well as God’s call. In a sermon tentatively dated Whitsunday 1623,30 Donne handles a text crucial to the debate over election and reprobation at the heart of reformed theology. 30

Potter and Simpson assign this sermon to 1623 “because of its comparative freedom from controversial matter” (V, 6). However, neither a reading of sermons in general nor of Donne’s sermons in particular justifies this conclusion.

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Zeal and Discretion in the Pulpit, 1623–5 The problems this text poses for Donne are twofold: desperation (associated with a rigid predestinarian interpretation of the “unforgiveable” sin against the Holy Ghost) and presumption (associated with disregard for the conditions set by God for this forgiveness). Both of these interpretations result from faulty assumptions that distort perspective on the possibilities of repentance. Donne begins by exploding the perception that the point of the text is the unforgiveable sin, the darling of rigid Calvinist theology. Read more carefully, Donne says. If the whole text is a “Royall palace,” this last clause is but a “sewar, a vault behinde it”; it is a clause subordinate to the main proposition, and it was a statement “extorted” by the “iniquity of the Pharisees” (V, 78). That being the case, the emphasis in the text is on God’s mercy, and only peripherally on this exception to it. All manner of sin, even blasphemy against the Son shall be forgiven, Donne reminds his congregation. Wresting a rigid predestinarian point from this text would require changing God’s grammar: “for, it is not They were forgiven before they were committed, nor They are forgiven in the committing, but, They shall be, by using the meanes ordained by God, they may be” (V, 85). The addition of “meanes ordained” is Donne’s characteristic move against rigid predestinarianism: such unnecessary and deliberate despair is willful and proud, an abandonment of reason and a preferring of one’s sins above Gods mercy (V, 86). Having emphasized God’s merciful intention in the first part of the sermon, Donne considers the unforgivable sin against the Holy Ghost in the second half. Defining it, Donne says, is possible, but demonstrating its presence in any person is not (V, 89). Moreover, the point is not that God cannot forgive this sin, but that he will not if it contradicts his word that he will not forgive those who exclude the means of mercy, “the preaching of the Word, . . . the seales of the Sacraments, . . . the absolution of the Church” (V, 90). Donne concludes that while there are solid grounds to claim that there is such a sin as leads to final impenitence, there are no marks by which that sin can be infallibly recognized. We know that the sin exists, that it casts a speechlessness on both God and the church; and we need to watch diligently that we do not approach too near it. But in the end, Donne concludes: “This is as much as these words do justly occasion us to say of that sin; and into a more curious search thereof, it is not holy sobriety to pierce” (V, 95). Although Donne is least sympathetic to the controversies inspired by predestinarian debate, he reserves considerable energy for the fight against Romanist heresies and political aspirations. Donne’s Easter Sermon for 1623, for example, conflates separatists and papists in the image of the Holy Ghost as dove – a bird that couples – to warn his hearers against “singular” and “schismaticall” opinions: “and what is more singular, more schismaticall, then when all Religion is confined in one man’s [the pope’s] breast?” (IV, 349). Donne urges his hearers on this occasion to embrace the truths believed by the whole flock of the church, and to forget traditional, occasional, conditional, collateral, and circumstantial points. Such opinions he calls “Almanack Divinity” that changes with the seasons, “Meridionall Divinity” calculated to the height of such a place, “Lunary Divinity” that ebbs and flows, and “State Divinity” that obeys the affections of persons (IV, 349). Donne makes the further point, contrary to the Roman Church, that while the Articles of the Creed are the objects of faith, God has left the scriptures out of which these articles are proven to human arguments. The contrast here is between implicit believers (papists) and understanding believers (in the Church of England): “Implicite beleevers, ignorant beleevers, the adversary may swallow; but the 157

John Donne and Conformity in Crisis understanding beleever, he must chaw, and pick bones, before he come to assimilate him, and make him like himselfe” (IV, 351). Donne’s Easter sermon for 1625, preached in the evening at St. Paul’s, emphasizes the relationship between good works and faith, but in a way that distinguishes his Reformed position from that traditionally held by Catholics. The “work” of the resurrection is the focus of the last part of the sermon, a work not accomplished by Christ’s ordinary voices (preaching, prayer, sacraments), but by the powerful voice of the trumpet, his call of election. But it is a judgment predicated on works, so that “They who have done evill, shall passe from that fire, into a farther heat, without light, They who have done good, into a farther light, without heat” (VI, 278). Moreover, Donne is clear that his congregation can “fix upon the Conditions, and performe them.” “To have knowne Good, to have beleeved it, to have intended it, nay to have preached it to others, will not serve, They must have done good. They must be rooted in faith, and then bring forth fruit, and fruit in season; and then is the season of doing good, when another needs that good at thy hands” (VI, 278). Further, Donne reminds his hearers that the text asks them to marvel rather than to discourse on these questions of election and perseverance, which Pharisaical puritans on the one hand, and Catholics on the other have distorted. The sermon affirms that the resurrection is conditional, and that the necessary conditions, though rooted in faith, are grounded in works. In this sermon Donne continues to construct Catholics and puritans as extremes and to suggest, by framing his discussion in this way, the middle way of his own path to resurrection. MATTERS OF STATE: AUTHORITY Many late Jacobean sermons wrestle with questions of authority, obedience, and vocation, intent on articulating the responsibilities of preachers and other public servants in the construction of the English state church. Several themes emerge from this discourse, but foremost is the evident anxiety sermons evince regarding public dangers to religion and security following James’s Directions, the journey of the prince and Buckingham to Spain, and complex negotiations for his marriage. The crisis is most clearly expressed in Thomas Scott’s The High-Waies of God and the King. Scott’s works are always important for putting their finger on precisely those pressure points that threatened religious and political equilibrium. Invariably, Scott says directly what many others glance at obliquely, and frames debates in ways that clearly indicate fault lines in religious discourse.31 As Scott diagnoses the problem, public persons go by private ways, thus abjuring their duties to the laws of God and the church.32 Saul, for example, lost the public spirit and was possessed by a private mad spirit that made him hate David (p. 68), while Solomon, too, “forgot what he had written,” (p. 69), consumed by the private spirit of adultery. Accordingly, Scott condemns institutions and processes of state as 31

32

See Cogswell, Blessed Revolution, pp. 285–7, 290–5. Lake has argued that “central elements of Scott’s world-view were shared by many contemporaries and that, therefore, analysis of his outlook may tell us something about the political polarization of the 1620s” (“Constitutional Consensus,” p. 825). Dave Gray and I argue that this is the thrust of Donne’s counsel to Charles in the Devotions, the political meaning of “No Man Is An Island.” See “Political Advice in Donne’s Devotions.”

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Zeal and Discretion in the Pulpit, 1623–5 corrupt places swarming with “schismes, sects, heresies, and private spirits” (p. 80). Worse yet, most people exhibit “such a deade luke-warme indifferencie, a dow baked zeale, as if we cared not which way the world went” (p. 80). Scott’s sermon is a manifesto of the conformist puritan’s understanding of the legal structure of authority and obedience in late Jacobean England, and although few preachers ventured as far as Scott in political analysis, their sermons indicate that he touched the pulse of current anxieties. The call to action stated so directly in Scott’s sermon is the theme of increasing numbers of vehement late Jacobean sermons. John Lawrence’s Paul’s Cross sermon of 11 April 1624, for example, is a golden trumpet to rouse the drowsy magistrate, urging civil authorities to “draw out the sworde of Iustice, and with boldnesse to ransacke the irrilegious corners of this Citie” (sigs. A2r–A3v). Emulating Haggai, Robert Lougher proposes to rouse both rulers and people from their sleep of security by preaching as a trumpet in their ears. Lougher’s articulation of how God alone stirs up faith and the works of faith is a clear statement of the conformist discourse of social structure, authority, and conscience. Much of the sermon outlines the respective duties of Moses and Aaron, biblical examples of the magistrate and the minister, and the ecclesiastical responsibilities of the Christian prince (p. 15) whose charge is to provide “by good lawes, ciuill punishments, and orders that Ministers doe their duties in things concerning God” (p. 16). His authority, while it is “not to offer Incense, not to preach the Word, not to administer the sacraments, not to celebrate publike prayers, not to practise the discipline of the Church . . . , [is] to see that these things bee done as they ought to bee done, by such as are lawfully called thereunto” (p. 17). Donne’s contribution to the discourse of authority in church/state relations develops themes broached in his sermon defending James’s Directions. His Candlemas Day 1622/3 sermon, for example, examines the phrase “Let every soule be subject to the higher powers,” noting that bishops, archbishops, even prophets, are subject to the “ordinary jurisdiction” God has given men over men (IV, 312). The fundamental debt we owe finds its roots in the sovereign, to whom Donne says we owe real debts of tribute, and ceremonial debts of respect. These lines of authority were clearly mapped out in the sermon defending the Directions where Donne acknowledged the administrative authority of the king in religious causes. Contrasting the king with the example of Christ is perhaps the most constant and subtle limitation Donne imposes on James. We see this, for example, in a Whitsunday sermon, tentatively dated for 1623, in which Donne contrasts the mercy and power of the King of Heaven with that of earthly kings. The latter, he admits, are beams of that sun, tapers of that torch, like gods; in fact, “they are gods,” in their dispensation of judgment and mercy, in their executions and pardons (V, 85). However, Donne’s point in the comparison is to show the larger mercies and power of the King of Heaven, who, unlike earthly kings, “swears, and swears by himselfe That there is no sinner but he can and would pardon” (V, 85), and it is in this context that Donne examines the sin against the Holy Ghost that condemns men to reprobation. If authority is to be obeyed, however, Donne characteristically qualifies his call to obedience. In a sermon preached at St. Dunstan’s on 1 January 1624/5, for example, Donne uses the example of Abraham who obeyed God’s command of circumcision by distinguishing casuistically between obedience to men, which requires dispute, resistance, and even suffering on occasion, and obedience to 159

John Donne and Conformity in Crisis God, which demands that we become “speechless and thoughtless.” As with the application of precedent in legal interpretation, the key is in knowing which kind of obedience is applicable in a given case. Moreover, neither of these is “blind” obedience. Donne offers a rule: only God knows why he commands a thing; our part is to obey. But, characteristically, Donne concedes that the example is different from the rule. Sometimes, he says, good and godly men may reason and dispute against God’s commands. Furthermore, Abraham might have legitimately disputed with God, if any man had taken the liberty. As with so many of Donne’s sermons, however, this one focuses finally not on human authority, whether in state or church, but on the authority of conscience to make difficult moral discriminations in misinterpretable things. TOPICAL APPLICATION: WAR, PEACE, AND THE MISERIES OF THE PRESENT AGE The issues of interpretation Donne raised in his sermons, and which challenge congregations to see differently, were not confined to scriptures. Despite the Directions, anti-papist and anti-puritan sermons abounded in these late Jacobean years. Consequently, pulpit controversy, and commentary on that controversy, did not abate, particularly as crises in church and state developed. As we have seen, sermons treated personal and religious duties, questions of authority and obedience, and ultimately the vocational responsibilities of preachers. As negotiations for the Spanish match climaxed with Charles’s pursuit of the Infanta in person, and then waned as negotiations for a French marriage seemed more advantageous and acceptable, sermons dealing with war and peace, continental religion, and especially marriage acquired a topical resonance that could not be ignored. Certainly, the tone of sermons in late 1622 and early 1623 is one of lamentation, stressing the afflictions of the godly. Hering’s sermon mentioned above moves easily between its anti-papist agenda and the miseries of the reformed religion in the face of powerful counter-reformation forces.33 He says that the time is right to remind his hearers of the calamities accosting the Church of God at home and abroad, and, as we have seen, his entire sermon presses comfort from affliction through the winepress of God’s providence. Several sermons by Thomas Gataker also illustrate the uses of affliction, epitomized in the obedience, the sufferings, and the providential deliverance of Noah. Gataker is at his most eloquent in preaching on this theme, particularly when he praises Noah’s contempt for the disgrace caused by his obedience in building the ark. The contrast with England elicits Gataker’s most pointed application. “Religion,” he claims, “is growne to be, as Bernard sometime complained, not a matter of forme, but a matter of scorne . . . the feare of God esteemed folly, & religious carriage made a matter of reproch” (p. 118).34 33

34

See Jonathan Scott’s England’s Troubles for an analysis of tensions within the English church in terms of confessional polarization within Europe, and especially of the impact of the European Counter-Reformation on that process. Davids Remembrancer. “How long, O Lord? Wilt thou forget mee for euer? How long wilt thou hide thy face away from me?” The thrust of the sermon is that, once the godly understand God’s language of afflictions, they will be free of evil interpretations. “God by his judgements preacheth not verball, but reall Sermons unto vs” (p. 65).

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Zeal and Discretion in the Pulpit, 1623–5 The emotional impact of counter-reformation advances on the continent informs many sermons and underwrites their rhetorical effects. Robert Harris, for example, constructs a strong argument for public prayer based on solidarity with continental co-religionists, reminding his congregation of their neglect of this practice: “yea many a Church distressed, Bohemia afflicted, the Palatinate and Valtoline distressed, yet we did not pray.”35 A funeral sermon preached by John Wall, 27 July 1623, builds on nostalgia for the militant protestantism of the dead Prince Henry for its effects, comparing the death of his subject, John Stanhope, to that of Prince Henry, whose death had had profound religious and political consequences both in England and in Europe.36 Like the dead Prince Henry, the dead son, one of the elect and admired for his “devout heart and religious soule” (sig. C3v), will not see “the troubles of life, the furie of warre, the subuersion of States, the ruin of Kingdomes” (sig. D8r). Though the catalogue of miseries is conventional enough, the sermon resonates with a sense of misery that could only have been exacerbated by Charles’s continued absence in Spain, fear of his capitulation to Catholicism, and perhaps even the news that the marriage articles had recently been agreed to by King James and his Council. Perhaps the most intense, detailed, and wide-ranging discussion of the miseries of continental protestants, particularly in France, is offered by the minister of the French Church in London, Gilbert Primerose. In a series of sermons delivered in London in 1624 after Primerose had been banished from France and forced, for political reasons, to return to England, he expatiates on the evils of the righteous, and the Lords deliverances, taking as his text Psalm 34:19.37 When he elaborates on the evils of the righteous man, Primerose describes the tortures, the martyrdoms, the contemptuous defamations, and other calamities suffered by the righteous of the Reformed churches. Primerose’s descriptions of the calamities suffered by these people is painfully detailed, and, even if exaggerated, his account is gripping, and draws continuous parallels between the persecutions of the primitive church and those in Germany, France, and England. “Christs enemies forbeare not to spew out of the open sepulchre of their stinking throats, in our faces, the reproach of heresie, noveltie, factions against God, schisme against the Church, and such like mustie defamations of very old date” (p. 28). The persecutions of the primitive Christians are repeated in the stories of the contemporary religious martyrs, from the Albigenses onward. All of these stories are related in graphic detail, intended, no doubt, to shock the godly. So we hear of women, “first misused in that which is their most precious jewell, and then murdered, or blowne up in the ayre, with gun-powder thrust and stopped in their wombes,” babies “throwne in the aire, and received upon the points of pikes for sport” (p. 45) and sold to the Egyptians for eighteen pence apiece, and a host of similar atrocities. When there was peace these churches professed the gospel publicly, but now “when their forts are levelled and cast downe to the ground, when their townes are dismantled, when they are curbed with strong Citadels, when they are disarmed among armed enemies, when they see nothing in their streets but the plagues of Egypt, but swarmes of Priests, which are a most noysome 35 36 37

Harris, Peters Enlargement, p. 6. Wall, A Sermon Preached at Shelford. The Righteovs Mans Evils. “Many are the evills of the righteous: but the Lord delivereth him out of them all.”

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis mixture of filthy and stinking flyes, but great store of Iesuites, which like loathsome frogs come unsent for, leaping and croaking into their houses, and bedchambers, but an infinite multitude of Monkes, which as so many locusts eate up all their substance, but armies of souldiers, which are to them the louzie disease, wherewith their bodies are pestered, their flesh is consumed, all the blood of their veines is suckt up,” their ability to persevere in the faith is proof of their constancy. The overt message of all of these sermons is that the Lord is a powerful deliverer, and that he alone is to be trusted to deliver the righteous from the calamities Primerose has described. Men cannot be trusted in this cause: “The sonnes of men are men: The Princes are sonnes of men; they are men: . . . Be faithfull to your Princes: Obey and keepe their commandements, render to them their dues, tribute, custome, feare, honour; give to Cesar that which is Cesars. Pray to God for them: but give not unto them Gods tribute. Render not to any creature the homage of trust, which is proper to God alone” (p. 149). There is nothing doctrinally subtle or school-like about Primerose’s sermons; nor is there any doubt that he has experienced first-hand afflictions Englishmen could scarcely imagine. More than any other preacher, Primerose speaks as a traveler returned, with an urgency and a passion missing from most homegrown meditations on religious afflictions. The sermons are unusual, too, in their elevation of Christian women as exemplars of militant and courageous devotion. The entire treatise, delivered at the fast in early October 1624, is an urgent call to sympathy and prayerful confraternity with their continental Reformed brethren. Talk of the miseries of the godly on the continent drifted inexorably to debates about war and peace as a matter of foreign policy crucial to the survival of religion in England. While it is possible to think of conformists urging peace and radicals urging war, the discourse on this subject was far more complex. Preachers sometimes refer to the blessings of peace to remind their congregation that times of peace bring greater responsibility than times of war. On 5 September 1624, for example, Sampson Price comments in a funeral sermon that “Wee liue in a quarrelling age, the most making ill vse of Gods mercies, not enduring any correction. Wee haue enioyed a long time of peace, plenty, & aboue all, the free passage of the Gospell, yet our owne consciences doe accuse vs, that we haue neither worthily esteemed, nor sufficiently expressed the sweet comfort of the Gospell reuealed vnto vs; . . . wee neglect true deuotion” (p. 30). For many Englishmen, however, events on the continent required them to protect religion abroad to buttress it at home. And, despite James’s reluctance to treat war on the continent as a confessional conflict, most of his preachers did. Samuel Bachiler, preacher to the English soldiers at Gorichem, naturally invoked a more militant rhetoric,38 comparing the Israelites’ war with the Canaanites and “the mysticall warre of these Provinces for the same ends, against the Papacie” (A2r). Lest a reading audience of “Burger[s], or homedweller[s]” (sig. A3v) think the sermon does not concern them, Bachiler affirms that “what is here spoken to them abroad, doth deeply concerne thee at home” (sig. A3v). Bachiler’s sermon, accompanied by a poem by Thomas Scott, preaches an overtly militant message on Deuteronomy 23:9 (B2r). As he states in his dedicatory epistle “Christ came not to send peace, but a sword,” and the premise of the entire sermon is that the soldiers 38

“When the host goeth forth against thine enimies, then keepe thee from everie wicked thing; For the Lord thy God walketh in the midst of the Campe.”

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Zeal and Discretion in the Pulpit, 1623–5 are engaged in a religious war against the Romish Whore of Babylon, a topical subtext that gives a decidedly political resonance to a sermon ostensibly concerned with the inculcation of godly purity. TOPICAL APPLICATION: MARRIAGE In 1623 and 1624, the topic of marriage was politically sensitive, and yet, more sermons handling this subject have survived than for the period immediately preceding the Directions. Donne, we know, comments in a New Year’s sermon on marriage with idolaters, and the topic is conventional. What is needed is to register the range of comment on this topic to gauge what could and could not be said. Several sermons by Gataker handle this sensitive topic, including the proper method of securing a good wife.39 When Jerome Phillips warned against bitterness and controversy over indifferent, ceremonial matters, he expressed it in terms of marriage as well: “The Church is the Kings Daughter, all glorious within: why then should a Kings sonne thinke her too meane a match for himselfe, to be married vnto” (p. 25). Of course, this comment strikes at the heart of popular fears that Charles was prepared to convert in order to marry the Spanish Infanta. News of negotiations for a French match did not alleviate such fears. In a 1624 sermon, Thomas Barnes handles some of these questions concerning marriage immediately positioning his text in relation to “these days of sorrow” (sig. A3v) not only in foreign parts but at home. Preaching from Canticles 1:12–14,40 his exegesis of the melodious passages of love between Christ and his bride the church takes him into many areas of the emerging discourse of royal marriage. As the bridegroom in this passage is a great prince, Christ the Prince of Peace, the excellency of his bride is unutterable. “Emperors with all their Monarchies, Nobles with all their dignities, Captaines with all their Victories, Papists with all their prelacies, Pagans with all their excellencies, are not comparable to her” (p. 5). This royal image contrasts to the image of Christians as the scum of the earth, and warns the church’s enemies that kings will not brook injuries to their wives. Moreover, his power to crush his adversaries should serve as warning to persecutors of the godly and as a “Writt of assurance” (p. 18) to the faithful that Christ will make “royall provision” for his “beloved Bride” (p. 19). Barnes directs his discussion of Christ’s ordinances – his word and sacraments – by comparing this diet of the church to a wedding feast, and urging those who do not like this food (separatists, presumably) to leave their excuses and come to the feast prepared by a king. He says that although “Cookes doe mar it [the food] sometimes in the dressing (as Fryer-like preachers doe powdering the Word with the dust of their own inventions; or as the Papist-like Prelates doe adding cream, salt, oyle, spittle, and the like trash to water in Baptisme, and defiling the Lords Supper with that abhominable idol of the Masse), yet the fault of that is not in the King” (pp. 24–5). As these are necessary helps, Barnes’s advice is to “Get thee to a good Cooke” (p. 25). 39

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Three sermons in particular, published late in 1623, exhibit the full discursive range available and are discussed in detail in Chapter 7. Sermons by Whateley and Rawlinson are discussed in Chapter 6 in the context of Charles’s journey to Spain in February 1622/3. “While the King sitteth at his Table, my Spikenard sendeth forth the smell thereof. A bundle of Myrrhe is my welbeloved unto me, he shall lie all night betweene my breasts.”

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis While Barnes claims to have shunned historical particularity, the sermon’s topical resonance heightens its allegorical meaning. This is most evident in its antipapist handling of sacramental theology. So, when Barnes considers how Christ is present in baptism, he rejects Catholic notions that he is there to uproot original sin, to confer invisible grace, or to print an indelible mark on the soul (p. 32). Instead, Barnes explains, he is there to seal our admission to the covenant, to represent to us our justification and sanctification, and to remind us of our repentance and other duties owed him. Christ is also present in the Lord’s Supper, but not transubstantially (as the papists believe), nor consubstantially (as the ubiquitarians believe); rather, he presents a sacrifice of remembrance to strengthen our faith, to arm us against idolatry, to preserve us in obedience, to assure us of resurrection, and to signify the certainty of our union with him. Christ’s people frequent his sacraments so diligently because there they meet their groom, Barnes says, and the domestic images of the bridegroom sitting at the table with his queen “not only to feed with her, but also to carue [God’s word] to her, to conferre and to be merry with her” (p. 31) must have contrasted starkly with the reality of relations in a “mixed” marriage such as that proposed for Charles. The sermon drops the marriage metaphor as it completes its explication of Reformed theology, but indicates how the true marriage of Christ and his church could interpret the worldly marriage that was dominating political life in 1624. “What wife that loues her husband,” Barnes asks, “doth not delight daily to converse with him at his Table?” (p. 34). TOPICAL APPLICATION: KING JAMES King James himself (in both his writings and his example) became a focus in sermons seeking to assure congregations of his constancy in the Reformed religion, as well as those seeking authority for their religious claims. Sheldon, for example, notes that papists and Jesuits are at the height of their deception, but reminds his congregation (and James) that James has shown in his writings that images and relics are idolatrous.41 Myriell, too, protests that James is committed to “our Church” while “some few seeme to fall to the Popish religion.” He is the “patterne” of constancy who will restore “old ceremonies of Idolatrous Temples, prophane priuiledges of their superstitious Priesthood” (p. 49). In fact, many sermons of these years look for leadership, and raise, especially in their dedications, the issue of James’s commitment to Reformed religion. Primerose, in dedicating The Righteovs Mans Evils to the Marquess of Hamilton, focuses extensively on the long history of loyal counsel practised by the Hamilton family to their Kings, and the biblical analogues for such service. These examples show that “there is nothing so needfull and profitable to Kings as faithfull counsellers and servants of the chiefe of the Nobilitie” (sig. A3v).42 James’s authority as pattern of constancy was bolstered in some sermons by comparison to Queen Elizabeth. Myriell established James’s constancy by placing him in a line of Reformed monarchs, including Elizabeth (p. 49), who retained an amazing power to galvanize public opinion. However, praising Elizabeth could 41 42

Christ on his Throne, p. 33. In Hamilton, Primerose observes the marriage of “a vehement passion for the common-weale and true zeale to God” (sig. A4r), a combination that deserves admiration and praise.

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Zeal and Discretion in the Pulpit, 1623–5 also highlight James’s differences from her, or, at least, express anxiety about his motives and actions. In a visitation sermon preached at Boston, William Worship asks his people to remember “how many yeeres of Iubile we passed vnder the prosperous reigne of Queene Elizabeth, (at whose name, me thinkes, I could weepe for ioy) (p. 16). Why is she so beloved, he asks?: “Did shee not reforme Religion, establish peace, extinguish rebellion, inrich and fortifie her kingdome, relieue France, support Netherland, quiet Ireland, keep Spaine in awe, and astonish the world with the report of her vertues? . . . And truely, if wee take Gods for Princes . . . me thinkes wee may inoffensiuely desire, that the gods would imitate good Queene Elizabeth” (pp. 16–17). He concludes, however, “Wel, shee is gone,” replaced by the “milde and gracious” King James. As if to compensate for this mildness, Worship observes: “His Maiesty already hath in Peace warred, disturbed in silence, hurt more by the Pen, then the Pike, by the Booke, then the Bullet, by the Inuention of Gutenberge Knight, then of Barthold the Monke. And, when iust occasion shall be offered, he can fiercely hunt at Sea” (p. 17), although, one suspects, with less dramatic success than his predecessor. It is no accident that from 1623 to 1625 the pulpit emerged as the voice of public opinion. James’s Directions, coming at the crucial political moment in which negotiations for a match for Charles, James’s physical decline, the confusion of parliaments as to their function and perogatives, and counter-reformation advances on the English church were converging. The perceived need for both zeal and discretion in the handling of religious tensions, voiced by Abbot and defended and modelled by Donne at the moment of the Directions, was rarely achieved by preachers. Zeal often degenerated into controversy, while discretion weakened into silence, flattery, or time-serving. Donne provides perhaps the fullest evidence of the pressures these polarities placed on the English church. And his sermons offer the most complete record of a preacher both zealous and discreet, but nonetheless unable to steer the ark through the storm that was threatening. In the moments of tension that marked the end of James’s reign, the crisis of identity in the English church was inexorably tied to the crises of censorship and controversy that had provoked it.

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Chapter 6 “JESUS WEPT”: THE JOURNEY TO SPAIN AND PULPIT LAMENTATION

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HE FIRST half of 1623 was dominated by one event: the departure of Prince Charles and Buckingham for Spain in February – in disguise – and the prolonged negotiations for a match with the Spanish Infanta. Every other matter – both domestic and foreign – paled in comparison to interest in this event and its real and imagined repercussions. Even concern for Elizabeth and her family on the continent was enmeshed in the details of this proposed alliance, Charles having promised his sister that he would not marry with Spain without restoring Frederick’s hereditary lands in the Palatinate (in retrospect, a hopeless promise). Fears for the prince’s personal safety and honour in Madrid, and for his spiritual constancy in the heart of Catholic Spain, promoted rumours of his conversion to Catholicism, rumours fanned by reported concessions to English Catholics in negotiations with the Infanta’s brother, Philip of Spain. Some toleration of popery and further relaxation of the penal laws against recusants were only two of the unpalatable consequences of this journey. The Directions warned preachers against meddling with these and other matters of state, but conditions of censorship reached a critical stage following the prince’s departure for Spain in early February, as James took pre-emptive measures to prevent public commentary on the event. The secretive way in which this journey was executed suited James’s ends better than a foreign policy initiative undertaken after broad public consultation. This was one event that James did not want brought into the public sphere. Simonds D’Ewes’s diary for this crucial period records a steady diet of sermons, however, and suggests the range of topics permitted, despite these censorship initiatives. Where the Directions, and Donne’s defence of them, had encouraged preachers to focus on the creed, the Thirty-Nine Articles, and the Lord’s Prayer, D’Ewes records a sermon by Dr. White on “that parte of the creed conceived of the virgin Marye,” preached 12 January 1622/3. Donne had preached to reassure his audience that the Directions were not intended to prevent controversial preaching, and this choice of subject confirms that claim. The point of the sermon was abstruse enough: “hee shewed that the three persons did ioine in the conceiving of him and hee onlye took it upon him, like as if three virgins . . . should all ioine in the working of some curious garment, and then one putt it on.”1 In response to this further tightening of regulations, a number of incidents involving preachers occurred, suggesting, more than 1

D’Ewes, Diary, p. 113.

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The Journey to Spain and Pulpit Lamentation a systematic application of legal sanctions, an atmosphere of uncertainty in which it was difficult to determine what might occasion dissatisfaction, or why. This atmosphere, more than any consistent prosecution of preachers, allowed James and his bishops to maintain a measure of control over the pulpits. A law that could be, and was, applied at the discretion of local authorities, could be a powerful incentive to self-censorship. James’s displeasure with Montaigne’s Christmas sermon has already been noted, although there is nothing to suggest that his objections were particular to that sermon.2 There is less doubt about a sermon preached on Twelfth Night by Francis White, prebend of St. Paul’s, in which, Chamberlain reports, he was thought to have libeled the state by his prayer to preserve the king and the prince from any that should try to withdraw them from their “first love and zeale to religion” (II, 473).3 Gabriel Bridges, Master of Arts and fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, also ran afoul of the Directions by preaching Arminian doctrine in St. Mary’s Church. In particular, he was charged with preaching on God’s absolute decree, universal grace, and free will, then censured by his examiners, and ordered to recant in the Convocation House and to preach only what was conformable to the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England. In addition, he was enjoined to maintain in the Divinity School two theses for his degree of B.D.: “Decretum Praedestinationis non est conditionale. Gratia sufficiens ad Salutem non condeditur omnibus.”4 Such prayers as White’s for constancy in religion no doubt seemed prophetic by February 1622/3 when Charles and Buckingham embarked suddenly on their journey to Spain disguised as Tom and John Smith. Their departure initiated a flurry of activity in high places to curb public criticism of this astonishing turn of events. On 23 February, we learn that Secretary Calvert has introduced new, specific directions from his Majesty concerning preachers.5 Stuteville writes to Mead: “We are commanded . . . neither in our sermons nor prayers to prejudicate his journey, but yet to pray to God to preserve him in his journey, and grant him a safe return to you. Yet not in more, nor in any other words.”6 On 8 March, Chamberlain reports that the clergy have been instructed by the Bishop of London not to discuss the departure for Spain in sermons, permitted only to pray “for the Princes prosperous journey and safe return” (II, 482). The instructions notwithstanding, preachers were evidently having difficulty complying. On 21 March Chamberlain writes that their tongues were hardly held in. Everard, a perpetual critic of the state, was once more committed (perhaps for the sermon heard 2

3 4

5 6

McCullough offers it as “perhaps the clearest indication of the tensions created by Montaigne’s preferment to the Almonership, and perhaps even James’s regret for doing so” (Sermons at Court, p. 153). According to Chamberlain, Montaigne suffered by comparison with Andrewes who had preached to “the Lords and houshold with great applause,” and was deemed more “able” than Montaigne (II, 470). The libel inhered in the suggestion that “there were some daunger of such a matter.” Wood, Book II, part 1, p. 349. This opposition to overt Arminianism indicates that even in early 1623 the official orthodoxy of the Church of England in Oxford was still Calvinist. Wood notes, however, that the tenets of Arminianism began to gather head, while those of Calvinism disappeared at Oxford University at about the time that the prince and Buckingham went secretly to Spain. White uses the examples of Lucy at Cambridge and Bridges at Oxford to argue that Arminian opinions were “much more widespread than has usually been supposed” (p. 209). PRO SP 14/138/65. Birch, II, 368.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis by D’Ewes on 9 February, preached at the Temple Church).7 Chamberlain reports yet another incident at St. Michael’s, London, where Mr. Corshes preached out of the Book of Kings, choosing a passage concerning Solomon’s marriage with an idolater. When he told the auditory he would make application to these times, the minister of the church, Dr. Gifford, “agreeably to the Directions” rose up and told the congregation “that he feared the preacher would speak contrary to the instructions and so willed them to sing a psalm.”8 And Mead, writing to Stuteville on 29 March, recounts the “jest” of the preacher who took the instructions to pray for the prince “and no more” so literally that he added these very words to the conclusion of his sermon.9 King James’s instructions to the prince’s chaplains regarding their ecclesiastical deportment reveal his concern to furnish Charles’s chaplaincy with “high-church décor” and thus assure Spanish observers that the prince was no puritan. Accordingly, James insisted that Matthew Wren and Leonard Mawe follow the prince to Spain, while Henry Burton, who as Clerk of the Closet ought to have been sent, was “rudely excluded.” As McCullough makes clear, James wanted to display a churchmanship radically different from Burton’s in Spain, going “as neare the Roman form as can lawfully be done,” and so Burton was told there was no berth on the ship.10 The importance of ceremony to their worship is clear in James’s instructions to the chaplains, which provided for a specially-appointed room for prayers, decently adorned with appropriate vestments and articles for celebrating the Eucharist. Prayers and communion were to be conducted with ceremonial reverence (“in due forme”). As to preaching, the king specifically forbade “polemical preaching” or the refutation of doctrines. Instead, he ordered them only to confirm the doctrine of the Church of England, and especially to preach the moral lesson of Christ crucified. The chaplains were also ordered not to give any conference or entertainment, out of fear of dishonour to the prince, and were permitted to carry only the articles of religion, the Book of Common Prayer, English service books, and the king’s own works.11 Clearly James was concerned to prevent open disputation, but was adamant that the fundamental disciplines and doctrines of the English church be represented in Spain. In the popular view, however, there was some doubt that chaplains would even be sent. Beaulieu writes to Trumbull “If I were with you I could tell you such things as would make yor haires stand at an end. God haue mercie upon vs for we are in a deplorable condition, neither is there any remedie left but prayers to helpe our mischeife.”12 While the prince was in Spain, several conferences intended to convert Charles were organized, and James’s dispatch of chaplains there was intended to reassure the people of Charles’s constancy in religion. However, the chaplains were forbidden to enter the Royal Palace where Charles was housed.13 Charles was powerless against such a prohibition, and enjoyed no public celebration of his religion, including sermons, while in Spain. 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

D’Ewes, Diary, p. 117. PRO SP 14/142/22. Birch, II, p. 381. Sermons at Court, p. 206. PRO SP 14/139/76. BL Add. MS 72255, fo. 34.r [Beaulieu correspondence]. Chamberlain writes at length of the materials provided for the prince’s chaplains, “all which is to little purpose, for the Spaniards will not vouchsafe the hearing nor looking on” (II, 487–8).

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The Journey to Spain and Pulpit Lamentation There is evidence that in these early months of 1623, the king and members of his Council were deliberately avoiding situations in which they might have to endure pulpit criticism, or in which they would be forced to act against outspoken ministers. Chamberlain reports that only seven or eight of the Council came to hear Richardson preach on 24 March, the king’s anniversary (II, 487, the sermon is not extant), and on 19 April Chamberlain reported the king’s attendance at his first Lent sermon, preached by the Lord Keeper, Williams (II, 489). Richardson’s sermon was performed reasonably well according to Chamberlain “because he was not long nor immoderate in commendation of the time, but gave Queen Elizabeth her due” (II, 487). The king and Council had little to worry about in this regard, as most preachers were avoiding contentious sermons. On 25 April, for example, we hear that a chaplain to Abbot spoke plainly against the “fearful flattering style” of most clergy, even claiming that the main cause of misery in the land was the flattering of government by clergy. Mead writes that the preacher, an Oxford man, preached “wondrous plainly and vehemently” against this flattery, and asking: “Who dare call the great ones princes of Sodom? Who dares say that schismatics or puritans, who do but break peace, are hunted as with the inquisition, while they go uncontrolled who seek to kill the peace-makers.”14 One of those sermons examined for possibly contravening the Directions is by Edmond Wilson, lecturer at St. Andrew’s Holborn.15 Concerning this sermon, the Bishop of London writes to Secretary Conway that he can find nothing “that might give cause of any suspition tending to tumult or sedition.”16 Upon examination, Wilson said that he had preached on the catechism, according to his Majesty’s appointment [in the Directions], and that he had preached on the text (Matthew 26:39) before.17 Wilson specifically denied preaching against Jesuits or the Spanish Ambassador, asserting that he never so much as named them; nor had he handled any point of controversy, or even thought of any. Even in this reported conversation, Wilson’s defensive posture suggests that he was not anxious to be imprisoned, and was denying things for which he had not even been charged (such as “thinking about” controversy). Bishop Montaigne was evidently in sympathy with the strong anti-papist sentiments of Wilson’s sermon, and loathe to reprimand him for any indiscretions. The incident went no further. In the first half of 1623, people seemed uncertain about the direction religion was taking, and careful about expressing their criticisms. On 3 May, Chamberlain reported that men “mutter” of a toleration of religion, and a suspension of the acts and statutes against Catholics (II, 493). Denmark House and St. James’s were ordered readied by Inigo Jones for the Infanta’s reception. On 23 June, Valaresso

14

15

16 17

Birch, II, 392. The writer goes on to say that “The hope of a crosier staff or a cardinal’s hat could make many a scholar in England beat his brain to reconcile the Church of Rome and England.” PRO SP 14/142/8. This is not the same “Dr. Wilson” who was examined for a sermon preached at Paul’s Cross on 30 March 1623, on Genesis 49:6, Jacob’s curse of Simeon and Levi: (“O my soul, come not thou into their secret; unto their assembly, mine honour, be not thou united: for in their anger they slew a man, and in their self-will they digged down a wall”). Apparently, he spoke “in general words full of evil interpretation”; however, the sermon does not survive (Maclure, p. 245; CSPD James I [1619–23], p. 551). PRO SP 14/142/22; 22.I.; 22.II. “And he went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.”

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis reported that two preachers had been arrested for “seditiously inciting the people to take arms to maintain their religion at a place outside London.”18 While no contemporary source confirms this report, the Earl of Kellie reported to the Earl of Mar just two days before a new leniency towards recusants “if thaye doe kairye them selfes manerlye and keepe them within their bounds.”19 The uncertainty about religion was aggravated by reports that judges had been admonished in July to deal favourably with papists, except those found to be turbulent and seditious. To most Englishmen, papists were by definition turbulent and seditious, and the admonition was seen as evidence of James’s incomprehensible, but real, relapse into idolatry. On Sunday, 20 July, in the royal chapel at Whitehall, Secretary Calvert read the public articles of the marriage treaty in the presence of the Spanish ambassadors and the majority of the Privy Council. The king also swore to private articles governing the Infanta’s practice of religion in England, and English recusants. All of these activities created considerable popular excitement, which Gardiner connects with a letter attributed to Abbot, denouncing the marriage treaty and the religious concessions to Catholics extorted by Spain as part of its price.20 CANDLEMAS SERMONS: THE DECEITFUL HEART Three surviving sermons delivered on Candlemas Day 1623 allow us to take the pulse of the pulpit on the eve of the departure of Charles and Buckingham for Spain. Their temporal conjunction intensifies their thematic preoccupation with moral readiness and resistance to spiritual erosion within the church. As conformist sermons, all three indicate the flexibility of the pulpit as an instrument of the public sphere, but also the pressures exerted on sermons by political events both at home and abroad. Of the three, Donne’s demonstrates most effectively how personal identity intersects with public duty in a sermon that takes obligation as both its message and its medium. On 2 February 1623, Thomas Myriell preached at Paul’s Cross,21 taking as his text 2 Chronicles 15:2. Entered on 19 February 1623,22 the sermon touches on a number of doctrinal and political questions that were increasingly important to congregations in these months. Myriell’s sermon establishes its orthodox credentials in two ways: its use of the straightforwardly Calvinist language of predestination, election, vocation, justification, and glorification; and its anti-papist rhetoric. It establishes its conformist credentials by focusing on the Church of England as the established means of salvation, and on James as the model of religious constancy. The chain of salvation that Myriell forges is straightforwardly Calvinist: “He predestinated vs before we were our selues; he called vs, when we were departed 18 19 20 21

22

CSPV [1623–25], XVIII, 46. Supplementary Report, ed. Paton, p. 175. History, V, 71–3. “The Lord is with you, while ye be with him; and if ye seeke him, he will be found of you; but if ye forsake him, he will forsake you.” Charles and Buckingham left secretly for Spain on 17 February, and news of their departure spread quickly. However, I am not claiming that Myriell decided to print his sermon upon hearing the news, or even that he revised it with these circumstances in mind.

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The Journey to Spain and Pulpit Lamentation from our selues; he iustified vs when wee were sinfull, & he glorified vs, when we were mortall” (pp. 10–11). So too is his anti-papist commentary. He exhorts his hearers to resist defection to Rome by public devotion in the Church of England: “If Priests and Iesuites swarme in houses, let vs so much more deuoutely flocke together in Churches” (p. 31). The problem is that there are many wavering Christians who out of “peruersenesse of iudgement, think they are with Christ, when they be with Antichrist . . . [who] suppose they be with the Church of God, when they are with the Synagogue of Satan . . . [who] imagine they bee with Iesus, when they are with the Iesuits” (p. 18). Myriell’s stress on the Church of England as the established means by which Christians see Christ is directed towards the “poore seduced Romanists” in his congregation. These papists “thinke to finde God in Purgatorie, when yet the wisest men of the Church could neuer find that there is any Purgatory?” (p. 28), or seek him in images and crucifixes rather than in scriptures and the church. To confirmed Protestants, Myriell offers James as the exemplar of constancy to the cause of the protestant religion and renounces suspicions of James’s commitment to reformed Protestantism. James, “as his iudgement and learning informes him against falshood: so his affections & desires confirme him to the truth: That should Rome, and all Romanists come to him, and make it a request, to mingle their old dregs with our pure Water of life. . . . He would vndoubtedly answere them, . . . That which my Brother King Edward the Sixt, (let me adde my Sister too, Queen Elizabeth of famous memory) did take away, how would you haue me to restore again, considering, that therein I should wrong Religion, & them too? Certainely, wee should be very disloyall to his Maiesty, if wee should with a needlesse feare perplexe our selues with that, wherein wee ought to beleeue him most firme and constant” (pp. 49–50). At the same time, Myriell chastises his hearers for being too eager for war, commenting that peace has been a sign of God’s favour to the English people, and warning his congregation to “Take heed, be not weary of Peace” (p. 57). With its divided address to both papists and protestants, its stress on James’s religious constancy and leadership, and its thematic resolution of all conflict within an orderly English church, Myriell’s sermon participates in the discourses of warning typical of the Paul’s Cross pulpit. Joseph Hall’s The Great Impostor was preached at Gray’s Inn, also on Candlemas day (V, 158–73).23 Entered in the Register on the day Charles departed for Spain, the sermon provides an unwitting commentary on the themes of disguise and papist treachery that intensified with the spread of this news. Hall’s application of his text is simple, and unremitting: “the greatest cheater and malefactor in the world, [is] our own heart” (V, 158). Hall divides his discussion of the heart’s deceitfulness according to how the understanding, the will, and the affections connive at their own deception. He concludes that “the heart of man is wholly set upon cozenage: the understanding overknowing, misknowing, dissembling; the will pretending and inclining contrarily; the affections mocking us in the object, measure, manner; and in all of them the heart of man is deceitful” (V, 163). In fact, the moral of the entire sermon is that the heart is its own worst enemy, subtle in self-destruction, and crafty, a “secret broker of Satan” (V, 173). Only occasionally, Hall’s general points take on 23

Hall’s text from Jeremiah is “The heart is deceitful above all things.”

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis a sharp topical application. He says, for example, “As deceitfull persons are wont ever to goe under many names, and ambiguous, and must be exprest with an alias so doth the heart of man” (V, 159). Although rumours of the Prince’s projected voyage to Spain had been circulating at least since 4 January,24 the applicability of this comment to Charles and Buckingham, who were about to go to Spain disguised as Tom and John, would have been appropriate, even if not intended when the sermon was preached. We do not know whether Hall revised the sermon before it was entered for publication. But Hall’s abbreviation of the “ten thousand other tricks that the heart of man hath devised for the conveyances of sin” to include “secret fraud in contracts, booties in matches, subornations of instruments, hiring of oaths, feeing of officers, equivocations of answers,” buries references to “booties in matches” among the other legal references appropriate to his Gray’s Inn audience (V, 165–6). Hall’s sermon anticipates one subject of Donne’s Devotions: the consequences of “heart-failure” to the kingdom.25 And he is clear that the greatest impostor, the deceitful heart, is the foe of which we must be most aware. Of his audience of lawyers, Hall asks “What comfort can you find in public service to the state against offenders, if you should carry a fraudulent and wicked heart in your own bosoms?” (V, 172). The integration of public duty with private conscience emerges as the sermon’s main concern, an index of identity in a precarious religious sphere. A third Candlemas sermon, this one by John Donne, is of uncertain date, although Potter and Simpson advance a sound argument for dating it in 1623.26 Donne’s text is Romans 13:7, and he uses it to sort out the networks of religious interconnection that comprise religious duty and experience. In this sermon, Donne considers three kinds of debt – those to God, to others, and to ourselves – claiming that this whole epistle reduces all duties appertaining to the religious worship of God to charitable offices towards one another and holiness in our selves. The only debt believers can pay to God is glory and praise. This debt, Donne says, is indisputable, even among those who can agree on nothing else. By contrast to this irrefutable fact, Donne offers a satiric portrait of the arid disputes of churchmen along the Jacobean religious spectrum, beginning with those rigid predestinarians who “will needs be of Gods Cabinet Counsell, and pronounce what God did first, what was his first Decree” (IV, 305), but extending to those controversialists who will “needs know, and then publish Gods secrets,” his mysteries which “for the opposing and countermining stubborne and perverse Heresies, it may concerne us, in Counsels and Synods, and other fit places, to argue and cleare” (IV, 305). Furthermore, Donne distinguishes the debt of praise and glory from flattery, explaining that flattering the times is not the way to pay this debt owed to God. Whereas Shuger locates Donne’s religion in the political 24 25 26

Chamberlain, II, 472. Gray and Shami, 346–7. Donne’s text is “Render therefore to all men their dues.” Potter and Simpson date the sermon in 1623 because the feast was part of the epistle for that day (the fourth Sunday after Epiphany) which fell on Candlemas day in either 1616/7 or 1622/3. They reason that at Lincoln’s Inn, where Donne was in 1616/17, the feast was not celebrated with any ceremony, whereas at St. Paul’s the Lord Mayor went in procession on that day, and Donne felt obliged to preach before him. I think this dating is also likely because Donne notes that the text was part of the epistle of that day, that year, perhaps justifying his use of this text by stressing his conformity to the demands of the occasion, as required by the terms of the Directions. If, in fact, Donne’s sermon was preached at St. Paul’s on Candlemas Day 1623, audiences would have heard two sermons on that day, a Sunday.

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The Journey to Spain and Pulpit Lamentation analogies between God’s absolute power and the king’s, the analogy between king and God does not hold here; nor does overpraising great men recompense God for the due praise owed him. Such flattering sermons, that speak “more of Great men, then of our great God” (IV, 307), make a mockery of the pulpit, and are no different from praise spent upon angels in the Catholic church. Besides praise, another debt to God is prayer, payable at all times, but chiefly in his church. All the world is God’s Exchequer, Donne says. But the church is his Court of Requests where he receives our petitions and we his answers. Once more Donne stresses the established institutional means for rendering this debt to God, distinguishing the proper attitude to prayer from those distempered attitudes – identifiably puritan but not so named – that he exposes. Donne says, for example, that even when preaching is omitted, the church is still a house of prayer, but the church is never so exclusively a house of preaching so that prayer may be omitted. Furthermore, he notes that God will not be paid with extemporal prayer but with that coined in the king’s image, the liturgy and service of the church. This is not to say that God does not hear prayer in the good motions of the heart, but his solemn days of payment are the sabbaths and the place of payment is the Lord’s house. Donne’s rhetorical method in this sermon is to define (and redefine) by contrast (with previous definitions, false definitions, partial definitions) and by analogy (with other forms of experience). So, to an audience familiar with political structures, the distinction between God’s Exchequer and the Court of Requests is effective, as is the distinction between God’s cabinet councils and his more public synods. So, too, is the definition that distinguishes due praise of God from the overpraising of great men or the misguided praise of Catholics for angels. Having outlined the debts owed to God in the first part of the sermon, Donne’s focus in part two is on the debts owed to men, represented by the king as the root of all creditors. Not to maintain the prince is a derogation of duty, a “declination” that Donne deplores (IV, 314), but a duty he leaves to his hearers’ consciences. The other kind of debt is ceremonial, comprising things that contribute to the prince’s dignity, a debt that does not extend to allowing the prince’s errors, or sinning with one’s superiors, but which imposes the duty to counsel superiors respectfully and reverently. “No man is a good Counsellor, for all his wisdome, and for all his liberty of speech, except he love the person whom he counsels: If he do not wish him well, as well as tell him his faults, he is rather a Satyrist, and a Calumniator, and seeks to vent his own wisdome, and to exercise his authority, then a good Counsellor” (IV, 317). The emphasis in this section on the monetary and ceremonial debts due to the king is framed within a discourse that places all judgment, in the end, in the conscience, but that sets a high, personal standard of counsel as the motive and measure of that duty. Part three brings the discourse of conscience home as Donne avers, finally, that we are creditors to ourselves. Here, Donne reiterates Bernard’s advice that since we are commanded to love our neighbours as ourselves we must be sure to love ourselves as we should or “we proceed by a wrong, and a crooked rule” (IV, 319). The first and final arbiter, however, is conscience: “Be just therefore to thy selfe all the way, pay thy selfe, and take acquittances of thy selfe, all the way, which is onely done under the seale, and in the testimony of a rectified conscience. Let thine owne conscience be thine evidence, and thy Rolls, and not the opinion of others” (IV, 322). On the eve of momentous changes in national and international equilibrium, the pulpit was poised to respond to a crisis. The audience at St. Paul’s on 173

John Donne and Conformity in Crisis Candlemas would have heard two sermons stressing the English church as the institutional means ordained by God for salvation. Myriell approaches this conclusion by contrasting the Church of England with the corruptions of the Romish Antichrist and by offering James himself as the model of constant religious leadership. Although he gestures towards “Romanists,” they do not seem to be his intended listeners, nor does he accommodate himself to their concerns. Donne approaches the church as institutional means by focusing on prayer and praise as the debts owed to God and payable in the church each sabbath. His anti-papism is much more muted than Myriell’s, and in his dismissal of puritan scruples about prayer he seems to be gesturing more seriously to church-papists who would share his liturgical emphases. In the end, however, listeners that day would have been asked to think about the foundations of religious authority. Myriell’s sermon offers James as the symbol of that authority, whereas both Hall and Donne advance the strongest claims for conscience. In so doing, they are responding to the crises precipitated by censorship and controversy by articulating a concept of religious identity that is at once intensely personal, and yet mediated through authorized national institutions. The conflict between private and public religious spheres is resolved by external authorities in Myriell’s sermon while their tension is thematized in those by Hall and Donne. Two weeks later, on 17 February, Baby Charles and Steenie set out for Spain in disguise. William Whateley had not likely heard the news when he preached two sermons on marriage troubles, but Charles would have been well advised to read them when they were published in 1624.27 Whateley’s sermons are intended for readers who offend “in an ouer-sudden and ouer-hastie vndertaking of Marriage” (sig. A2r) without due meditation on the duties and difficulties of that state. The first sermon, on 1 Corinthians 7:28,28 forewarns his audience of the difficulties of marriage, by analogy with God who forewarned the Israelites of the burdens of having a king. Whateley’s purpose is to counsel against marriage, not because it is unlawful, but because it is burdensome. These burdens increase when the marriage partner is not one of the same “true Religion” (p. 28), as in marriage with infidels (“Turkes or Pagans,” p. 32), but Whateley supports the counsel by the same scriptural texts commonly used against marriage with papists, either literally or spiritually: “What communion the Temple of God can haue with Idols” (p. 32) and “It is not good plowing with an Oxe and an Asse” (p. 32). The second sermon, on Colossians 3:5,29 takes up similar themes. A military rhetoric appropriate to the soldiers of Christ (their Captain) dominates the tract, and the lusts they must abjure are figured as “rotten and foule clouts” unbecoming to the children of God (p. 100). There is shame in these lusts, Whateley urges, saying that “A beggers dirty, patched cloake, doth no more beseeme a Princes backe, then the practice of sinfull lusts doth become a Christian” (p. 100). If there is any doubt that these “sinfull lusts” are associated with “mortall enemies” in “farre countrie[s],” Whateley warns that “As men that are wise, will not conuerse with their mortall enemies: (specially strangers travelling in a farre countrie, wil not willingly associate themselves with those that hate them, and conspire their 27 28

29

These sermons were preached 17 and 19 February. “If thou marriest, thou sinnest not; and if a virgin marry, she sinneth not, but such shall have trouble in the flesh.” “Mortifie your members which are upon the earth.”

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The Journey to Spain and Pulpit Lamentation death;) so the people of God, must have nothing to doe with sinfull lusts of any sort” (p. 100). In particular, the third sermon resonates within a discourse of weeping that marked the occasion of the prince’s foolish journey to Spain.30 The sermon, addressed to “any small remnant left, of those that haue hearts of flesh” (sig. O2v), is a call for “sighs and tears” for the nation’s sins. These tears, he says, will do “good to your soules, and good to your Countries, good to the King, and good to the Commons, good to the Commonweale, and good to the church, and good to the whole Land, and all that dwell in it” (p. 252). Yet, Whateley is also careful to distinguish tears for sin from the activities of those “fault-finding men [separatists?], that make vs farre worse then wee be, their sharpe-sighted eyes can see no lawfull Ministry, no true Word, Church, Sacraments, nor prayer amongst vs; and yet of these captious People, and carping Nation, that ouerlash so much in accusing, there is scarce any that mourneth for the things hee carpeth at: for they so spend themselues in false accusing, that they haue no leasure to bestow in true bewailing of our sinnes” (pp. 236–7). His warnings, Whateley says, make neglecting the duty of mourning “notorious and inexcusable” (p. 242) . . . “A fitter season to mourne, wee need not seeke for. The Text fits well with both!” (p. 243). The mood of lamentation sounded in Whateley’s sermon is repeated in other sermons that focus on “tears.” Donne’s sense of the occasion for lamentation might have prompted his choice of text (“Jesus Wept”) for a sermon preached at Whitehall, the First Friday in Lent [1622/23] shortly after the departure of the prince and Buckingham to Spain. Donne’s text expressed powerfully the only response to the enormity of the event that had undermined all hope for religious stability in England, and political stability on the continent. Potter and Simpson observe that Donne made no mention of the great excitement of the moment, the departure of the prince and Buckingham in disguise to Spain, and further dilute topical application by suggesting that the sermon was generically appropriate to the beginning of Lent. It is hardly surprising, however, that Donne did not speak specifically about this shocking political event. For one thing, it was not Donne’s custom to speak openly on matters of state; moreover, preachers were still under the force of James’s Directions and of special instructions not to mention the incident of which almost the whole of England was critical. Donne did sometimes speak obliquely on political matters of the moment, usually to offer the counsel of discretion to his great hearers and the counsel of charity to his audience at large. Also, Donne’s manner of speaking could have amplified the resonant lamentation of his text; but most of this mode of interpretation is not available to modern readers. Donne registers the impact of this two-word text by the amazement it produced in commentators who divided the Old Testament into verses.31 In the season of general mortification, its subject – weeping – is appropriate. Of course, hearers 30

31

Whateley’s text is Psalms 116:136. “Rivers of water runne downe mine eyes, because they keepe not thy Testimonies.” The sermon on John 11:35 (“Jesus Wept”) and the one on I Thessalonians 5:16 (“Rejoyce evermore”), to which Donne alludes as more fitting for a festival time, appear together in BL MS Harleian 6946, along with three marriage sermons. Harleian 6946 is the only manuscript source for Donne’s sermons that contains sermons only by Donne, and the only known manuscript source for the sermon on 1 Thessalonians 5:16. Results of this manuscript discovery are forthcoming in English Manuscript Studies.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis aware of recent developments might see more than one reason for mourning, and this short, dramatic statement speaks eloquently, and without hyperbole, of the force of this event. The sermon itself considers the three occasions on which Jesus wept. On the first, the death of Lazarus, Jesus wept human tears of condolence for a natural calamity befallen upon one family. On the second, he wept prophetical tears in contemplation of future calamities upon a nation. The third tears were pontifical, wept in contemplation of the everlasting punishments due to sin. Although a topical reading is not demanded by Donne’s exegesis, it is certainly available as Donne moves through the domestic and then public consequences of his text. According to Donne, Jesus’s first tears showed his human compassion for Lazarus and his family. Donne points out, however, that these tears did not show distrust, nor were they inordinate. However, the example of Jesus here is difficult to apply. There is an apparent excess of passion in Jesus’s agony, but Donne says the tears are sanctified in the root. Unlike Moses, for example, who showed excessive zeal in asking to be blotted from the Book of Life, Christ’s zeal was “safe” and showed “no foulnesse, no declination towards inordinatenesse” (IV, 329). However, as Donne observes, every Christian is not Christ and though Christ could fast forty days and whip merchants out of the temple we cannot follow his example in these things. “The rule is, we must avoid inordinatenesse of affections; but when we come to examples of that rule, our selves well understood by our selves, must be our owne examples; for it is not alwaies good to go too far, as some good men have gone before” (IV, 329). It is interesting to speculate on what effect these words would have had on an audience considering the inordinately passionate behaviour of Charles in setting out for Madrid – a place undoubtedly “too far” – in such haste and secrecy. The implied contrast between the example of Jesus and the example of men motivated by inordinate affections is strong. But Donne also leaves room for conscience, arguing that the rule is to follow “our selves well understood by our selves.” The requirement of self-knowledge Donne stresses here suggests, on the one hand, the slender self-knowledge Charles had exhibited in executing his rash plan, but also leaves open the possibility that Charles knew himself well enough to make this choice. Those who wished to could see how Charles’s decision to put himself into the hands of the Spanish was dangerous, not to mention foolhardy, as James himself came to realize when the prince’s return was delayed. On the whole, however, the contrast with Christ suggests that only Christ can follow the excess of his own singular example. Human beings cannot. If we can draw from Christ’s example, it is to see that Christ “wept not inordinately; but he came nearer excess than indolency” (IV, 336). So, “when men are refractary, as that they forbeare to heare, or heare and resist our preaching, we must pray; and where they dispise or forbid our praying, we must lament them, we must weep” (IV, 335). In the second part of the sermon, Donne considers Jesus’s prophetical tears as an example of weeping in contemplation of public calamities. Here again, the application to immediate circumstances would have been difficult to resist. Donne is careful to contrast present times with these but to show that even in the best times and under the best princes (who are naturally mutable) there is ever cause of tears. Finally, in the third part of the sermon, Donne considers Jesus’s pontifical tears. Here he wept under the weight of all the world’s sins, tears that Donne aligns with tears of true repentance in sinners; “the soule bathed in these 176

The Journey to Spain and Pulpit Lamentation teares cannot perish” (IV, 343). This sermon raises the subject of Jesus’s tears to a level of popular and public lamentation for sin, loss, and calamity that dominated pulpit discourse. Typically, Donne’s sermon offers moral counsel that takes his hearers outside the prescriptive domain of rule and example to the domain of conscience and the principles that inform its judgments. EASTER SEASON: TRIUMPHALISM AND TEARS On Easter Monday, 14 April 1623, Walter Balcanquhall, royalist divine, and one of the delegates to the Synod of Dort, preached a sermon at St. Maries Spittle on Psalms 126:5.32 D’Ewes heard the sermon, having gone early to secure a seat, and concluded that he “did most excellently” upon his text, being “an honest man of exceeding great learning and sufficiencye.”33 Like Donne’s, this sermon on Christian weeping resonates with topical application of egregious calamities visited upon Christians, and supports the view that these texts of lamentation were specifically chosen both to warn and to uplift their congregations. In the sermon, Balcanquhall observes first that to the saints of God, “this is not paradox, but a proposition by experience prooved vnquestionable, that those that sow in teares, shall reap in ioy” (p. 3). Balcanquhall’s schematic division of his text according to the four wells of tears Christians must tap reinforces the movement from sorrow to joy conventional for an Easter sermon, while emphasizing the profound spiritual lamentations appropriate to the Lenten season, and, I would argue, to the particular season of religious calamity the sermon evokes. While Balcanquhall’s sermon divides and amplifies his text to provide a taxonomy of Christian tears, however, his sermon, unlike Donne’s, remains resolutely detached from the issues of conscience, interpretation, and controversy that mark Donne’s sermon as topical and that engage rhetorically with an audience anxious for religious stability. James himself, no doubt embarrassed by the need to explain the departure of Charles and Buckingham for Spain, and not anxious to hear sermons of lamentation, however suitable to the liturgical season, avoided London. Chamberlain reports that in the Easter season of 1623 the king did not come to London until the day before Palm Sunday. According to his account, there had been no sermons at the open preaching place at court; nor had the king been present at any in the chapel. Nonetheless, a full rota of preachers “all performed their part exceding well,” and Chamberlain predicts that “yf he that is to make the rehersall sermon to morrow follow the same steps, I have seldome knowne the places better furnished” (II, 489). The news in London by Easter was all of the Spanish match and the prince’s “wonderfull entertainment and kind usage” in Spain (II, 488). Chamberlain predicts in early April that “this mariage one way or other is like to cost the King and realme as much as she [the Infanta] bringes, be yt what yt will: for we must now be content with what conditions they please to impose” (II, 488–9). Letters also speak uneasily of the prince’s delay in returning, noting that he is having his arms and tilting horse shipped to Spain (II, 489).

32 33

“They that sow in teares, shall reape in joy.” D’Ewes, Diary, pp. 130–1.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis A court sermon by John Rawlinson, one of James’s chaplains, must have caused a small stir on 19 March 1622/23. Preached before the Lords at Whitehall, the king and prince being absent, the sermon touches explicitly on the question of marriage. Rawlinson dedicates the volume to Charles, whose “deplored absence” (“The Epistle Dedicatory”) on his “Amorous travels” apparently inspired the preacher to preach on his “Amatorious text, Come with me from Lebanon, my spouse.” Rawlinson hopes that he has “behaved . . . as became a sober Subiect, and a modest Divine, not like a buisy Statist, or curious Commonwealth-wright,” and the sermon bears out Rawlinson’s conformist claims. It alludes only indirectly to human marriages, contrasting these with the marriage between Christ and his spouse. So, where other husbands “Woo the dowry, not the wife” (p. 7), Christ woos her in earnest. The duties of the spouse – not to fornicate with devils or idols (p. 16) – might also have reverberated with the anti-Spanish audience. So, too, might the claim that God the Father is the first mover of the match, especially in the context of the observation that in earthly marriages the father’s consent, as well as the lover’s, is required (p. 15). While Rawlinson’s sermon speaks directly to the interest created by Charles’s marriage journey, several surviving sermons suggest some of the related topics of concern affecting the liturgical season of rejoicing in 1623. On 13 April Donne’s Easter sermon was preached at St. Paul’s in the evening as part of the second lesson of that evening prayer. Donne took as his text, a verse from Acts 2:3634 in a sermon that considers its subject, resurrection, by focusing on methods of interpretation and systems of understanding, rather than on doctrine. Almost all of the occasional flavour of the text is available in digressions, passing allusions, metaphors and other comparisons, never in direct, sustained controversy or polemic. Donne is clear in this sermon about the ground of his faith, and about the abuses of this faith among the most dangerous schismatics, the papists. In it, Donne appropriates the language of James’s ecclesiastical policy to show that the greatest danger to the church is in separation from its ordinary means of grace. And all who rely implicitly on human beings rather than God are schismatics in this sense. From the outset, Donne notes that this text is part of a sermon and observes that the apostle applies himself gently to his auditory. He gives them their title, House of Israel, proving that “a true heart, and a fair tongue might very well consist together” (IV, 346–7), and that good intentions of the heart improve by being expressed in fair language. This disquisition on the relationship between good language and truth is interesting, especially since Donne uses as one of his examples the words of a “vulgar Spanish Author” who calls the Holy Ghost a good “courtier” for giving Mary her due title as Mother of God, although he gives her no additional titles of honour. Potter and Simpson believe that the sermon was “not one of his best” and that Donne mentions the Spanish author entirely for expedient motives, recognizing that with the Prince gone to promote his marriage to the Infanta in person, knowing Spanish would be an advantage, particularly for one seeking placement at court (IV, 39–40).35 34

35

“Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord, and Christ.” The unfounded notion that Donne was motivated solely by ambition is challenged by Flynn in “Donne’s Politics.”

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The Journey to Spain and Pulpit Lamentation However, little else in the sermon supports this view. As with the Candlemas day sermon, Donne is concerned to provide his congregation with grounds for right action in this question of the relationship between language and truth. Accordingly, he instructs them in the relation between “examples” and “rules” for action; one can go to an example, or one can go farther than that example to a rule. For preachers, the professional rule of fair speech is to approach the affections of his congregation with “faire accesses,” and “sweet and honourable entrances” (IV, 347). Once more, we have Donne’s carefully measured rhetorical play between extremes, achieved by defining cases and examples at either end of the spectrum, and locating a regenerate response somewhere in the middle. “Especially is this manner [the courtly and civil rhetorical style] necessary in men of our profession; Not to break a bruised reed, nor to quench smoaking flaxe, not to avert any, from a will to heare, by any frowardnesse, any morosity, any defrauding them of their due praise, and due titles; but to accompany this blessed Apostle, in this way of his discreet, and religious insinuation, to call them Men of Iudea” (IV, 347–8). The civility Donne proposes, however, does not amount to flattery: “Plainly and without disguise he imputes and puts home to them, the crucifying of Christ; how honourably soever they were descended, he layes that murder close to their Consciences” (IV, 348). Donne’s purpose in advocating a professional style that is both “faire” and “civil” is to warn the House of Israel of those things that threaten its foundations. And foremost among these are “singular” and “schismaticall opinions” (IV, 349), here equated with popery, for “what is more singular, more schismaticall, then when all Religion is confined in one mans [the Pope’s] breast?” (IV, 349). This is why he urges his hearers to be “sheep” inasmuch as they should flock together to embrace those truths that “the whole Christian Church, hath from the beginning acknowledged to be truths, and truths necessary to salvation” (IV, 349). Here again, Donne is implicitly contrasting such truths with those new truths invented by the Council of Trent and authorized as articles of faith. The goal of this sermon is to create understanding hearers; such believers the adversary cannot swallow but “he must chaw, and pick bones, before he come to assimilate him, and make him like himself ” (IV, 351). This kind of faith, grounded in reason, will distinguish them from the “implicite beleever” whom “the adversary may swallow.” Similarly, Donne urges his congregation to base their faith on the covenant with God revealed in scriptures rather than on the persons of men (martyrs or popes). The thrust is once more anti-Catholic: “Not upon the persons of Martyrs, as if they had done more then they needed for themselves, and might relieve us, with their supererogations; . . . Not upon that person, who hath made himself supernumerary, and a Controller upon the three persons in the Trinity, the Bishop of Rome; not upon the consideration of accidents upon persons, when God suffers some to fall, who would have advanced his cause, and some to be advanced, who would have throwne downe his cause” (IV, 353). The anti-papism of this particular sermon and, especially, Donne’s redefinition of “schismatic” to refer primarily to Catholics rather than puritans, expresses clearly the religious foundations of the Church of England. As fears of that church’s security were threatened by the consequences of a Spanish marriage, Donne is clarifying for his auditory that they must rely on scriptures for their resurrection, not, as Potter and Simpson suggest, advancing his courtly ambitions. 179

John Donne and Conformity in Crisis Andrewes’s sermon, preached before James at Whitehall on Easter Day, was an eloquent, even poetic, exposition of Isaiah 63:1–3.36 Unlike Donne’s sermon with its hermeneutical self-consciousness and its topical interpretive cruxes, Andrewes’s sermon alludes only faintly to current discourses, and focuses almost entirely on the metaphysical dimensions of his text. Rejecting the “dead letter” in favour of the spiritual meaning, Andrewes concludes that “Edom” is simply another name to express the enemies, both mortal and immortal, of Isaiah’s countrymen. “No place on earth that resembled hell nearer; next to hell on earth was Edom” (III, 65); and Bozra is hell itself. But despite this, Christ has come forth and won a victory, and so this text refers to his triumphant return from the descent into hell where “He that was thrown Himself, threw them now another while into the press, trod them down, trampled upon them as grapes in a vat, till He made them the blood spring out of them . . .” (III, 74).37 Andrewes’s Easter sermon marks a clearly anti-Calvinist moment at the court, in contrast to Donne’s sophisticated sermon at St. Paul’s and its focus on how understanding believers make interpretive discriminations.38 Balcanquhall’s Easter Monday sermon, with its call to tears as the seeds of joy and its pedestrian division of tears into four wells, cannot compare with the rich wit and dexterity of Andrewe’s exegesis, his movement from metaphorical to literal interpretation of the entrance into Edom and the treading of the winepress. As controversial as interpretation of that article still was, particularly after Dort, Andrewes’s sermon is neither polemical nor even overtly controversial. It is a remarkable performance that contrasts the calamitous tone of the sermons on weeping with the triumphalism Andrewes saw as appropriate to the occasion. William Rawley’s sermon on meekness preached at the Spittle and dedicated to the disgraced Francis Bacon, rounds out the London preaching rota. The joys typical of Easter sermons, alluded to in Andrewes’s triumphal interpretation of his text and discerned through the tears of Balcanquhall’s sermon, are certainly muted in the sermons by Donne and Rawley, with their focus on moderation, foundations, and meekness. Donne’s use of the occasion to discuss “resurrection” in the context of separatist movements threatening the Church, and Rawley’s 36

37

38

“Who is this That cometh from Edom, with red garments from Bosrah? He is glorious in His apparel and walketh in great strength: I speak in righteousness, and am mighty to save. Wherefore is Thine apparel red, and Thy garments like him that treadeth the winepress? I have trodden the winepress alone, and of all the people there was none with Me: for, I will tread them in Mine anger, and tread them under foot in My wrath, and their blood shall be sprinkled upon My garments, and I will staine all My raiment.” Wallace has shown that Andrewes, as early as the 1590s in correspondence and definitively in print in 1610, had rejected Calvin’s interpretation of the descent (i.e. that Christ suffered the torments of hell on the cross as part of his humiliation) in favour of a more Lutheran “belief in a local descent of Christ into the hell of the damned” contributing to his triumph over Shem (p. 280 and n. 150). Only a year before, on Good Friday, Barten Holyday offered a similarly triumphalist interpretation of this passage (Three Sermons, pp. 36–7). Donne’s interpretive self-consciousness rescues him from dogmatic pronouncements. However, it is worth noting that in his 1623 Easter sermon, Donne distinguishes between “that which admits no disputation” (the Resurrection) and the interpretation of Christ’s descent into hell. Rather than pronouncing on the dispute, Donne describes its parameters: “And if he beleeve that to be a limme of the article of the Resurrection, His descent into hell, must rather be an inchoation of his triumph, then a consummation of his Exinanition, The first step of his Exaltation there, rather then the last step of his Passion upon the Crosse” (IV, 354–5). The only indication of Donne’s inclination is his prior statement that “Christs descending into hell, and his Resurrection, in our Creed, make up one Article, and in our Creed we beleeve them both alike” (IV, 354).

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The Journey to Spain and Pulpit Lamentation explication of “meekness” as a humble (but not abject) attitude between wrath or flatness (on the one hand) and incapability of anger (on the other) exemplifies a homiletic discourse more concerned with the discursive achievement than the absolute pronouncement of doctrinal certainty. Donne’s stress on interpretive principles, in particular, demonstrates a flexible rhetorical approach balanced between dogma and dispute that characterizes his moderate style. ELIZABETH OF BOHEMIA: THE SAINTS’ ADVANTAGE With continued negotiations for the Spanish match, however, and no sign of Charles’s return, John Wing’s The Saints Advantage reveals the public preoccupations of the faithful in England in a sermon preached 18 May 1623 at the Hague before Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, and dedicated to her and her posterity. Wing’s text is Hebrews 11:26,39 a text appropriate to the times, as a remedy to “the hard conceit” that the godly harbour in evil times when they seem forsaken by God (“To the Christian Reader”). The founding premise of the sermon is that faith alters the mind of man so that what was esteemed the best in the world, he esteems as base. Accordingly, the sermon argues that the worst estate of a child of God is better than the best estate of any wicked man. At first sight, this appears to be an impossible paradox. The world judges tyranny, slavery, and cruelty to be the unhappiest case a man can possibly be in, and honour, wealth, and prosperity the best. Since there are no interpretive cruxes, “no obscuritie or ambiguitie, but all being easie and open to the meanest capacitie” (p. 9), Wing proceeds directly to the examples that prove his thesis, beginning with Moses (p. 13). Moses was brought into Pharoah’s favour by God’s extraordinary providence, and adopted by Pharoah’s daughter, by whom he was educated, not as a slave, but as a learned Egyptian. Being thus qualified, he became eminent at court.40 He continued in this state for 40 years, and could have held what he had in perpetuity (p. 14), yet, Moses chose to join his own people, a decision that would cause him to feel Pharaoh’s tyranny more intensely (p. 14). To the eye of carnal reason, Moses ought to be condemned as a fool (p. 15), but his faith allowed him to choose to be leader of God’s chosen people, even under the woeful conditions they suffered. Moses is Wing’s example of one who followed God’s illumination and forsook worldly things to follow God. Some might interpret his behaviour as more brainsick than obedient. But faith made glorious things vile and vile things glorious to him. Wing’s text, and the entire epistle to the Hebrews, contains many examples of others famous for this very thing (p. 17). Abraham, David, Jeremiah, and Job are cited as examples of men who were deeply discomfited and confused by the sufferings of the godly and God’s dispensation of outward favours (pp. 25–7). Working by contrasts, Wing proves that the restraint of Lazarus was better than the freedom of the wicked Dives (p. 34). Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar prove that captivity of the child of God is preferable to the king’s freedom (p. 35), 39 40

“Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Aegypt.” Wing even speculates that he may have been Lord Treasurer of Egypt, perhaps a reference to Lionel Cranfield, whose rise to this position of authority was soon to be eclipsed by his impeachment in the 1624 parliament.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis an example that surely resonates in the situation of Elizabeth and Frederick, whose title as king and queen of Bohemia had not led to their freedom but, in fact, to their bondage. The sermon is certainly applicable to the times, as the dedication makes apparent, and is a sustained call for perseverance in the face of worldly calamities and persecutions. Elizabeth, Frederick, and their children, of course, were well acquainted with such calamities, and their supporters in England, who realized that the Spanish marriage would not materially aid their cause, must have felt that they were facing the worst of times. This sermon, preached and published on the continent as English people tired of waiting for the match to be completed, speaks to the demoralized condition of both English and continental godly communities. Extant printed sermons for the first half of 1623 betray neither of the extremes reported by contemporaries: neither the “fearful flattering style” denounced in the Oxford sermon, nor the critique of state affairs anticipated by the February instructions to preachers.41 Surviving printed sermons focus on lamentation and weeping, on papist treachery and deceit, on the Church of England as the means to salvation. A court sermon on the touchy subject of marriage makes the occasion of the sermon’s topic explicit (Charles’s voyage to Spain to complete the Spanish match) but allegorizes the text to refer to the soul’s marriage to Christ. Some preachers, like Andrewes, took the opportunity to broach doctrinal views (such as the interpretation of Christ’s descent into hell) that moved the Church in an anti-Calvinist direction, while others, like Donne, focused much more on national centrist solidarity against separatist threats. But, as Wing’s sermon to Elizabeth and her beleaguered protestant court indicates, the only possible way to interpret the calamitous condition of the godly was to focus on the paradox that the worst estate of the child of God is better than the best estate of any wicked man. Suffering, however, is the predominant theme of sermons, exacerbated by the suggestion that these calamities may have been self-generated by the deceitful heart that Hall so passionately exposes.

41

A sensitive sermon by William Loe preached at Whitehall in January survives in manuscript but was not published until after the prince’s return.

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Chapter 7 “BLINDE BUZZARDS IN THE CHOISE OF A WIFE”: SERMONS AND THE MORAL MARKETPLACE

I

N THE MONTHS following ratification of the marriage articles, and preceding Charles’s return (presumably with his Spanish bride), concerns about religion and politics simmered, and rumours of great changes circulated. Simonds D’Ewes recorded the popular refrain of contemporary news sources: “everye mans heart [is full] of feare of an ensuing toleration.”1 These anxieties were alleviated temporarily by the prince’s miraculous return as a bachelor in October, an event that occasioned the outpouring of public relief and thanksgiving so well documented by Cogswell.2 Occasions of public rejoicing, however, could also become occasions of public debate, and several sermons used the opportunity and the discourse of thanksgiving to express relief, as well as to offer warnings and advice for the future. The anti-Spanish anti-popery that Charles’s return unleashed combined with public rejoicing to forge “public, national, and common interests and purposes that rendered the public sphere genuinely public.”3 These two strands, in turn, were unexpectedly consolidated into the public interest by the Blackfriars incident, and the providential reading of history that it invited.4 At the same time, however, the debates earlier that year between the Jesuit John Percy and representatives of the Church of England illustrated, despite James’s efforts at secrecy, that once a public sphere had emerged, its structures and procedures became available “not merely to members or agents of the state and their clients or dependents but also to others.”5 The sheer number of people present at the Blackfriars disaster, both Catholic and protestant, as well as the publication of the debates with Percy, reinforced the sense that public debate could get out of control. Although the Directions were still current, rigid enforcement of censorship declined noticeably, while controversy and dispute as modes of public debate were legitimized. And despite the failure of negotiations for the Spanish match, fear of toleration of

1 2 3 4

5

D’Ewes, Diary, p. 147. Blessed Revolution, pp. 6–12. Lake and Questier, “Puritans, Papists, and the ‘Public Sphere’, ” 591. “On Sunday afternoon, 26 October 1623, a large garrett adjoining the French ambassador’s residence, in which a congregation some three hundred strong had gathered to hear a celebrated Jesuit by the name of Robert Drury preach, suddenly and dramatically collapsed. In the middle of the sermon the floor of the makeshift chapel gave way, carrying with it the chamber below, and plummeting the preacher, a fellow priest, and over ninety of his auditors to their deaths.” Walsham, “The Fatall Vesper,” 36. Lake and Questier, “Puritans, Papists, and the ‘Public Sphere’, ” 626–7.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis popery at home did not abate, but was prosecuted through a variety of media. An anonymous letter attributed to Abbot in July 1623, as well as Donne’s Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, articulate two ways in which the national interest intersected with a discourse of true religion at the end of 1623. Donne’s Devotions, in particular, bear the marks of this emerging public sphere. At once intensely private spiritual devotions, they are suffused with a public significance embedded in their political and spiritual discourses, and confirmed by their rapid publication and distribution. While Charles and Buckingham were still in Spain, a spurious letter, allegedly from Abbot to James, rebuked James for trying to set up the Whore of Babylon. Dated 27 July, the letter purports to discharge the author’s conscience on the question of toleration for papists that many took to be the tenor of James’s policies, including the Directions. The letter confronts directly the issues that mattered to most citizens: aversion to the “wicked haerisies” of the “whore of Babylon”; the king’s connivance at the prince’s journey to Spain “without the consent of yor Councell, the privity, & approbation of yor people”; the tacit allowance of counselors who could draw him to so “desperate” an action; and the fear that this proposed toleration was to be set up “without a Parliamt,” thus indicating “a liberty to throw downe the lawes of the land at yor pleasure”; and the fear of God’s wrath on the nation.6 The device of anonymity, though transparent, was one means by which public criticism could be expressed, and the perpetrators of this letter received the added bonus that Abbot did not openly refute his authorship. Secretary Calvert, unable to ascertain the identity of the author, and alarmed that thousands of copies were circulating in London and in the shires, asked for orders for preachers to declaim against the letter as counterfeit.7 The State Papers, in fact, record the official view that Abbot should preach against the sermon if he did not author it. Castle, however, writes to Trumbull that if Abbot is the author he has done well to “succour his honour and reputac¯on,” which had suffered some censure recently. He adds that even if Abbot did not write it, the number of copies extant will ensure that some of them will “sticke,” despite Abbot’s disavowals.8 As an experiment in the public sphere, this letter was a resounding success. Many at the centre of the English church feared that measures of toleration for Catholics instituted by James were the slippery slope to a general papist takeover of religion. Prideaux wrote in September 1623 that “The Papists here [in Oxford] and everywhere assault and insult upon our brethren in the ministry.” On Prideaux’s account, however, the pulpits had taken up the anti-papist cause: “Popery was no more eagerly preached against than now amongst us by our best men.”9 Anti-popery continued to be anti-Spanish, causing state officials such as Conway to examine passages in public sermons against the King of Spain.10 Moreover, the prince’s absence had exacerbated the state of religious polarization fuelled by the crisis of censorship. The Venetian ambassador reported, on the one hand, the open declaration of Catholicism by about a hundred families, and, on the other, the huge crowds attending protestant churches where preachers 6 7 8 9 10

Bodleian MS Tanner 299, fo. 48v. PRO SP 14/150/54, 55, 56, 57. BL Add. MS 72276 [Castle Correspondence], fo. 54r. [8 August 1623]. Birch, II, 418. PRO SP 14/152/6.

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Sermons and the Moral Marketplace refrained, with difficulty, from customary invectives against the pope.11 In this volatile situation, those closest to the king were reduced to silence, causing the Venetian ambassador to report that the king was ruling “practically despotically,” and doing “what he pleases without taking counsel of anyone.”12 It was only a matter of time before things boiled over. A sermon by Dr. Whiting is one of the best-documented cases in 1623 of antiSpanish anti-papist pulpit rhetoric following the Directions. The State Papers contain correspondence between the two Secretaries of State on the matter,13 and the incident is recorded in newsletters, diaries, and correspondence. Whiting apparently preached at Hampton Court on the text “Remember Lot’s wife,” the same text that had caused such trouble for Dr. White a year before. This time, in the heat of marriage negotiations, and intense fear that the prince’s safety was compromised, Whiting, though he was said to have preached “worthily,”14 was accused before the king, an accusation seconded by the Spanish ambassador. The king had not been present at the sermon, but having consulted privately with Whiting’s accusers, he demanded a printed copy of it, whereupon Whiting was imprisoned.15 Although Whiting acknowledged his error, the authorities wanted to make an example of him.16 This decision is explicable in part by the timing of his offence, which occurred while the prince was still in Spain, and his examination, which occurred shortly after the prince’s return. James was aware of the dangers of “free speech” authorized by public celebrations of Charles’s return, and wanted to send a clear message that preaching exceeding the boundaries of conformity would be punished. Locke complained that a “good preacher” had been silenced for speaking words that might receive “double construction.” Ordinarily such a strategy would have been sufficient to placate authorities, who were willing to allow speech where at least one construction was innocent.17 Whiting’s exemplary confinement is not the only evidence of James’s increasing sensitivity to language at this time. His micro-management of controversial writing extended further, even to the level of single words. A letter to Mead of 21 November reports that James had perused Francis White’s reply to the Jesuit Fisher, demanding that the word “idolatry” be excised. Though the word was eventually allowed to stand (at Laud’s pleading!) the degree to which James was sensitive to inflammatory language, and the degree to which he was willing to intervene personally in verbal conflicts, can be measured by this incident.18 Three colloquies were held on three consecutive days (24–26 May) before the Buckinghams, in which Percy, the Jesuit confessor to the Villiers family, debated Francis White, Laud, and King James himself. James’s attempts to orchestrate these “debates” are indicated by his selection of Arminian-leaning White and Laud to make the protestant arguments, rather than more puritan disputants such as Abbot’s chaplain Featley. James hoped to facilitate the Spanish negotiations by 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

18

CSPV, XVIII, 103. Ibid. PRO SP 14/153/20, 39. Birch, II, 419. Ibid., II, 419–20. Acts of the Privy Council XXXIX [1623–25], 95. BL Add. MS 72299, fo. 123r. [Locke Correspondence]. Chamberlain reports to Carleton 3 January 1623/4 that Whiting has only recently been restored to preaching, “and with goode wordes” (II, 536). Birch, II, 435.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis selecting divines who professed anti-Catholic doctrines, but were moderate enough to appease Spain.19 In fact James shrouded all three debates in secrecy, knowing the damage that the conversions of some of Buckingham’s family to Catholicism had produced.20 Charles’s prolonged absence in Spain coupled with the increasingly public presence of Catholics pressured preachers to demonstrate their loyalty to the Reformed religion. Already constrained by the Directions and chafing to retain interpretive initiative in the public sphere, several preachers were officially silenced. The case of Whiting has already been noted, but on 21 September 1623 Joseph Hall preached at Theobald’s and dedicated the sermon to William, Earl of Pembroke.21 Both preachers suffered the same fate for their need to testify to their faith at court – “imprisonment and popular glorification.”22 In the dedication to Pembroke accompanying the printed sermon, Hall observes that it will be “not a little useful for the times; which, if ever, require quickening. Neither is it to no purpose that the world should see in what style we speak to the court, not without acceptation” (V, 174). In drawing attention to the topical application and the direct “style” of this sermon Hall intends to “quicken” those courtiers whose support is needed to strengthen the “patriot” coalition against Spain, and, ultimately, to support the Reformed religion.23 Hall’s selection of Pembroke as his patron was judicious. Still respected as a protestant leader at court and an opponent of Buckingham, Pembroke was invoked as one whose power was great but whose public resolve required strengthening.24 Hall’s recourse to Pembroke was astute for it seems that through Pembroke’s patronage the sermon was published, despite Hall’s temporary imprisonment. In this sermon, Hall implicitly exhorts his audience to reject the match between Prince Charles and the Infanta Maria of Spain as an “ill bargain of misreligion,” which would cost “their liberty, their country, the life of their sovereign, and the eternal state of their souls” (V, 180). For this sermon, Hall was imprisoned, presumably because he tied the Spanish match to spiritual matters so thoroughly that it became an issue of religious as well as political error. The political extension of this sermon is alluded to in the dedication to Pembroke, himself “no friend of James’s . . . tortuous diplomacy abroad” (DNB), particularly his pro-Spanish policy. When Hall describes Pembroke as a “sincere friend of religion, and rich purchaser of truth” (V, 174), he allies this sermon, based on the scriptural text “Buy the truth and sell it not,” with Pembroke and his known political position. Even without the politically allusive dedication, the sermon itself moves from the scriptural text to a subtext of “large extent” (V, 174). Hall’s concentration on issues arising from his text rather than on the words themselves allows for the extension of spiritual into political matters.25 The sermon’s topical nature is 19

20 21 22 23 24

25

Ibid., 163. Lake and Questier argue that this entry of official Catholic disputants into the public sphere marked a crucial moment in Jacobean confessional politics (“Puritans, Papists, and the ‘Public Sphere’, ” 626). Wadkins. Works, V, 174–85. Cogswell, Blessed Revolution, p. 45. Ibid., pp. 103–4, 129–32. Cogswell cites Abbot’s complaint that Pembroke did not take a clear lead at court but “looketh only to his own ends and whatsoever leagues, promises and confederations are made within one hour they come to nothing” (Abbot to Carleton, 12 December 1617, cited in Blessed Revolution, p. 131). McCabe, p. 263.

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Sermons and the Moral Marketplace further intensified by Hall’s claim that the matter of the text “holds both now and ever” (V, 174–5). In fact, every step of Hall’s argument promulgates this relationship between now and ever, the “matter” and salvation. As McCabe notes, Hall infuses a “witty conceit” of the means of salvation as a moral marketplace into his text and incorporates his textual divisions according to this conceit. The logical structure of the sermon “itself becomes part of the message, . . . its order and precision being designed to reflect the order and precision of the disciplined Christian mind.”26 The logical disposition of the text and his “insistence upon precise and meticulous definition”27 is related to Hall’s concern for an order that will allow listeners to understand, and so act upon, the sermon’s scriptural message. To divide the phrase “buy the truth,” Hall argues that to buy is to make a bargain, and “in every bargain there is . . . the commodity and the match” (V, 175). The inclusive word “every” connects the word “match” and the “matter” of the sermon to the Spanish marriage. In this opening move, then, Hall quickly shifts the emphasis of the text from a purely religious meaning to a consideration of how the “bargain” of the Spanish match is related to the “truth” that the scripture enjoins Christians to buy. Hall adds that if the careless unbelievers, the formal Christians, the worldly semi-Christians, the glorious hypocrites, and the damnable apostates are eliminated, very few customers for truth remain. Hall must also define “truth” at the beginning of the sermon. Here he rejects timeless or universal truth, instead connecting truth and state politically by claiming that “no court of heaven hath so rich a stock of truth as this of Great Britain” (V, 180) “under the pious government of the true Defender of the Faith” (V, 183). Just as Hall creates a witty conceit in transforming the means of salvation into a moral marketplace, he transforms the scriptural injunction to “buy the truth” into the political message to reject the Spanish match. Opposed to the popish religion of magic, conjuring tricks, and superstition, Hall describes truth as “bare, simple, plain, honest, homely . . . like some native face among the painted.” So, when Hall warns that “there are two shops that get away all the custom from truth; the shop of vanity, the shop of error” (V, 179), and identifies such shops with words such as “gewgaws,” “gilded,” “gaudy,” and “glittering,” the implication is that the shops of error and vanity are popery itself. The “large extent” of this metaphor is that the superficial enticements of the Spanish beguile royal officials into “truck[ing] for the truth of God” (V, 183) by “swapping Catholic toleration for continued peace.”28 The idea that negotiating Catholic toleration for a Spanish match is equivalent to “trucking” for the truth of God is central to Hall’s sermon. One might let truth go for “the old shoes of a Gibeonitish pretence of antiquity,” he says, alluding to the Catholic pretence that it is the oldest religion. Similarly, the “painted, gilded hobby horse of an outwardly pompous magnificence of a Church” for which one might part with truth alludes to the Catholic church’s emphasis on elaborate vestments and ornament. The “baubles of childish superstition” that might tempt someone else hint at the “false miracles” of the Catholic mass and of exorcism, while the “colloguing impostor” (V, 183) evokes the pope, who usurps Christ’s role as head of the church. These familiar metaphors would undoubtedly have been construed as warnings, welcome or unwelcome, against making bargains with Catholic Spain. 26 27 28

Ibid., p. 280. Ibid., p. 266. Cogswell, Blessed Revolution, p. 45.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis What is the price of truth? “Sometimes the price of truth hath risen; it would not be bought but for danger . . . yea, sometimes it hath not gone for less than blood” (V, 177). And if blood must be paid to resist popery, there must be battle – that is, war with Spain. Popular uncertainty about James’s pacifist policy abounded and many, including Hall, thought a battle between protestant England and Catholic Spain would achieve church unity. Referring directly to James’s peace policies, Hall says “if anything in the world may seem a due price of truth, it is peace,” but while he concedes that peace is “sweet,” and the “joy of good men,” he says “For God’s sake, for your soul’s sake, whatever transactions ye make for the world, lay your plots for the blessed purchase of truth” (V, 180), because a man “cannot sell truth but his soul is lost” (V, 182). Hall’s purpose in this sermon is still predominantly spiritual, but political rejection of the Spanish match is its foundation. In part, this makes the sermon even more compelling (and dangerous) because it ties matters of state so completely to conscience. And the spiritual ramifications go beyond personal salvation, extending to God’s providential care of the English nation. Hall admonishes the court “while ye keep the truth, the truth shall keep you, both in life, in death, in judgement” (V, 185). In the end, Hall’s imprisonment confirms that the sermon’s political message, intertwined with the spiritual divisions of the text, was readily perceived, and was unwelcome, at least officially, at court. McCullough suggests further that both Hall and Whiting suffered royal opprobrium not only for the substance of their sermons but because their patron, Prince Charles, was abroad.29 THE PRINCE RETURNS: DISCOURSES OF THANKSGIVING Following the prince’s safe return from Spain without the Infanta preachers took to the pulpits, “nor can the preachers in their sermons do enough”30 to express the relief and joy that marked the event. This occasion is layered onto reactions to the Directions, and rejoicing becomes a discourse interwoven with a number of other themes: providential history, advice thinly disguised as praise, continuing fear and insecurity, militant triumphalism. Sermons seek to control interpretation of the event, and to use it as a starting point for renewed anti-popery. As McCullough observes, “with the Spanish Match discredited Charles and Buckingham could now claim the legacy of militant anti-Catholicism and native conformist Calvinism that had been nurtured at St. James’s since Prince Henry’s time.”31 Although preached 14 January 1622/23 at Whitehall, “when its contents were no doubt too sensitive to commit to paper,” a sermon by William Loe was presented to Prince Charles upon his return in October.32 What would have been dangerous in February rings with prophetic authority after the events of late 1623. It is a sermon about the sword given to defend the faith, to cut down sin, and to maintain peace, and supplicates both Christ and kings for royal assistance. This sermon was not published early in 1623 for good reason. As a direct reminder to both James and Charles of their power and responsibility to defend the faith, it could have been construed as 29 30 31 32

Sermons at Court, p. 202. James Palmer to the Earl of Leicester, 13 October 1623 (Report on the Manuscripts, V, 438). Sermons at Court, p. 207. Ibid., p. 208.

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Sermons and the Moral Marketplace meddling with matters of state. With Charles now returned “from the ploys of his father’s Hispanofile pacifism to an English defence of European protestantism,”33 Loe’s sermon is recycled as a thanksgiving sermon. The dedication to Prince Charles, which handles several matters requiring interpretation, including the actions of kings, advances a consistent program of political advice on governing. Loe writes that “The renowned Actions worthy of Monument, and Memorie are when Christian Princes will (after they haue fixed their most pretious faith uppon god) in all prudent, provident, and politique Provision addresse themsselues in all readines to secure their state, their posteritie, & their owne sacred person even in omnen eventum according to that Might, Glorie, and Maiestie, that god hath invested them withal” (fo. 3v). Kings who govern themselves will testify to “their pious policie, & Politique pietie” (fo. 4v) by ruling with justice and mercy. Christ’s regal power is used to punish the nation that ignores his warnings to turn from sin: “If a man, or a Nation will not turne, god will whett his Sword, He will bend his bowe, & make it readie, He will prepare instruments of death, He will ordaine his arrowes against the nation that seeketh him not, and against all the People that forgett him” (fo. 11v). The regal power of the sword dominates the rest of the sermon. Loe is careful, however, to distinguish his advice to “Gird thy sword upon Highe” from the incendiary “spirit of Jesuitisme” that “blowe[s] the bellowes of Bellona into the Iland of Christian Princes” (fo. 16v–17r). In fact, Loe extols the virtues of peace, saying “The vearie name of Peace is not onlie precious (as Hillary speaketh) but singularlie pretious to all gods servaunts” (fo. 18r). But, as the sermon maintains, peace means readiness for “prudent, provident, and politique” (fo. 18r) war, and care “to prevent all daungerous occurrences both domestique, and forraigne” (fo. 21v). Loe repeats the alliterated theme of peace, prudence and politics throughout his exegesis. So, he credits James with having “the most prudent, and most provident Counsell in the World” (fo. 22v), a reminder that kings ought to “be alwaies readie in a godlie, prudent, provident, and politique expedic¯on to . . . make, and maintaine Peace both abroad in forraigne parts, and also wthin their owne territories, and Dominions” (fo. 23r). Lest his advice be construed as an admonition to James to gird his sword for religion, Loe, who has already said that peacemakers must confront peacetakers, adds “god be thanked we see noe cause, or occasion of any feare, that we neede such cautionary Remembrances” (fo. 29r). Still, Loe continues to counsel public preservation, applauding the Polanders who stand upright at the Creed and draw their swords halfway (fo. 33v). The sermon ends with advice to kings to be “as wise as serpents” (fo. 34v) and for Christians to maintain their spiritual guard. Despite or perhaps because of his protestations, Loe’s sermon reverberates with the public anxieties about religion exacerbated by the Spanish negotiations. As an opening salvo in Charles’s anti-Spanish campaign following his return from Spain, it marks a new direction in both domestic and foreign policy for Charles and the nascent “Patriot” coalition. One of the first sermons preached upon Charles’s return responds both to that occasion and to Hall’s sermon of 21 September. On Sunday 16 October 1623 in the cathedral church of Canterbury Thomas Jackson preached on Matthew

33

Ibid.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis 13:46,34 entering into direct dialogue with The Best Bargain preached several weeks earlier, but the two are separated decisively by the intervening occasion of Charles’s return. In the opening words of his sermon, Jackson announces his confederacy with Hall, his “ancient colleague” (p. 2), and with the sermon that had earned Hall his prison stay. This confederacy, he says, is not like that between priests and Jesuits, who are brethren in evil. The better analogy to describe their relationship is to the cherubim who looked “face to face, and both vpon the Arke” (p. 3). So while Hall used an Old Testament text, Jackson uses one from the New. Jackson uses the parable of his text, the instruction to sell all to buy the pearl of great price, to exhort his hearers to make the spiritual bargain to which Hall’s sermon alluded, and which negotiations for the Spanish match illustrated negatively. He wants to provoke his hearers “in this dead time wherein though truth was neuer cheaper, it is generally thought to be too deare amongst many cheapners, but few buyers” (pp. 11–12), to sell all they have and to consider it a good bargain. The marketplace metaphor, particularly the metaphor of “selling” as part of the bargain of truth, dominates the entire sermon. In this world, princes and rich men are able to buy pearls and not sell anything, Jackson admits, but in the spiritual bargain there is no buying without selling something first. The price seems exorbitant but we are assured that it is the best bargain, and that “if the market mend not” (p. 12), Christ will shut up his shop windows and offer his pearl to those who will esteem it more. Abraham is Jackson’s primary example of the man who can sell himself and make a “happy market” (p. 18), unlike the papists who “going about to establish their owne inherent, home-made righteousnesse, cannot submit themselues to the righteousnesse of God” (p. 21), trusting instead to their own works. Neither are philosophers, Jews, or Pharisees good “chapmen” (p. 19). The first turn theology into witty questions, the Jews establish their own righteousness, while the Pharisees, like the papists, trust in their meritorious works. As he draws out the implications of the marketplace, Jackson teaches that the buyer of truth must also sell all his sins through repentance. The terms and conditions of sale are stringent, and without loopholes. So, men may not sell one sin and take up another; so that “luke-warme Protestants, become Idolatrous Papists: some superstitious, become prophain: and many Atheists, turne Heretikes” (p. 42). Nor is it possible to gain the pearl by selling only some sins, by retaining a secret pleasure in sin, or by selling sins only temporarily. Jackson’s sermon complements Hall’s, reinforcing the spiritual message, while avoiding the explicitly political altogether. He alludes to the “deare” (p. 51) cost of truth in the time of Queen Mary and in the primitive church, but says that now that “this Pearle is cheape” his hearers can afford to buy it – they have no excuse not to. Consequently, he urges them to buy the pearl, and to wear it. The sermon takes up Hall’s admonitory tone, reproving his congregation’s “languishing, drooping, and dying zeal to the Gospell” (p. 57), and urging them to buy the pearl “before Market be done, and Shop-windowes shut vp” (p. 58). In fact, only by placing this sermon alongside Hall’s can we see the degree to which Hall manipulated his marketplace metaphor for political purposes. The comparison also underscores Hall’s outspokenness, Jackson’s courage, and the degree to which the

34

“Who when hee had found one pearle of good price, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.”

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Sermons and the Moral Marketplace pulpit had become politicized in the volatile climate occasioned by continental events. Samuel Ward of Ipswich, so recently in trouble for his sermon critical of Spain, could not resist preaching in thanksgiving for Charles’s safe return. To celebrate this important occasion, Ward takes as his text 1 Thessalonians 5:18,35 noting that preachers have neglected gratitude, although the prince’s return is a “sudden and extraordinary cause of publique thankes” (p. 3). With obvious reference to the celebrations that greeted the returning prince, Ward says that “ringing of bells, displaying of banners, pompe and feasting, lights and fires” (p. 12) are all signs of thanks, but that Christians should praise God more for wise rulers, for it is foolish to “prize a domesticall and priuate welfare before the Common-wealth, and the good of the Kingdome” (p. 20). England, in particular, has much to be thankful for, especially that it is an island, which from its position of safety hears news of wars, pestilence, and bloodshed although it does not feel the disturbances of foreign invasions and domestic treasons. The elaborate exegesis of things for which Englishmen should be thankful prepares for the warnings that follow. Ward uses the duty of thankfulness enjoined by his text, and the relief consequent on God’s sudden lifting of the “damp of griefe & feare,” to criticize the spiritual complacency of English congregations. Their gratitude, he laments, is “lukewarmnesse and Newtralitie at the best; in many lingrings after Superstition and idolatry” and dissolution in the worser sort. All could be made well, however, “If euery English man would kindle a Bone-fire in his owne heart” (p. 45). Cogswell says of this sermon that, in it, Ward censures the excess of public joy at the prince’s return,36 but Ward’s point is really that rejoicing with the tongue, “the best Interpretour of the minde,” is more acceptable than ostentatious shows of thanksgiving demonstrated by “Cheere of the countenances, gestures of the body, leaping and dauncing [which] are but dumbe shewes” (p. 12).37 Many of the sermons related directly to Charles’s return – unwed – on 5 October 1623, adopt a providential, anti-Catholic rhetoric, legitimized by the language of thanksgiving that is Ward’s main theme. A sermon by Thomas Reeve, preached at the Church of Great Yarmouth in Norfolk, 19 October 1623, uses this opportunity to equate Charles’s providential return with the providential fulfillment of James’s foreign policy.38 Taking as his text 2 Samuel 19:30, Reeve promotes the “necessity of Royall Authority” (p. 20) in safeguarding the safety and virtue of a people: “as we ought to pray vnto God that our Soueraignes with all care, conscience, compassion may defend vs: So wee ought to beseech God to giue vs grace that in all submission and subiection we may obey them” (pp. 19–20). The great cause for Mephibosheth’s rejoicing, of course, is that the king has returned free from former dangers, healthy in body, and in the “good liking” of his subjects” (p. 22), and Reeve develops the theme that “the absence of Princes from their people, is a great darkening of their ioy” (p. 21). Consequently, Reeve 35 36 37

38

“In all things give thankes, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus our Lord towards you.” Blessed Revolution, p. 9. In an unusual post-script, Ward encourages each reader, in a kind of spiritual chain letter, to multiply the sermon’s effect by filling in the thankful man’s “Calendar,” a check-list of blessings, with spaces left for the reader to inscribe evidence of God’s many blessings in response to the specific questions posed. “Yea let him take all, seeing my Lord the King is come home in Peace.”

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis establishes the aptness of the analogy immediately, rejoicing in the safe return of Prince Charles, while James stayed home and wore the crown of thorns. “As for the Lourd our Prince,” Reeve adds, “he being yet young and the scepter being not yet in his hand, he vndertake hard Voyages, and being accompanied with some few Nobles . . . venters to see the fashions of other Countries, and the lustres of other Courts” (p. 24). All know of the physical hardships and dangers he encountered: his passage was troublesome; his speedy journey wearisome; his possibility of being discovered in a strange country dangerous; his venturing over hill and dale hazardous; his living so long in a kingdom not agreeable to his nature uncomfortable; his return journey rocked with storms and tempests. Fortunately, “the Lord sent his good Angel [presumably Buckingham] with him” (p. 25) to protect him and, as a result, there was no “sad newes” (p. 26). To this point, Reeve’s topical application and celebratory rhetoric fall well within conventional parameters, but Reeve does not rest here. He follows this section on universal rejoicing with fulsome praise of Charles, going so far as to theorize that the people would elect Charles if his throne were not hereditary, because he bears the image of a ruler. With only a token gesture of qualification, Reeve asks, “What can be desired in him (set aside a freedome from that naturall, humane, hereditary frailty, that we are all borne with, and shall euer bee burthened withall) but in some measure, yea in an eminent degree in him we may be espied?” (p. 28). First, he is true to our God, Reeve claims, betraying by his hyperbole public anxiety over Charles’s commitment to Protestantism: “he had rather dye sixe hundred deaths than lose the least syllable of this profession” (p. 28). Second, Reeve repackages Charles’s interest in feats of arms as evidence of a prince “in the times of Peace fitting himselfe for times of War” (p. 28), thereby recasting James’s unpopular pacifism in the best possible light. Third, Reeve praises Charles’s prudence as the result of his upbringing at the feet of a sage and discreet parent, a “Mirrour of the World concerning Wisdome, either in Church or State Points” (p. 29). Charles’s imprudent voyage to Spain becomes a politic device for observing the government of other nations. Although the prince is safely returned, however, Reeve feels he must address the continuing fear that the Spanish match will come and papists will draw him from his religion. Here, Reeve gets to the heart of the matter. The prince, he says, deserves “the best opinion and worthiest estimation” (p. 37) because he was constant in Spain, shall not be shaken here, and in fact, stands more confirmed against papists than before because he has witnessed their abominations. Further negotiations for a match are glossed as mysteries of state. And “though so farre as wee through our darke creuises can discerne, could wish matters might goe otherwise, and we would giue the eyes in our heads to obtaine it; yet because we see but the outside of things, and the inward secrets we cannot ransacke, nor pry into, there being such wise Pilots at the Sterne, let vs commit all vnto these, trusting that they will not suffer the shippe to miscarry” (p. 38). The sermon ends by exhorting the nobles and commons to lay aside their “scandals, ignominies, [and] opprobrious, calumnious speeches one against annother” (pp. 39–40). This sermon, more than any other, shows a determination to interpret royal behaviour favourably, but, in so doing, betrays the anxieties that even Charles’s safe return had not alleviated. Robert Johnson’s sermon preached before the prince at St. James’s, 25 January 1623/4, also celebrates Charles’s safe deliverance from the Spanish Antichrist. In his 192

Sermons and the Moral Marketplace dedication to Prince Charles, Johnson, one of James’s chaplains in ordinary, thanks God for Charles’s preservation, a deliverance he attributes to a faith that makes him heir apparent to James, “THE DEFENDER OF THE FAITH” (sig. A4r). For Johnson, “faith” more than national security was at stake in this mission, and, supported by Hebrews 11:6, the sermon moves inexorably to conclude that the necessity of faith is “a generall Canon or Rule of Diuinity without exception” (p. 9).39 Johnson’s emphasis on the characteristics of a justifying faith is twinned with an unequivocal anti-Catholic polemic satirizing the corrupt Roman faith. Johnson shows, for example, how miracles, such as Elias’s restoration of the Shunamite’s child, ceased with some prophets and apostles, and is now practiced by Jesuitical impostors who “go about to delude them [those who question the foundations of their faith] by fained stories and lying miracles, and to confirm the truth of their doctrine by them which are no other miracles but the wiles of Antichrist” (p. 16). Like many Reformed sermons on this subject, Johnson stresses, in opposition to papist slanders, that, by definition, a saving faith includes works: “Therfore no good workes, no good faith; no good fruits, no good tree” (p. 27). Such a faith is the “true catholique faith” (p. 2), which brings salvation, and such faith is most pertinent now. In its distance from the moment of Charles’s return, the sermon adopts a more familiar anti-popery, relying for its edge on the degree to which Johnson can portray the sojourn in Spain as a near-death experience for Charles, and with him, for religion. In the months to follow, this return to anti-Spanish anti-Catholicism will lay out the direction for sermons, particularly those marking the emergence of a patriot coalition against Catholic Spain and in support of continental Reformed Protestantism. Adams also uses the occasion of the prince’s safe return to discourse on the duty of thankfulness that constitutes the fruits of grace in men. Complicating the transmission of this sermon is the fact that while it was intended as a sermon of thanksgiving for one event it was preached on the same day as the notorious Blackfriars incident. The published version notes this conjunction, thus illustrating how these two providential moments were twinned in popular imagination. As Adams notes “The argument was but audible in the morning, before night it was visible” (sig. A4r), and he printed the sermon in part to commemorate “so extraordinary a Iudgement” (sig. A4r). This sermon is one of several in 1622–3 dedicated to Donne (styled by Adams as “Iudicious” [sig. A3v]), and is offered as “the poore fruit of that tree, which growes on your owne ground” (sig. A4r). Donne’s patronage of Adams may perhaps be observed in the “modest forwardnesse” Adams assumes in opposition to “those Rheumaticke Pennes, that are still dropping upon the Presse” or “those Phlegmaticke spirits, that will scarse bee coniur’d into the orbe of employment” (sig. A4r). In particular Adams handles application to the Blackfriars disaster with Donne-like discretion, refusing to conclude that this incident was a judgment “for the transgression of the dead,” yet recognizing that “It is meant for the admonition of the liuing” (sig. A4v), and particularly recusants. In handling his text, Luke 13:7,40 Adams assumes that the Vineyard is the church, every Christian a fig-tree, God the owner, and every pastor a dresser, 39 40

“But, without faith, it is unpossible to please God.” “Then said hee to the Dresser of his Vineyard; Behold, these three yeares I come seeking fruit on this Fig-tree, and find none: cut it downe, why cumbreth it the ground?”

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis adding that since this is a parable it must not be forced to warrant conclusions “which the Author neuer meant” (p. 63). The entire sermon moves towards a certainty that God will cut down the barren tree, especially one that occupies space where a better tree might grow. At the end of the sermon, Adams comments specifically on conditions in England. God not only answered their prayers with a plentiful harvest, but manifested his mercy in the safe return of Prince Charles, whom Adams calls the best sheaf of wheat and the best fruit of the royal tree. While Adams uses the occasion to sharpen the moral point of his sermon, however, the thrust of it remains spiritual rather than political, focusing on the spiritual needs of society, but relying on topical details for its edge. In its consistent focus on the moral rather than the political, and in its rejection of the controversial potential of the conjunction of 5 October and 26 October, his homiletic style suggests Donne’s patronage. Other preachers were not as generous.41 THE BLACKFRIARS INCIDENT AND PROVIDENTIALISM The Blackfriars disaster added fuel to the anti-popery unleashed by the prince’s return from Spain and the apparent failure of the marriage negotiations. The event galvanized anti-papist propagandists who recognized the symbolic value the disaster could accrue in the public sphere, particularly in converting wavering Catholics and retaining wavering protestants. Foremost among these propagandists was John Gee.42 Cogswell has demonstrated that Gee’s detailed exposure of the modus operandi of Catholic proselytizers (preying on disgruntled scholars, the dying, and above all, women), his extensive list of Catholic imprints for 1623, and his information on names and addresses of Catholic clerics in London buttressed parliamentary initiatives in 1624 against Catholics. He has also shown how Middleton relied on Gee’s tract for details in his profoundly anti-Spanish, antiCatholic play, which was hugely popular in August of 1624.43 Complicating this picture is Questier’s discussion of the use of converts from Catholicism, such as Gee, in a programme designed to appeal by example to wavering Protestants. Questier argues persuasively that Abbot attracted the services of most of the clerical apostates from Catholicism and used them as counter-converts against a turning toward Rome. Gee’s tract, dedicated to Abbot, was a particularly effective weapon because it did not follow the standard apocalyptic arguments on which protestants habitually relied, and went beyond a call for harsher legislation. “What was necessary, in Gee’s opinion, to bring down the religious tyranny of the Roman clergy was not just the constant and tedious enforcement of anti-Catholic penal statutes, as many Protestants thought, but, equally, the destruction of the framework of the snare which the priests employed, as evidenced in their polemical works. If this were done, the web which the frame of the Catholic ‘snare’ 41

42 43

It is hard to see how Adams’s refusal to exploit the disaster for an anti-Catholic providential moral could be construed as “tactical” moderation. Adams had nothing to lose by the application, if we are to believe Walsham’s reports of popular responses to the event. He seems to have shared Donne’s vision of a Church of England that could still “love” recusants who came to worship, and it is certainly true that gloating over the deaths of papists could not have induced them to seek communion with protestants. The Foot out of the Snare. Blessed Revolution, p. 288.

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Sermons and the Moral Marketplace supported would simply collapse.”44 The tract itself, a string of “egregious Popish impostures” strung together to demonstrate, anecdotally, the degree to which idolatry, superstition, and credulity defined Catholic spirituality, reads like a modern journalistic exposé of Catholic claims to miraculous conversions. Priests, especially Jesuits, are excoriated, and Gee indicts them for the debased spiritual state of the Catholic Church. Of one miracle, involving the vomiting up of devils, Gee says: “And indeed well it may bee so said, that shee and her Copes-mates the Priests do work miracles: for, to my vnderstanding, it is little lesse than a miracle, that any of our Nation, vncapable of Bedlam or a Bable, should be stricken with such stupidity, as to beleeue in these Iugglers and Romish Mounte-banks” (p. 64). In fact, the tract compares these public spectacles to theatrical stage plays and interludes. Walsham describes Gee’s tract as “a crude but none the less convincing propaganda for the thesis that clinging tenaciously to popery was a perilous enterprise.”45 Gee interpreted his escape from the collapsing building as a “monument” to the divine grace that had plucked him from the brink of the Babylonian pit. Walsham demonstrates that “Far from a set of bizarre phobias and irrational beliefs, providentialism like anti-popery could on occasion operate as a coherent and unifying force. But as we have seen, it could also contribute to the creation of a dangerously polarized urban political scene.”46 In late 1623, both of these tendencies, exacerbated by continuing censorship and repression of authorized controversy, were evident in England’s religious politics. A sermon by William Gouge, preached at Blackfriars on the symbolic anniversary of God’s providential deliverance of England (i.e. 5 November), and occasioned by the collapse at Blackfriars, embodies the motives and tensions outlined above.47 The sermon expounds Matthew 10:29–31 to focus on God’s providence and its application to the “inferiour things under heaven” which only “folly, errour, and blindnesse” (p. 379) prevent us from acknowledging. Applied to Christian history, Gouge’s providential account of God’s deliverances interprets the Reformation as only one of many examples in an historical narrative that moves from the “dismall and damnable darknesse of Popery” (p. 390), through Wickliffe, Hus, and Henry VIII, to the “full brightnesse” of Edward VI and the seventy-three years of settled peace in the gospel which have followed. Not surprisingly, Gouge’s prime example of providential deliverance is the downfall of the papists only two weeks before, an event narrated in circumstantial detail and accompanied by a counter-narrative in the margins justifying Gouge’s authority as a reporter, and stressing the accuracy of what he claims to be almost an eyewitness report. The workings of providence as he reports them are curious indeed and point to the multifaceted audience he intended. Those who escaped, whether papist or protestant, are said to have done so by providence, illustrating that “even such an accident may befall an assembly of true worshippers of God” (p. 400), while simultaneously demonstrating God’s judgment on the “palpable idolaters” who formed the bulk of the audience. God intended this event to speak especially 44 45 46 47

Questier, “John Gee,” 357–8. Walsham, 7. Ibid., 25. “Are not two sparrowes sold for a farthing? And one of them shall not fall to the ground without your Father. But the haires of your head are all numbred. Feare ye not therefore: ye are of more value then many sparrowes.”

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis to these papists, “whose doctrine is a masse of ancient heresies, who are by the Law interdicted the execution of ministeriall functions” (p. 401). But he also intended protestants who heard of this judgment to conclude that “This is the finger of God” (p. 401). It was precisely the finger of God that Thomas Scott saw in this event. His Digitus Dei, published on the continent, would not have escaped censorship in England for its virulent anti-papism, but Walsham claims that while Scott’s antipopery was unusually scurrilous, it was not a drastic departure from pamphlets licensed for the press.48 What was dangerous, however, was how Scott teased out the seditious implications of his position.49 He rebuked those who had silently allowed the “encrochments of Antichrist,” condemning official reluctance to implement the recusancy laws, the aristocratic crypto-popery creeping into the Stuart court, and the pro-Catholic character of domestic religious policy.50 This sermon epitomizes the degree to which Jacobean preaching had become politicized, and measures what could and couldn’t be said from the pulpit following the Directions. Using reaction to this sermon in the press, Walsham, in fact, marks two important shifts in the pulpit. One is the association by an “ascendant Arminianism” of aggressive anti-popery exclusively with “ ‘Puritanism’, unorthodoxy and schism” rather than as an accepted means by which moderate puritans could both demonstrate conformity and encourage reform.51 The other shift is in the realm of providential preaching. Until the 1620s reform had focused on moral and social failings, rather than political ones. After this point, impending catastrophes were attributed to England’s evasion of her responsibility to continental protestants, to the scandal of the Spanish match, and to state connivance at the idolatry committed by its Catholic subjects.52 However, Scott’s sermon is several degrees stronger than even the most politically explicit sermon, and makes unequivocal claims only suggested in licensed sermons. For example, those who seek a temporal peace, he charges, “sinne against God and their consciences” (p. 3). Equally, Scott’s scathing verbal portrait of the young King of France goes beyond accepted Jacobean standards. This is a king who was taught by his mother to “protest and sweare publiquely, contrarie to his inward purpose; and dissemble so artificially, that after the fact, being retired, he demands of his Mother, and of other his flatterors in priuate, If he had not playde his part well. Perhaps he expected a triumph for lying, for periurie, for dissimulation, and for betraying the too-credulous hearts of his faithfull people, as Nero did for fidling, and fireing of Rome” (p. 13). Certainly such depictions were censored for the stage, and this vitriolic satiric account would not likely have been received any more readily from the press. Comments urging execution of the penal laws use equally strong language. Scott says “I thinke it Treason to the Church and State, and Rebellion against God, the King of Kings, to sit still till these [Romish wolues] arme themselues, and disarme vs, the more safely and speedily to effect a Massacre” (p. 14). Of course, there is nothing new in discussions of Catholic gunpowder treachery, but Scott’s depiction of their gathering about the head 48 49 50 51 52

Walsham, 77. Ibid., 79. Ibid. Ibid., 80. Ibid., 81.

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Sermons and the Moral Marketplace “to heare, and see all, and to haue a hand in the highest and most seacret Councell” (p. 17) aims directly at the incursion of popish aristocrats into public positions of trust and authority. Scott’s speculation regarding the fate of the consecrated wafers also pushes the boundaries of acceptable anti-popery. With satirical levity he advises the Catholics to “Hire you some Souldiers (if Souldiers will be such hirelings, as doubtlesse you may fit your selues with some zealous Reformados vpon promise of absolution; or otherwise make shift with your owne equiuocating Locusts, armed at all points for the purpose with mentall reseruations and dispensations) to say, they saw the consecrated Cakes rise alone from vnder the ruines, or I shall neuer beleeue your Transubstantiation” (pp. 26–7). Scott views the Blackfriars collapse as a judgment and his sermon marks the beginning of a process that elevated it to the status of a sacred date in protestant England’s victory over popery.53 His mobilization of the public sphere as the best way to combat this Romish incursion is clear in his call for magistrates, priests, and people to publish rather than to conceal this event. Throughout his sermon, Scott stresses the illegality of this assembly as much as its irreligious character, further entangling religious and political readings of the event. As with Hall’s and Jackson’s sermons, the metaphor of spiritual merchandise and bad bargains runs through this sermon. “If the Pope be Antichrist, then to make a Couenant with him, or to trade with him in Spirituall Merchandize, is to make a Couenant with Death, Satan, and Hell, against God, his Sonne, and his Church” (p. 31). This kind of open “trading” opens the way for the “slye insinuation” of Antichrist through the “wiles” of them who work “reconcilement,” specifically those who cloak their “lukewarmnesse or personall cowardice vnder the pretence of modestie, patience, discretion, moderation, prudence, or temperance” (p. 29). Such reconciliation is a work for Christ, the great mediator, not for individuals, Scott argues; uniting the reformed churches is work enough of reconciliation for moderate men. Scott’s anti-papist rhetoric to support a united protestant front is his defence against charges of speaking seditiously, and he prays that his peaceful intention will justify his comments. It is hard to believe that any Catholic readers would remain by the end of this sermon, but the latter part is indeed addressed to Catholics to open their eyes to discover Antichrist and their ears to hear Christ in the midst of candlesticks. It may be, as Walsham argues, that the sermon’s heavily politicized anti-popery differs (only) in degree from conventional anti-popery, but in a situation of heightened emotion – both relief and anxiety – these differences become differences in kind. Moreover, the network of providence, politics, and religion gathered in this sermon and the self-conscious exploitation of the event in the public sphere marks a noticeable escalation of debates about the identity of the English church that were more direct and sustained than anything heretofore. Nothing of this kind was published in England during the late Jacobean years, but Scott’s sermon echoes ominously into the future.54

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Ibid., 82. Lake examines the ideological foundation of Scott’s writings, and concludes that his significance “may lie in the clarity and coherence with which his peculiar career and radical bent allowed him to work through and develop tendencies inherent in some of the commonplaces of contemporary political discourse” (“Constitutional Consensus,” 825).

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis MILITANT EDIFICATION: BARRELL’S PAUL’S CROSS SERMON Robert Barrell’s Paul’s Cross sermon delivered 16 November 1623 is the most explicitly militant sermon of this period, both politically and religiously. The sermon is dedicated to George Abbot, and his patronage informs its protestant evangelism. Termed the “Maister-builder” of the temple of God in England, Abbot is an appropriate patron for this sermon on spiritual architecture, Barrell says, because he is the main pillar of religion under James, a man whose zealous tongue and learned pen have done much to protect the temple against the “Babilonish Tobiahs and Sanballats, [who] seeke by all meanes to hinder, and (if they could) to ruine” (sig. A3r) God’s temple and the walls of this Jerusalem. The appeal to Abbot signals several things, among them Barrell’s sense that Abbot’s zealous, anti-Spanish spiritual leadership is required now to re-establish the temple of God in England. The sermon’s metaphor of building is interwoven with Barrell’s motive of “edification.” Its catechetical impulse calls attention to the Directions, self-consciously fulfilling them. In the process, Barrell acquires the authority that working within existing structures offers. The appeal to Abbot’s patronage is tied to this need for authority, and shows Barrell aware of the crises that had awakened the vigilance of authorities and affected rhetoric in the public sphere. Abbot’s authority as both issuer of the Directions and Archbishop of Canterbury encourages Barrell to speak forcefully on issues important to the Church of England, and to adopt the style as well as the doctrine associated with Abbot’s churchmanship. Recent events had revealed a breach in the customary discursive boundaries established for sermons. At once liberated yet cautious of offending, Barrell offers his sermon as a little stone added to God’s temple, and tries to enlist Abbot in the larger project of hewing more stones. The character of the building he hopes to construct is tied to the identity of the English church, and the sermon adopts an emphasis on foundations that will enable this identity to emerge. The emphasis on foundations appears at first to be a retreat from controversy, but in fact it engages the most basic questions of what is fundamental to a true church. Moreover, in its appeal to various audiences, the sermon tacitly admits that identity is something negotiated in the public sphere rather than pronounced in official policies. To his Christian readers, Barrell explains his decision to publish this sermon to correct the “tottering inconstancie in Religion” that afflicts the Church of God (sig. A4r). The metaphor of a tottering building to figure the inconstancy of religion in England not only depicts the crisis of uncertainty created by James’s foreign policy, but also resonates against the toppling temple of idolatry that had collapsed in Blackfriars only a few weeks before. The epistle to the reader extends this metaphor to the “liuing stones” (sig. A4v) who are his readers, urging them to build and be built on a firm foundation of hearing and practising. Barrell preaches on a scriptural passage (Matthew 7:24–27) that allows him not only to discuss the true stones that build God’s temple, but also to discourse on the sandy foundations of the Roman religion. That text contrasts the foolish man who built his house on sand with the wise man who built his house on rock. In his exegesis, Barrell handles every topic forbidden by the Directions and marks clearly the rapid shift in public policy and discourse occasioned by the prince’s return to England without the Infanta. First of all, it is an unabashedly reformed sermon, concerned to “win those that are truly religious to a constant perseuerance in truth 198

Sermons and the Moral Marketplace and godliness (p. 6) with what he calls the five principal links of the golden chain of salvation: election, vocation, justification, sanctification, and glorification (p. 6). Such doctrine is established almost entirely by contrast with Rome. The good works of the Roman church – popish pilgrimages, invocations of saints and angels, adorations of saints’ relics and images, building of monasteries for lazy monks – are contrasted with those rooted in faith and charity, specifically the founding of hospitals for orphans, and the erecting of grammar schools, works with which his patron Abbot was specifically associated. Politically and doctrinally the sermon expresses openly anti-papist views. Much rhetorical energy is deployed against those “croking Frogs of Rome, (I meane the Iesuits and Seminary Priests) which now more then euer swarme our Coasts, like Grasshoppers and Caterpillers” (p. 5). That said, Barrell also confronts the connections between religious labels and religious identities, accusing his doctrinal enemies of assuming false identities, and substituting names of his own for the names they claim. So he argues that “the specious titles of holy, Catholike [and] Apostolike” (p. 24) will not serve the turn. In St. Bernard’s time heretics were termed “Apostolic” (p. 25), for example, and in Barrell’s day “Popish Catholikes tearme themselues Catholikes, and Iebusites, Iesuites, and the Synagogue of lust, the family of love” (p. 31, erroneously printed as 21). Although Barrell’s primary target is Rome, his sermon actually considers four sorts of heretic who build on sandy foundations: “Superstitious Papists,” “Prophane Belials” (profane sinners who do not believe that God will punish them), “Greedy Mammonists” (those who build their nests in this barren quicksand) and “Masqued Hypocrites” (those who leave their religion at church and do not express it in their lives). He says he will not even consider the sandy foundations on which papists build their hope of salvation, namely their own merits, the intercession of saints and angels, the pope’s indulgences. In fact, however, Barrell comments extensively on these. Against the sandy foundation of the pope’s infallibility, Barrell unleashes a scathing indictment: “And therefore all must be Haeretikes that be not within his pale, scripture must be no scripture without his allowance, and Kings no Kings if he please to kick their crowns of their heads with his holinesse foot, or to bellow out excommunications, and depositions against them with his Papall Bull” (p. 40). As for tradition, it is a name used by papists to include “euery Fryers dreame, rotten reliques, base costome, and idle ceremony of the Romish Church” (p. 37). Ex cathedra pronouncements are founded on equally sandy foundations “as if the Popes chayre were made of Irish wood, to which no cobweb of errour could possibly cleaue” (p. 40). As for the “Tridentine conventicle” (p. 40), it has invented new articles of faith and corrupted the church. Consequently, Barrell urges the bishops in these “dangerous dayes” to oversee the English church vigilantly. They have the keys of jurisdiction to “see that euery Archippus vnder you in your seuerall Diocaeses, doe both by preaching and catechizing (according to his Maiesties late pious, and most Christian directions) take heed to the minstery that he hath receiued in the Lord, that he fulfill it” (p. 57). The sermon ends with an account of the many blessings enjoyed by England, and with a parting shot at co-religionists who argue about “the swadling clouts of holy Religion” (i.e. clerical habits and comely ceremonies), Barrell urges his hearers to take care for the “body or substance of true Religion.” The sermon’s strident anti-Catholicism sharpens its anti-pacifist edge, thus commenting on James’s unpopular foreign policy. “And may it not be truely said 199

John Donne and Conformity in Crisis of this Church and land, that the raine of prosperitie, peace, and plenty (falling not by drops, but by full showers upon it, in the late, long, and happy reigne of our ever to be remembred, and thrice renowned Deborah, and our now peacefull Salomon) hath done more hurt to this building, by rotting many beames and rafters thereof, than those tempestuous whirle-winds, and violent torrents of persecution in Queene Maries Dayes?” (p. 54). Barrell argues that morality is corrupted with long peace and prosperity, noting that only water from the true rock of Christ can prepare for legitimate spiritual warfare of the Church militant against “mysticall Amalech, (i.e. the Church malignant)” (p. 59). In the end, Barrell claims, “he that will confirme to his owne conscience his election, and bee a partaker of Iustification, and a possessor of glorification, must have an effectuall vocation, and a sincere sanctification, hearing the voice of Christ, and following him” (p. 17), and these steps can only be achieved in a church founded on the true rock rather than on sand. Clearly, the Roman Church is the opposite of everything that Barrell endorses, and this Paul’s Cross sermon argues strongly for a Church guided by the principles of Abbot, militantly opposed to Romish idolatry and superstition, and dedicated to reformed theology and politics. The sermon marks the triumphant climax of October 1623 and looks forward to renewed protestant militancy in the public sphere. “A WIFE INDEED” Late 1623 also saw the publication of three sermons by the assiduous puritan preacher Thomas Gataker specifically concerning marriage. The first two, printed together, were entered in the Stationer’s Register on 4 November but are reissues of sermons first published in 1620. The third sermon, entered 16 December, was not published until 1624. The timing of these publications may be entirely coincidental, but taken together they offer trenchant topical advice on selecting a marriage partner, a subject undoubtedly uppermost in both popular and courtly contexts. In A Good Wife Gods Gift, Gataker takes as his text Proverbs 19:14,55 using it to distinguish between wise fathers (like Solomon) and foolish children in the matter of marriage. In particular, Gataker offers Solomon’s aphoristic wisdom on the benefits of a good wife and the evils of a bad one. One of the greatest evils, Gataker notes, is that a bad wife is a domestic enemy. As he explains: “An euill at the next dore may be bad enough, and may proue ouer troublesome; an euill within dores, at home, in a mans owne house much more” (p. 3). Even within the house, the worst evil is a bosom-evil, one that lies next to the heart, and none more treacherous than that of a child: as Solomon himself says, “A foolish Sonne is a sorrow to his Father, and an heauinesse to his Mother” (p. 4). In stressing the closeness of the bond between husband and wife, closer even than that between parent and child, Gataker concludes that to be matched with an evil spouse is the greatest temporal affliction because it is continual and intimate. Conversely there is no greater temporal blessing than a good wife. Therefore a good wife, a discreet woman, is better than wealth and her price is far above pearls. Gataker is relentless in this approach: God charges his people not to make matches between their children 55

“Houses and Riches are the Inheritance of the Fathers: But a prudent Wife is of the Lord.”

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Sermons and the Moral Marketplace and the Canaanites either by giving their daughters unto the sons of the Canaanites or by taking Canaanite daughters unto their sons (p. 8). Furthermore, choosing a good wife may be difficult because men may be deceived. Taking up Hall’s marketplace metaphor, Gataker observes that some men may have skill in beating a bargain or making a purchase “that are yet but blinde buzzards in the choise of a wife” (p. 10). Gataker insists throughout that the choice of a wife and married life are governed by providence, but allows as well that human error can frustrate God’s ordinance. For, “as tyrannie in gouerment is not the fault of Gods Ordinance, but of mans corruption abusing it: so in these cases, the euill and inconuenience is not the fruit of Gods Ordinance, but of mans corruption accompanying it” (p. 14). Gataker devotes an entire section to the lawful procedure for seeking a wife, beginning with prayer, stressing that some go “too far of, matching with such as they are by religion prohibited to marrie” (p. 16). In particular, he points out that fair and wealthy wives are not necessarily gifts of God, echoing Hall’s comments on “the best bargaine” and alluding, if only indirectly, to the wealthy dowry that was at least partially a motive for prosecuting the Spanish match. To this sermon, Gataker appended A Wife Indeed, part of which was preached at the wedding of Sir Robert Harley and his wife, the Lady Brilliana, 22 July 1623. Holding up these two as the model of a good marriage, Gataker uses Proverbs 18:2256 to comment sententiously on good wives. As with the previous sermon, however, Gataker considers the question of seeking the good wives whose qualities he has already delineated. As Gataker observes, unless we seek we are not likely to find her; nor should we expect “that God should drop Wives downe out of the clouds” (p. 55). Those intending to marry should use all means available, beginning with diligent consideration, but including advice from friends and parents, and prayer to God. A third marriage sermon entered by Gataker late in 1623 takes up in more detail the question of seeking a good wife. Gataker’s text is Genesis 24:12–14, the chapter relating the means of making a match between Isaac and Rebecca, a couple that has become “a precedent and a patterne to blesse others by” (p. 1). This sermon demonstrates powerfully how difficult it is to read sermons topically, despite ample contemporary evidence that they were so preached and interpreted. Despite the unlikelihood of this sermon’s supporting negotiations for a Spanish marriage, Gataker’s exposition of Eleazer’s example mentions two things that might support such an interpretation. One is that fathers are the fittest to negotiate matches for their sons (p. 2). The second is that Abraham sends his trusted household steward to make the match, proving that a good wife is well worth seeking. As Gataker says, “A long journey taken for such one [i.e. a good wife] is well undertaken” (p. 3). However, the sign he prays for, a sign of her courteous disposition, certainly was not forthcoming in Spain, where both Charles and Buckingham were treated without dignity and honour, in part due to the uninvited manner of their coming. Perhaps the godly could hear in Gataker’s application of this example their own view of the affair. Taken together, Gataker’s late 1623 marriage sermons seem, in the ebbing of negotiations for a Spanish match, to be directed towards the future, urging prayer as the surest means of marrying well, stressing the benefits of a good match and the perils of a bad, and 56

“He that findeth a Wife, findeth Good; and obtaineth Favour of God.”

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis reminding his readers that a match determined outside of an explicitly religious context is inevitably a bad bargain. “NO MAN IS AN ISLAND”: JOHN DONNE’S DEVOTIONS UPON EMERGENT OCCASIONS AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE In this charged religious climate, John Donne continued his practice of frequent preaching “twelve or fourteen Sermons every year, to great Auditories, at Paules, and to the Judges, and at Court.”57 Although few of Donne’s sermons for this period survive, due primarily to his illness of late 1623, we do have his Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, entered in the Stationer’s register on 9 January, and published on 1 February 1624. Deprived of his books for several weeks, Donne composed his Devotions, dedicated to Charles and distributed to ranking nobility among the “Patriots” gathering force against Spain.58 Reading these Devotions as Donne’s contribution to an emerging public sphere – in which matters of political and spiritual counsel are thematized and structured – enables an understanding of Donne’s professional contribution to public discussion of these matters. Energized by the providential light that recent events had cast on experience, Donne reads his own illness as an expression of God’s ways, and inscribes within his text the metaphors and habits of thought that explicate these experiences. Donne’s otherwise puzzling rush to publish and distribute the Devotions makes sense if interpreted as his public political intervention from the most private of personal spheres, his sickbed. For a variety of reasons, however, commentators have rejected explicitly political readings of the Devotions.59 Nonetheless, I will argue that the political advice of the Devotions focuses on the phrase “No man is an Iland,” a statement that many readers interpret as Donne’s personal, “spiritual” turning point,60 but that resonates politically as well, reminding the prince, his advisors, and the larger audience of readers through the physical and spiritual crisis figured by his disease that even private actions have public consequences. The Devotions remind Charles of something James had declared in his own writings: the king is as “one set on a stage, whose smallest actions and gestures, all the people gazingly doe behold”; any “dissolute” behaviour on his part breeds contempt in his subjects; and contempt is “the mother of rebellion and disorder.”61 In the Devotions, Donne extends 57

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Matthew, A Collection of letters, p. 354. See Bald, pp. 441–2, Daley, 59–60. Bald notes, further, that the printed dedications to Donne all came from 1622 and 1623. D’Ewes heard several sermons by Donne (15 September 1622; 1 November 1623; 23 November 1623; and perhaps others). This statement is an extrapolation from Donne’s list of recipients, as well as from his letters. Donne’s sympathies for the Palatine cause, inextricably connected with negotiations for the Spanish match in 1623, are discussed in Bald, pp. 446–7; Sellin, pp. 166–9; Arshagouni [Papazian], “Politics”; Frost, pp. 43–56. Perhaps the most balanced treatment of the political, pastoral, and spiritual significance of the Devotions is in Frost, pp. 39–77. Two articles focusing explicitly on the politics of the Devotions are by Cooper and by Gray and Shami. Arshagouni [Papazian] expresses reservations about Cooper’s political reading, largely due to its historical inaccuracies (“Politics,” 242–4). While she admits that an accurate political reading “may add to the poignancy and emotional depth of the work,” she cautions that Donne’s disappointment at the failure of the Doncaster mission might show how “anti-historical” a work the Devotions really is (244). See, for example, Andreasen, p. 215 and Smith, p. 9. Basilikon Doron in The Political Works of James I, ed. McIlwain, p. 43.

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Sermons and the Moral Marketplace the consequences of the monarch’s “stage” presence by stressing the king’s responsibility to maintain a good reputation. Whatever the spiritual implications of Donne’s statement that “no man is an island,” the political implication is that the heir apparent and his advisors, and indeed royal chaplains, have a responsibility not to act merely as private persons. Donne’s consciousness of the public nature of their sphere of activity expresses fear that the Directions to Preachers and the prince’s secretive journey to Spain had eroded that sphere and precipitated further crises of religious and political identity.62 Donne’s dedication of the Devotions to Charles can be read as a merely ceremonial gesture, a shallow bid for patronage. Within the hermeneutics of censorship, however, dedications functioned to “alert the reader to his special responsibilities” and to signal “the possibility of hidden meaning.”63 This might explain why Donne was apprehensive about dedicating the book to Prince Charles, even asking Sir Robert Ker “whether there be any uncomeliness or unseasonableness in presenting matter of devotion or mortification to that Prince, whom I pray God nothing may ever mortify but holiness.”64 The dedication allows Donne to establish his authority as counsellor to Charles, while suggesting a political message in the example of Hezekiah, who “writt the Meditations of his Sicknesse, after his Sicknesse.”65 Contemporary sermons confirm that the example of Hezekiah was routinely applied to English current affairs. Hezekiah ruled over the remnant of the divided kingdom of Israel and faced the threat of a war against the Assyrians. This tempted him to seek an alliance with the idolatrous Babylonians (2 Kings 20). Similar threats of religious unrest and war in Europe, as well as the temptation to form alliances with “idolaters,” faced Donne’s England.66 Increasingly, puritan elements within the English church were being radicalized, and the possibility existed that England might be drawn into the

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As unlikely as it might seem, Donne’s views on the rule of law – the place of institutions, processes, and means in conducting public affairs – show some affinity with the writings of Thomas Scott. On this issue, they agree: “law-governed activities were ‘public’ and proper. Authority exercised outside the limits set by the law became ‘private’ and hence illegitimate and possible tyrannical” (“Constitutional Consensus,” [814]). They would also agree on the view that Charles’s marriage was the “legitimate interest” of the whole commonwealth (815). Where they would part company is in their practical resolution to this private/public dichotomy. Scott finds the point of contact between people and king in parliament and its processes, and sees them as “an almost infallible means to bring king and subject together” (824). Donne finds a more imaginative solution in the Devotions, where he shows the public consequences of even his private illness, and, by dedicating the work to Charles, invests his analogies with multilayered significance and shows the correspondences between the most apparently public and apparently private spheres. Scott’s classical republican analysis of the English commonwealth also had some affinity with Donne’s humanist education and family tradition. On Donne, see Flynn, John Donne, pp. 37–43, 52–3; on Scott, see Peltonen, pp. 229–70. A. Patterson, Censorship, p. 48. Gosse, II, 189. Donne, Devotions, p. 3. Frost defines the spiritual autobiography as “a literature both public and private” (p. 14). Sherwood, Fulfilling the Circle, notes that “Like Donne, Hezekiah offers an exemplar of humiliation: not strength, but weakness distinguishes his value as a model . . . It is as a sinful exemplar of humiliation and repentance that Donne presents his experience, Hezekiah-like, to the ‘times’ of Charles and to Donne’s community” (p. 188). Sir Thomas Wentworth observed, with irony, “They saie the clergie of spaine haue undertaken to paie the whole porconn, beinge a marriage so much tendinge to the honore and safetie of Spaine, the good and aduancement of the Catholiq faith” (Wentworth to Lord Clifford, 25 April 1623, Wentworth Papers, ed. Cooper, p. 184).

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis escalating continental conflict. Donne himself had connections with Elizabeth, had traveled in Germany and was sympathetic to a policy of intervention.67 Moreover, the example of Hezekiah had particular resonance for Donne at this time. Only a year before, Petley had dedicated to Donne a sermon that had focused primarily on the deportment of a religious king (with sustained topical application to James) and on the dangers of idolatry and security in England. In particular, Hezekiah’s treatment of the prophet-ambassador Isaiah and his respect for Isaiah’s blunt truthfulness are echoed in Donne’s dedication to Charles, with its reminders of James’s fatherly support of Donne’s ministerial vocation. The very structure of Donne’s text, which moves rhythmically through cycles of meditation, expostulation, and prayer, is also anticipated in Petley’s extended discussion of the importance of private devotion and prayer in enabling spiritual conformity. And Petley’s emphasis on Hezekiah as a reformer of ceremony and preaching leading to undivided hearts is anatomized in the Devotions through Donne’s exegesis of the metaphors of heart and government. Yet just how Donne applies the Hezekiah story to the rest of the Devotions remains open to interpretation. Frost argues that in the Devotions, Donne draws 67

Donne’s extant letters for this period indicate ongoing interest in affairs in the Palatinate and on the continent. A letter addressed to Buckingham in Spain between February and October 1623 warns against Spanish deception, and reminds Buckingham to take things as they seem, for that is indeed how they are, and continue his instrumental role in constructing the peace of Christendom. Donne writes “Their autors in Diuinity, though they do not show us the best way to heaven, yet they thinke they doe: And so, though they say not true, yet they do not ly, because they speake their Conscience. And since in charity, I beleeue so of them, for their Diuinity, In Ciuility I beleeue yt too, for Ciuill matters, that therin also they meane as they say; and by this tyme yor Lp: knowes what they say” (Bodleian MS Tanner 73, fo. 305r). The slipperiness of Donne’s references to Spanish intentions, the deliberate ambiguity of the suggestion that Buckingham now “knowes what they say,” and the parallels between their political and religious discourse (“though they say not true, yet they do not ly”) reveal the delicacy of Donne’s rhetorical situation and the effort required to be both direct and circumspect in these matters of national interest. In his slightly later letter to Ker, Donne’s opinions are expressed more openly, but still indirectly. He says that north and south can never meet though east and west may do so. In this analogy, England and Spain are north and south: “They have hotter daies in Spain than we have here, but our daies are longer; and yet we are hotter in our businesse here, and they longer about it there” (A Collection of Letters, p. 306). Bald says that the thought of midsummer in Spain suggests the contrast between the two national temperaments and allows Donne to express his impatience with Spanish prevarication (p. 447). It is clear, though, that Donne is opposed to joining north and south. “There are things in which we may, and in that wherein we should not, my hope is in God, and in Him, in whom God doth so evidently work, we shall not meet, Amen” (A Collection of Letters, p. 306). Another letter, addressed to Sir Henry Goodyer, confirms Donne’s interest in continental affairs, but is more important for what it specifies about the way in which letters could signal more than their literal content (Letters, pp. 82–5). Donne sends this particular letter via a messenger instructed to answer in detail to the questions raised by the “naming of some things” in the letter. In other words, Donne is telling Goodyer that his letter contains only the topics for discussion, not Donne’s broadest views on the matters, a point that surely tells us much about the decorum of letter-writing in the period, and the way in which oral accounts supplemented letters on misinterpretable subjects (Annabel Patterson, “Misinterpretable Donne”: Carey, “John Donne’s Newsless Letters”). The topics he names are those that might be expected, namely the Spanish match and the war on the continent. Of the former Donne writes that the Spanish ambassador “proceeds in the old pace,” no doubt encouraged by ongoing negotiations for the match. Of more interest is Donne’s report of Olivares’s opinion that until the prince came there had been no thought of the match at all. Of the situation in the Palatinate, Donne writes that “Amongst the irregularities of this age, to me this is as strange as any, That this year there is no peace, and yet no sword drawn in the world; & it is a lost conjecture to think which way any of the Armies will bend.” This must surely have been the thought uppermost in the minds of most people, especially in the months during which Charles and Buckingham were in Spain, leaving them no room to negotiate either in terms of the marriage articles or of the restoration of the Palatinate.

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Sermons and the Moral Marketplace upon the association between Hezekiah and reform to “remind the Prince of his coming twofold responsibility: As a monarch he must fulfill the type of the good King Hezekiah, and as head of the Church he must promulgate the Word through the support of its preaching priesthood, of whom Donne is a living example . . . Like the father/son Hezekiah, Charles can be a destroyer of idolatry and the enemies of Israel, but he can also fall like Manasseh, the undutiful son who delivered his people into the Babylonian captivity . . . On the other hand, Charles could imitate his father in building a strong church and fortifying it with learned preachers.”68 Apart from this public application of the example, Donne’s emphasis on the figure of Hezekiah reveals “not only his identification of that ancient king with James and Charles Stuart but equally its private application to himself as suffering victim and Christian poet.”69 That Donne in his sermons regards Hezekiah as essentially a good king is evident from his frequent citations of Isaiah 38:2, in which Hezekiah turns his face to the wall in his sickness. Donne interprets this turning to mean that Hezekiah had a purpose “to conforme, and compose himselfe towards the Temple” (VII, 58); that is, even on his sickbed Hezekiah did not excuse himself from the discipline of the state religion. In another sermon, Donne praises Hezekiah for his success in inducing “vertuous times in the temporall State, and government” (VIII, 238). For Donne, Hezekiah’s religious conformity reinforced his temporal leadership and was the basis of his “good” example for posterity. As with many of Donne’s examples, however, the example of Hezekiah is not wholly positive. “When Ezechias shewed the Ambassadors of Babylon all his Treasure and his Armour, the malediction of the Prophet fell upon it, that all that Treasure and Armour which he had so gloriously shewed, should be transported to them, to whom he had shewed it, into Babylon” (II, 357). Whether James is the “good” Hezekiah whose allegiance to the established church Donne remarks on frequently, or whether James is the “bad” Hezekiah who unwittingly sold his people into the Babylonian captivity (as many predicted as a consequence of the proposed Spanish or French marriage), the point in the Devotions is that Charles is commanded by Hezekiah’s “good” example to protect his people from the erosion of protestantism. Only Hezekiah’s “good” example has the force of a commandment; his “bad” example serves primarily to warn that not all the actions of even the best kings are worthy of imitation. In dedicating the Devotions to Prince Charles, then, Donne publicly affirms his authority as a counsellor, derived in part from his exegesis of his personal experience of illness, and in part from his typological application of that experience to his audience, specifically Charles Stuart.70 In its application to Charles, Donne’s Devotions challenges the prince to consider the public significance of his private actions, to accept the responsibility to govern openly and honestly, and to accept the counsel of those “physicians” who, like Donne, were authorized to help him with his task. Moreover, it challenges the physician/counsellors to persist in their counsels and not to vapourize into destructive rumours. The application of Hezekiah’s example results in political metaphors illustrating two related themes: the vulnerability and the public responsibilities of the king. 68 69 70

Frost, p. 55. Ibid., p. 56. See Mueller “Exegesis of Experience.”

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis Both of these are embodied in the metaphor of the king as heart of the kingdom. Donne proposes that “the Braine, and Liver, and Heart, hold not a Triumvirate in Man, . . . but the Heart alone is in the Principalitie, and in the Throne, as King, the rest as Subjects” (p. 56). Despite the heart’s preeminence, however, it is extremely vulnerable, for “if an enemy dare rise up against it, it is the soonest endangered, the soonest defeated of any part” (p. 56). But Donne’s main point is that the vulnerable heart has public responsibilities: “the other parts, as younger brethren, and servants in this family, have a dependance upon [the heart]” (p. 56); in fact, “there is no possibilitie that they [the brain and the liver] can subsist, if the Heart perish” (p. 57).71 Donne confronts the disastrous consequences of “heart failure”72 to the kingdom by recognizing that the heart of man “is deceitfull, above all things, and desperately wicked” (p. 58). Of course, being human, kings are susceptible to personal weakness and sin, for they are able to “deface in themselves thy [God’s] first image, in their owne soule” (p. 42). However, the Devotions also has much to say about the political vulnerability of monarchs, namely their ability to deface God’s “second Image, imprinted indelibly in their power” (p. 42). The king’s reputation seems to be one of the most vulnerable aspects of his power and the soonest damaged. This is made clear in the twelfth meditation, where the threat of rumours to the body politic parallels the pernicious effects of vapours on the body: “That which is fume in us, is in a State, Rumor, and these vapours in us, which wee consider here pestilent, and infectious fumes, are in a State infectious rumors, detracting and dishonourable Calumnies, Libels. The Heart in that body is the King; and the Braine, his Councell; and the whole Magistracie, that ties all together, is the Sinewes, which proceed from thence; and the life of all is Honour, and just respect, and due reverence; and therfore, when these vapors, these venimous rumors, are directed against these Noble parts, the whole body suffers” (pp. 63–4). The lesson is not limited to a warning against the dangers of rumours fostered by the “fugitive” or the “Almes-man of any forraine State”; Donne emphasizes that “the most dishonorable rumours, and those that wound a State most, arise at home” (p. 64). Here, he chastises the malignancy of those who weaken the body by their siege of the heart, by the toxicity of their vaporous rumours. And yet, the Heart is subject to self-bred “intestine poysons” and to an unhealthy leniency and patience that allows these “venimous rumours” (p. 64) to flourish. If citizens are directly responsible to desist from detraction, so, too, must the heart, brain, and sinews exercise both “vertue” and “power” to prevent the destruction of the body politic. Although Donne’s metaphor of the body politic is more descriptive than prescriptive, it imagines a political atmosphere destructive to the health of the state. The atmosphere of secrecy created by the prince’s sudden departure had been exacerbated by the king’s absence from court sermons and the attempts to limit 71

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Strier claims that the stress on kingly responsibility is “dubious” because “in the text, vulnerability eliminates responsibility. Donne’s emphasis is not on the importance of the heart caring for other parts but on these parts caring for the vulnerable and absolutely crucial heart” (p. 98). Strier’s reading is partially correct in that Donne is explicating how a “rebellious heat” in the liver or the brain “will blow up the heart” (p. 56). The metaphor’s political extension, however, is directed against kings who show too much patience to their enemies, and in so doing exalt the venom of their enemies (p. 57). Frost notes that at this stage of Donne’s illness, his physicians feared heart failure and applied a poultice to the breast containing countervenoms and heart stimulants (p. 73).

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Sermons and the Moral Marketplace public comment on this event. Valaresso’s report in the fall of 1623 suggests that the official silence of James’s despotic rule was heightening tensions. Charles’s letters to his father from Spain suggest that the Venetian report was not exaggerated. While in Spain Charles had repeatedly instructed James to “advise as little with your Council in these businesses as you can,” and to “be secret in the conditions” of the negotiations. The secrecy created a tense atmosphere in England in which rumour flourished.73 The scandals thereby engendered in the atmosphere of mutual distrust were destructive to the health of the kingdom and the gossips were indeed in need of rebuke. Gardiner indicates that when in July the Privy Council was deliberating about signing the Spanish marriage articles, “the acts, the words, the very countenances of the members of the Privy Council, had been eagerly scanned by multitudes” and “never were the newsmongers more busy.” The desire to know the fate of the nation provoked “strange tales of what had happened in the Council and at Court . . . the greater part of them evidently invented for the occasion.”74 In October, after their return to England, Charles and Buckingham kept such a close rein on James that other councillors found it difficult either to advise the king or to discern his intentions.75 In the Devotions, Donne warns that “Twentie rebellious drums make not so dangerous a noise, as a few whisperers, and secret plotters in corners” (p. 52). Kings can counter the damaging political effects of rumour and secrecy in the public sphere by consulting widely with their “physicians” and by governing openly. The Devotions claim that “It diminishes not the dignitie of a Monarch, that hee derive part of his care upon others” (p. 35). On the contrary, government by counsel has divine sanction: “It was not only a civill spirit of policy, or order that moved Moses father in law, to perswade him to divide the burden of Government, & Judicature, with others, & take others to his assistance, but it was also thy immediat spirit O My God, . . . though Moses alone had indowments above all, thou gavest him other assistants” (p. 38). Donne later drives the point home by referring to the example of the Trinity: “thou O God, thogh thou have no councell from Man, yet doest nothing upon man, without councell; . . . for all thy externall workes, are the workes of the whole Trinity, and their hand is to every action” (p. 48).76 At the same time that Donne feels the need to persuade his royal reader to accept the physic of counsel, he cautions against excessive dependence upon the physician. This is because “hee falls into the hands of the Phisician, that casts himself wholy, intirely upon the Phisician, . . . and neglects that spirituall phisicke” (p. 22). Nevertheless, Donne’s concern lest the physician become a curse does not cause him to neglect “to condole, and commiserate their distresse, who 73 74

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Charles and Buckingham to James, 17 March and 27 April 1623, ed. Petrie, pp. 13, 18. History, V, 71. Chamberlain complained of “the vulgar” who “talke of many uncouth and unlikely conditions propounded as well touching religion as matter of state.” He believed that such rumours “cannot but proceed from a Vaine feare in the people, who the lesse they know the more they suspect” (II, 497). See Ruigh, p. 22; Chamberlain, II, 529. The letters of Thomas, Earl of Kellie, to John, Earl of Mar, refer repeatedly to the secrecy with which the match was being handled, even by Jacobean standards. On 18 October Kellie reported of a “dispatche” from Prince Charles to Spain that “I think none of the consell [knew] of it but the King, the Prince and Bukkinghame; if onye more warr, it was Kairlille and Connowaye. Sume did talke of it as the dispatche had bein to desyre the randering of the Pallatinate or then noe more treatye. . . . Howsoever, the treatye holds on” (ed. Paton, p. 181). See articles by Nicholls, cited above. Johnson stresses the Trinitarian, consultative nature of Donne’s God (pp. 2–37).

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis have none” (p. 36). The political implication is that, whereas a prince must be careful not to rely solely on his advisers, that prince who has none is to be pitied. In Donne’s opinion, both of these circumstances are unfortunate, for “the danger is not the more, and the providence is the more, wher there are more Phisicians; as the State is the happier, where businesses are carried by more counsels, then can be in one breast, how large soever” (p. 35). The tremendous importance of the matter of counsel in the Devotions is indicated by Donne’s query, “But why doe I exercise my Meditation so long upon this, of having plentifull helpe in time of need” (p. 36)? Of course, Charles’s risky trip to Spain in 1623 had enhanced his reputation for ignoring sound advice, for Charles refused to heed his father’s and Francis Cottington’s warnings concerning the manifold dangers of an unofficial, unlawful, unattended journey through a foreign nation’s territory. Charles’s departure provoked the observation from Chamberlain that “then was yt in every mans mouth, but few beleved yt at first, because they could not apprehend the reasons of so straunge a resolution as beeing a misterie of state beyond common capacities” (II, 480). In Spain, Charles refused to heed the advice of his experienced ambassador, Bristol, who counseled the Prince to be patient and to secure the marriage agreement prior to negotiating for a resolution of the problems related to the Palatinate.77 In the Devotions, the practice of Donne’s physicians illustrates the importance of open judicial government to avoid the dangers that secrecy creates. While Donne delights that his anatomy of himself aids the consulting physicians, he is even more pleased that their efforts have taken place openly: “I am glad they know (I have hid nothing from them) glad they consult, (they hide nothing from one another) glad they write (they hide nothing from the world) glad that they write and prescribe Phisick” (p. 47). For Donne, open government is inseparable from the rule of law, for God’s example is always to proceed “openly, intelligibly, manifestly, by the book” (p. 49). The fourth of the eight books Donne describes in the ninth Expostulation is God’s “booke of just, and usefull Lawes, established by them, to whom thou hast committed thy people” (p. 49). While political readings may have rescued the Devotions from a morbidly introspective focus, however, they have resulted in radically polarized interpretations of Donne’s religion. It is impossible to discuss this text without engaging with Strier, on the one hand, who argues that this text is an Arminian polemic against puritan anti-ceremonialism, and [Arshagouni] Papazian, on the other, who argues for its status as an orthodox Reformed treatise articulating the “fall into affliction” of Donne as one of the “elect.”78 All are agreed, however, that engaging with the public and communal dimensions of the work uncovers interpretive problems, and that poorly executed political analyses discredit generalizations. One interpretive crux focuses on the possibility of relapse and the precarious status of the movement towards “health” at the end of the Devotions. Cooper interprets the issue of vulnerability politically, maintaining that the “frantic fear of relapse” in the closing devotion suggests “the dangers that the Roman Church 77

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See Gardiner, History, V, 111. Charles’s avoidance of the mechanism of counsel was also evinced by his repeated request, “for the love of God and our business, let nothing fall from you to discover anything of this [to the Privy Council].” Charles and Buckingham to James, 26 June 1623 (ed. Petrie, p. 22). Papazian, “Donne, Election,” 615.

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Sermons and the Moral Marketplace holds.”79 Such an interpretation is plausible. The pervasive fear of Roman Catholicism was demonstrated by the jubilation with which Charles was received in October 1623, when he returned to England without a Spanish bride. Despite the immense relief, the real possibility of a Spanish marriage remained at least until 25 January 1624, for the Earl of Kellie could still report to the Earl of Mar that, “It is thoct certenlye that all matters for the matche with Spayne is concludit, and now attending noe thing but the consent of the Pope, whitche all churchemen in special sayes and speciallye the Jesuits sayes he can not refus, and if he shuld thaye will goe on with out him.”80 Both Strier and Papazian reject this interpretation, however. Papazian suggests that after the fall of Heidelberg in September 1622 the Spanish Match was no longer contemplated with “dread” because it became “intertwined with the restoration of the Palatinate” and the plight of Elizabeth and Frederick of Bohemia.81 Strier, too, concludes that the Spanish match was a moot point by the end of 1623 and cannot explain the urgency of Donne’s rush into print.82 Papazian argues that the section, far from warning James of the dangers of papism, is “rather an anatomy of Perseverance, an experience appropriate only to the elect who despite their assurance of salvation, can never be free from sinfulness while on earth. It is a dramatization of the emotions which afflict the godly as they attempt to humble themselves before God, repent their sins, and bear their crosses patiently as they await their final moment of peace”83 that comes with escape from politics and the world. Also rejecting the politics of state of some interpretations, Strier reads the Devotions as an Arminian anti-puritan tract, responding to the Roman calumny that the Church of England had cast off “all outward manifestations of religion, all concern with particular places and times, and all concern with ‘outward meanes of assisting’ devotion.”84 He argues that Donne’s urgency in publishing the Devotions derived from a “profoundly felt (and highly political) sense that not to would have been “a betrayal of his whole religious vision, and would have made him feel as if he were validating the piety of the group that (along with the Jesuits) he despised most.”85 The Devotions, then, focus on the physical distance that his illness forces him to keep from the church as a physical place, on the inability to fulfill his vocation as preacher the disease produces. Strier’s primary example of Donne’s “explicit”86 Arminianism and polemical anti-puritanism is the section on the funeral bell. Donne here expostulates not with God but with the puritans who reject the ceremony of bells within the Church, and whom Donne sees as schismatical for so doing. Strier sees these 79 80

81 82 83

84 85 86

Cooper, p. 193. ed. Paton, p. 189. See also Chamberlain, II, 537, 540; and the discussions in Ruigh (pp. 22, 27) and Gardiner, History (V, 175–6). Arshagouni [Papazian], “Politics,” 236. Strier, p. 100. Arshagouni [Papazian], “Politics,” 244. Papazian’s discussion of the “strongly Reformed dimension of [Donne’s] Augustinianism” (“Literary ‘Things Indifferent’, ” p. 329) goes some way towards explaining the exemplary spiritual function of Donne’s illness for his readers, a microcosm of the “saving cycle of grace so well-defined in Augustine’s late anti-Pelagian theology” (p. 333). See also her important essay “The Latin ‘Stationes’, ” which demonstrates how the Latin headnotes address the reader to guard against “back-sliding” (206). Strier, p. 101. Ibid., p. 102. Ibid., p. 106.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis passages as explicitly polemical, as Donne’s “coming-out” against the puritans. In fact, he speculates that the great section about being involved with mankind is really talking about the “communion of saints” that Arminians held up as an ideal against “the puritan ideal of separating the godly from the ungodly.”87 The mention of Europe extends this vision of mankind, he says, to include union with Rome, so that the “real point” of “No man is an island” is that “England should find a way to see itself as united with the Church of Rome.” Accordingly, Strier reads the fear of relapse as “Donne’s most important enactment of theological Arminianism.”88 The athleticism of Strier’s leap from the mention of Europe to reconciliation with the Church of Rome makes Cooper’s cautious suggestion that Donne’s comments on idolatry constitute a warning against relapse into Catholic idolatry seem pedestrian indeed.89 However, despite our sense that political reconciliation with Catholic Spain was unlikely in late 1623, it seems plausible that premature movements for reconciliation with the Church of Rome promulgated by some antiCalvinists and proto-Laudians were precisely the danger that Donne saw as “emergent” in these months. Donne’s own commitment to the Christianity embodied in the established Church of England – “our” Church – and practised according to its Articles and Canons, while it does not absolutely reject the possibility of reconciliation, strongly defends the Reformation and focuses on continuities with the primitive rather than the post-Tridentine Catholic Church. My own sense is that Donne is here concerned, as Strier says, with maintaining the means of salvation within the Church of England (though that does not make him an Arminian), but also, as Papazian argues, with expressing his disillusionment with factional politics, in favour of a religious and political vision that promotes the health of all bodies and spirits only in complete and committed association with one another. The contradiction may be semantic. The only way that Donne in these Devotions can be both puritan and anti-puritan is by focusing on some aspects of puritanism and ignoring others. To make Donne an Arminian, then, one must focus almost exclusively (as Strier does) on Donne’s ceremonialist views, while ignoring the core of Augustinian “things essential” described by Papazian. Equally, one must ignore the fact that the Thirty-Nine Articles speak of word and sacrament as essential features of the church, treating only ceremonies not specified in scripture as inessential, but enforceable by a national church in the interests of good order.90 Donne’s concern for the Church’s institutions marks him as a conformist, rather than an Arminian, and there is no evidence that Donne was preoccupied (as were the Arminians) with nonscriptural ceremonies and matters of outward form, to the exclusion of other means. It might be argued, in fact, that Donne’s exclusively scriptural authority for his text emphasizes his fundamental faith in the Word, preached from the sickbed, as Mueller, Frost, and Papazian have argued. Narveson’s careful study of Donne’s “contented conformity” takes discussion of Donne’s religion beyond doctrine and church polity to explore Donne’s “piety,” demonstrating the “standard conformist anti-puritanism” of the Devotions rather 87 88 89 90

Ibid., p. 108. Ibid. Cooper, p. 204. Doerksen, Conforming, pp. 26, 73.

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Sermons and the Moral Marketplace than Strier’s “proto-Laudian discontent with the established Church.” This work confirms that “contented conformist,” despite its unfortunate quietistic connotations, is still the aptest term to describe Donne, and her reading of the Devotions the most useful for resolving the interpretive cruxes raised by this work. In his role as professional preacher, however, Donne can be characterized most usefully as a “conforming English Christian,” a phrase that attempts to combine Donne’s primary allegiance to a common Christian tradition, and his conformity to the doctrine and discipline of a specifically Jacobean English church. The latter months of 1623 mark a real shift in pulpit discourse, reflecting several developments. Foremost among these was the return of the prince unwed, an atmosphere of secrecy surrounding marriage negotiations, and a period of licensed commentary on affairs of state under the rubric of “public thanksgiving.” The major factional re-alignments described by Cogswell were also difficult to read,91 marking a shift at court, with James still in control and pursuing a pacifist foreign policy, while Charles and Buckingham forged a “Patriot” coalition that was essentially anti-Spanish, pro-Dutch, and focused on regaining the Palatinate. Fears of institutional change were marked by an intensifying anti-papism, a feeling that was encouraged by the Blackfriars incident in late October. The Directions, in force for little more than a year now, had had some effect, primarily a decline in controversial sermons on predestination and other deep doctrinal points. Still, official anti-papism remained in Gowry and Paul’s Cross sermons, and in those handling the Blackfriars incident, and some preachers such as Jackson and Johnson used the mantle of “thanksgiving” to utter sentiments that before October 5 landed Whiting and Hall in prison. The Directions, of course, had forbidden handling matters of state and yet Gataker’s three sermons on marriage, and sermons handling the topics of war or stressing constancy in religion, commented obliquely on anxieties of the day. In late 1623, Donne’s Devotions and Barrell’s Paul’s Cross sermon dedicated to Abbot engaged politics, religion, and personal piety in ways that mark a new opening for counsel from the spiritual physicians of the realm, encouraged by the promise of a new parliament and a new coalition of godly patriots.

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Blessed Revolution, pp. 57–134.

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Chapter 8 “THE LOVESICK SPOUSE”: PARLIAMENT, PATRIOTS, AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE

PREACHING TO PARLIAMENT

T

HE FIRST half of 1624 was dominated by the parliamentary session that began in February and was prorogued in late May. Popular expectation that the Catholic upsurgence would be halted, the Spanish hold on James broken, and war with Spain declared was shadowed by the failure of the 1621 parliament over these very issues of domestic and foreign policy. The mood of elation and relief expressed at Charles’s return and the temporary collapse of the Spanish marriage negotiations in October, then, was tempered by deep-seated uncertainty about James’s trustworthiness, and parliamentary reluctance to subsidize on faith a foreign policy that was not openly anti-Spanish. The situation was further complicated because there were, in effect, two heads of state promoting divergent policies: James, who preferred diplomatic solutions to foreign disputes and refused alliances formed along confessional lines; and a “patriot” coalition, committed to a breach of the Spanish treaties, alliance with the Dutch, and open war against Catholics at home and Spaniards abroad.1 A manuscript sermon by John Stoughton on Canticles 5:8 illustrates how sermons could contribute to engaged political debate on “emergent occasions.” Little is known of the textual transmission of Stoughton’s The Lovesick Spouse, and Maclure can provide only the general date “ante 1640.”2 However, a manuscript of the full sermon in the Bodleian Library dates it in 1623 (i.e. between 25 March 1623 and 24 March 1623/4) and internal evidence suggests that it was delivered at Paul’s Cross after the Christmas season of 1623, and probably in February or March of 1624 while parliament was in session.3 While the precise dating of this manuscript is uncertain, 1

2 3

My discussion of these months follows Cogswell’s analysis in Blessed Revolution. See also Simon Adams. Maclure, p. 253. The evidence for this conclusion is based on two passages in the sermon. Stoughton approaches the end of his sermon with references to the stability of the church founded upon the rock of Christ. In the printed version, Stoughton gives two examples of the outward signs by which this confidence can be manifested. The 1623 manuscript contains an additional example: the instruction to write “Immanuel ouer or gates in golden letters; god wth us” (fo. 90r), an example that would have been conventional to a sermon preached during the Christmas season. This addition helps to explain a second passage in which Stoughton employs a topical analogy to rouse his congregation from their security, and to remind them of the sufferings of their continental co-religionists. He asks whether it were not “wisdom for us, that are but of the lower house [i.e. the Commons], to grant a Subsidie

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Parliament, Patriots, and the Public Sphere however, other aspects of its provenance suggest extensive impact as a scribal publication. The sermon handles many of the themes dominating pulpit discourse of 1623/24: anti-papism, marriage (and lovesickness, or idolatry), and a quasiapocalyptic fear of the political and religious consequences of peace and security. Stoughton is remembered as a preacher persecuted by Laud through the High Commission.4 He enjoyed the protection of puritan leaders such as Sir Robert Harley (who accompanied him before the High Commission), and Henry Rich, Earl of Holland, although their support was not sufficient to prevent him from being examined for “inconformity.”5 Although suspected of channeling funds to nonconforming ministers in the New World, however, Stoughton was eventually acquitted and died in 1639. The 1640 posthumous printing of fifteen of his sermons, including the sermon on Canticles 5:8, is dedicated to the Earl of Holland. As Lord Kensington, Rich was part of the coalition of “patriots” formed after the prince’s return from Spain.6 He had intervened in 1621 in Everard’s imprisonments for indiscreet words regarding the Spanish match,7 and was chief negotiator for the French match early in 1624. McCullough has argued that Stoughton’s court sermon in Cambridge later that year when the articles were signed praised that match fulsomely.8 Stoughton’s sermon has survived as part of Bodleian MS Rawl. E. 148, an anthology of Cambridge materials from the 1620s and 1630s epitomizing how conformist Calvinists traced their woes in the 1630s to their betrayal by James to pro-Spanish ceremonialists circa 1618–24.9 The sermon’s date and its circulation

4 5 6 7 8 9

of sighs; for us that are but of the Comon Councell, to take order for a presse of prayers; for us that are but private Subjects of the Kingdome of Grace, to contribute a benevolence of tears, toward the quenching of those flames, with which all the Churches of God round about us are on fire?” (p. 143). The allusion would have been especially pointed after parliament convened when the subject of subsidies and benevolences to support a war with Spain was debated. A letter from Chamberlain to Carleton, 3 January 1623/4, corroborates that “Most of the time [between Christmas eve and the present] hath ben spent in daylie consultations, which resolved in the end on a parlement to begin the 10th of Februarie” (II, 536). Whitebrook. Eales, p. 63. Cogswell, Blessed Revolution, pp. 79–80. DNB, VI, 948–9. McCullough, “Calendar,” p. 295. The sermon on Canticles 5:8 is the fourth of eight documents. The first two are sermons by a Dr. Garnons, likely John Garnons of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, whose commencement sermon on Psalms 84:1, the first in the manuscript, marked his proceeding D. D. in 1631 (Venn, part 1, II, 196). The second is a Latin sermon ad clerum. The third sermon is by Richard Spinkes on Romans 1:14, delivered in St. John’s College Chapel on 17 May 1632. This is likely Richard Spinke who matriculated at John’s, Easter 1620, took his BA 1623–4, MA 1627, and died on 9 October 1634, aged 29 (ibid., IV, 136). Milton notes that “increasingly, those who discussed Church ceremonies [in the 1630s] found their motives questioned and their works censored.” He observes that Spinke was summoned and forced to recant this sermon because, among other things, it emphasized the spiritual beauty of holiness to the detriment of the physical [Catholic and Reformed, p. 71]). The sermon on Romans 1:14 recants various positions taken regarding the authority and vocation of preachers and ministers of the Gospel, the beauty of holiness, the role of the sacraments, the authority of bishops, and in particular the preacher’s “indiscreet and unadvised manner of expressing himself ” (fo. 50r). Item 4 is Stoughton’s sermon, dated at Paul’s Cross 1623. This is followed by an unidentified fragment of a Latin/Greek discourse, a copy of a letter from John Williams, Bishop of Lincoln regarding the placement of a communion table, and a speech delivered at Norwich by Dr. Corbet, Bishop of Norwich on 28 April 1634 to the clergy of the synod. The speech calls for a benevolence for the reparation of St. Paul’s. The final item is part of a sermon by Dr. Love, anti-Laudian head at Cambridge, in St. Mary’s on Christmas Day, 1633, on 2 Cor. 8:9 (Milton, Catholic and Reformed, pp. 73, 75). The entire manuscript reflects the doctrinal and disciplinary debates of the 1630s in Cambridge.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis in an anthology of non-conforming, anti-Laudian materials highlight several topical and thematic aspects. The sermon as a whole focuses on the spouse’s love for Christ, and is divided into two parts: the substance of the text, treating the affection – love – and the spouse’s lovesickness; and the circumstances of the context, divided roughly into the absence of her beloved (pp. 1–85) and the spouse’s affliction (pp. 85–156). The absence of the beloved, Stoughton says, punishes former negligence and provokes future diligence (p. 54), eventually leading the spouse to Christ. The second major circumstance of the context – the afflictions of the spouse – expresses Stoughton’s views on the unpopular negotiations for a bride for Charles. In Stoughton’s sermon, lovesickness, a disease that Charles had demonstrated publicly in his 1623 expedition to Spain, is countered with the proper devotion of the spouse for Christ.10 The language of marriage, even the choice of text, is suggestive, as is the extended description of the sickness caused by the separation of the two lovers, Christ and his Church. Stoughton’s comments on marriage take on additional meanings in the context of continued negotiations for a Catholic match for Charles.11 Many opponents of the Spanish match viewed a French marriage with less distaste, recognizing its strategic advantages in a war to recover the Palatinate. Stoughton, whose patron Rich was enthusiastic about the French match, seems to be expressing the caution of those wary of, if not absolutely opposed to, a marriage with one of the daughters of Antichrist. Although he praises the French match later in 1624 when the treaties were signed, Stoughton asserts here that “when marriage is not in the feare of the Lord, in the knot of true Religion, there is nothing in it but the fire of contention” (p. 58). Much of the sermon also considers a topic of immediate public concern: the dangers of security. The language of war and peace, in particular, reverberates in the context of pressure to wage war with Spain, and to make parliamentary subsidies dependent on some say in foreign policy. In this context, Stoughton’s assertion that “the language of war is the best Rhetoricke to commend peace” (p. 56) registers another plane of dissatisfaction with James’s handling of both domestic and foreign policy, reinforced with statements indicating that England has been lulled into security and has not benefited from peace. The example of the French protestant church is a cautionary tale to England: “and mourning France may tell merry England, sorrowful France may tell secure England thus much: Gods children must not look for any Paradise upon earth, that Vine must not think it grows in Paradise” (p. 85). In fact, the dangers of prosperity and peace are a premise of the sermon: “both make faith effoeminate” (p. 97). Stoughton comments, for example, that “The beautie of the world foils a Christian more than the strength, the Peace more than the war, the flattering Sunshine more then the blustring storm” (pp. 94–5). If these continue, they will open the door to religious toleration. But his sermon is animated with the prayer “that Peace doe not play the Sophister in the world now adayes and partaking of the nature of cold, freeze Heterogeneals together, Papists and Protestants in the neerest bonds” (p. 138). This fear of religious toleration is 10

11

Another way of thinking of this disease is as a form of “idolatry,” an association that had been made in Hall’s sermon, The Great Imposter, for example. Cogswell argues that many in England hoped that a match with France could be arranged “without prejudice to the domestic religious situation” (Blessed Revolution, p. 279).

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Parliament, Patriots, and the Public Sphere expressed in anti-papist and specifically anti-Jesuit comparisons suggesting that Stoughton’s agenda is not identical to that of his patron, Rich. Stoughton contrasts the numberless tears of the saints with the papists numbering their beads, for example (p. 75). He also contrasts the faulty papist economy of the relationship between grace and merit – now named as Pelagian – with the right valuation of the work of grace: “The acclamation at the founding of the Temple in Zachary, was Grace, Grace, not Merit, as the rough Pelagian; nor Merit and Grace, nor Grace and Merit, nor Merit at all, nor Free-will neither, but all Grace, Grace” (p. 80).12 Stoughton invites a strong topical application when he criticizes sermons that sing sweetly in the meditation but fail in the application (p. 72). The manuscript of the sermon, however, shows even Stoughton avoiding some applications. Where the manuscript mentions only “a certaine [exemplary] Xtian” (fo. 78r) upon his deathbed, the 1640 printed sermon supplies the name “Deering” (p. 116), an example that was significant to the beleaguered saints in 1640. The posthumously published sermon invokes the full symbolic weight of this “martyr” in the antiprelatical cause, a man who on his deathbed preferred the “golden beams” (p. 116) of God’s countenance won through adversity to the “golden bags” of worldly prosperity (p. 117).13 The manuscript, however, avoids naming Dering, in part to defend against censorship, and in part to open up rather than to limit application of the text. The individual afflictions epitomized by “Deering” are enlarged by Stoughton’s references to the trials of Reformed religion on the continent, particularly in the Palatinate. Stoughton asserts “that God tries his children now at the river Rhine; but hee doth alway in the water of affliction” (p. 119). Later, he declares that “if any now will say he is a Christian, and yet is so unnaturall that he can see his brother Germans in the faith suffering, and yet not be sorry: I will say he is but a sorry Christian” (p. 139). And in specific application to the joint future of England (under Charles and his children) and the Palatinate (under the heirs of Frederick and Elizabeth) he urges his hearers to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem, that our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth, that our daughters may be as corner-stones, polished after the similitude of a Palace, that they may be Royall and Palatine stones” (p. 141). Scholarship on the political temper of the nation at the opening of parliament (on 10 February) confirms that emphasis on religion – and only secondarily on political alliances – was the keynote of the first weeks of the session.14 Cogswell characterizes Hall’s sermon before Convocation and Bargrave’s fast sermon before both houses as “impassioned call[s] to theological arms.”15 Both of them are imbued with a sense of their occasion, and a confidence that their urgent call will be answered.

12

13 14 15

On 22 February 1624, D’Ewes writes that “Wee had one verie bad sermon savouring of Arminianisme, a very dangerous heresie, being but refined pelagianisme or rather revised, which was broached in the Low Cuntries and had now of late spread exceedinglie in Cambridge and in most partes of England” (pp. 181–2). This comment marks the connection between the names “Arminian” and “Pelagian” in 1624, one that had been introduced into English controversial polemic via the Synod of Dort, which denounced the Dutch Remonstrants as Pelagians. On Dering, see Collinson. Cogswell, Blessed Revolution, pp. 166–96. Ibid., p. 169. Hall, Noahs Dove, X, 21–44; Bargrave, A Sermon Preached before . . . the Lower House; Ussher, An Answer to a Challenge.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis Hall’s sermon, preached in Latin in Convocation, was translated into English by his son, Robert. The entire sermon plays on the theme of diversity in unity that contributes to the construction of God’s temple. Discussion of the diversity of gifts represented by the assembled clerics leads directly to justification of the hierarchical degrees of ministers in the Church of England. Now is the time for these diverse ministers to work as “brethren in service” (X, 31) in unity against the common enemy, the Tridentine Catholic Church. Hall urges: “if ever ye have wrought heretofore, if ever ye will work hereafter, now work. A large doore and effectual is opened unto you, and many adversaries. Ye see how audacious will-worship hath of late set upon vs: how proudly the Tridentine faith hath advanced her crest, and hath dared to flie fiercely in the very face of the Gospel” (X, 34). The bulk of the sermon distinguishes between the Catholic Church and its post-Tridentine corruptions, and argues that the Church of England should focus on reforming the Catholic Church and directing all endeavours “to the constitution and maintenance of this one body” (X, 35); “reformed, I say: not new made, as some emulous spirits spitefully slander us” (X, 41). The break with Rome is justified as a necessary departure from Roman errors, rather than a willful departure from Roman communion. As Hall claims, “We have willingly departed from the communion of their errors; from the communion of the Church we have not departed” (X, 37). The Romans, in fact, have dealt with the Church of England as the “foolish fellow in Gerson, who, being very busy to drive away a fly from his neighbour’s forehead, brained the man” (X, 40). In a bold reclamation of the name “Catholic” (and the moderate and moral high ground), Hall says it is mad to claim that a person must “of necessity die a Romanist that would die a catholic,” taking the public occasion to recover, yet again, the reputation of John King who lived and died a protestant, and “now, as ours, is crowned in heauen” (X, 39). Even if the Roman Church has cast off all unity, however, Hall asks why members of the Church of England should not keep peace among themselves. His hope is that “the religious princes, which are the nursing fathers of the reformed churches, would command by virtue of their authority, a synod to be assembled, as generall as it might; wherein both parts freely and modestly might lay forth their opinions, and such common terms might be agreed upon, as wherein both parts might freely rest without prejudice to either” (X, 43). Like Donne’s, Hall’s sermons indicate that resolution in the public sphere of deep-seated national conflicts was not only a possibility but a vocational mandate. These statements move tactical rhetorical moderation to a new ethical and political level by risking the loss of interpretive control to achieve reconciliation. Cogswell argues that in this sermon Hall saw the only solution to the advance of the Roman religion to be an exchange of the 1622 Directions for a more aggressive evangelical preaching style.16 But the Directions did not prevent the preaching style Hall advocates here. Hall’s metaphors suggest imaginative ways of construing diversity in unity: “In a pomegranate are many grains under one rind: you know the mystery: let vs ioyne these pomegranates to our bells; let us be loud, but consorted.” So while the common enemy is the Tridentine Catholic Church, Hall calls Convocation to embrace the unity of Christianity rather than labeling the reformed Churches with the sectarian names of men such as “Luther, Melancthon, Calvin, Zuinglius, Arminius.” Hall’s list suggests that the only unity 16

Cogswell, Blessed Revolution, p. 169.

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Parliament, Patriots, and the Public Sphere possible is as followers of Christ rather than men, and is carefully constructed to make all of these theologians equal in their inadequacy. Citing Gregory, Hall transforms Donne’s “stars” into the “Pleiades,” suggesting that in the authorized public sphere of the Church of England – Convocation – ministers will function together if they seize the initiative to imagine themselves as Christians. Like Hall, Bargrave expresses confidence in parliament to engage in Christ’s battles by first finding reconciliation at the communion table. In so preaching, Bargrave is addressing a specific custom – receiving the Eucharist in preparation for the opening of parliament – but drawing upon the long-standing enmity against papists as his more general theme. Taking as his text Psalm 26:6,17 Bargrave justifies “religious Acts” as the preface to “great consultations” (p. 2) and condemns papists who have “set a marke” (p. 4) upon previous parliamentary assemblies by suggesting that they did not prosper because members received the Eucharist. These objectors “labour to deceiue vs, with the pretence of Antiquitie, their old shooes of S. Peter, their old garments of their owne merit, their old mouldie Bread of Transubstantiation, with all which, though put on but yesterday, they endevour to deceiue Iosuah and his people” (p. 6). The entire sermon, in fact, is directed against papist dissemblers who work to obstruct God in his ordinances by promulgating division among protestants. These have discovered, Bargrave notes, “that there is no way so ready to convert a Lutheran, as by the passion of a Calvinist: no means so prompt to make a Protestant a Papist, as by opposition of a Puritane” (p. 35). Bargrave’s aim is to dispel “these distracting names of Lutheran, Calvinist, Puritan” and thus deprive them of “the maine axiome and anuile of popish Pollicy” (p. 35). This call to English religious unity is performed as a sustained and bitter attack against papists, which Cogswell argues marks a new liberty in anti-papist rhetoric.18 Bargrave’s sermon attacks a variety of papist dissemblers: church-papists in whom “Machiauell in the head hath gotten the aduantage of the Pope in the belly; halfe Papists, halfe Protestants” (p. 22); professed papists who take the Sacrament as an act of civil obedience only; and English pensioners to foreign States, who, like the traitors in the Trojan horse, “sell their consciences eyther for Courtfauour, or popular applause, pretending the Common good, but ayming at their owne” (pp. 26–7). The sermon’s plea for eucharistic reconciliation as well for unity against the common Roman enemy expresses all of the confidence in the public sphere that events in 1623 had brought to a climax, and embodied in this national assembly committed to relief from censorship, profitable debate, and a national identity strengthened by a patriotic, anti-Spanish leadership coalition. Although Hall and Bargrave had opened the way for public, official antiCatholic rhetoric, they had refrained from overt political commentary. Such was not the case of a sermon by Richard Lee, preached at St. Paul’s.19 Lee was a prebend at Wolverhampton, a “worthy Preacher” appointed by Hall in a diocese “lamentably swallowed up by wilfull Recusants” to “reside there, and painfully Instruct, that great and long neglected people.”20 According to Hall, Lee performed his duties “with great mutuall contentment and happy success” (p. 31), 17 18 19

20

“I will wash my hands in innocency, O Lord; and so will I goe to thine Altar.” Blessed Revolution, pp. 169–70. The sermon was entered into the Stationer’s Register in the autumn of 1624. It is arguable that Lee preached on Hall’s recommendation and with Donne’s approval on this occasion. Hall, The Shaking of the Olive-Tree, pp. 31, 27, 31.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis and earned Hall’s clerical support, and presumably Donne’s, as well as financial aid from the “Gentlemen of London” mentioned as benefactors in his dedication (sig. A2v). Their support of ministers gave Lee the means to fight “Poperie” and “duskie ignoraunce” (sig. A2v) and to establish preaching in Wolverhampton. As a place where “Romes snake brood roosted themselues more warmer and safer” (sig. A2v) than anywhere in the country, it required these sunbeams to dispel night and shadows. The sin against which Lee preaches at St. Paul’s is “the deadly poison of apostacie” (p. 1), taking as his text the last verse of 2 Peter 3, the apostle’s injunction to grow in grace. Growth, however, must be distinguished from mere change, which Lee calls “Mutation,” the mark of “our bedlam Anabaptists, and phantasticall Brounists” (p. 4). Growth is also evidenced by good works, those that benefit the body, but especially those that “hoyst vp the saile of drooping Religion, and with his Prayers, purse, and power doth his endeavour to beate downe Popery, and prophanenesse” (p. 6). Lee contrasts these works of faith with those rote performances by persons who have stagnated in the outward actions of religion, and “are as ignorant, as sinfull, as dull, as fruitlesse, as twenty years agoe; they goe round as a horse in a mill, they goe to the Church, to the sacraments, to family-prayers, runne vp and downe as Ants in a Mole-hill and doe nothing, and yet thinke they haue Religion” (p. 6). Rome is the worst example of one that was once beautiful but is now “dropt into a crooked old age, a foolish dotage” (p. 8). Lee hopes for better things of London than of Rome, and credits money invested in benefices with dispelling the ignorance that breeds popish superstition in the country. However, Lee advises that money invested in preachers must be seconded by the execution of laws by magistrates so that neither “Popery nor carnall security” (p. 11) will eat the heart out of religion. Lee counters the hawk-like attack of the first part of the sermon with the “silver bels” (p. 13) of comfort in the second half. The victory of ‘88, Elizabeth’s longevity, and the Gunpowder plot are recalled, indicating that God’s mercies support an anti-papist providential reading of recent history. The increase in preachers, those stars enlisted to battle Sisera in Donne’s sermon defending the Directions, here becomes further proof that religion is flourishing. Pointed in its anti-papist application and foundation, however, Lee’s sermon moves beyond criticism to practical instruction for sustaining individual and national spiritual growth. Fundamental to this growth is the enlightenment provided by preachers, those “stars” illuminating the dark corners of the kingdom. The evangelical and pastoral impulses of this sermon would have been agreeable to Donne, who presided over it, and its stress on “doing” would have corresponded with Donne’s own emphasis on “inquiring right” as the condition of religious experience. By Easter 1624, the treaties with Spain had been breached, war had been anticipated but not declared, and James was demanding huge parliamentary subsidies. The debates indicate that although parliament was wary of passing such legislation before war was declared, a formal offer of one-third of James’s request was presented to the king who, in turn, promised to take parliament’s advice. As Cogswell has shown, the three-way negotiations between the patriot coalition headed by Charles and Buckingham, the king, and parliament had been delicate, and the outcome uncertain. While Lent sermons for 1623 had produced a chorus of lamentations, the same period of 1624 saw a remarkable increase in direct, 218

Parliament, Patriots, and the Public Sphere outspoken sermons warning against toleration of popery and calling for harsher execution of existing penal laws.21 PREACHING AT COURT Two court sermons survive in manuscript for March 1624, both of which address the perceived religious consequences of the current political culture, particularly its susceptibility to idolatry.22 Thomas Winniffe, who less than two years previously had been examined for an indiscreet, anti-Spanish comparison in a sermon, preached this one on Romans 12:2.23 The sermon contrasts God and the world as irreconcilable opposites, like light and darkness, but warns that this text cannot be used to support either monastic mendicants on the one hand or nonconformists to church discipline on the other. These latter men, in particular, he calls the late “sons of thunder in their admonition to the Court of Parliament,” because if it lay in their power they would wish thunder and lightning to beat down the present government. Although Winniffe acknowledges the substance of their charge that popery is increasing, he characterizes them as fish that love to swim upstream, looking for difficulties rather than going with the current. The better part of the sermon, however, castigates unprincipled worldly men who change with the times. Men are chameleons, he says; they honour great men, whom Winniffe likens to idols, and rather than running from the plague, take up residence in the hospital among the sick. The world damns them that conform to it, and Winniffe’s sermon is a sharp reminder of this lesson. On Palm Sunday George Abbot preached before the King “with that extraordinarie boldnes and plaines, as it much comforted all his honest hearted hearers.”24 This sermon on Matthew 22:3725 confirms D’Ewes’s assessment and indicates why Abbot was not known for moderation, tactical or otherwise, in his sermons. In his exegesis, Abbot sounds an absolute tone: all goodness comes from God; God will have all or nothing; the law of God is neither right-handed nor left-handed but a perfect circle. Speaking of the total love enjoined by his text leads Abbot to his negative target – recusants – who prove that they do not love by their belief in things that have no scriptural warrant. The litany of Romish abuses is extensive, including doctrinal as well as political corruptions. Abbot says plainly that giving way to such “trash” is not proof of the total love God requires. That love also prescribes against plowing with an ox and an ass, mingling Jews and Samaritans, or otherwise polluting the purity of religion with popish corruptions. For the sake of unity and purity, Abbot justifies compelling recusants to worship as reformed English Christians, arguing that accountability to God allows execution of laws against recusants in due time and place and in a “moderat manner.” Abbot scoffs 21

22

23 24 25

That is not to say that sermons inclining to popery were not delivered. D’Ewes apparently attended a 7 March sermon at Whitehall by Laud “whoe was suspected to bee somewhat popish” (D’Ewes, Diary, p. 185). Winniffe preached on 11 March, while Abbot preached on Palm Sunday, 21 March. The manuscript is in the hands of Mr. Linenthal, a private collector in London. McCullough first called attention to these sermons in his “Calendar” (pp. 299–300), electronically appended to Sermons at Court. “And be not conformed to the world.” D’Ewes, Diary, p. 187. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soule and with all thy mind.”

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis at the suggestion that recusants have been oppressed, noting their wealth, property, social connections, and political power. In fact, Abbot concludes that this mildness has wrought insults from papists rather than conformity. The sermon ends with a call for unified resistance to Romish idolatry figured by Abbot as the “Sheebare” at the gate who must be locked out.26 Deliberately and sustainedly provocative, this sermon takes anti-papism to levels not usually recorded, all under the guise of duty, love and moderation. Citing Elizabeth as an example to James, insulting the Spanish with his reference to the Catholic “Sheebare,” and exposing the laxity of the legal system towards Catholics were not strategies designed to earn favour for Abbot at court, where he enjoyed little enough of that in 1624. The sermon speaks to the confidence inspired by parliament and a patriot coalition in early 1624, and the effect that institution had on expanding debate in the public sphere. “MORE INGENIOUS THAN PRUDENT”: THOMAS LUSHINGTON’S OXFORD SERMONS Wood reports that in 1624 nothing but war with Spain sounded with the vulgar,27 citing as proof a sermon preached by Thomas Lushington in Oxford at St. Mary’s on Easter Monday. In his sermon Lushington supposedly uttered words reflecting on the Spanish match, for which he was questioned by the Vicechancellor, Dr. Pierce, ordered to recant and to preach the same sermon the following Sunday omitting the offending passages. However, the real reason for the severe reaction to Lushington’s sermon relates to its style, described by Wood as “more ingenious than prudent.”28 Lushington’s dramatic appropriation of voices, in particular his impersonation of a “deriding Iew” (p. 4), was so believable that it was deemed “light and scandalous” even though he changed to a more serious tone with “admirable dexterity.” While the audience may have appreciated this dramatic approach, however, the University governors were not impressed, calling it a “petulant Histrionical Stile” not befitting his sacred subject (p. 4). Lushington’s sermon and its reception indicate the degree to which the public sphere was contested, particularly in moments of crisis. Lushington is well aware of the role played by public debates in creating as well as reflecting “truths,” and his sermon is an extended meditation on the nature of that arena. He makes this point explicit when he connects the current fascination with news with religious controversy, and, ultimately, with the power of “reports” to create history. Lushington’s entire discussion of the public discursive sphere frames a particular situation: the denial of Christ’s resurrection by the soldiers guarding the tomb. As Lushington observes, news “goes not as things are in themselves, but as men’s fancies are fashioned, as some list to report, and others to believe, the same relation shall go for true or false, according to the key, wherein Men’s minds are tuned, but chiefly as they stand diverse in religion, so they fain, and affect different news; 26 27

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McCullough’s suggestion that Abbot is referring to the Infanta is apt (“Calendar,” p. 300). Wood, II, Book 1, p. 352. The sermon, originally published under the feigned name of Robert Jones, D.D., is found in two forms: Bodleian MS Eng.hist.e.28, fols. 481–520; Bodleian MS Add. B. 12. The copy taken later in the century (1659) is much shorter and less specific than the earlier version, and contains a preface added by Clarendon. The sermon is discussed by Jacobsen. Wood, II, Book 1, p. 353.

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Parliament, Patriots, and the Public Sphere by their news you may know their religion, and by their religion you may know their news” (8v). So while Catholic news is of the Spanish match, and protestant news is of the Palatinate, “each party thinks that the safety of the Church, and restoring success of religion depends upon the event of one another, and therefore they cross, and countertell each others news” (9r). In his text, Lushington confronts the discrepancies between the reports of the “three old Matrons” who say the resurrection is true, and of the soldiers who say it is false, “for it fares with Spiritual news as with Temporal, it is variously & contrarily related, till the false controuls the true; and as for our modern news, comes neither from the Court nor the Camp; nor from the place where things are acted, but is forged in Conventicles by Priests; or in some of Pauls Assembly, or such like place, and the devulge committed to some watchful tongue, so it is with the news of nonResurrection: it came not from mount Calvary; but the Priests are the authors of it, . . . they frame and mould it to the watch; the divulgers, men of double credit, they know the truth, for they are of the watch, and they will not lie, for they are Soldiers, nay they will maintain it, for they are knights, Militants, knights of the Post, they are hired to say” (9r). Lushington’s anatomy of the workings of news in the public sphere ties the competition between witnesses to current styles of controversial rhetoric, particularly the consideration of the pros and cons of any opinion. As he describes it, “no error so absurd, but it finds a Patron; nor truth so sound but meets with an Adversary, nor point controverted, but the opposite Tenent may be reconciled; be they distant as Heaven and Hell, as incomparable as Iews and Christians, yet they shall meet with a moderator, and a cogging distinction shall state the question on either side” (9v). Lushington’s dramatic rendering of the soldiers’ rhetorical style further illuminates how authority is achieved in the public sphere. In putting words into the mouths of “deriding Iew[s],” Lushington enacts another of the features of public discourse, its susceptibility to distortion. In the words of one Jewish soldier “This Iesus of Nathareth was a very Iugler, a neat compiler of Impostures” (9v), his miracles “delusions” and “hocus pocus” (10r), the women who aided the disciples nothing but “She disciples; night house Wifes too” (11r). By all accounts, Lushington’s performance was so convincing that he carried his audience along with his dramatic ruse for some time before exposing it. His audience was delighted, as their loud applause indicated, but officials were not impressed by this performance showing how words and truth could be so easily detached. Lushington’s sermon also glanced at contemporary controversies, which he trivializes by comparison to the fact of the resurrection itself. Whether Jesus’s resurrection could satisfy for reprobates, “we leave it to the arminians” (21r). Whether the soul came from heaven to hell “we leave it to the Calvinests” (21v). The reunion of his soul with his body made “his real presence there, but whether thereby they came Omnipresent to be every where, while he was in the grave we leave to the Lutherans” (21v). Lushington’s point seems to be that substantive issues are the proper focus of debate in the public sphere; he leaves quibbling over details to internal interest groups and lobbyists. In his sphere, the credibility of the reporter is the most important issue. Forced to recant, Lushington sidesteps the issues, accepting that he has been “censured publickly and justly” (26v). Furthermore, he recognizes the power of public speech, observing that a word once spoken cannot be recalled, and noting 221

John Donne and Conformity in Crisis that his listeners have the authority to give “a fair construction, and a favourable acception” to his words. Lushington’s decision to read his recantation sermon also suggests his awareness that the indeterminacy of speech acts from the pulpit is dangerous, subjecting him to misinterpretation. Finally, his acceptance of an appointed text shows his willingness to conform to the demands of authority, even by sanctioning this intervention in the preacher’s autonomy. The entire incident, and Lushington’s self-conscious participation in it according to conditions established by authority, reveals both the power and the limitations of the pulpit in advancing real public debate. SEEKING TRUE RELIGION: DONNE AND ANDREWES AT EASTER In its eccentric way, Lushington’s sermon had endeavoured to engage his audience in seeking true religion. Donne’s sermon for Easter 1624 brings this subject of “seeking” to the foreground by connecting it, as had Lushington, with “interpretation.” Through this discourse Donne wants to construct a Reformed church of England that redeems the historical Reformation and incorporates it into the providential history of resurrection begun by Christ but offered to Christians who stand inquiring right. Donne’s redefinition of the “literal sense” to mean the “principall intention” of the Holy Spirit (an intention that might be metaphorical, in fact [VI, 62]) allows him to interpret his text figuratively to refer to four resurrections: from religious persecution; from sin; from relapse into sin; from death in Christ. Donne’s comments in the first section – the persecution of the primitive church – are explicitly political, and specifically anti-Catholic. This first resurrection begins as a resurrection from persecution but becomes a metaphor for the reformation, a resurrection from the “persecution of ignorance, and of superstition” in which Catholics lived: “And yet God gave you a Resurrection from it, a reformation of it” (VI, 67). This resurrection is broadly applied to all who have “not applied the Honour, and the Allegiance due to their Soveraign, to any forraign State; nor the Honor due to God, that is, infallibility, to another Prelate” (VI, 68). As the first form of resurrection applied primarily to resurrection from persecution and then from papist superstition, the second takes the form of resurrection from sin. Donne distinguishes here, as he had in Satyre III, between those who “stand upon the way, and inquire” and those who have fallen and lie still.29 But whereas Donne had said earlier that sleeping or running wrong were both ways of straying, he distinguishes in this sermon primarily between inquiring (which might be a “turning out of the way”) and sleeping (which is “a sinking, a falling”) (VI, 69). Such falling precludes inquiry, and all forms of inquiry, even those that “retard[s]” a man in the way or that “put[s] a man for that time in a wrong way” are now enfolded in that upright religious posture of standing to inquire right. Donne’s views here take their emotional force from his efforts of inclusion, so it is all the more telling that those who need a resurrection resemble puritans. They become “we,” who fall “into a security of our present state, into a pride of our knowledge, or of our purity, and so fall lower, then they, who never came to our heighth” (VI, 70). So, mere presence at a sermon is not a mark of 29

Donne, Satyre III, ll.78–9: “To stand inquiring right, is not to stray/ To sleepe, or run wrong, is.”

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Parliament, Patriots, and the Public Sphere spiritual life, and dead men walk in churches if they walk out after a sermon as ill as when they walked in (VI, 71). Having identified papists and puritans as extremes on the religious spectrum of resurrection, Donne swings between the extremes now, to focus on the third resurrection, the soul’s resurrection from relapse into sin. The endangered soul returns to her own darkness “not because she loves ignorance, but because she is weary of seeking out the truth, and so swallowes even any Religion to escape the paine of debating, and disputing; and in this lazinesse she sleeps out her lease, her terme of life, in this death, in this grave, in this body” (VI, 76). Such a relapse, fed by laziness, ignores the painful process of religious debate that answers the imperative to “seeke true religion.” In the resurrection, such a soul “knows without thinking, and concludes without arguing” (VI, 76), a state of clarity and communion for which Donne thirsts, but which is not available to Christians in the way. The true resurrection must be understood, then, in relation to Christ who alone “is” the first Resurrection: “others were raised; but he only rose; they by a forraine, and extrinsique, he by his owne power” (VI, 77). Referring all resurrections – from persecution, from sin, from relapse – to Christ makes him the efficient cause, the meritorious cause, and the only pattern of resurrection. This Easter 1624 sermon is one of Donne’s strongest statements that the Church of England is Christian – not merely natural or even moral. And its Christian character is distinguished for all those who continue to stand inquiring right from the papist/puritan and sectarian divisions that threatened its survival. By contrast with Donne’s Easter sermon, a sermon by Andrewes prepared for that day illustrates how each preacher’s rhetorical choices expressed a fundamentally different – although conformist – pastoral intention. Donne’s conciliatory tone, for one thing, contrasts markedly with Andrewes’s admonitory purpose. Moreover, perhaps because the sermon was not delivered, Andrewes concedes nothing to the political or occasional nature of his topics. Although not in themselves incendiary, discussions of the benefits of peace and the ceremonial goodness of liturgical blessing demand some recognition of their controversial potential. At a time when parliament and those who had long opposed the Spanish match were proposing specifically anti-Catholic legislation, when war with Spain was the implied end of the subsidies being voted, and when ceremonial disputes were acquiring doctrinal support, Andrewes’s sermon sends a message contrary to that being sent by the Commons. Like Donne, Andrewes argues that any return from the worse to the better course is a type of the resurrection, but unlike Donne, he emphasizes works as the end of the entire text. Quite simply, faith without works is stark dead. Furthermore, the good works that signify the resurrection, Andrewes suggests, include the whole discipline of the Church, a move designed to criticize nonconforming puritans who approve of “some one piece of god’s service, wholly addicted to that, but cannot skill of the rest” (III, 99). Unlike Donne, who finds the “right” in the process of standing, inquiring, and interpreting, Andrewes defines the right as a fixed attitude: “To be for every one, for all sorts of good works, for every part of God’s worship alike, for no one more than another, that sure is the right. So choose your religion, so practise your worship of God. It is not safe to do otherwise, nor to serve God by Synechdoche” (III, 99). In the last part of the sermon, Andrewes brings works and peace together, contrasting the works of peace with the works of death that issue from war. In itself, 223

John Donne and Conformity in Crisis there is nothing objectionable about Andrewes’s discussion of peace or works, although his adoption of the term “works” without distinguishing it from the Roman abuse of the doctrine of good works would surely have brought charges of “negative popery,” and his concentration on disciplinary good works would have seemed provocative in the current climate. Donne’s middle way is carefully centred, focusing on interpretation and compromise, while Andrewes’s good works of peace are controversial precisely because they are proclaimed without any concession to their controverted status. The substantive distinctions between sermons by Donne and Andrewes cannot be measured apart from these rhetorical choices. THE “PATRIOT” COALITION AND PATRONAGE OF SERMONS Supported by the patriot coalition, several preachers in 1624 focused on rousing the people from security by encouraging ministers and magistrates to fulfill their vocational duties. In a sermon preached 7 April at the Canterbury Visitation, and dedicated to Abbot, Alexander Udny, royal chaplain and rector of Hawkinge, delivers a scathing indictment of preachers and congregations who fail to preach and hear the word, and of magistrates who neglect to establish sound preaching. Abbot’s patronage is evident in the zealous tone, the focus on preaching, and the anti-papist filter applied to this text.30 The sermon is an impassioned exhortation to godly preaching, derived from the Colossians’ admonition of their minister Archippus. Udny uses the example to model the proper course for expressing zeal. The godly and most learned were those who exhorted him to diligent perseverance, rather than traducing him behind his back. The short, gentle, and public admonition was timely as well; Archippus needed to be more diligent because the people were threatened by false teachers among them. Such a faithful ministry is urgently required “when Gods people are like to be carried into captiuitie, either in body or mind” (sig. B3v). It is time now, he says, to “stand on our watch towre, to see Babylon fall, that Romish idol” (sig. C2r). Only four days later, John Lawrence delivered a sermon at Paul’s Cross addressing in his dedication key parliamentary lawmakers whose public responsibilities were currently being exercised on crucial policy matters.31 In a dedicatory epistle addressed to Martin Lumley, Lord Mayor of London, and to Sir Allen Apsley, Sir Richard Morison, and Sir Benjamin Riddiard, Lawrence says that God has chosen to govern by rulers whom he has styled gods, and urges them to draw the sword of justice to ransack the “irrelegious corners of this Cittie” (sigs. A2v–A3r). A second dedication, to Sir Robert Carr, asks for protection from the “enuie of malicious detractors” (sig. A4v), and a third dedication, to friends and well-wishers, extends his circle even further. A sub-text of this last dedication is the contumely that ministers often faced in discharging their duties, and their difficulties in preaching sermons conformable to both conscience and authority. 30

31

Udny’s text is Colossians 4:17: “And say to Archippus, the Ministerie which thou has received of the Lord, see that thou fulfill it.” One of Lawrence’s dedicatees was Sir Benjamin Rudyerd, a client of the Earl of Pembroke, whose Four Propositions (strategic proposals for war that might ensue following the breach of the Spanish treaties) were the backbone of debate in the early Parliamentary sessions.

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Parliament, Patriots, and the Public Sphere Lawrence takes as his text Luke 19:41,32 emphasizing (like Donne, Balcanquhall, and Chaloner the year before) this occasion on which Jesus wept and suggesting, as they had, the public lamentation occasioned by religious developments in England and on the continent. The entire sermon, in fact, exposes the corruptions of a city from which Christ has withdrawn his countenance, Christ’s absence being the only evidence needed of decay in the English church. Using the metaphor of the watchtower, Lawrence admonishes his audience to contemplate Jerusalem, just as Christ does, and to ensure that as the head of the body politic, it be protected. The safety of the church and commonwealth he says lies in their vigilance. Without this watchfulness, there are “Masse-priests as ordinary in the streets as Ministers” (p. 42). The responsibilities of the magistrates are increased and their guilt exacerbated by God’s abundant favours to the nation. Lawrence rehearses the conventional litany of blessings: the defeat of the Armada in 1588, deliverance from the Gunpowder Plot, the peaceable government of Queen Elizabeth, the peaceable accession of James. Lawrence’s spiritual militancy does not extend to actual war, however. In fact, popular ingratitude for peace brings severe rebuke: “Wee heare not the noise of the Gun-shot, the clattering of Armour, the flashing of Swords, the grones of the wounded, nor that vnmercilesse proclamation, Kill, kill, and spare none, rip vp the Women, imbowell the aged, and dash the Infants vpon the stones” (p. 63). In conclusion, Lawrence contrasts Caesar’s “I came, I saw, I conquered” with Jesus’s “I came, I beheld, I wept,” ending with a plea to the magistrates to be about their jobs: “you are the armes of our Citie, therefore ought to be strong; you are the pillars of a Common-wealth, therefore must haue a good foundation; you are our Watchmen, therefore ought not to be drowsie; you are our Keepers, looke therefore you be not found gadders too far from home, when we haue most need of your helps” (p. 100). DONNE’S VOCATION: ST. DUNSTANS-IN-THE-WEST AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE On the same day as Lawrence was preaching at Paul’s Cross, John Donne delivered his first sermon as vicar of St. Dunstan’s-in-the-West. This sermon, another preached there on 25 April, and a third preached on Trinity Sunday comprise Donne’s introduction to this new congregation, and set forth the reciprocal duties of preacher and congregation. These sermons are important not only for what they tell us about Donne’s particular sense of vocation, but for their contribution to a public discourse of vocation emerging early in 1624. Political intensity and authorized opportunities to debate controversial issues occasioned by parliamentary proceedings produced several sermons on the need to take up the challenges of judicial and pastoral callings and renewed efforts to refashion these in the interests of “the blessed revolution.” Taken together, these three sermons constitute Donne’s “profession of faith” to his new congregation. They show his acute awareness of divisive elements within the English church, but also a resolution modelled on God’s contractual relationships 32

“And as he drew neere, he beheld the Citie, and wept over it.”

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis with men and strengthened by connections of responsibility, communication, and good faith. Donne’s vocation expressed here is imbued with a pastoral ethos that remains as sensitive to the needs of his audience as to the demands of his text. All three sermons reveal the hallmarks of Donne’s hermeneutics: his focus on the Trinity as foundational to Christianity; his positioning of the Christian “middle way”; his focus on the instrumentality of the word preached within the Christian church; his understanding of the “works” of faith within a doctrine of callings; his habit of drawing positive applications from a broad spectrum of interpretations; his positioning of authority in the conscience. In the first of the two April sermons, Donne takes as his rather unusual text Deuteronomy 25:5.33 As Donne unravels the ties of brotherhood that link churches together, he articulates an understanding of the Church in England that both reassures and challenges this congregation with its “profession of faith” (VI, 89). Beginning with his commonly iterated principle that God hates singularity, Donne interprets his particular relationship to this congregation by contrast with false understandings of it. The marriage metaphor used to describe Christ’s relation to his church and applied to his own wedding to the church of St. Dunstan’s establishes both the honour and the burdens of this office, interpreted as a condition framed within particular “laws.” Foremost among these is the requirement that the dead brother be succeeded by a professor of the same faith and that he dwell in the same household of the faithful. Donne interprets this to mean that he must “not separate himselfe, or encourage others to doe so, for matters of Ceremonies and discipline; Idolaters must not, Separatists must not be admitted to these marriages, to these widow Churches” [VI, 83]). Donne’s focus on one particular aspect of the issue – who are “brethren” – suggests the acrimony among contending pastors that he is trying to avoid. Before a new pastor can marry a church, Donne says, the husband must be dead: if the pastor is suspended or censured, this is a separation or divorce, but not a death. So for those to take advantage of the weakness or disgrace or poverty of the incumbent is spiritual adultery. And, as his scriptural text enjoins, the successor must be “brethren of the same faith, and the same profession of faith” (VI, 89), a rhetorical construction that emphasizes two characteristics of brethren, subtly different from one another, and a double requirement that they be brethren in both “faith” and “profession,” doctrine and discipline. Moreover, Donne includes a political dimension by arguing that brethren must be sons of the same father. So any that incline to a foreign father, an “imaginary universall father” (VI, 90), or corrupt themselves to a prostitute church (the Church of Rome) are not brothers: “hee is not our brother by the whole blood, who hath not a brotherhood rooted in the same religion, and in the allegiance to the same Soveraign” (VI, 90). Furthermore, this brother must be one of the same discipline, “That as he beleeves, and professes the same articles of faith, so by his own obedience, and by his instructing of others, hee establish the same government; A Schismatique is no more a brother to this purpose, then a Heretique” (VI, 90). In fact, Donne claims that more mischief may result from disobeying uniformity of discipline in the Church than from a mistaken opinion of some doctrine. “If they advance not the truth of the Church, and the peace of the 33

“If brethren dwell together, and one of them die, and have no childe, the wife of the dead shall not mary without, unto a stranger; her husbands brother shall goe in unto her, and take her to him to wife, and performe the duty of an husbands brother unto her.”

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Parliament, Patriots, and the Public Sphere Church, and the head of the Church, fomentors of Error, and of Schisme, and Sedition, are not husbands for these widows, Pastors for these Churches” (VI, 91). Finally, Donne considers the duties of the preacher’s office, using the occasion to justify the lawful plurality of benefices, but to complicate that law with the higher moral responsibility to preach to this congregation. The people can claim as their due what “the laws of that State, and the Canons of that Church in which God hath placed them” (VI, 93) have enjoined. But the pastor tries himself by another court, namely his duty to preach frequently. As this first sermon indicates, Donne will perform the spiritual duties that are his congregation’s due, will respect “the temporall rights of all persons” (VI, 94) in the parish. But this brotherhood will be rooted in love, and manifested in peace and unity. Donne’s active interest in the affairs of the parish is well documented, as is the gratitude and affection of his large congregation.34 Donne’s second sermon to the St. Dunstan’s congregation is on Psalm 34:11.35 Building on the legal foundation of his sermon two weeks previous Donne establishes ground rules for a good working relationship between himself and his new parish and establishes clear lines of communication and responsibility from the very beginning. Even the division of his text and the language of common law follow this sense of mutual duty: “To you one, to us appertains the other part. You must come, and you must hearken; we must teach, and teach to edification; There is the Meum & Teum, your part, and our part” (VI, 95). Part 1, then, addresses itself to the audience, urging them, as they are children of God, to find perfect freedom in God’s service. This service, however, is not to be confused with the slavery that characterizes the Roman Church. “In the new Rome, that endevours to adopt all, in an imaginary filiation, you that have the perfect freedome of Gods service, be not adopted into slavery, and bondage of mens traditions.” And in a deliberate twist on Roman Catholic claims to antiquity he continues, “you that are in possession of the ancient Religion, of Christ, and his Apostles, be not adopted into a yonger Religion” (VI, 98), one that modified doctrine so substantially at the Council of Trent as to become a new religion.36 Moreover, Donne instructs his hearers to come to the house “in which he hath given thee thy Baptisme, if that do still afford thee, as much as is necessary for salvation” (VI, 100). In this church’s “ordinances” and “exercises of Religion” the true “communion of saints” is constituted. Not coming is recusancy, although “thou maist be here, even when thou art not here.” What matters is the disposition, and recusancy is as much a state of mind as a material condition. “If no Hereticall recusancy, (thou dost like the Doctrine) no schismaticall recusancy, (thou dost like the Discipline) no lasie recusancy, (thou forbearest not because thou canst not sit at thine ease),” your absence is not recusancy (VI, 101). Donne elaborates on this point in a section addressed to members who are present in body but do not hearken, whether they be church-papists, sermongadders, or souls who come only for earthly respects. To come to the church in 34 35 36

Bald, pp. 458–63. “Come ye children, hearken unto me, I will teach you the fear of the Lord.” By Donne’s logic, the reformed Church of England antedates the post-Tridentine Roman Church and is the elder brother: “That which we affirm, our adversaries deny not; that which we professe, they confesse was always necessary to salvation. They will not say, that all that they say now, was always necessary; That a man could not be saved without beleeving the Articles of the Councell of Trent, a week before that Councell shut up” (VI, 98).

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis body only is to come to your funeral. “A man may thread Sermons by half dozens a day, and place his merit in the number, a man may have been all day in the perfume and incense of preaching, and yet have receivd none of the savor of life unto life. Some things an Ape can do as wel as a Man; some things an Hypocrite as wel as a Saint” (VI, 101–2). In this passage, Donne interweaves the language of the entire religious spectrum, reclaiming the terms canonization, perfume, incense (with their connotations of Romish idolatry) by tying them to the word preached. The word alone is not intended by this text, Donne claims, and challenges the man who “rest[s] so wholly in the Word of God, the Scriptures, as that he seeks no interpretation, no exposition, no preaching” (VI, 102). Part 2 focuses on the preacher, offering a blueprint for orderly preaching within the terms of the Directions. Accordingly, Donne speaks against ministers who silence themselves, whether “out of ease, or state” or “by their distemper, and Schismaticall and seditious manner” (VI, 104). This section seems aimed expressly against certain godly ministers whose definition of preaching excludes catechizing, set prayers, and preparation. As in his sermon defending the Directions, Donne pushes the boundaries of preaching to include these things. Preachers are required by this text to teach the fear of the Lord, but it is a fear that must be met with valour, which is his real subject. Sometimes valour is expressed in speaking directly, and sometimes in a discreet silence. But clearly the fear taught by “the times we live in, or [of] the company we live in” or “of the place we live in” (VI, 106) needs to be met with valour “guided by the Word of God, how far you are to serve the turnes of those persons upon whom ye depend, and when to leave their commandements unperformed” (VI, 107). Donne speaks out here against those who “are afraid it will be called a singularity, and a Schismaticall and seditious disposition, and taken for a Reproach, and a Rebuke laid upon their betters, if they be not content to be as ill, as those their betters are” (VI, 107). Even to suggest this act of conscientious valour distinguishes Donne’s sermons from so many conformist sermons of the day, while distancing him from the dark threatenings and apocalyptic warnings trumpeted in puritan sermons denouncing sin. The mixture of zeal and discretion is Donne’s signature appeal. But in the end, Donne’s end is “to teach you valour” (VI, 109). As he argues, “God would not chuse Cowards; hee had rather we were valiant in the fighting of his battles; for battles, and exercise of valour, we are sure to have” (VI, 108). Finally, Donne’s sermon preached at St. Dunstan’s upon Trinity Sunday, 1624, continues instruction in the duties of faith and worship. Taking as his text Matthew 3:17,37 Donne moves from discussions of authority and responsibility to questions of religious identity. As earlier sermons had established the “lawfulness” of his calling to serve St. Dunstan’s, and the duties of preachers and hearers, this sermon touches on disputed ceremonial issues occasioned by the custom of celebrating certain times by reading certain scriptures. Donne attributes controversy over ceremonies to a faulty interpretation of “the age of the Christian Church,” either “too high or too low,” a practice that “will never finde a good measure to direct our religious worship of God by, for the outward Liturgies, and Ceremonies of the Church” (VI, 132). The lawfulness of this custom of appointing scriptures for certain times is confirmed, then, by observing a pattern of use that covers all

37

“And lo, a voyce came from heaven, saying, this is my beloved sonne, in whom I am well pleased.”

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Parliament, Patriots, and the Public Sphere ages from the “pure times of the Church” to the “corrupter” Roman times, and finally to the Reformed Church (“Geneva”) (VI, 132). The sermon calls Donne’s congregation to confirm their Christian baptism. As Donne explains, while the sacrament itself is sufficient for salvation, “there is required diligence, and a laborious holinesse, in the right Church, and in the true Religion” (VI, 140). Interpretation of this call to this “farther degree of goodnesse” (VI, 140) is Donne’s final focus. Deftly, Donne positions the “voice” that calls as an epistemological “middle way” between the “low” way of Nature or the “high” way of miracles. But while it is a voice from heaven (and so distinguishable from “voices from Hell, in the blasphemies of Heretiques” or “Voyces from amongst us, Inventions of men” [VI, 144]), it is a “speaking” voice, “The same voice from heaven, the same word of God, but speaking in the ministery of man” (VI, 145). Illuminated by the speaking voice of preaching, Donne’s hearers are exhorted, finally, to “Rise, and ascend to that growth, which your Baptisme prepared you too” (VI, 149), to pursue the “contract” of their Baptisms. Donne’s language in this sermon dignifies his congregation while reminding them that their salvation is achieved, not in one singular moment, but in the laborious growth that alone “confirms” their sonship. It articulates clearly Donne’s zeal and discretion, and his vision for a church in which the “profession of faith” is the means to the full experience of salvation. MAINTAINING MOMENTUM In May 1624, the last month of this parliamentary session, events moved inevitably towards alliances with the Dutch, war with Spain, and a French match. During this month, Buckingham suffered a nervous breakdown, and the Spanish ambassadors tried – unsuccessfully – to weaken his influence during his absence. France, already negotiating for a match with Charles, awaited an open breach with Spain. And while the treaty with the Dutch was costly for the English it was required to show plans for war were proceeding. At home, the hispanophile Lord Treasurer Cranfield was impeached. At the end of the session, the subsidy bill was finally passed, although the members were still not sure what they were financing, and a 6 May proclamation against Jesuits relieved some anti-papist tension. All of these circumstances contributed to the volatility of the pulpit, and to a sustained campaign to continue the momentum initiated by the patriot coalition in parliament. While Donne’s sermons during this unstable period are careful to steer an independent course of conformity to the broader Reformed principles of the church, a sermon preached in Oxfordshire by Nicholas Cantrel warns against lukewarmness in religion and calls for watchfulness against hypocrites and church papists who infiltrate and corrupt the church. Both preachers might be seen as supporting the program of vigilance and reform outlined in Abbot’s Palm Sunday sermon, and demonstrate the contrary marks of a patronage committed both to rapprochement with malleable papists and to the utter destruction of idolatry. Cantrel’s strategy is to draw both a parallel and a contrast between the reign of Joshua and present times in order to exhort his hearers towards constancy in their religion, despite the corruptions of present times. Cantrel commends Joshua for ordering both his private house and his public state well, saying: “No loosenesse was suffered to raigne here, no impietie to infect here, no busy Sycophants were 229

John Donne and Conformity in Crisis sufferd to nest themselves here, being the onelie instruments which the unhappie world, in these last and dangerous times, cherisheth to its confusion” (p. 4). Joshua’s resolution stood firmest near the time of his death when he assembled the Israelite magistrates about him to commemorate God’s former deliverances, asking only that they be thankful and serve the Lord instead of false gods. Lest his hearers miss the pointed topical application, Cantrel contrasts Joshua’s actions with present times where there is no authority that bestirs itself in God’s cause. Biblical examples of zeal to God’s cause – even in the face of wicked decrees against it – condemn this wretched coldness, and Cantrel observes that rumours of a change in religion disclose many wavering hearts who run with the multitude, not valuing Christ, his promises, or religion. “Thus the foundations of the earth are out of course, and none like Ioshuah to beare up the pillars of it” (p. 9). Joshua’s particular virtue was that he allowed only such as would join in the true worship of God, a detail used by Cantrel to lash out against treacherous recusant households headed by church-papists. A true “Catholic Church,” by Cantrel’s definition, is one in which nothing abides “which is not pure and holy” (p. 17). It is a puritan church, in fact, an exclusive society that purges the household of false Christians, and where the “sonne of the bond-woman” does not tarry with the “sonne of the promise” (p. 18).38 Cantrel laments, however, that the ungodly “walke from one house to another and, Chameleon-like, change their colour everie change of ayre” (p. 34).39 Preachers cannot object to these corruptions in a city “where they scarce dare thinke what they list, much less speake what they thinke” (p. 36). The sermon ends by exhorting that God’s deliverances and his gift of peace “stirre up in us a readinesse, a resolution, a zeale to this dutie: To feare God; to love God with all our heart” (p. 38). This sermon comments clearly on the times, part of an intense public campaign designed to spark the flickering zeal of reformers in the Church of England, and to descry the “dow baked zeale” of moderate voices. In these times, such discretion smelled suspiciously of timeserving and was clearly not the dominant voice in the public sphere. IMPLEMENTING THE DIRECTIONS: PARLIAMENT AND THE CASE OF SAMUEL HARSNETT Despite Cogswell’s suggestion that parliamentary rejection of the treaties with Spain in favour of new treaties with France opened up a mine of pulpit criticism untouched since the Directions, it is also clear that certain ecclesiastical governors, especially Samuel Harsnett, were using the Directions to justify increased control of the pulpit in their respective dioceses.40 In 1624, Harsnett was also forced to 38

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Abbot had concluded his Palm Sunday sermon with reference to the fundamental antagonism between the son of the bondwoman and the son of the promise. His reference admitted a topical application in that it follows the injunction against the “Sheebare” at the door. The application may also be pertinent here. In words that suggest the Catholic infiltration of even the royal household, Cantrel asks: “If the sonne of the bond-woman [Buckingham?] bee suffered to tarrie in the house with the sonne of the promise [Charles], he will never leave mocking and persecuting, untill hee bee cast out” (p. 18). Winniffe had used the same image of the hypocrite as chameleon in his 11 March sermon. Seaver examines the fates of lecturers in the 1620s, concluding that many more were “winked at” than ever “went down the wind” (p. 235). He bases his conclusions on diocesan administration records rather than on policy statements (p. 231).

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Parliament, Patriots, and the Public Sphere justify his ecclesiastical administration before parliament, in the process exposing the tensions the crisis of censorship continued to provoke. Harsnett’s trial in the public sphere, though not a judicial proceeding, also showed the degree to which the patriot coalition exerted influence in matters of religion and ecclesiastical jurisdiction. As Fincham has demonstrated, Harsnett set as a priority the control of the pulpit in his diocese of Norwich. This is evident from his very first visitation articles, which include a separate section of six questions on the conduct of lecturers unprecedented in Jacobean visitation articles.41 Fincham adds that Harsnett’s moves against lecturing were supported by James I, whose fears he exploited to “launch a direct attack on urban lectureships.”42 According to Fincham, Harsnett was the only Arminian bishop to seize the opportunity of the Directions to tighten his hold on preaching.43 He prohibited all Sunday morning sermons in Norwich, and ordered clergy to preach on the catechism in their Sunday afternoon sermons. Sometime between 1619 and 1629, Harsnett also drew up strict regulations for the lecture at Bury St. Edmunds. These orders touching public lectures were likely issued after a letter dated 26 July 1622 from Whitehall addressing recent dissension between “lecturers wthout cure of Soule & preachers yt have cure.” James charges Harsnett not to admit any public preacher to any town “Chosen into yt place by voice or assignation of ye people,” but to establish lectures by nominating in the place of the one lecturer five or six conformable preachers, and to nominate a “grave conformable peaceable minister” to preach the Sunday sermon.44 Harsnett’s orders to lecturers indicate some things that ecclesiastical authorities were attempting to control in the pulpits, and which James’s Directions sought to handle officially. However, they go further than the Directions in their instructions requiring ceremonial conformity. The lecturer was responsible for reading the uniform order of common or evening prayer (depending on when the sermon was preached) “whollye in his own p[er]son” without addition and omission. In fact, it is clear that Harsnett’s concerns were only secondarily with doctrine. Only after four items outlining the forms of public prayer to be observed before preaching does the bishop note that they must preach what is “agreeable to the Doctrine of the old & newe Testament, and wch the Catholicke Fathers & auntient Bishopps have gathered for trueth out of that doctrine.” That said, lecturers are warned against contentious preaching that would move the people “to the desire of noveltye” in church government or discipline. This includes a provision that lecturers not denounce those who preach false doctrine but report offenders to the bishop. To ensure that contentious lectures not be allowed accidentally there was even a provision against substitutions of preachers for those “by us named & allowed.” The provisions continue in this manner, ending by requiring that at the reading of 41 42

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Visitation Articles, I, 216. Fincham, Prelate as Pastor, p. 244. He cites, in particular, the case of Samuel Ward of Ipswich, whose lectureship was removed, even after his suspension from preaching was lifted. James instructed Harsnett to nominate six beneficed clergy to fill Ward’s lectureship, to be financed by the bailiffs and burgesses of Ipswich, thus preventing Ward from being reinstated. Fincham (Prelate as Pastor) observes that Bishops Davenant, Dove, Matthew, and Williams asked specifically about the Directions, and in his 1623 visitation, Bishop Lake of Bath and Wells required ministers to display copies of the directions and warned them to be guided by the Book of Homilies. In that diocese, a large number of churchwardens were presented for not possessing a copy of the Directions. Churchwardens were also admonished not to permit unlicensed preachers (p. 137). Bodleian MS Tanner 265, fo. 28r.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis public prayer and at the sermon, the preacher wear a “grave and modest vesture” and not any “undecent apparrell, to the disgrace of his holy & sacred Function.”45 When Harsnett was criticized in parliament for his measures against preachers, James publicly defended his suspension of popular lectures, though he warned him not to prosecute conforming ministers.46 Six charges were brought against Harsnett through the Commons on 19 May 1624.47 Foremost is the accusation that he inhibited Sunday preaching in the forenoon. In particular, he is charged with ordering preachers of the thirty-four churches in Norwich (serving thirty to forty thousand people) not to preach at this time except in the cathedral church (which could only accommodate two or three thousand). The inhibition was all the more galling to the petitioners because it came at a time when the king had commanded more preaching and when the open toleration of recusants made preaching increasingly vital. Though the bishop allowed catechizing, this was no substitute for preaching, especially since Harsnett commanded preachers to ask bare questions and nothing else. This was followed by charges of setting up images, punishing those who did not pray towards the east, punishing a conformable minister for catechizing his family and singing psalms, extorting money through excessive fees, and not registering benefices for which he had been paid. Harsnett responded to each of the charges in the House of Lords. He affirmed (in opposition to the first charge) that he had in no way discouraged preaching, and cited his own preaching in Chichester and Norwich. He went so far as to say that he was considered “half a Puritan” (VI, 315) for his attitudes towards preaching and non-residency. Harsnett’s explanation of his orders regarding preaching in the cathedral church suggests that economic as well as religious forces were at work. He alleged that he had reduced the number of expositions before the sermon so that people would attend their own sermons in the afternoon, and preachers would retain their stipends. He also answered charges imputing a tendency to popery in him, denying the accusations and explaining why he could not consent to popish doctrines. Among these were his own record of preaching, his erection of twelve new lectureships, and his revival of four others.48 On the second charge, Harsnett said that the erection of images and the pulling down of a marble tomb had been done without his knowledge, and that he had blessed the parishioners for their cost in repairing God’s house rather than for any images they had set up. Denying the third charge, praying to the east, entirely, Harsnett then answered the fourth charge, that he had punished a minister for catechizing his family. Harsnett justified his action, in part, by placing it within a judicial process begun by the local Justices of the Peace who had accused the minister, Peck, of keeping an assembly late at night. Harsnett argues that Peck’s nonconformist record justified action initiated against him as a repeat offender.49

45 46

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Bodleian MS Tanner 137, fo. 1r–v. The State Papers report the ongoing developments in this case (PRO SP 14/164/47, 86; 14/165/2, 21; 14/167/10, 17, 50). The transcription of this debate in the Lords is recorded in detail in The Parliamentary or Constitutional History of England, VI, 312–19. PRO SP 14/165/2. Harsnett countered that Peck had been using the excuse of catechizing to draw people to his late night conventicle (VI, 317). Furthermore, Harsnett noted Peck’s history of nonconformity, especially his convictions for such in 1615 and 1617, and the fact that in 1622 he had been taken with twenty-two neighbours at a conventicle.

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Parliament, Patriots, and the Public Sphere On the extortion charges, Harsnett denied any changes in the fee structure, and said he had only followed his predecessor. In addition, Harsnett denied that he had imposed fees other than those for Institution to benefices, and that, contrary to the sixth charge, he had registered all of them. At the direct interrogation of the prince, Harsnett explained that he had not taken away catechizing but that he had ordered preachers to refrain from dilating long on difficult texts. He explained that he did not forbid explanations, as long as they were done “catechetically” (VI, 318), presumably in “yes or no” terms, with as little interpretive latitude as possible.50 The examination of Harsnett was a direct attack in the public sphere on a person who was a symbol of popery and one of the main exponents of censorship. Sermons for these early months of 1624 also express renewed anti-papist energy, renewed public concern for the duties of magistrates and ministers, and increasing anxiety about the religious constancy of those in authority. The unsatisfying negotiations for a clear-cut breach of the Spanish treaties and recognition of the need to prepare for war touched the pulpit discourse of even the most moderate preachers with a heightened sense of change, anticipation, and responsibility. Many sermons bear the mark of Abbot’s patronage and speak with new confidence and passion. The vocational call to arms provides the backdrop to Donne’s own articulation of his pastoral responsibilities and his even-handed targeting of opponents at the margins of the religious spectrum. Most significantly, these months show Donne’s continued professional interest in the role of ministers within the Church of England, a role that he defined most clearly as “to stand inquiring right.”

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Harsnett’s stress on catechizing is clear from his orders to clergy to preach on the catechism in their Sunday afternoon sermons (Fincham, Prelate as Pastor, p. 246). In 1623, for example, the parish of Mellis in Suffolk paid two shillings “For certifinge to Norwitch that our minister [was] cattikiseinge” (Creed, Proceedings, I, p. 25).

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Chapter 9 “CHURCH-QUAKES”: POST-PARLIAMENTARY FAULTLINES

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Y THE BEGINNING of the summer of 1624, Buckingham had withstood an assault by the Spanish ambassadors during his illness, people were rejoicing in the anti-Spanish turn of English foreign policy, and war with Spain seemed imminent. Parliament had been prorogued until 22 November. The possibility of a marital and military alliance with France to restore the Palatinate and the expectation that more co-operation between king and people would ensue was expressed in sermons and pamphlets by openly warlike and anti-popish rhetoric. Donne’s friend James Hay, Earl of Carlisle, had been sent to France to promote the French match, and Buckingham, attended by George Abbot, was about to return to court after an extended illness. John Knight, whose infamous sermon advocating resistance to tyrannical kings had precipitated the Directions, was named chaplain by the Earl of Southampton to his regiment (although he died in prison). Jesuits and recusants were once more officially out of favour, due to the proclamation against Jesuits (6 May) and the Petition on Religion (23 April), which had passed earlier in the parliamentary session.1 The situation was ripe for renewed anti-popery, as well as for increased antipuritanism. Preachers and magistrates were charged to exercise the anti-papist sanctions already confirmed by parliament. Others used the opportunity to challenge separatist threats to order in the church, to condemn controversy, and to provoke anti-puritan sentiments. As the mood shifted from qualified optimism to frustration at setbacks in the patriots’ program, preachers hoping to consolidate gains and maintain the momentum for reform stepped up their confessional campaigns. The dominant discourse continued to advocate separation from Romish Babylon, but some preachers, notably Donne, Hall, and Ussher, imagined a communion within the English church that enlarged the boundaries of that institution. One preacher, Lancelot Andrewes, ended the year with a bitterly sarcastic Christmas sermon calling for a return to the “law” of the gospel rather than the pleasing fictions of preaching, while John Donne aimed at a much more inclusive and tolerant interpretation of God’s merciful signs. While not engaging in controversy, Andrewes’s whole approach was controversial, whereas Donne continued

1

Despite these official policies, hammered out through difficult parliamentary negotiations, Castle wrote to Trumbull on 18 June that the king had ordered the bishops to use “an easie hand” towards priests and Jesuits, and that judges had been charged to use mildness towards recusants (BL Add. MS 72276, fo. 101v. [Castle Correspondence]).

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Post-Parliamentary Faultlines his programme of defusing controversy, redefining terms, and seeking consensus, without sacrificing distinctions he saw as crucial. The contrast between these two sermons is the contrast between two distinct styles of exegesis, informed by radically different views of the function of preaching in the public sphere. HOME-ENEMIES Following the first session of the 1624 parliament, several preachers took up religious and political questions that had been debated there. Passionate anti-popery continued to dominate, but it focused on internal rather than external opponents, on the home-enemies that threatened the identity of the English church. James’s public assent to the Petition on Religion meant that sermons could invoke him as a stable point of reference, an authority and model committed to suppressing idolaters. Thomas Taylor, a puritan divine styled by his admirers a “brazen wall against popery,” preached and published two sermons dedicated to the Commons that treat many of these themes. Calling upon members to emulate the co-operative example of their predecessors, Taylor emphasizes that their first responsibility is to religion. All godly parliaments, of which there are many scriptural examples, he reminds them, first settled the causes of “God and Religion” and then the causes of “King and Civill Justice” (sig. A2v). And the situation he describes is dire: armies of Jesuits have invaded the country, home-adversaries – or recusants – have risen up everywhere, and swarms of atheists have proliferated. Finally, he urges that parliamentarians use their skill in law-making to fight “neutrality” and “thoughts of reconciling two such contrary religions” (sig. A3v). Taylor takes as his text for the first sermon an apocalyptic verse from Revelations 18:42 requiring speedy obedience. The parallels between Babylon and papal Rome are so exact, he says, that “one egge is not liker another than Rome and Babylon” (p. 7), and all people are enjoined to depart from this cunning whore by renouncing her unscriptural doctrine and embracing “the Harmonie of Confessions of the Reformed Church” (p. 11). But the separation extends even to ties of society and intimacy. Taylor urges that even if it means rejecting wife and children, this departure is required: “He is but halfe departed whose other halfe is a Recusant, neither can a man of reason thinke him departed, that sends his pawnes, his sonnes and daughters, for education in Popish countreys” (p. 14). As Taylor explains it, enemies of the English church accuse it of separation from the “true” church. Romanists, themselves apostates from Christ, charge protestants with being heretics and separatists for departing from the Catholic Church, although his text teaches that they are not departed from the Church of Christ but from Babylon. Separatists say that protestants are in the midst of Babylon, and that their assemblies are antichristian. Neither can prove that Christ has given the Church of England a bill of divorce: “So, whatsoeuer they can say, though falsly, is wanting in our church; or whatsoever they say is redundant or superfluous, she being founded on Christ her head, and truly dispensing the word and sacraments, they cannot overthrow her being a true church of Christ” (p. 19). 2

“Come out of her, my people, that yee be not partaker of her sinnes, and that ye receive not her plagues.”

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis The scriptural requirement of absolute separation is Taylor’s most developed theme. Those who partake of Babylon’s sins naturally include Romanists, but Taylor targets especially protestants who do not separate cleanly from their sins. Romanists express their sins openly, refusing the oath of supremacy, living as recusants, frequenting masses, worshipping images, praying to saints, and plotting, threatening, slandering. More secretly, indifferent and wary protestants partake of Rome’s sins by idol worship; by counselling and persuading others to the popish religion; by defence of popish persons, doctrines and practices; by not professing against popish idolatry; by flattering and praising papists; by consenting to their discourses; by countenancing their persons; and by spreading popish books and sporting beads, crosses, and popish baubles. This catalogue of protestant accommodations to popery underlines the degree to which popery was not merely an alien ideology, but a pervasive network of social practices, many of which are conducted in the public sphere on both national and local levels.3 To the idea that people may live in Babylon with good consciences and may go to Mass and yet be good Christians, Taylor opposes this text, and says “Did they consider what a cleaving pitch, a spreading leaven, an infecting leprosie, a fretting gangren this idolatrous filthinesse is; they would listen to those frequent holy counsels” (p. 28). While Taylor disingenuously resists judging papists, his sermon illustrates that the consequences of not coming out of Babylon are grave. “I say not that no Popish person can be saved,” he adds, but “whosoever will bee saved must depart from fundamentall errors of Popery, for which Christ hath given that Synagogue a bill of divorce” (pp. 33–4). Compromises are impossible: “one of two thou must chuse, either thou must goe out of Babylon, or goe into her destruction” (p. 35). Accompanying the sermon on Revelations is a second one on Exodus 17:14.4 Like the previous sermon, this one uncompromisingly applies its scriptural story, the rising up of the Amelekites against Israel, to contemporary conditions in England. Once more, Taylor targets not only those who war against the church, but also those who do not stand up for it: the papists and “neutralists” of the previous sermon. In this extended application, Taylor draws parallels between the cruelty of the Amalekites and that of the Romanists. This extended contemporary application leads to Taylor’s identification of James as a valorous and victorious Joshua to lead his country. The sermon ends with an exhortation to pray more fervently for leadership and success against these “fierce and implacable enemies” (p. 26). There could not be a clearer, more direct exposition of the hopes that conforming puritans, and presumably all those who represented the people in the Commons, cherished. And Taylor uses the parliamentary occasion to rouse Englishmen from their complacency in the face of a serious threat to both salvation and national security. William Hayes’s assize sermon preached at St. Mary’s in Oxford, 7 July 1624, indicates the degree to which public anxiety about toleration continued after parliament had been prorogued, despite official commitments to anti-papist legislation. Hayes chooses as his text Esther 1:15,5 intending by his choice of subject to raise the issues of resistance, law, and obedience. As Hayes reminds his audience of 3 4

5

On this point, see Milton, “A Qualified Intolerance.” “And the Lord said to Moses, Write this for a remembrance in the booke, and rehearse it to Joshua, for I will utterly put out the remembrance of Amaleck from under Heaven.” “What shall we doe unto the Queene Vashti according to the Law &c.”

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Post-Parliamentary Faultlines judges, King Ahasuerus proceeded “not after his priuate humour, but according to law” (p. 2), and he appeals to them to apply the lessons of this text to circumstances that now include the execution of laws for suppressing idolatry against recusants and Jesuits. King James becomes Hayes’s principal subject, praised by Hayes for recognizing the need for consultation and for his “vsuall Parliament-phrase, I craue your advise” (p. 15). His public dialogue with parliamentary counsellors has created a blessed time “when a mans tongue may bee as free as his opinion; and when he may with Tacitus, not only think what he will, but also speak what he thinks” (p. 15). With more hope than conviction, Hayes claims that just as Ahasuerus submitted to the law, so does James, an action that distinguishes kings from tyrants. Accordingly, Hayes acknowledges that the laws have not been executed for good reasons of state, but encourages kings now to unsheathe the sword against “bloody Iesuits, those sly messengers of Antichrist” (p. 24). Referring specifically to James’s 23 April speech to Parliament, Hayes says that the law is now open; magistrates must act “to the vtmost that the law inioynes” (p. 27). This is an important sermon for understanding some of the immediate consequences of the recently prorogued parliament, and the commitments it had made to the cause of the reformed religion. It appeals directly to King James to follow the example of Ahasuerus; it warns magistrates to execute laws against even the most eminent persons, by analogy with execution of the law against Vashti; and it unfolds the way in which the law should be interpreted, so that it is neither too lenient nor too cruel. Above all, however, it exhorts those in authority to ensure that existing laws be executed. THE SETTLING OF RELIGION: WAR, PEACE, AND THE TRUE PEACEMAKER The “settling” of religion promised by the end of the first parliamentary session dominates conformist sermons, especially those preached before the king, as part of a “patriot” campaign to move him to act on his parliamentary promises. A sermon by Prideaux preached before the king at Woodstock on 24 August 1624 positions itself clearly by its overt analogy between the historical situation of its text and the political and religious situation in England, and its focus on obstacles to religious stability. The sermon was preached only ten days after the sudden conclusion of Middleton’s A Game At Chesse, a literary production with a transparent hispanophobic political subtext that epitomized the concerns as well as the high spirits of the English in the summer of 1624.6 The topic Prideaux addresses in his “troubled Meditations” (¶2) is the settling of religion, drawn by analogy between two kings: David and James. King David has undertaken to settle religion in Jerusalem by moving the ark to its tabernacle. “A Parliament therefore is proclaimed, and consultation had with the thousands 6

Perez-Uzzah. 2 Samuel 6–7. “And when they came to Nachons threshing floore, Vzzah put forth his hand to take the Arke of God, and tooke hold of it, for the Oxen shooke it. And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Vzzah, and God smote him there for his errour, & there he died by the Arke of God.” Cogswell, Blessed Revolution, pp. 302–7, argues that this play was “a public celebration of the radical reformation, the ‘blessed revolution’ that had taken place in England” (quotation p. 307). For discussion of contiguities between Robert Harris’s sermon Samuells Funerall, entered for reissue in the Stationer’s Register in May 1624, see my “Thomas Middleton’s A Game At Chesse.”

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis and hundreds of the choisest Priests and People of all Israell” (p. 2). The king’s decision to seek public advice on amending this problem is recommended as preferable to “imperious commands” (p. 3), but despite these auspicious preparations the best intentions of the guardians of the ark are crossed. Prideaux distributes his text to apply evenly to papists, puritans, and “Atheisticall Politicians” (p. 4), thereby positioning the proper action of reform between these co-ordinates. Prideaux interprets the danger the ark was in as a lesson to papists that, no matter how settled the church, it is not privileged from shaking. “Naturalists cannot number more Earth-quakes, then wee (if the word may passe) may reckon Church-quakes” (p. 10). Uzzah’s fault in touching the ark is a lesson to the puritans that “every man in such a case, is not to thrust forth his hand to bee a Reformer, farther than his place and calling warrant him” (p. 4). The strict punishment of death imposed by God warns “Atheisticall Politicians” that God cannot be deluded; when he spies a fault, he may strike suddenly. Prideaux positions the Reformed English church between papists and puritans. Refuting Romish charges that England set up a new church rather than reforming a corrupt one, Prideaux observes: “When good King Ezekiah purged the Temple from all vncleannesse, in the Olde Testament; and our SAVIOVR from buyers and sellers, in the New: May they be said to have set vp a New Temple, or rather reduced the Olde to its ancient luster?” (p. 11). Furthermore, he asserts that “the idolatrous and tyrannous additions, which they [Romanists] for their glory and gaine haue patched to the common grounds of Christianitie, and wee now protest against” (p. 12) have always been resisted. The charge of novelty provokes Prideaux’s passionate response, who praises the achievement of “moderat reformation” (pp. 13–14) in England. Prideaux’s anti-papist “digression” (p. 16) allows less time for consideration of the sermon’s other main points, but he does allot time to each part. He acknowledges, first, that no matter how shaken the ark by Romish Philistines, Uzzah must not thrust his hand to settle things outside his calling. Touching the ark was “beyond his vocation, flat against Gods ordinance” (p, 20). Prideaux makes this situation a case of conscience for puritans regarding obedience. Uzzah’s punishment, he says, “should lesson the pragmaticall itching humourests of these our busie times, to keepe within their compasse, and not to haue an oare in euery boat, where their carriage lyes not” (p. 20). This not minding the business of one’s vocation is exemplified in several situations that extend beyond Prideaux’s initial target to include “the encroaching of the Romish Clergy on Princes Regalities” and “Schollers [who might] bee better busied in the State of Questions, then in Questions of State” (p. 21). Uzzah’s destruction for this presumptuous act leaves a pattern to posterity that “when men ouersee or wink at abuses, God will shew himselfe at length in his owne quarell, execute his owne iudgements, and iudge of all mens actions, not as they seeme in shew, but as he findes them in substance, conformable or dissenting from his strict prescription” (p. 22). This direct anti-papist and anti-puritan sermon, conformable to the polarizing rhetoric authorized by James, offers even-handed criticism against either kind of sectary or recusant, in the church over which James presided. The settling of religion is its challenge to James and his advisors and judges, and its message, in the end, is “feare, to intermeddle in cases reserved to our Superiours, and God’s owne privy Counsell” (p. 23). A month later, two court sermons by Hall pounded home the message that the nation awaited religious leadership in matters important to civil and religious 238

Post-Parliamentary Faultlines integrity. Cogswell reads this sermon as Hall’s effort to reconcile James – The True Peacemaker – to war, and perhaps because of divided public debate on this subject, part of the campaign focused intensely on James as the key to a breakthrough.7 Hall takes a verse from Isaiah 32:178 as his text, and applies it directly to his royal audience: “My text, you hear, is of justice and peace, two royal graces, and such as flow from sovereign majesty. There is a double justice, divine and human; there is a double peace, outward in the state, inward in the soul. Accordingly there is a double sense in my text, a spiritual sense, a civil sense; the spiritual concerning theological justice and inward peace; the civil, concerning human justice and outward peace” (V, 218). Hall positions the debate about spiritual justice and peace squarely between those of the “Tridentine faction” who find righteousness “in the holy works wrought by us” and those in the English church who believe that Christ’s works have been applied to them. From the outset, Hall clarifies that he is not even considering the (papist) view that moral righteousness is enough to justify and save. However, he is equally dismissive of controversies that arise from this subject, saying “How easy were it to lead you through a thicket of distinctions into a large field of controversy, concerning the nature, means, manner of our justification!” (V, 222). In resolving this issue, Hall observes that “we” are for the righteousness of Christ as clearly outlined in the scriptures. In contrasting human sinfulness with Christ’s perfect obedience, Hall concludes with the Calvinists that we are “sanctified in part” though “justified thoroughly” (V, 220). As for peace, Hall distinguishes it from the pathetic twigs of assurance offered by papists to drowning souls, the miserable comfort of their supererogations, indulgences, pilgrimages, saints, and satisfactions. At last, he says wittily, these leave the dying soul fearing hell, doubting heaven, and assured the flames of purgatory. Hall frames his discussion of “spiritual justice and peace” (V, 222) within a civil context, comprising both commonwealth and church. In this sphere, legal justice is the “apparent mother and nurse of public peace,” in which the head and members unite their endeavours in the centre of “the common good” (V, 222–3). Hall’s appeal to the common good establishes a public sphere of interest in which peace depends on fulfillment of one’s role, so that if any of the parts mutiny, ruin is threatened to the whole. As in many conformist sermons, the body politic with its ordering and subordination of parts figures the “sweet correspondence betwixt sovereignty and subjection” that is an ideal analogue to the peaceful state (V, 223). In this body, however, there must be no peace without justice, so while the head must do its part, the subjection of members must not soften the tongues of divines or obstruct the due course of justice. Such violators of justice are enemies to the state. In the church, too, peace must arise from justice, but, not surprisingly, no possibility exists that justice will arise from Rome. Here, Hall outlines the more egregious claims of the Roman church, especially their unjust claims over kings, church, scriptures, and conscience, the foundations of both civil and spiritual society. The horrible injustice of their practice is revealed in their inquisitorial assaults on all who do not accept their doctrinal innovations. As Hall’s exegesis demonstrates, moreover, their injustice is boundless. What, he asks, could be more 7 8

Hall, V, 218–31; Blessed Revolution, p. 298. “The work of justice (or righteousness) shall be peace.”

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis unjust than “to falsify the writings of ancient or modern authors by secret expurgations, by wilful miseditions? What more unjust than the withholding the remedy of general councils, and transacting all the affairs of the Church by a packed conclave? What more unjust than the suppression of the scriptures and mutilation of the sacrament to the laity? What more unjust than allowance of equivocation; than upholding a faction by willing falsehood of rumours; than plotting the subversion of king and state by unnatural conspiracies?” (V, 226). Part of Hall’s frustration is that an inverted set of values has come into play, so that the strict execution of justice rather than the guilt of the perpetrator is blamed for breaking the peace. Echoing Donne’s claim in his Devotions that leniency (in the guise of mercy) is destructive to the health of the body politic, Hall describes the moral and civil decay that he observes. In the family, the headstrong and debauched children are not judged as harshly as the severe father who corrects them. In the country, the oppressing gentleman is exonerated while the poor over whom he tyrannizes are blamed. In the city, the marshal is blamed, not the brothels, panders, cheaters, and vagrants. In the commonwealth, watchmen and sheriffs are blamed, rather than adulterers and the “traitorous coiner.” In the church, “the clamorous preacher, or the rigorous high commission” are blamed rather than heretics, schismatics, or perjured chaplains (V, 228). Hall’s application of the sermon to England leads through the connection between justice and peace to the subject of war, concluding that “the spiritual disposition of righteousness produce[s] the civil effect of peace” (V, 229). Praising Solomon/James for the lengthy peace the country has enjoyed, Hall nonetheless warns that if it is to be perpetuated religion must not be neglected. “Let religion lead all our projects, not follow them,” he urges. And in all these places, the work of righteousness will be “peace of heart, peace of state; private and public peace; peace with ourselves, peace with the world, peace with God” (V, 230–31). Hall’s sermon, distinguishing as it does between the justice of the king, and its distribution through his son, addresses just those matters of state and religion forbidden by the Directions. Hall speaks directly, as he claims the preacher must, and tries to balance his spiritual challenges to authority by his political conservatism. It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that Hall is simply recommending the status quo. The injustice of any wrong offered to the Lord’s anointed “shall be war,” a possibility that boils beneath the surface of Hall’s sermon, and insures that there can be no peace with these doctrinal and civil enemies. Lest the militant message of Hall’s court sermon miss its target, a second sermon before King James, also preached in September 1624, issues a passionate warning to preachers to fulfill their responsibility of counsel.9 “We are by our profession the seers of God in respect of our eyes; and we are the prophets of God in respect of our tongues,” Hall proclaims, charging that preachers are “blind guides” if they see not, and “dumb dogs” (V, 200) if they do not give warning. The warnings issued must be conducted loudly and openly – in the public sphere: “Our Saviour therefore bids us not to run into corners and whisper his messages; but to get us unto the housetop, and to make the highest roof and battlements our pulpit” (V, 201). The sermon emphasizes the responsibility of preachers to uncover Christ’s enemies, particularly papists and “such shufflers” who “will bow their knees to a breaden god, for fear of an inquisitor’s fly, and kiss the toe of a living 9

Hall, The Enemies of the Cross of Christ, V, 200–17.

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Post-Parliamentary Faultlines idol rather than hazard a suspicion” (V, 214). Taken together, Hall’s court sermons for September 1624 preach spiritual watchfulness on the part of both congregation and ministers and express his tireless and outspoken calls for a just peace, but one that is not purchased at the expense of “true religion.” THE FRENCH MATCH AND RENEWED ANTI-PAPISM By December, sermons before the king had to contend with a recent development: the signing of marriage articles with Henriette Marie of France. At the end of 1624, John Stoughton preached a sermon at Trinity College, Cambridge, which McCullough dates 13 December, the day after articles for the marriage were signed.10 In it, McCullough identifies “an important variation on the rex pacifici theme, praising James for securing peace without compromising religion, and insisting that war for religion’s sake was a justifiable compromise for peace – in short, a thanksgiving for the end of the Spanish Match and an endorsement of war on behalf of the Palatinate.” Less than a year before, Stoughton had preached at Paul’s Cross, expressing there a more cautious approach to marriage with idolaters, denouncing security and ill-founded peace in favour of a more militant anti-papist agenda. Stoughton’s sermon is clearly directed to the court, a place where “such a benigne aspect of Majesty, such a constellation of Nobility” resides and whose desires Stoughton’s words shall express as “the lively picture of your wishes” (pp. 2–3). Stoughton offers his text as “a Privie Counsellour to Majestie” to inform it of how a people may be made happy, primarily through the unity of peace and religion. Peace is a great blessing to a nation, Stoughton argues, yet religion is greater. Their union results in “perfect felicitie: as when some skilful hand hath made an happie marriage betweene perfect Red (suppose the Prince of the House of the Roses) and purest White (suppose the Lady of the nation of the Lilies) they beget the sweetest colour” (p. 26). Stoughton amplifies this description of the proposed French marriage so that God is the bridegroom himself and the Church his bride, and extols this marriage, with its fruits of peace and piety. Nobles and especially the king are urged to maintain their zeal for religion and defence of the faith, but the sermon concludes with fulsome praise for James who, as sovereign defender of the faith, providentially blesses the nation. Apparently, on the occasion of the signing of articles for the French match, Stoughton, whose patron Rich had negotiated the marriage, was called upon to praise James’s “wisdome and zeale for religion” (p. 40) in terms that gave scriptural authority to the view that the match with France joined peace and religion providentially. This was to put the best possible construction on the treaties, although Stoughton reserves criticism for those “whose Religion is rebellion, whose faith is faction,” the Roman Church (p. 32). Equally, he warns that when marriage is not “in the knot of true religion” (p. 33) nothing but contention thrives. The sermon, however, does not identify this “true religion” except as the peaceable analogue of James’s peaceable wisdom (p. 33). Negotiations for the French match provide the subtext for anti-papist rhetoric throughout the latter half of 1624. The home-enemy, variously depicted as 10

McCullough, “Calendar,” p. 306.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis recusant, church-papist, wavering protestant, “shuffler” between religions, atheistical politician, or schismatic, appears in an Oxford sermon by John Wall as the “Jew.”11 Wall’s dedication to John Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, Lord Keeper and member of the Privy Council, invokes Williams’s dual roles, the combination of Moses and Aaron in one chair, “whilst he doth interprete Lawes to men, (vnder the most blessed gouernment of our most gracious Solomon) that receiues Oracles from God, and is a Law of vertue to himselfe and others” (sig. A5r–v). In fact, the entire sermon treats the necessity and manner of “mightily convincing” the Jews, who represent all those of a “Jewish” disposition, including “Priests, Hypocrites, Iesuites, and Impostors; Romanizing Iewes, Iudaizing Romans, that come as nere as Antichrist to the Diuell” (C2v–C3r). The issues raised here were fundamental to the religious debates that had emerged in the first parliamentary session, and were embodied in the Petition on Religion to which James had agreed on 23 April. In this first half of the sermon, Wall preaches against the spirit of contradiction, urging evangelists to rebuke idolaters. Wall’s sermon evinces powerfully his confidence that in the public sphere, the victory will be achieved “by the strength of Arguments, the sacred violence of vnanswerable reasons, and proofes inextricable” (sig. B3r). The work of the preacher, he says, is the castigation of heretics, using plausible arguments and reasons, but expressing his proofs “mightily,” with “the sharpnes, and vehemency of spirituall redargution” (sig. B4r). He must “break down the partition wall of Idolatrie and schisme” (sig. B4r). Despite the militancy, even violence, of his language, Wall distinguishes this preaching from that of clamorous stentors who have zeal without knowledge, or knowledge without discretion. Equally, he castigates the secret conventicles of carpet divines. The preacher’s job, he says, is to evince daily, in sermons and schools, those of a “Jewish” disposition,” to arraign heresy and “Iudaisme” in public (sig. C2r). These “Jews,” in fact, modulate into papists who, for Wall, embody idolatry, but are disguised in sheep’s clothing. In the end, his sermon calls for a return to a scripturally-based Christianity and a rejection of the corruptions of both Roman and separatist doctrine. It also calls ministers to speak militantly and prophetically at this time, to be worthy of God’s many blessings (those “helpes and adiuments of Piety and Religion” [sig. D4v]), and to “convince the Adversary, & shew Christ with oracular demonstration” (sig. D6r). DONNE, USSHER, AND THE UNITY OF FAITH The temperature of Wall’s oracular anti-papism makes sermons in early summer by Donne and Ussher all the more remarkable for their efforts of community. Just as surely as sermons by Prideaux and Wall expressed the dominant fear of toleration and the blurring of religious boundaries, Donne and Ussher express anxiety about division, discord, and instability. All preachers hoped for a settled religious peace, but few were agreed on the terms and conditions of its achievement, much less what it would mean for the Church of England’s emerging identity. Donne’s sermon preached on 13 June 1624 to the Earl of Exeter and his company takes a rather different apocalyptic text than that chosen by Thomas Taylor in his sermon

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The Watering of Apollos.

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Post-Parliamentary Faultlines dedicated to the Commons. Donne chooses to preach on Apocalypse 7:9,12 to stress unity rather than difference, and universal Christianity rather than sectarian purity. The sermon is completely consistent with Donne’s irenical conformity, but still distinguishes between fundamental and indifferent points. Donne opens his sermon resolved to interpret this text in the plainest way, that in which the best interpreters concur, to refer to the glory of those who overcome Antichrist. In contradistinction to reiterated claims that the pope is this Antichrist, Donne asserts that “if those disputed, and problematical Antichrists, Eastern and Western Antichrist, Antichrist of Rome, and Antichrist of Constantinople, Turk and Pope, were removed out of the world, we should not for all that be delivered of Antichrist, that is, of that opposition to the kingdome of Christ, which is in our selvs” (VI, 151). Donne follows this refusal to limit Antichrist historically by choosing a text that stands discursively, with King James, between Roman and puritan opposites, to show that salvation is “more communicable” than those who have walled salvation in a monastery or those who are “over-valuers of their own purity, and righteousnesse” take it to be (VI, 151). Consequently, the sermon begins with Donne’s characteristic emphasis on God’s sociable nature. The natural man could not conceive one God and strayed into a multiplicity of Gods, and in the bible, all three persons contributed to man’s creation: “God, in his whole counsail, in his whole Colledge, in his whole society, in the whole Trinity, makes man, in whom the whole nature of the world should meet” (VI, 154). God’s desire to associate with man is his imperative from the creation, “and then, what shall disappoint, or frustrate Gods desires and intentions so farre, as that they should come to him, but singly, one by one, whom he cals, and wooes, and drawes by thousands, and by whole Congregations?” (VI, 155). God’s love for society has been shown in many ways, but a final testimony of God’s love is the reformation of Religion, “a miracle scarce lesse then the first propagation thereof, in the primitive church” (VI, 158). The seal of God is his image imprinted in every man at his creation, the contract with God in the incarnation, the seal set before the world in baptism, and, finally, the works of a holy life. Here Donne clarifies the relationship between faith and works, which together constitute a Christian spiritual life: “then have we made sure our salvation, when the works of a holy life, doe daily refresh the contract made with God there, at our Baptisme, and testifie to the Church, that we doe carefully remember, what the Church promised in our behalfe, at that time” (VI, 160). The extension of God’s love is also shown in the number sealed; Donne takes the 144,000 to be an “indefinite, and uncertain” number, signifying “all those who shall be saved” (VI, 161). Even if it could be taken as an “exact” number of Jews saved, Donne urges his hearers to remember that “there may be infinite number of soules saved, more than those, of whose salvation, we discerne the ways, and the means” (VI, 161). Having used his hour to focus on “The assurance which we have from Gods manner of proceeding, that Religion is not a sullen, but a cheerfull Philosophy, and salvation not cast into a corner, but displayed as the Sunne, over all” (VI, 165), Donne has time to consider only briefly the words of the text that refer to the next 12

“After this, I beheld, and loe, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the lambe, clothed with white robes, and palmes in their hands.” The sermon was preached in the Earl’s chapel at St. John’s.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis world. However, in this sermon, Donne reinforces some of the most significant emphases of his career. Foremost is the stress on God’s sociability, and of his intention to save many, a fact that Donne has reiterated from the beginning as part of his pastoral qualifications of rigid Calvinism. Donne is aware of differences of opinion on the subject, but insists that most of these are not fundamental to faith, and should not be invested with authority to divide men. At a time when men were rejoicing in the new parliamentary sanctions against Antichrist and his agents, Donne is reminding his hearers of the Antichrist that lurks within them. Guibbory has argued that the timing of Donne’s qualifications of rigid predestinarianism – only a month after Parliament had brought a petition against Montagu for his allegedly Arminian views in A New Gagg – suggests that Donne supports Montagu’s view that Antichrist need not signify “one particular person,” that there are “many Antichrists.”13 Rejecting the view that Donne is attacking only the most extreme “separatists” – those Catholics who have “walled salvation in a monastery” or those “over-valuers [my emphasis] of their own purity” (VI, 151) – a view entirely consistent with Donne’s rhetorical habit of positioning “our” church between extremes outside the community of faith – Guibbory argues instead that Donne, like Montagu, is expanding the category of “puritan” to include Calvinists, or all who distinguished between the elect and the reprobate. Similarly, Guibbory argues that Donne times his stress on God’s sociability to support Montagu’s stress on the universality of grace, expressing a position that goes well beyond the “hypothetical universalism” that English delegates had achieved at Dort. And she rightly highlights Donne’s contribution to the ongoing debate on the atonement.14 However, when Guibbory claims that “Donne subtly moves to attack the Puritans as perhaps the most dangerous Antichrist,”15 the text does not readily support this view. Earlier, Donne had named “over-valuers of their own purity” as extremists, but here, Donne seems to be referring exclusively to the current tribe of Dan and its Antichrist, the Roman Church and its pope, as the most dangerous men, a point that he reiterates frequently about post-Tridentine Catholics with their newly doubled articles of faith, and their charges of heresy against the English church. Similarly, Guibbory’s assimilation of Donne’s inclusion of “the Latine” Church to Montagu’s statement that Rome is a “true” though not a “sound” church is misleading. In fact, even in the passage from Montagu cited to support the claim that Donne’s position regarding salvation in the Roman Church approaches the more dangerous view of Montagu and Laud, Montagu’s position needs to be distinguished from Donne’s. To begin with, Donne rejects the absolutist rhetoric of controversialists such as Montagu: (“I am absolutely perswaded [Appello Caesarem, 1625], p. 113). Furthermore, Montagu’s claim that the Roman Church was true “as well since, as before the Councell of Trent” (p. 113) contradicts Donne’s frequent criticisms of post-Tridentine Catholicism.”16 In the end, it seems crucial to distinguish Donne’s rhetorical positioning of the English church from that of antiCalvinists such as Montagu. There is no doubt, as Guibbory argues, that Donne 13

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Guibbory, 418–19. This “soft” stance towards Rome, she argues, links him with Arminians like Montagu, Laud, and Cosin (419). See especially works by Nicholls and Johnson, pp. 32–6, 67. Guibbory, 421–2. Shami, “Anti-Catholicism,” p. 149.

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Post-Parliamentary Faultlines deliberately enlarges the interpretation of the Dort decree on grace, but not, as she concludes, to undermine Calvinism. Her question concerns how far a person can qualify a position before it becomes a completely different position. Do Donne’s temperate modifications of rigid Calvinist theology make him an Arminian? My answer is “no.” I believe that here, as elsewhere, Donne, was showing his congregation how to bring their consciences and beliefs into alignment with a Reformed consensus, such as that achieved at Dort, by not taking statements at their most literal and narrow. This was all the more important for Donne because he believed that the position of the Church of England on many of these doctrines had not yet been defined, except in the language of the Thirty-Nine Articles, and that “over-precise” definition risked hardening positions and reducing the liberty and responsibility of interpretation of the Scriptures that even the Calvinist Synod of Dort had accorded preachers.17 Unlike Montagu, Donne saw the public sphere as a space where such interpretive moves could be made, challenged, retracted, qualified. His doctrinal affinities with Montagu notwithstanding, Donne’s vision for the English church was marked by a much more gradual shift in emphasis, as part of a shared focus on the “mediocrity” of an English reformed tradition achieved by negotiation in the public sphere. The unity of faith is also the subject of James Ussher’s sermon preached on 20 June 1624 before King James at Wanstead.18 The sermon was published separately in 1624 and in 1625 was appended to Ussher’s refutation of Catholic doctrine and practice entitled An Answer to a Challenge made by a Jesuite in Ireland. Ussher takes as his text Ephesians 4:13.19 Like Donne’s sermon on the number of the saved, this sermon is an exhortation to understand those things wherein all Christian faiths concur, and to diminish those things that cause separation. Ussher’s point of view as protestant Bishop of Meath in Ireland is coloured by his experience there, “the vulgar superstitions of Poperie not doing them [the Irish] halfe that hurt, that the ignorance of those common principles of faith doth, which all true Christians are bound to learn” (p. 33). And in fact Ussher’s sermon is premised on this notion of a unity of faith, a foundation fundamental to all Christians and believed since the beginnings of the primitive church. It is also a foundation that works by dispelling ignorance, through preaching and catechizing, which is the “ground-work” (p. 34) of all religion, and for which James, by his Directions, has provided. Consequently, the church Ussher describes is universal, not to be sought in one quarter of the world. The faithful, rather than particular congregations, are the parts that make up the whole, so it is the ground of schism for particular churches to work as divided bodies. The worst separatists, according to Ussher, are the Romanists,“the authors of the most cruell schisme, that ever hath been seene in the Church of God” (p. 7). Their church, he says, is not content “to be a fellow-member with the rest of 17

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Martz has recently argued that “Donne’s sermons set forth a deliberate, careful, reasoned attack on the dominant Calvinism of the older generation.” He claims, moreover, that any qualification of Calvinism negates its identity as Calvinist: “indeed, as the framers of the Lambeth Articles believed, it might be said that there is no true Calvinism that is not strict. When one denies, or refuses to declare predestined reprobation, or asserts some measure of free will, or allows some degree of efficacy in the sacraments, it may be said, and indeed it was said, that one is no longer a Calvinist” (2. 9, 27). A Briefe Declaration. “Till we come in the unitie of the faith and of the knowledge of the Sonne of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulnesse of Christ.”

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis the Churches of Christ, and to have a joynt dependance with them upon the whole body of the Church Catholick” (p. 8). Instead, it wants to be acknowledged as the root. “Neither indeed is there any hope, that ever we shall see a generall peace, for matters of Religion, settled in the Christian world, as long as this supercilious Master [the pope] shall be suffered to keepe this rule in Gods house” (pp. 13–14). Roman claims to exclusive jurisdiction of the “Church of Christ” are both uncharitable and schismatic, forcing those who do not obey the Roman Church to forfeit their salvation. The unity of faith inheres in the foundation, allowing great disparity in the superstructure. So, Ussher says, the rule of faith should consist of few propositions, and the unity of faith should not be extended beyond those common principles. The church has always been where the common principles of faith have been maintained; contemporary “Popery it selfe is nothing else but the botch or the plague of that church: which hazardeth the soules of those it seizeth upon, as much as any infection can do the body” (p. 26). Ussher concludes that it is foolish to take up lodging now in “such a Pest-house” (p. 26), and there is no need; the English church is continuous with that primitive Christian church because the reformers did not begin a new church but transformed the old.20 Both Donne and Ussher seem to be moderate voices, unusual in the general enthusiasm for anti-popery and war encouraged by parliamentary legislation and subsidies granted in the first session. Their message of unity and reconciliation, if it is tactical, is better understood not as the vanguard of anti-Calvinist accommodations with Rome and denigration of Calvinism, but as voices of a new strain of Calvinism. Theirs is a Calvin refashioned in a distinctly English, post-Dort public sphere, and accommodated to principles of reformation markedly in contrast with the counter-reformation Council of Trent. The foundations that both Donne and Ussher stress are not the redoubled articles of faith proclaimed by that council but the foundations agreed upon by a harmony of reformed confessions, and interpreted generously by English pastoral needs, which include the need to reconcile belief with a “Catholic” history, ecclesiastical structure, and ceremonial legacy. FROM OPTIMISM TO FEAR: THE PAUL’S CROSS SERMONS The last months of 1624 produced a flood of anti-Catholic sermons and pamphlets. Partly, these were encouraged by public actions against Catholics authorized by parliament, and by a sense that the proposed alliance with France would result in a military and political alliance against the Habsburgs. However, by the end of the year, the optimism that had culminated in the openly anti-Spanish mockery of Middleton’s A Game At Chesse gave way to fears resulting from the prorogation of parliament until February 1624/5, relaxation of the penal laws (including repayment of recusant fines and release of Catholics from prison), reports of Buckingham’s mother’s conversion to Catholicism, and conscription of troops for continental service without sufficient means to support them. Cogswell observes that in these last months of 1624 following the “blessed revolution,” antipapist rhetoric reached a pitch of intensity, while the pulpits reinforced popular 20

Donne’s first sermon preached before Charles is on this very subject of foundations, distinguished from Roman superstructures and additions. See Chapter 10, below.

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Post-Parliamentary Faultlines interest in war with a decidedly anti-pacifist emphasis. The “buoyant mood” of the summer of 1624 proved “all too fleeting.”21 The last months of 1624 are documented in six Paul’s Cross sermons that reveal a pulpit poised between optimism and despair. The voice of sermons preached in these months is vehemently anti-papist, imbued with prophetic, oracular warnings, dominated by the dangers of home-enemies. In this most public of pulpits, the public good, defined primarily as the settling of the reformed religion in England, is an insistent pulse and a unifying concern. So is the sense that England, unlike its continental neighbours, can redeem the time by militant intervention on behalf of Protestantism. But there is also a sense that time is running out, and that unless the entire body politic acts in concert, the English religious commonwealth will implode. On 5 August 1624, Thomas Adams took the official anti-papist opportunity afforded by the Gowry Anniversary to preach a masterful disquisition on idolatry.22 The sermon applies idolatry literally to Roman practices, but morally to the idolatry in men’s hearts, the treacherous home-enemy. Adams begins by explaining that “Diuers seeds of graine in one ground, diuers kinds of beasts in one yoke, diuers sorts of cloth in one garment, were expressely forbidden vnder the Law: and shall seuerall Religions bee allowed in one Church vnder the Gospell?” (p. 2). The warning to English authorities could not be more explicit: “In composing differences betwixt man and man, betwixt family and family, betwixt kingdome and kingdome, Beati Pacifici, Blessed are the Peace makers. But in reconciling Christ and Belial, the Temple of God and Idols, Maledicti pacifici, Cursed are the peacemakers” (p. 3). Despite this curse, Adams finds that “The Sheepe and the Goates are indeed now blended promiscuously” (p. 1). The controversies between the two churches are substantial rather than circumstantial: “whether God or man, grace or nature, the bloud of Christ or the milke of Mary, the written Canon or vnwritten Tradition, Gods ordinance in establishing Kings, or the Popes vsurpation in deposing them, shall take place in our consciences and be the rule of our faiths and liues” (p. 31). Consequently, Adams warns his hearers against these superstitions, observing that “if it haue once got a secret liking of the heart, like the plague it will hang in the very clothes; and after long concealement, breake forth in an unlook’d for infection” (pp. 34–5). “I have heard of some,” he adds, “that euen by laboring in the Spanish galleys, haue come home the slaues of their superstitions. Egypt was alwayes an vnlucky place for Israel, as Rome is for England” (p. 34). Lest his hearers resist application of allusions to Egypt to recent negotiations for the Spanish match, Adams’s example of the worst kind of “familiar societie” (p. 35) – marriage – leaves little unsaid: “the nearer this coniunction, the more dangerous. . . . When Religion and Superstition meet in one bed, they commonly produce a mungrell generation.” A reference to Solomon brings the point even closer to home, Great Britain’s Solomon having himself loved an “idolatrous” woman (p. 35). “Other strange women only tempt to lust, these to misreligion; . . . One Religion matching with another, not seldome breed an Atheist, one of no religion at all” (p. 36). Exasperated, he asks “But now, is there no tree in the Garden, but the forbidden? None for me to loue, but one that hates the truth?” (p. 36). 21 22

Blessed Revolution, p. 309. The Temple.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis The connection between idolatry and treason – James’s official stance, but downplayed during marriage negotiations with Spain – underwrites this sermon,“the one being a breach of Allegiance to the Lord, the other a breach of allegiance to the Lords Anointed. Idolatry is Treason against God, and Treason is a kind of Idolatry against the King” (p. 65). Adams notes that James is justly styled the Defender of the Faith, but praises him more in hope of future actions than in recognition of past. Under such a King; “our temporall estate is preserved in liberty, our spirituall estate may bee improved in pietie, and our eternall estate assured us in glory: that our lives be protected, and in quiet our soules may be saued” (p. 67). In the end, this sermon is important for its interpretation of this anniversary’s anti-Catholicism. While Adams’s professed confidence in James’s preservation of “safetie and happinesse” (p. 67) in the kingdom rounds out the sermon, his rhetoric throughout demonstrates that idolatry, far from being a specific sin, is the nature of sin, and the essence of the Roman Church, not only in its images and saint worship, but also in its political aspirations. The sermon’s praise of James and its thankfulness for preservation from “all the raging violences of Rome and Hell” (p. 67) are offered not primarily in gratitude but as encouragement to his auditors for continued vigilance against idolatry. Robert Vase’s Paul’s Cross sermon confronted contemporary political and religious anxieties in a more public sphere.23 Vase’s sermon is full of anger, and rationalizations of anger, of doubt, and yet of assurance that God’s elect, no matter what afflictions they suffer, will persevere. It speaks powerfully of the religious exhaustion of those looking for signs of their election amidst the manifold afflictions visited upon religion in this year. In an emotionally-charged discourse, Vase treats Jonah’s contestation with God recorded in Jonah 4:9, and examines the “disputation” as a way of commenting on Jonah’s assurance of election. While Vase does not offer Jonah’s self-willed contention with God as exemplary, he offers God’s way of dealing with Jonah as a model to all “petty gods” of “equitie and faire dealing” with others (p. 4). Vase’s concern with equity extends to the manner of dealing with those with whom we are angry, recommending peaceful rather than contentious approaches. The orderly way is “Not first to runne to the Church, to tell the Church, as the vsuall manner now adaies is; falling at first to suits in law, open contentions, branglings and ianglings in Courts Ecclesiasticall and Temporall, whereof there is no end; God iustly punishing contentious minds, because they love not peace, with dissentions, all the daies of their lifes” (p. 15). Instead he advocates a private admonition, perhaps a small delegation of witnesses, and, only then, an official complaint to the church or the secular courts. The contentiousness of lawyers and litigious petitioners is descried by Vase who laments that “We live in dogged dayes the last and worst of times, wee seeke peace, but cannot obtaine it” (p. 39). The “common broyles . . . eate into the bowels of Christendome, the adversaries of Zion prevailing and setting vp their banners for tokens” (p. 38). Nonetheless, these miseries do not justify Jonah’s intemperate response to God. Like Jeremy’s and Job’s, Jonah’s resistance to what he believes is the “Tyrannicall government” is his sin (p. 44). In fact, all that preserves Jonah from sinking into final perishing is “the hand and power of grace, which hath stated them in the covenant of Gods free Election, and doth sustaine them in the 23

This sermon was preached at the Cross on the same day as Hall was preaching to James at Theobald’s.

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Post-Parliamentary Faultlines same condition to their lives ends” (p. 46). At the end of the sermon, Vase admits “That he fell not by his hap-hazard vpon his text” (p. 59), that his own infirmity was his inspiration. Vase concludes that his own anger against God and “rash iudgement concerning the state of divers God’s Elect” (p. 61), brought on this sermon, so that when he was assigned to the Cross he was determined to express his mind on a theme that had first subdued his own affections. William Proctor’s Paul’s Cross sermon a week later sounds the apocalyptic note of many preachers forewarning both London and the nation of the evils that their sins bring upon them. Only a radical reformation will prevent God’s punishments. He says “I cannot rippe vp, neither am I acquainted with all the particulars of your raigning sinnes; I know you are often put in minde of them, tis the vsuall subiect of Sermons made in this place, I will not therefore spend a great part of my allotted time this way: yet this I aduise you in the name of the Lord, that although you equall Ierusalem in worldly dignitie, yet you would not henceforth equall her in sinne and iniquitie: otherwise, if you partake with her in her sinnes, certainely yee shall partake with her in her punishments” (p. 15). Accordingly, he asks them to make good use of the late miseries sustained by neighbouring countries, all of which are caused by sin, and warns that the English are not exempt from “forraigne inuasions” or “domesticke calamities” (p. 16). When he considers God’s delay of their punishment, Proctor focuses on two main points: that forbearance of punishment is not exemption from it, and that men may perform external services to God and yet suffer his judgments. So, he warns that present “prosperitie and peace” does not ensure that “ensuing iudgments” (p. 22) will not come to pass. Nor will the superficial conformity of “formalists” (p. 28) prevent calamities. These outwardly religious men are Proctor’s real target, the homeenemies whose proliferation he laments. These “Pharisaicall men-pleasers” (p. 28), he observes, “swarme amongst vs, as once the Flies in Egypt? they fill vp most of our holy Assemblies; . . . And hence is it that an vniuersall deluge of iniquitie hath ouerflowed our whole Nation” (p. 28). According to Proctor,“tis now in fashion to seeme to be religious, yet to oppose the sinceritie and power of Religion with all their power” (p. 29), but Proctor warns that their formal services of “hearing, reading, speaking, praying” (p. 31) will only make their judgments heavier. Finally, Proctor considers the afflictions that will surely ensue as a consequence of England’s sins. This discussion opens the subject of God’s decree of reprobation which is “a reiection from grace, wherewith God elected vs in Christ; & from those effects of grace, wherevnto we are elected, and from the end, which is eternall life, whereunto the elect are ordained” (p. 50). Proctor mitigates the determinism of this position by saying that just as God is just in rejecting the reprobate, he does not save men “without the willingnesse of their owne wills: mans will is Gods instrument, for so the Lord doth ordinarily vse instruments and meanes, for the effecting of all his works” (p. 52). The sermon ends with a warning and a prayer: a warning that “the Lord Almightie is abundantly prouided with sundry kinds of iudgements, to be avenged of vs” (p. 54), and a prayer that God would put his fear in our hearts that “we may walke in his statutes, and keepe his ordinances, and doe them” (p. 55).24 24

Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, cites this sermon to support his claim that the printing of Calvinist sermons by late 1624 indicates that the Directions had proven largely inoperative (p. 103, n.72). Proctor is Seaver’s example of the “typical Anglican lecturer of the 1620s and 1630s” (pp. 195–6). If this is the case, then the sermon is proof that Calvinists admitted some measure of free will in their theology of grace.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis A month later, Robert Bedingfield of Christ Church Oxford uses the growth of Rome toward heresy to warn his congregation at Paul’s Cross that a fall into apostasy may be a gradual process rather than a single event. Bedingfield’s anti-papist attack stands on the premise that Rome’s growth to heresy was cumulative. “The grand Heresies of the Apostate Roman church, which indirectly and by consequence raze and destroy the very foundation of Faith, came in by degrees, and the first stone for the building of Babel was laide long since” (p. 7). In this case, “small things neglected, grow and become big ones; the tares spring vp faster then the corne, and they doe it insensibly, they steale their growth” (p. 8). Bedingfield does not want to lose distinctions between greater and lesser sins, but by the same token he must refute the false Roman distinction between mortal and venial sins by demonstrating that for the elect “legally all are mortall, Euangelically all veniall” (p. 9). This evangelical rather than doctrinal emphasis takes Bedingfield from the abstractions of theology to the pastoral negotiations of the public sphere, where he castigates, in particular, the exemplary sins of powerful public figures. Clearly, not all sins are equal: “The person, the place, the manner, are circumstances which both aggrauate & extenuate a sinne” (p. 10). Consequently, “no Monarch hath licence to offend, no Prince hath any non-obstante for sin: neither yet is the Kings prerogatiue lessened, because he may not sin, it should be inlarged if he could not sin. ‘Tis the misery of soueraignty, that the offence is alwayes as great as the offender, the sin as soueraigne as the person; a Prince his slips are crimes, a moat in his Eye is a beame; his blemish is a leprosie” (pp. 11–12). Bedingfield challenges papists for their political corruption as well, deflating their martyrdom as treason and condemning pseudo-martyrs as the worst heathens. Worse yet are the pseudo-Catholics who “die malefactors, more for sedition, then Religion; more for faction, then for Faith; they liue Papists, but they are hanged Traitors; & although both Haeresie & Treason might deserue death, yet hath the mercy of our Princes inflicted it only vpon the latter” (p. 21). When Bedingfield moves to eternal reward, he stresses that it is a reward “not of merit, but of mercy, not of debt, but of fauour” (p. 34). From this point he attacks the “Popish Schooles” of semi-Pelagians who have enlarged the “liberty of the will” blasphemously to say that it is “in our power to reiect or receiue any inspirations of the spirit” (p. 35). Scripture opposes these “Popish Pharisies in their hightowring thoughts of meriting,” (p. 36) he says. But while faith alone can save, justifying faith requires works, “so that we require of our good workes, although not a meritorious dignity to iustification, yet a dutifull necessity to sanctification” (p. 39). Particular targets of his rhetoric include great ones whose influence aggravates their sins, and Bedingfield scores rhetorical points by collapsing anti-puritan and anti-papist terms into doubly negative phrases such as “Tridentine conventicle” (p. 35) and “Popish Pharisies” (p. 36). Such a move both refutes Roman charges against the Reformed doctrine of election, and distinguishes the Calvinist “center” from the corrupt extremes. In the rush of overtly anti-papist sermons advancing the “blessed revolution,” the testimony of a recent convert from Catholicism could speak authoritatively of that church’s seductive corruptions. On 31 October 1624, John Gee, lately converted from Catholicism following the Blackfriars disaster, preached at Pauls Cross.25 As public testimony of his conversion, and “defence against such balefull 25

Hold Fast.

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Post-Parliamentary Faultlines poyson, whereof my selfe haue formerly had a taste” (sig. A4v), Gee preaches this sermon on Revelations 3:11, a text exhorting to constancy through the figure of “holding.”26 This text calls those who study it to examine whether they have lost any light, or moved backwards. Anticipating the ethical weakness of his position, Gee challenges himself by asking how he can exhort to constancy when he himself has been a recent spectacle of inconstancy (p. 21). Gee admits that he was caught in the snare and led captive into Babylon by his own carnal passions, but as a prodigal son he offers himself as the most vivid example of the need for this exhortation. Gee figures the Roman claim to a monopoly on constant truth in economic terms in this sermon. Not unexpectedly, Gee condemns the Church of Rome for believing it has the prime possession of this spiritual tenure, and for saying that “al other Christian Churches are but vnder-tenants, as holding by deriuation of petty leafes from this vniversall Land-lord” (p. 26). This tenure is “a vaine fond incroching forgery of vsurpation, as authenticall as the pretended donation of Constantine, of the patrimony of Saint Peter, and other priuiledges vnto Siluester the Pope” (p. 26). Whereas originally there were many “motherly Churches, wherein the faith was planted seuerally by diuers Apostles, not by one,” Gee says, “the present Roman Church, or rather the Papall faction in the Westerne Church, hath long since left that Hold; the present Church there hauing little else but locall prescription for propertie herein” (p. 27). While there are many aspects of the Roman Church that could be noted in this regard, Gee comments specifically on Roman doctrines of works and supererogation, and of their will to “subiect the Scepter of Princes to the Popes becke” (p. 27). The contrast with the old and the present Roman Church rounds out his sermon, but as he says, “I am not here to read a Lecture of the differences and degenerations of the present Roman Church, which are soundly and plentifully demonstrated by the lights of the reformed Churches in their controuersall Bookes. Only this I inferre, that of all Christian Churches that I know extant today in the World, the Roman troope, (especially in the superlatiue Tenents of the Iesuites) can least of all say . . . what I receiued from Christ and his Apostles I still maintaine intire and incorrupt” (pp. 28–9). Gee signals his concern with jurisdictional rather than doctrinal differences with Rome by charging the “Court of Rome[‘s]” (p. 29) with attempting to usurp authority. This court plants agents, both lay and clerical, who employ disguises to infiltrate and use their positions to seduce discontented scholars, and gentry children. The sermon rehearses the choicest examples culled from Gee’s pamphlet of earlier in the year: Friar Lawrence and his miraculous transportation to Spain where St. Lawrence spoke to him; the Jesuit custom of picking female saints as their Valentines and claiming that they will be honoured by that saint all year; fraudulent and theatrical exorcisms; a newly founded order of Jesuitesses. In fact, much of the sermon exposes the Jesuit impostures, demonstrating Gee’s intimate acquaintance with Jesuitical practices, and with the popular (anecdotal) perception of their methods of seduction. To make the topical application sharper, Gee reminds his congregation that this day (24 October) stands between two that he must never forget. One is a day of public danger intended by men but prevented by God [5 November]; the other is of danger not intended by men but permitted by God [26 October (the Roman 26

“Behold, I come quickly, hold fast that thou hast, that no man take thy Crowne.”

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis fifth of November)]. As Walsham has shown, both incidents coalesce in Gee’s mind as moments of providential deliverance, one general and the other particular. This sermon embodies the most common features of anti-popery of the day, with its catalogue of Jesuit schemes, its providential interpretation of recent historical events, its vitriolic and sarcastic tone, its attitudes, and its images. Even a year before, at the time of the Blackfriars disaster, the sermon’s excesses would probably have prevented its delivery. In a rush of militant anti-papist sermons preached in 1624, noted casuist Robert Sanderson preached at Paul’s Cross, 21 November 1624.27 Sanderson’s approach is to establish a discourse of conscience that demonstrates for this congregation their personal authority and responsibility to discriminate in moral matters. In seeking to inculcate “holy discretion and wisedome, in the free vse of his good Creatures” (p. 69), Sanderson presents a thorough anatomy of the general doctrine of creatures, supported by interpretation of particular examples offered by his text. His casuistical approach to moral decision-making exhibits a moderate, conformist stance, working dialectically between carefully-constructed extremes that meet in the notion of “hypocrisy.”28 The elision of puritan and papist forms of hypocrisy means that while the bulk of his polemic targets Rome’s abuses of ceremonial observances, false puritan righteousness regarding ceremonies is also bound up in this attitude, making formal division from the common enemy, Rome, about which there was little disagreement, a pattern for division from puritan extremists as well. In his sermon, Sanderson acknowledges that he is operating within a polemical discourse, “each side charging other (as commonly it happeneth where differences are about Religion) with Apostacy, and Errour, and Falshood, and Hipocrisie” (p. 2). Concerning the right use of creatures, his polemic constructs a middle position between those who reject any ordinance “as vpon tye of Conscience” and those who use them superstitiously. The state towards which the sermon aims is “Christian liberty” which steers a course between these. Deviations from the course of liberty occur when men measure things exclusively by their own apprehensions. Hearing sermons provides Sanderson’s prime example of this failing: “If a thousand of vs heare a Sermon, scarce one of that thousand, but he must shew some of that litle wit he hath in disliking somthing or other: There the Preacher was too elaborate, here too loose; that point he might haue enlarged, contracted this; he might haue beene plainer there, shewed more learning here; that obseruation was obuious, that exposition enforced, that proofe impertinent, that illustration common, that exhortation needlesse, that reproofe vnseasonable: one misliketh his Text, another his Method, a third his stile, a fourth his voyce, a fifth his memory; euery one something” (pp. 10–11). The lawfulness as well as the goodness of all God’s creatures is argued by Sanderson to refute superstition: either the superstitious refusal of creatures or the superstitious belief in the holiness of such refusals. Creatures, Sanderson explains, become sinful if we use them doubtingly against conscience, indiscreetly against 27 28

Two Sermons. Lake, “Calvinist Conformity,” argues that Sanderson’s main conflict with puritans was that “By denouncing ceremonies and observances that were inherently indifferent as simply unlawful, the Puritans were offending against Christian liberty” (91). The article as a whole demonstrates that “even men who shared great tracts of ideological terrain with the Puritans, could end up hating them with a passion” (115).

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Post-Parliamentary Faultlines charity, or inordinately against sobriety, but Christians now (unlike Jews who were in training regarding the law of ceremonies) have liberty with regard to creatures, even those formerly abused by the Roman Church. These thoughts lead directly to a discussion of several contested prohibitions enjoined by the Roman Church, particularly the prohibition of marriage to the clergy, and the forbidding of meat on certain days. Of the former he asks “with what Conscience can they make the same thing a Sacrament in the lay; and Sacriledge in the Clergy?” (p. 20). Of the latter, he points out the absurdity of making the eating of the coarsest flesh more serious than surfeiting on the most delicate fish and confections. By contrast with the superstitious Catholic use of creatures, Sanderson claims a space for Christian liberty that extends to all God’s creatures. While this liberty may admit restraint in outward practice, the lawfulness of these things is affirmed. Still, to avoid “that great and difficult common-place of scandall, so much debated and disputed by Divines” (p. 35), superiors ought to restrain the outward exercise of Christian liberty. However, in the end, not even the respect we owe to “publique Gouernours” (p. 28) ought to remove the inward freedom of the conscience, and certainly not the tyranny of the High Priest of Rome who arrogates spiritual power over men’s consciences. Sanderson, like Donne, gives his hearers tools rather than doctrines, instructing them in moral reasoning that exercises “active discretion” in the interests of Christian liberty rather than “passive obedience” in the interests of security. TENSION AT THE CENTRE: CHRISTMAS SERMONS BY DONNE AND ANDREWES The Paul’s Cross sermons emphasized the radical differences between true and false versions of the Christian religion, most often by distinguishing between the dark violence of antichristian Rome and the peaceful gospel of the new Jerusalem. Christmas sermons by Donne and Andrewes, however, exemplify that even at the doctrinal centre, between preachers who shared a common suspicion of papists and puritans at the margins, fault lines can be discerned. Donne’s sermon preached at St. Paul’s on Christmas evening sounds a decidedly conformist note on the subject of God’s signs. Taking as its text Isaiah 7:14,29 the sermon stresses human perceptions, judgments as “interpretations,” and the importance of restoring focus to the interpretation of God’s judgments. The historical occasion of the sermon, God’s provision of a sign to King Achaz, leads Donne to interpret the sign as an act of God’s radical and “occasional” mercy. The natural man calls these occasions accidents, Donne says, but the regenerate man recognizes them as mercies: “He brought light out of darknesse, not out of a lesser light; he can bring thy Summer out of Winter, though thou have no Spring; though in the wayes of fortune, or understanding, or conscience, thou have been benighted till now, wintred and frozen, clouded and eclypsed, damped and benummed, smothered and stupified till now, now God comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of the spring, but as the Sun at noon to illustrate all shadowes, as the sheaves in harvest, to fill all penuries, all occasions invite his mercies, and all times are his seasons” (VI, 162). 29

“Therefore the Lord shall give you a signe; behold, a virgin shall conceive, and beare a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.”

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis For Donne, the main interpretive stumbling block is that Achaz, of all men, seemed least to merit mercy, particularly because his kingly office multiplied his faults. However, as Donne shows, understanding God’s mercy requires conscious efforts in perspective. On the one hand, Donne says, “Subjects are to look upon the faults of Princes, with the spectacles of obedience, and reverence, to their place and persons; little and dark spectacles, and so their faults, and errors are to appeare little, and excusable to them” (VI, 172). However, this limited human perspective is corrected by apprehension of “Gods perspective glass, his spectacle is the whole world; he looks not upon the Sun, in his spheare only, but as he works upon the whole earth: And he looks upon Kings, not onely what harme they doe at home, but what harme they occasion abroad; and through that spectacle, the faults of Princes, in Gods eye, are multiplyed, far above those of private men” (VI, 172). Donne uses the occasion to bring the spectacles of both obedience and judgment into focus. The complexity of this process of perceptual correction is characteristic of Donne, his signature move in connecting the subjectivity of personal perspective to a broader religious vision. The part of the sermon peculiar to Christmas Day treats the sign given, namely that a saviour will be born, but Donne asks how this future thing could have been a sign of their present deliverance. Donne’s meditation on the mysterious nature of the Incarnation comments further on the issue of perspective, allowing him to model rhetorically the faithful perspective that is neither blind nor overcurious. It also allows Donne to qualify, though he does not ridicule, the doctrine of transubstantiation. So, “though I may not say, as some have said, That by the word of Consecration, in the administration of the Sacrament, Christ is so infallibly produced, as that, if Christ had never been incarnate before, yet, at the pronouncing of those words of consecration, he must necessarily be incarnate then, yet I may say, that God is as effectually present, with every worthy receiver, as that hee is not more effectually present with the Saints in Heaven” (VI, 184). The wording here allows Donne a doctrine of real presence that does not depend on miraculous transubstantiations, but that nonetheless makes Christ effectually present in the sacraments of the English church to all believers. As with all of Donne’s sermons, the balances and discriminations he achieves are the measure of his conformity, both verbal and doctrinal, to Christianity. This is his strength, of discretion as well of wisdom, a way of seeing and framing his discourse that allows him to establish an independent but conforming spirituality in his hearers. On the same day as Donne was preaching on God’s merciful signs, even to undeserving kings, Lancelot Andrewes was preaching at Whitehall on Psalm 2:7, the “law, whereof the Lord said to Me: Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten thee.”30 Andrewes’s morally superior tone in this sermon contrasts radically with Donne’s pastoral rhetoric, and identifies Donne with the more truly evangelical arm of the English church. The sermon allows Andrewes an opportunity to lay down the law and to reveal his contempt for laxity in doctrine, a decline he attributes to the popular taste for sermons. Sarcastically, Andrewes expresses this preference for hearing sermons as a preference for gospel rather than law: “We had well hoped, Christ would have preached no law, all Gospel He. That He would have preached down the old Law, but not have preached up any new” (I, 287). Preaching is associated with “pure narratives” offering “certain theses to be held, dogmatical points, matters of opinion” (I, 288), whereas “There is a law besides” consisting of 30

Works, I, 284–302.

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Post-Parliamentary Faultlines “certain commandments also, and they to be observed” (I, 288). Lamenting the follies of the younger generation, Andrewes gripes that “we are fallen clean from the term ‘Law’ now. . . . Nothing but Gospel now” (I, 288), a softening of the law he treats with scorn. “Gospelling” becomes a verb used to deride the moral slackness of evangelizers. So that “Gospel it how we will, if the Gospel hath not the legalia of it acknowledged, allowed, and preserved to it; if once it lose the force and vigour of a law, it is a sign it declines . . .” (I, 289). The homiletic stress on “fair entreaty, gentle persuasion” rather than law, this “gospelling,” Andrewes says, has drowned the law. And what is to blame? Evangelical councils. For a time they were set aside, he says, but “now there be none else. All are Evangelical Counsels now. The reverend regard, the legal vigour, the power, the penalties of it are not set by. The rules – no reckoning made of them as law-writs, none,” but only as medicinal prescriptions: “if you like them you may use them, if not, lay them by” (I, 289). Andrewes further enjoins his audience to understand how his text’s “merely narrative” declaration can be called a “law,” a term normally associated with an imperative. Inasmuch as it declares what we are to believe (the Son’s person, natures, and offices) and do (the filial duties), Andrewes explains, it is a law. The reward is to “obtain the filial rights promised” (I, 301–2) in the text, a reward not available to those who “hear it not as a law, hear it not but as news” (I, 300). And Donne would certainly have agreed with Andrewes that there are fundamental “laws” defining Christian belief and practice, but unlike Andrewes, he would not have subjected the gospel – or those who adhere to its law of liberty – to ridicule, nor would he have diminished the soteriological or medicinal power of preaching within a Christian community. Perhaps in a courtly context, Andrewes’s antipuritan jokes would have elicited smug recognition of the “type” and appreciation of his condescending tone, but at St. Paul’s, Donne always accords preaching and zeal great dignity, reserving criticism for more extreme proponents of those things Andrewes scorns. And Donne would never have been witty at the expense of the “gospel,” certainly not to the point of deriding moral laxness as “gospelling.” Faultlines in the conformist response to events of 1624 emerged most clearly in the public sphere in their anti-papist rhetoric. Within that matrix, militant and apocalyptic calls to arms jostled with calls for peace, order, and unity, the more conventionally conformist attitudes. Sermons exhorting public servants – magistrates, judges, preachers, parliamentarians – to watchfulness and to action proliferated. In this context, Donne’s undogmatic exercises in exegesis stand out for the inclusiveness of their theological and political reach, and for their discreet defusing of polemic. In the negotiations for the conforming hearts of English subjects, Donne recognized the power of sermons to draw unsettled believers into the circumference of a distinctly English reformed religious experience, and the community of interest he creates in his sermons is a sphere in which all but the most determined “recusants” could practice their Christian faith. The evangelical and pastoral tenor of his sermons aligns them with Hall’s and Sanderson’s, and distinguishes them both in degree and in kind from those of avant-garde conformists such as Andrewes. They indicate that the foundation of conscience and the interpretive flexibility available to all Christians was a vision that could accommodate a broad religious spectrum, but that sometimes differences with brethren rather than with enemies stood most in the way of a stable religious identity.

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Chapter 10 “IF THE FOUNDATIONS BE DESTROYED”: RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

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HE CRISIS of censorship that had been alleviated by public debate of religious and political issues in parliament resurfaced late in 1624 when negotiations for the French match threatened to delay the second session of parliament indefinitely. In the final weeks of December 1624, King James once again issued proclamations ordering relaxation of penal laws against recusants in anticipation of the marriage between Charles and Henriette Marie of France. This was not the first time James had done so. But, after the outburst of popular relief at the failure of the Spanish match a year before, the penal laws had been tightened up again and attacks on Catholicism had crept back into sermons. In July, Chamberlain had predicted that the French match “is like to stick at the old stumbling blocke of toleration” (II, 571), but by 9 October he reported that “Our papists begin to hold up their heads again” (II, 581–2). The uncertainty resulting from James’s new efforts to appease Catholics worried many who felt that this laxity would hinder continued reform in the Church. This fear of idolatry was compounded by the fear of sedition. Penal laws had acted for some time to identify and suppress potential threats to national religious and political security. Now, the security provided by these laws was being compromised for what many saw as political concessions that would drive England even closer to idolatry. For most churchmen, the French match was only marginally preferable to the Spanish match, primarily because the French demanded fewer concessions for Catholics, and because the possibility of enlisting France in an anti-Habsburg alliance was politically desirable in England. By early 1625, puritans rather than papists were being targeted for official censorship. Stuteville reported to Mead on 21 January that Thomas Gataker “is yet in the Fleet,” apparently for a reference in an epistle he had prefixed to Elton’s catechism.1 Perhaps Gataker’s commendation of the “plentiful light to the latter times” afforded by Elton, compared to “that which former ages have had,” did not sit well with the authorities who were about to burn his books at Paul’s Cross for their puritan content.2 In addition, Stuteville reports the suspension of two lecturers.3 In February, Elton’s book on the commandments, as well as one by

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2 3

Birch, II, 491. In his Discours Apologetical, Gataker recalls that in this preface “others far greater than myself, even the archbishop himself, were aimed at” (p. 53). Gataker, Discours Apologetical, p. 53. Birch, II, 491. Mr. Rowles was suspended for refusing to subscribe, and Mr. Denison for maintaining the point of the lawfulness of private communions advanced in Mr. Elton’s posthumous book.

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Rules of Engagement Denison, were burned after a sermon at the Cross for containing schismatical doctrine concerning the sabbath and administration of the sacrament.4 If Gataker’s puritan views were sufficient to earn him a stay in the Fleet, and later a period of house arrest, so too were openly Arminian views. The cases of Simpson and Lucy at Cambridge and of Bridges at Oxford examined earlier indicate that these opinions were still considered heterodox in the late Jacobean pulpit. Nor was Arminianism merely a university phenomenon.5 The broil begun by Montagu’s publication of A New Gagg in 1624 had brought the controversial subject fully into the public sphere, and a petition against him had engaged the “educated laity” with the question as never before.6 In fact, Montagu’s publications and the whole issue of Arminianism provoked calls for censorship from parliament as stringent as anything intended or achieved by the Directions. These experiments in public debate, coupled with a shift from the threat of a Spanish match to the reality of a French match, provoked a crisis of identity for the English church. The reaction to Montagu had indicated real division over the extent to which the church would be Calvinist, especially as Calvinism had been defined at the Synod of Dort. A circle of divines associated with Bishop Neile, the Durham House group, was gathering momentum that would flourish in the Caroline reign. Some divines, neither staunchly Calvinist of the Prideaux school nor anti-Calvinist of the Laudian school, continued to search for consensus on identifying and resolving fundamental issues. Efforts of conversion increased as uneasy accommodations with papists continued to be struck. All of these tensions came to a head unexpectedly with the death of King James in March 1625. That death signaled momentous change, and sermons preached on the occasion express the anticipation as well as the anxiety that marked the transition to the new regime. In early 1624/5, Chamberlain’s letters also note the reprinting of Robert Wilkinson’s sermon on the massacre of English East India Company merchants by the Dutch at Amboyna (II, 602).7 This sermon illustrates the entanglement of political and religious tensions and the pulpit’s readiness to respond publicly to events of national significance. It also marks a move to politicize Arminianism, by associating the Dutch massacre of English sailors with Arminian terrorism. Chamberlain’s comment about the preface, which is “bitter enough,” reveals how a sermon’s topical significance could be sharpened by a dedicatory epistle. The epistle dedicatory, written by Thomas Myriell, is hardly oblique. Ignoring James’s fantasy that his political alliances were not confessional, it expresses surprise that Christians could exhibit such cruelty, noting how the people of the West Indies were so appalled by the inhumanity of the Spaniards that they “had rather goe to Hell by themselves, then to Heaven with the Spaniards” (p. 6). An example closer to 4 5

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Ibid., II, 498. Randolph Holland writing to Archbishop Ussher reports the case of a minister broaching Arminian opinions whom Holland would like stopped. The man is described as “a man of proud spirit taking libertie to himself to censure all divines contrarie minded to him self wth unbeseeming teares” (Bodleian MS Rawl. 89, fols. 38–9). This man had apparently gathered 24 or 25 followers who cast aspersions upon preachers and professors of received truth. D’Ewes reported the proliferation of Arminianism in Cambridge and “in most partes of England” earlier in 1624 (Diary, p. 182). Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, p. 125. The debates about this book were all the more intense, in part because before its publication Montagu had asked Cosin to “read it over privately, or att most with Austen [Lindsell]” (Cosin, I, 33). McCullough discusses Wilkinson as an alumnus of the court of Prince Henry, a select fraternal brotherhood committed to militant Protestantism (Sermons at Court, pp. 189, 190, 192).

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis home is the pope, whose cruelty and oppression satisfy “his Vulturean avarice and Luciferian pride” (p. 7). Worst of all, however, are the torments practiced by the Dutch in the Amboyna massacre upon the innocent bodies of their co-religionists. Much of the epistle addresses the Dutch directly, asking them to confess and accept judicial censure, under threat of reprisal from God, and, one supposes, the English. Finally, in addressing the survivors of the massacre, Myriell offers them his sermon, now found to comment aptly on this situation, though written long before. Myriell’s insistence on the timeliness of the subject is appropriate. The sermon examines the stripping of Joseph by his brothers, recorded in Genesis 37:23, in the process revealing that the politics of commenting negatively on Dutch co-religionists while they were being courted as anti-Habsburg political allies were complex. Even as James was signing a treaty with the Dutch, the East India Company was using the event to excite anti-Dutch sentiments, but, in the short term, Englishmen were willing to ascribe the incident to a group of renegade atheists or Arminians.8 Wilkinson makes the application clear: “when Iacobs sonnes, the seed of the Church, the light of the World, shall rob and spoyle one another, when wee of the refined Religion, the quintessence of Christianitie, shall doe that oppression, which they scorne to doe whom we scorne to bee like; to speake plaine English, when Protestants fall out among themselues, and endeuour to vndoe the good works which Papists haue done, wee are at a stand like Iosuah at the siege of Ai” (pp. 30–1). The anti-papist thrust of the sermon, made topical by discussion of cruelty between brethren, parallels the intentions of divine providence, according to Wilkinson, who explains the delay in publication as a withholding by Divine Providence, “the Subiect being so seasonable for the occasion” (p. 50). The entire premise of the sermon is the affinity between “IOSEPHS unnaturall Persecutions in Aegypt by his Brethren, and the inhumane Tortures of our Countrey-men in Amboyna, by the either Atheisticall or Arminian Dutch There” (n.p.). The event, and the publicity surrounding it, struck yet another blow against Arminianism, now tarred with the same brush as the cruelties of the Spanish Inquisition. CONVERSION AND CONFORMITY: VOICE AND ECHO IN DONNE’S SERMONS OF EARLY 1625 In the early months of 1625, Donne, recovered in health from the year before, assumes his full preaching responsibilities. These sermons engage the most vexed theological questions in the public sphere of late Jacobean preaching: obedience to human and divine laws; conversion and conformity; God’s effectual ordinances of prayer, preaching, and sacraments; the Church of England’s qualifications of rigid predestinarianism; and the authority of conscience. These sermons also continue Donne’s fundamentally casuistical interpretive habits by balancing moral alternatives within the context of competing human and divine laws. This way of approaching moral issues shows Donne’s audience how to redefine for their own consciences the meaning and practice of obedience. The casuistical epistemology finds its rhetorical correlative in Donne’s renovation of controversial terms and in the “active discretion” of his allusions to sensitive moral and political controversies. 8

Cogswell, Blessed Revolution, pp. 274–5. Continuing anti-Spanish feeling ensured that the treaty with the Dutch was seen as necessary in the battle against their common enemy.

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Rules of Engagement This approach is illustrated in a sermon preached on 1 January 1624/25, the Feast of the Circumcision, at St. Dunstan’s-in-the-West, on Abraham’s circumcision at the age of 99. Donne’s selection of text is unusual, but both theologically and politically apt. The symbolic significance of Abraham’s circumcision as the mark of the covenant is appropriate to the feast day. Yet Donne turns Abraham’s apparently straightforward consent to the rite in Genesis into a particular case of conscience focused on the issue of obedience, arguably using the occasion to encourage church papists and even recusants to “circumcise” themselves within the English church. Donne’s casuistical distinction between absolute obedience to men (which sometimes requires resistance) and obedience to God (which demands “speechless and thoughtless” obedience) is offered as the moral framework within which to interpret Abraham’s moral choice. Circumcision, Donne concedes early, is a misinterpretable sign. Nonetheless, Abraham’s obedience is not “blind,” although he might legitimately have expostulated further with God, arguing, for example, that God’s promise to him needed no seal. Donne complicates conventional absolutist interpretations, then, by characterizing the text as a case of conscience and by encoding within it Abraham’s imagined expostulations (namely, that this seal was frivolous, obscene, incommodious, and needless). Donne raises questions, however, not to domesticate them, but to offer them as reasonable, and therefore legitimate, extenuations of the letter of the law. In framing Abraham’s example as a test of obedience, and in allowing fully a quarter of his time to the voice of Abraham’s expostulation, Donne both legitimates and expresses the limits of resistance where the idea of resistance had not even been suggested in his biblical source. In light of historical circumstances preceding the sermon’s delivery, interpretation of it becomes even more problematical. The relaxation of the penal laws against recusants in anticipation of the French marriage had created uncertainty for many who thought James’s efforts to appease papists would endanger national security and return England to idolatry. Donne’s attitudes to these recent events are difficult to assess; he likely understood the penal laws as they stood before the December 1624 proclamation as the accepted political price for the liberty of conscientious resistance. And it is reasonable to think that, in keeping with his view of the function of laws generally, Donne saw the penal laws as an effective means of allowing and yet containing such resistance. As Donne observes: “The Lawe is my Suretie to the State, that I shall pay my Obedience, And the Lawe is the States Suretie to mee, that I shall enjoy my Protection” (VI, 253). The place to dispute the Law is “In those Councells, where Lawes are made” (VI, 259). It is also true that Donne would have seen the signing of the French marriage treaties in December as an occasion to persuade church papists and recusants on the one hand and wavering protestants on the other of the need to “circumcise” their hearts within the Church of England. Perhaps, then, the debate over the relaxation of penal laws can help to contextualize this sermon on Abraham’s obedience to the misinterpretable and incommodious law of circumcision. Historically, of course, circumcision was a sign to Jews of their covenant with God, a form of continuous renewal emphasizing the responsibility of every family to affirm their identity as God’s people.9 Donne’s stress on circumcision as a legal and moral constraint on idolatry, then, brings the 9

Van Seters, pp. 292–3.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis sermon directly into the discussion of the consequences of Charles’s impending marriage. As Donne expresses it: In this rebellious part, is the root of all sinne, and therefore did that part need this stigmaticall marke of Circumcision, to be imprinted upon it. Besides, (for the Jewes in particular) they were a Nation prone to Idolatry, and most, upon this occasion, if they mingled themselves with Women of other Nations. And therefore . . . God would be at the cost even of a Sacrament, . . . to defend them thereby against dangerous alliances, which might turn their hearts from God; God imprinted a marke in that part, to keep them still in mind of that law, which forbade them foraigne Marriages, or any company of strange Women . . . And God foresaw that extreme Idolatry, that grosse idolatry, which that Nation would come to . . . (VI, 192)

The warning of the idolatry that would ensue if the law of circumcision were not obeyed needs to be interpreted in relation to the circumstances of the proposed French marriage. Equally important is Donne’s application of legal circumcision to the circumcision of the heart. Donne points out that for Abraham circumcision was a legal sign, one that in Donne’s time needs to be replaced with a spiritual one. The same is true, of course, of the penal laws: as the legally enforced signs of outward conformity, instituted to prevent “grosse idolatry,” they must now be replaced by spiritual renovation among outwardly conforming Christians. Donne’s comments on conscience in the sermon reinforce such a view. According to Donne annual repentance is insufficient, and he makes this point in provocatively anti-absolutist language that calls his hearers to challenge the prerogative of their sins. Sedition, he argues, is not in questioning our conscience, not in disputing the “prerogative” of our sins, but in not questioning, in not disputing, in allowing our consciences to become cobwebbed. Through this discourse of resistance, Donne challenges his audience to think the unthinkable: “we dare not,” he says satirically,” dispute the prerogative of our sinne, but we come to thinke it a kinde of sedition, a kinde of innovation, and a troubling of the state, if we begin to question our Conscience, or change that security of sinne which we sleepe in, and thinke it an easier Reformation to repent a sinne once a year, at Easter, when we must needs Receive, then to watch a sinne every Day” (VI, 196). The point is, surely, that the prerogative of conscience justifies disturbing our “state.” In the end, Donne identifies the uncircumcised with idolaters, those too timid to trouble their consciences with seditious questioning and who have defined “obedience” as conformity to annual communion. Donne’s sermon preached at St. Paul’s on the Sunday after the conversion of St. Paul [30 January 1624/5] continues the theme of conversion. Donne takes as his text Acts 9:4,10 and offers Paul as an example of how God converts men through the ministry of men.11 Donne is struck not by the imitability but by the singularity of this example, observing that although the ecclesiastical story abounds with occasional converts, the church celebrates no conversion but this one. 10 11

“And he fell to the earth, and heard a voyce, saying, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” Kneidel looks at Donne’s self-fashioning on the Pauline model, affirming both the psychological as well as the rhetorical and communal dimensions of his ministry. In Donne’s four sermons on the feast of St. Paul’s conversion, Kneidel traces Donne’s ethical and rhetorical self-portrait as a Puritano-papismus, and therefore as an exemplary model for a church comprising disparate, even conflicting, factions to imitate.

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Rules of Engagement The language with which Donne describes this conversion resonates with the contrast between the false Catholic Eucharist and Paul’s true transformation: “Here was a true Transubstantiation, and a new Sacrament. These few words, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me, are words of Consecration; After these words, Saul was not longer Saul, but he was Christ: . . . here a Wolfe is made a Lambe, . . . A Pirat becomes a safe Pilot” (VI, 209–10). Clearly for Donne conversion is not outward conformity, but enacts the “circumcision of the heart” that he had advocated in his 1 January sermon. Furthermore, God’s calling of Saul allows Donne to interpret this singular conversion experience as accomplished communally through the “ministry of Men” (VI, 205), not in “Country solitude,” “idle retiring,” or “ignorance” (VI, 215).12 Donne’s explanation of how we understand the language of God’s call is situated, as Kneidel has shown, in the context of English parish worship: “as we are bound to blesse God, that he speakes to us, and heares us speake to him, in a language which we understand, and not in such a strange language, as a stranger who should come in and heare it, would think the Congregation mad; So let us blesse him for that holy tenderness, to be apt to feele his hand in every accident, and to discerne his presence in every thing that befals us” (VI, 219). Like Saul, Donne’s hearers are afforded a call, and Donne assures them that unless they hear God’s word as a voice, it will be unintelligible, ineffective for salvation. Both war and peace, God’s canon and his music, can support faith; but unless we hear them as a voice we think of them as emergent contingencies and natural accidents. We can be said to hear, Donne says, when we know whence the voice comes. “Princes are Gods Trumpet, and the Church is Gods Organ, but Christ Jesus is his voyce” (VI, 217). We are bound to hear when he speaks in these two former voices, but God created a supernatural way when he made him hear through the ordinance of preaching. Like Saul, Donne’s hearers must find this voice to be directed to them and he urges them to “Postdate the whole Bible, and whatsoever thou hearest spoken of such, as thou art, before, beleeve all that to be spoken but now, and spoken to thee” (VI, 220). The sermon ends with an exhortation to hear both of God’s voices – of correction and consolation – and to complete the conversion begun by God. As with the sermon earlier in the year, Donne focuses on the nature of conformity, and of the change required before Saul becomes Paul, before God’s persecutor is transubstantiated into his defender. While inner transformation is the goal, the sermon ends with the means of deliverance, means which suggest that the way is both earthly and communal, comprising the “Ministery in his Ordinance,” a “pilgrimage” in which God provides “more and more effectual seals” of rectification until the hour of the soul’s “transmigration” into “eternall rest” (VI, 222). In a 4 March court sermon, Donne continues his exploration of how to hear and interpret the voices that command attention. The text’s focus on God’s goodness allows Donne to make some pointed remarks against extreme predestinarian positions, and to build on the concepts of “voice” and of “means” developed in his sermon on Paul’s conversion. They are combined in the economic and evocative phrase “The Scriptures are God’s Voyce; The Church is his Eccho” (VI, 223). And in the church where we hear God’s voice redoubled through the manna of “plentifull, frequent preaching,” we prepare for the second course, “the very body 12

Ibid., 226.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis and blood of Christ Jesus, shed for us, and given to us, in that blessed Sacrament” (VI, 223). Donne’s focus on the young man of his text (Matthew 19:17) who has come to seek salvation continues Donne’s public qualification of rigid predestinarian positions. Donne’s advice, first of all, is not to misinterpret those things, such as the young man’s motives, that are “in themselves, but mis-interpretable (VI, 226; my emphasis). In doubtful cases, all things being equal, the best course is “to turn the scale the best way” as interpreted by “charity.” Donne’s own interpretation of the young man’s dialogue with Christ steers a middle course: “His disposition, then, (though it have seemed suspitious, and questionable to some) was so good, as that it hath afforded us these good considerations. If it were not so good as these circumstances promise, yet it affords us another as good consideration, That how bad soever it were, Christ Jesus refused him not, when it came to him. When he enquired of Christ after salvation, Christ doth not say, There is no salvation for thee, thou Viper, thou Hypocrite, thou Pharisee, I have locked an iron doore of predestination between salvation and thee; when he enquired of him, what he should do to be sure of heaven, Christ doth not say, There is no such art, no such way, no such assurance here; but you must look into the eternall decree of Election first, and see whether that stand for you or no” (VI, 229). In fact, Christ only directs him in the way to salvation, and this is the subject of the last part of Donne’s sermon. Christ’s Socratic method of instruction, answering question with question and approaching truth by degrees, shapes Donne’s final comments on interpretation. The principle is clear: “All error consists in this, that we take things to be lesse or more, other then they are” (VI, 230). In order to avoid this error, interpreters need to approach their subject in certain ways: questioning rather than asserting, opening up rather than closing, gathering together rather than dividing. In other words, they must hear with both ears, see with both eyes, hold with both hands, to use the perceptual/experiential metaphors that Donne prefers. Christ’s way of leading the young man leads to Donne’s prayer at the sermon’s conclusion that men abandon their aptness to misinterpret other men’s actions, and their haste to call “indifferent things sins.” This application of labels, as Donne understood, was inherently controversial. Donne’s catalogue of alternatives elucidates the rhetorical tensions within which he preached: so, indifferent things, such as “hardnesse of accesse in great Persons,” “sociableness of conversation in women,” or “accommodation of Civill businesses in States,” could be called “pride,” “prostitution,” or “toleration of religion” (VI, 239). These polemical labels, applied to things that are but misinterpretable, illustrate Donne’s view that the rhetoric of disputes, more than their substantive doctrinal content, contributed to discord in the church, and prevented accommodations between people that, for all their disagreements, agreed that they were Christians. Donne’s sermons in these early months of 1625 mark him clearly as a conformist preacher in the Jacobean mold. In taking up once more the professional mantle of counsel, Donne fulfills his mandate by turning his focus to the rhetorical and hermeneutical challenges of his ministry. His contribution to the reconstruction of the English church in these months is marked particularly by his calls for conversion rather than hardening of positions, for direct rather than “squint-eyed” perspectives, and for the exercise of conscience rather than the imposition of new laws. The “closing up of truth to truth” in Christ’s dialogue 262

Rules of Engagement with the young man rather than the blinding illumination that turned Saul into Paul continues to embody for Donne a model of practical instruction in divinity that is his professional trademark. WHAT SHALL THE RIGHTEOUS DO? On 27 March, the entire equilibrium of the Church of England was altered irrevocably by the death of King James. McCullough has illustrated the symbolic transition by comparing the churchmanship of the “consummate” Jacobean preacher, Daniel Price (another alumnus of Prince Henry’s godly Protestant chapel), with William Laud, who “intermitted” his sermon on hearing of the king’s death, alleging more important matters to attend to.13 This transitional moment in English politics and religion can best be gauged through those sermons addressing James’s passing and Charles’s accession. The advice offered, the doctrinal and political points registered, the occasional applications made, and the rhetorical style chosen epitomize the tensions of the moment and stress the foremost concerns of the diverse preaching ministry that had flourished under James’s patronage. In this liminal moment, preachers’ credentials were visibly exhibited in the public sphere, as the time drew near when they would be numbered as “o” or “p,” sheep or goats, in the judgment of the new regime. Preached for one purpose but dedicated to another, Barten Holyday’s Paul’s Cross Accession Day sermon and Daniel Price’s Sunday court sermon illustrate how preachers handled the coincidence of beginnings and endings inherent in this juxtaposition of events.14 Although James was still alive on the 1625 anniversary of his accession, Holyday’s sermon sounds an ominous note: “To speake of Kingdomes may bee as full of danger, as it is of difficultie,” he proclaims, indicating his intention to unite truth with “safety” in this sermon on the theme of unity that ends with praise and thanks for the blessings of union that James has embodied. In his dedication to the Bishop of Oxford, Holyday says that, when preached, the sermon was “my seruice to his Maiesty; but now to his memory: then it expressed my duty, but now my syncerity; in which only blessing I shall alwayes defend and endeuour an ambitious perfection” (n.p). The theme of unity culminates in Holyday’s evocations of the happy Britons, who, under James, achieved unity in justice and religion. In the former unity, they are “vnited in the same justice, though not in the same lawes; which differ more in their forme, then in their purpose”; in religion, they are even more fortunate in that they are “vnited now in the discipline of Religion, as before in Religion; Now doe we all not onely serue the same God in the same truth, but also in the same manner,” priests united “euen in apparel” (p. 40). Holyday did not speak for everyone at the Cross that day, however, as the evangelical Calvinist sermon of Price, begun that day at court, and completed three days later, illustrates. On 27 March, an hour before King James’s death, Daniel Price, Dean of Hereford and Chaplain to the King, completed his sermon on the petition of 13 14

McCullough, Sermons at Court, pp. 166–7. Holyday, A Sermon Preached at Pauls Crosse; Price. McCullough identifies Price as an alumnus of Prince Henry’s court at St. James, characterized by an “unambiguous agenda of anti-Catholic militant Protestantism” (Sermons at Court, p. 192). Its “self-consciously fraternal” intimacy is also remarked (p. 198).

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis Psalm 118:25.15 As chaplain to Prince Henry, then James, and now Charles, Price had experience with occasional sermons, and appreciates the transitional significance of this sermon begun on James’s accession day anniversary, completed an hour before his death, and now dedicated to King Charles. Aware of the timeliness of his comments, he beseeches the Almighty that Charles long be “the gracious Patrone and Patterne of Religion” (sig. A2r). Price’s sermon itself is on the second half of Psalm 118:25 and is remarkable for its handling of the Lenten theme of lamentation, its comments on worldly ambition, its pointedly anti-papist comments, and its direct application and address to Charles. As Price points out, this psalm was made by David when he was first invested into his kingdom, and in this respect his choice of text is doubly apt: both suitable to his Accession Day sermon of the previous Thursday, and to this transitional moment within the realm. D’Ewes, who attended the sermon, wrote that Price “prayed earnestly for the King before his sermon, and wept often whilst he prayed and preached.”16 Not surprisingly, the sermon begins with a meditation on the world as a region of death and a time of mortality, and focuses on the dramatic moment of wrestling between James and death taking place even as the sermon was being preached. In an address to Charles and the privy councilors that is hardly tactful given the circumstances, the dying James offers Price the occasion to call together mourning Christians to see that they whom God has called Gods have taught the lesson that they must die like men. Price offers his advice in that context: “O then trust not in Princes (p. 4). “All men,” including Princes, are “born sinfull, the sonnes of men; and borne weake, there is no help in them; and borne mortall, their breath departeth; and borne corruptible, they returne to their earth” (p. 10). Despite the frailty of kings and great ones, worldly rather than religious ambitions dominate the court. Price describes these ambitious suitors as “bladders puft up with the wind of false hope and selfe loue, confused heapes of enuy, pride, and emptinesse: and why, because they called not upon God” (p. 11). Price is careful to mention that just the Thursday before James had devoutly professed his constancy in the protestant faith. The evidence of his communion in that faith, Price hopes, will “stop the mouths of any interloping Priest, or Iesuited Proselyte, that commeth to pry and spy, that he may see, that this place is, Jehovah shammah, the Lord is here, though he doth not know it” (p. 4). Price notes that by contrast with James, who declared himself a devout protestant only days before he died, the land mourns for the “apish Popish Idolatry of many who call vpon, not onely imaginary saints, but vpon Statues, and pictures, and medalls, and Idolls, creeping to Crosses, bowing to Images, like those who turned the glory of the invisible God, into the similitude of a Calfe that eateth hay” (pp. 6–7). Charles, who must now bear a great charge on his princely shoulders, is exhorted to remember the signs of God’s favour he has already enjoyed, the foremost being his deliverance from his Spanish enemies. This liberation Price styles a rescue from the “imminent, eminent, emergent Iawes” of death (p. 18). As Donne had in his dedication to the Devotions, Price also reminds the prince that even his private actions have public consequences. He phrases the point positively by reminding Charles that while the goodness of a private man is his own, that of a prince is the whole world’s; “his words are Maximes, his actions examples, his 15 16

“Saue now I beseech thee, O Lord; O Lord, I beseech thee, send now prosperitie.” D’Ewes, Autobiography, I, 262.

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Rules of Engagement examples rules” (p. 30). More as a wish than a statement of fact, Price ends his sermon with a prayer that “God keepe two mischiefes euer from within the smoake of his Court, Flatterie and Treacherie” adding that “the Iniquitie of the times may make vs feare these, not his gracious inclination” (p. 34). As McCullough has noted, however, and as Price’s sermon indicates, godly preachers, especially those comprising the remnant of Prince Henry’s circle, saw little reason to hope that Charles’s “inclination” would be to support their causes. On 29 March, the Tuesday after King James’s death, Thomas Adams preached at Court, by the patronage of the Earl of Pembroke, on Job 42:6.17 Like Price, Adams observes that the sermon, a Lenten meditation on mourning, was unexpectedly apt as commentary upon James’s death: the occasion and the text, he says punningly, “met together with such unhappy happinesse” that he did not know “Whether my Text was a Comment vpon the Occasion, or the Occasion vpon my Text.”18 Also like Price, Adams wrings the lessons from affliction, bringing all to rest on the need for humility – wrought naturally by that great leveling power of man’s return to dust. Presuming on a deathbed repentance, such as that experienced by the repentant thief, is risky: “Nature flatters it selfe with that singular instance of mercy; one malefactor on the crosse repenting at his last houre. But such hath beene Satans policie, to draw euill out of good, that the calling and sauing of that one soule, hath bin the occasion of the losse of many thousands” (p. 40). If repentance is the only fortification against God’s judgments, the exhortation is timely, as Adams himself was aware, another godly application of the “Lesson of our mortalitie” that the “finger of GOD” has written in James’s ashes as his epitaph. “SOME INTEREST IN THEIR MEMORIES” The measure of James’s symbolic significance to the Church of England and the profound consequences of his passing can be illustrated in three sermons that culminate in James’s funeral sermon, delivered by John Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, Lord Keeper, and a figure fittingly embodying the sometimes conflicting authorities of church and state as well as James’s determination to consolidate their interests.19 As Hodson observed, “Funerall Sermons are ordinarily made by such as are neere to those that are deceased, and haue some interest in their memories” (p. 4), and these three sermons illustrate what was at stake for these members of the Jacobean church upon the death of its temporal head. On 26 April, Donne preached a sermon at Denmark House some few days before the body of King James was removed for burial. Taking as its text Canticles 3:11,20 the sermon develops a discourse of the church as God’s means ordained to call men that marks Donne as a true Jacobean divine. The body of the dead king moves Donne to speak of the certainties of religious experience as he understood them.

17 18 19

20

“Wherefore I abhorre my selfe, and repent in dust and ashes.” Adams, The Sinners Movrning Habite, in Three Sermons, sig. A2r. These sermons are by John Donne (preached at Denmark House 26 April [VI, 280–91]); Hodson; John Williams. “Goe forth ye daughters of Sion, and behold King Solomon, with the crown, wherewith his mother crowned him, in the day of his espousals, and in the day of the gladnesse of his heart.”

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis Foremost is the certainty that religious belief is in God “as God hath manifested himself to them, they must believe in Christ; so if they will pretend to heare Christ, they must heare him there, where he hath promised to speake, they must heare him in the Church” (VI, 283). The second part of the sermon, in which Donne considers the daughters of Sion as the children of the church, makes his second point: the particular church which conceived, bore, and raised these children is owed allegiance, just as a mother is honoured by her children. In particular, Donne urges his hearers not to quarrel with their mother, or despise her person or apparel. “Dispute not her Doctrine, Despise not her Discipline,” he stresses; “Doe not say, she is not the same woman, she was heretofore, nor that she is not so well dressed, as she was then” (VI, 284).21 Finally, Donne explains the duties enjoined by this text to the daughters of Sion, reiterating the classic Jacobean and Donnean position between extremes, here identified as puritan and papist. They are asked to go forth, but “it is not to go so far, as out of that Church, in which God hath given us our station.” With obvious reference to the puritans seeking the church across the sea, Donne advocates something closer to home, even as he acknowledges the imperfections of that institution. The church of God is not so far away that it must be sought “either in a painted Church, on one side, or in a naked Church, on another; A Church in a Dropsie, overflowne with Ceremonies, or a Church in a Consumption, for want of such Ceremonies, as the primitive Church found usefull, and beneficiall for the advancing of the glory of God, and the devotion of the Congregation” (VI, 284). Using James’s language of inclusion, he warns against straying towards “Idolatrous chappels” or “schismaticall Conventicles,” but to follow a path on which some have gone before. The other command of the text is to see, and Donne uses this opportunity to offer two glasses to his congregation: that of Christ as he is figured in King Solomon, and of King James, now laid low by death. Donne chooses to focus on Christ’s humiliation in this text as the best glass by which to achieve salvation and concludes that if we fix our selves upon this first glass, and conform ourselves to his holy humiliation, we will become like him in his joy and glory. The picture of Christ at his crucifixion, in his passion, leads Donne into his meditation on King James. James, says Donne, is a better glass in which men can see themselves, because he is like us in sin. “Christ as he was a pure Crystall glasse, as he was God, had not been a glasse for us, to have seen ourselves in, except he had been steeled, darkened with our humane nature; . . . Those therefore that are like thee in all things, subject to humane infirmities, subject to sinnes, and yet are translated, and translated by Death, to everlasting Joy, and Glory, are nearest and clearest glasses for thee, to see thyself in; and such is this glasse, which God hath proposed to thee, in this house” (VI, 289). James is invoked as an “abridgement” of the Solomon of the text, of Christ himself, crowned with his mother earth, leaving the half-joys of earth for the greater joy of heaven. Donne’s suggestion is that following these ceremonies of burial, many will go forth in their several ways, some “to the service of their new Master, and some to the 21

Although it is not my habit to read direct biographical revelations from Donne’s sermons, it is hard not to imagine the impact of these words on an audience that knew of Donne’s Catholic baptism, and, more to the point, of Donne’s ongoing care of his aged recusant mother at the deanery of St. Paul’s. These words suggest to me that Donne’s accommodations with Catholicism, as well as his willingness to forbear controversy over matters of “apparel” are explicable as much by his love and respect for his mother’s religious experience as by his formidable education in controversial divinity under the Calvinist Thomas Morton.

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Rules of Engagement enjoying of their Fortunes conferred by their old; some to the raising of new Hopes, some to the burying of old, and all; some to new, and busie endeavours in Court, some to contented retirings in the Countrey” (VI, 291), but that the example of James will continue to unite “all we that have served him” (VI, 291). Goldberg uses this sermon to argue that “Donne’s self-constitution is absolutist,” and in so doing focuses, not unexpectedly, on those aspects of it that stress the least complicated patterns of authority and imitation.22 For example, Goldberg claims that Donne gains authority by looking at the “two glasses,” James and Solomon. “The dead body of the king is an equal authority to the text in which the name of Solomon represents Christ.”23 But, as my own analysis has shown,24 James is not equal in authority because he is equal in power to Christ, but precisely because the stain of humanity and imperfection makes him more “exemplary” than Christ, and so more easily followed by sinners. Likewise, LevyNavarro has demonstrated that Donne consistently employs absolutist terminology to “transfer attention away from James and earthly kingship” to Christ as Solomon, the head of the Church of God.25 “He creates, then, a hierarchy of Solomons, and he imputes all the most extravagant claims of kingship to the highest Solomon, Christ.”26 Similarly, the authority in “ashes” that Donne stresses is by contrast with those who look for footsteps “with them which tread upon Carpets, or upon Marbles,” which, as Donne says, “receive no impressions” (VI, 285). It is preferable to look to the way marked out “in the ways of holy sorrow, and religious humiliation” than in these other courtly paths. And, whereas I interpret Donne’s comments that the royal household functions even if the king is gone as a way to stress that authority resides in the institution rather than the person, Goldberg interprets these words to mean that the king’s power extends from beyond the grave: “God continues to make his voice heard in the king; the king continues to exert his authority in the world, to make the human community those joined through him, speaking, directing their prayers in just that manner Donne had said that letters and prayers both worked, to make a place for oneself in the world.”27 The issues of authority Goldberg raises are important, but one needs to distinguish between authority and power, between the authority of a “good,” that is, an “exemplary” glass, and the unquestioned authority of the royal absolute presence. Donne’s instrumentality, likewise, requires another interpretation. It is perfectly conventional for Donne to speak of himself, as preacher, as one of those means ordained by God to advance the faith of the congregation and to instruct them in how to apply examples to their particular circumstances. Donne’s function is to show hearers how to read these texts, whether scriptural or historical. In this case it is important that Donne as preacher remain instrumental, that he not impose his personality or opinions on the congregation, but that he bring the example (in this case the dead body of James) into conformity with scriptures and with the experience of his congregation. That he exercises this authority does not mean that Donne’s self-constitution is absolutist. And in fact his emphasis on the exemplary properties of the broken and humiliated James belies that interpretation. 22 23 24 25 26 27

Goldberg, p. 218. Ibid., p. 215. “Donne’s Protestant Casuistry,” 54–5, 66; Levy-Navarro, 164. Ibid., 166. Ibid. Goldberg, p. 218.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis Title to the “last” sermon preached before James, also at Denmark House, falls to Phineas Hodson, D. D., Chancellor of York and Chaplain in Ordinary to the King. On 3 May, Hodson preached on Joshua 1:2.28 Hodson is a competent but not particularly inspired preacher whose theme is praise of the dead monarch, and whose invention and style are pedestrian. He divides his material into parts and handles each one briefly, focusing on topics by now conventional: James as peacemaker and James’s constancy in the reformed religion. Of the former, Hodson says that “if Moses were a great Warrior; King Iames was as great a Peacemaker” (p. 20). Hodson alludes to popular discontent with James’s policies, noting that “it hath euer beene the condition of the best Princes, euen to be traduced for their vertues” (p. 21). As to his resolution to religion, Hodson cites James’s frequent speeches, his learned writings, and his continual concern for religious duties, claiming that in twenty-two years, James heard more sermons than all the princes before him in two hundred (p. 22). The sermon ends with a call to arms, specifically for the restoration of the Palatinate to Frederick and Elizabeth, and a call for Joshua to arise and “thrust the vsurper out of his seat” (p. 26). Hodson’s application of his text, as in so many zealous sermons, exposes the frustration of the godly, in the process suggesting just how strained the positive rhetoric used to described James actually was at the time of his death. The man selected to preach the official funeral sermon for King James was John Williams, and from the perspective of ceremony and symbolism, he did not disappoint. The sermon is elegantly shaped to reveal the exquisitely detailed parallels between Solomon and James, the parts linked together in “mutuall cohaerence” (p. 5). The sermon’s structure and pattern is repeated sonorously – without deviation or digression – culminating in the exegesis of James as a statue or monument to the legacy of Solomon and a pattern to his son, the new king, Charles. The decorum of this performance – a public occasion celebrating the life of the most important public figure – is announced at the beginning where Williams explains that he will present an idealized portrait of James, evidenced in his happy life, happy reign, and happy death. In deliberately portraying James as an “image” rather than a “shadow” (p. 3), Williams offers him to the expectant congregation as the “liuely image or representation” of religious kingship. In the final section of the sermon this “image” becomes a “statue,” once more underlining the exemplary force of his life, reign, and death to the congregation at large, and then finally to his successor, that “imitator of Salomon” (p. 76). Price had condemned the idolatry of those who creep before statues and images, but Williams unabashedly invokes the devotional connotations of these words, drifting much closer to a Catholic use of images than Donne, for example, who selected the less controversial word “glass” to describe James, and who had made him exemplary in his sinful humanity rather than as an ideal of religious kingship. Williams singles out for praise particular aspects of James that correspond to the details presented about Solomon in the first part of the sermon. He praises James’s eloquence, for example, calling him “the most powerfull Speaker, that euer swayed the Scepter of this Kingdome” (p. 41). His accession to the throne of England is glossed providentially, while his commitment to England’s church is illustrated by his patronage of the doctrine, discipline, and maintenance of that church. At several points, public anxieties about the state of James’s religion make 28

“Moses my Seruant is dead; now therefore arise.”

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Rules of Engagement their presence felt, as when William protests that “there neuer lived a more constant, resolute, and settled Protestant in point of Doctrine, then our late Soueraigne” (p. 47). The circumstances of James’s death, including his reception of the Eucharist, corroborate this claim, and Williams relies on his ethical authority as eye-witness to make them. Williams also glosses a second anxiety related to James’s pacifist foreign policies, sharply condemning the “malice of some people” who would deny James the laurel of war as well as of peace (p. 55). Williams’s praise of the actions of peace and his bitter aside (“what euer debauched people say to the contrarie” [p. 56]) are virtually the only lapses in decorum, measuring the intensity of public debate on these subjects. Maintaining a continued peace, he concludes, can only be managed by the wisdom of Solomon (p. 57). Structurally and rhetorically, the parallel Williams draws between James and Solomon is thorough and detailed. The sermon’s tone is dignified, stately, and authoritative, in keeping with the decorum of state occasions. Significantly, Williams did not find favour with Charles (or, more specifically, Buckingham) as a result of this sermon, which, despite its glance towards the new regime, is very much the last public act of this Jacobean prelate, and looks naively optimistic when viewed from the perspective of the iconoclastic shattering of the symbolic in the execution of that one “most like himselfe” (p. 76) in 1649. Williams predicted in his sermon that history would be the cruelest interpreter of a man. “He had need be carefull of all his Actions, that is to be the subiect of future Histories” (p. 19), he had stated, confident that in all his actions, King James had pre-empted history’s “Lash, and scourge” (p. 20). His confidence in the judgments of history sounds ironic to modern ears. CREDO The last word on the impact of James’s death, however, belongs to Donne. With the death of King James in March and the invitation to preach to King Charles at St. James’s (3 April 1625), Donne was provided with an opportunity to establish clearly, at the outset of the new reign, his religious and political principles. This sermon is arguably one of the most important sermons Donne preached, because of its occasion, its audience, and its public articulation of Donne’s vision of the Church of England at this historical juncture. It is a homiletic moment charged with the possibilities of the new reign, and aware that voices of leadership needed to be heard. But the sermon is more than Donne’s credo – although it is that, too. It is his opportunity to intervene personally and powerfully in the direction of the English church. Both its style and its content characterize Donne at his most effective as a preacher. Donne’s text of this inaugural sermon is taken from Psalms 11:3: “If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” Even Donne’s choice of text is provocative, suggesting if only to be refuted, that James’s death has meant profound, perhaps irreparable, changes to the English church. Ultimately, Donne denies that foundations have been destroyed, but in order to make that claim, he must first define foundations so that the word is not synonymous with the person of either dead king or heir, but with the structures of authority by which kings are created and supported. The sermon is divided into three parts: a) a section arguing that unless foundations be in danger, the righteous man should be quiet; b) a taxonomy of foundations of Church, State, Family, and Self; and c) advice about what to do if foundations are actually destroyed. 269

John Donne and Conformity in Crisis Donne’s sense of occasion requires in Part I of the sermon a powerful explication of his theory of foundations, rooted in the belief that “there is a large Latitude, and, by necessitie of Circumstances, much may be admitted, and yet no Foundations destroyed” (VI, 243). This entire section is structured by contrast with the Roman Church and allows Donne to express a broadly based and tolerant spirituality opposed to Rome’s contentious and uncharitable multiplication of differences. Here Donne’s opening gambit is clear. Unlike those of the Roman faith, “we must not too jealously suspect, not too bitterly condemne, not too peremptorily conclude, that what soever is not done, as wee would have it done, or as wee have seene it done in former times, is not well done” (VI, 243).29 This toleration, however, does not sanction religious indifference that makes it “all one, whether wee had one, or two, or tenne, or no Religion” (VI, 244). In this sermon, Donne is bold to distinguish between those into whose hands God has committed power (those of whom he has said “ye are gods”) and those who are idols rather than Gods. So magistrates and those in authority have a duty not to be blind, deaf, or lame in discharging their duties. Only then does Donne add that private men have an equal duty not to be overly suspicious of superiors, exaggerating flaws so that “If there fall a broken tyle from the house, hee thinkes Foundations are destroyed” (VI, 245). Both parties bear some responsibility to be quiet, by fulfilling the duties of their specific offices. As evidence of confusion about the priority foundations should take, Donne cites examples of those within the English church who write “such Exasperations, such Exacerbations, such Vociferations, such Ejulations [sic], such Defamations of one another, as if all Foundations were destroyed” (VI, 246). Donne notes of these controversialists that “every Mart, wee see more Bookes written by these men against one another, then by them both, for Christ” (VI, 246). Worse than this torrent of uncharitableness, however, is the “universall Deluge” of the Roman Church which denies salvation to those of the Reformed churches “because wee denie some things, which they in their afternoone are come to affirme,” not because of any positive error that it can charge (VI, 246). Again, Donne takes the Roman charge of heresy seriously, affirming in this section that no heresy is “little.” Heresy does concern foundations, and it is a fault to be indifferent or even compassionate to heretics. But, as Donne points out, the righteous do not apply the term indiscriminately; “the Righteous lookes to Foundations before hee will be scandalized himselfe, or condemne another” (VI, 248). However, Donne charges that in the Roman Church the name of heresy is bent against anyone who damages “not the Church of God, but the Church of Rome; nor the Church of Rome, but the Court of Rome; nor the Court of Rome, but the Kitchen of Rome; nor for the Heart, but for the Bellie; not the Religion, but the Policie; not the Altar, but the Exchequer of Rome.”30 In Part I, Donne’s fundamental objection to the Roman Church is that “Evermore, they will presse for all, and yeeld nothing” (VI, 249). In this, he says, it is truly universal.

29

30

The possibility of a pun on Donne’s name in this sentence is intriguing, suggesting perhaps Donne’s own uncertainties, his own personal involvement in the issues, and even a satirical critique of his own fears or objections to changes in the Church. Milton discusses the uses to which the distinction between the Church and the Court of Rome was put as the problem of how to define Romanists who seemed to be opposing the temporal authority of the pope (Catholic and Reformed, pp. 263–9). Donne uses the distinction several times in his sermons. See especially II, 103; III, 210; VII, 421; IX, 76; X, 126; X, 174.

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Rules of Engagement Part II of this sermon is a taxonomy of foundations: Church, State, Family, Self. In each case, Donne elucidates the foundation clearly and contrasts it with its Roman distortion. The foundation of all is God, but, more particularly, the foundations of church, state, family, and self are Christ, the law, peace, and conscience. Christ and his doctrines as revealed in the scriptures are the foundation of the church, and the Roman Church, in denying the use of scriptures, produces a “wrinching, a shrinking, a sinking, an undermining, a destroying of Foundations” of this first house (VI, 253). The state’s foundation in this sermon marking the transfer of state power at the death of King James is the law, not the king.“The Law is the mutuall, the reciprocall Suretie betweene the State and the Subject. The Lawe is my Suretie to the State, that I shall pay my Obedience, And the Lawe is the States Suretie to mee, that I shall enjoy my Protection” (VI, 253). The foundation of the family is peace, achieved by obedience and charity, a “mutuall support of one anothers infirmities” (VI, 255). Judiciously, Donne balances the excesses that destroy its foundation. Finally, the foundation of the self is conscience, and must be laid here though the house is completed in the next world. “Conscience is, Syllogismus practicus; upon certaine premisses, well debated, I conclude, that I should doe it, and then I doe it” (VI, 256). Part III of the sermon offers counsel regarding action when foundations are actually shaken. Donne’s advice for handling shaky foundations in the church is specifically anti-Roman – not to call super-edifications and controverted doctrines foundations. In the commonwealth, Donne’s advice is not to dispute laws except “In those Councells, where Lawes are made, or reformed” (VI, 259). This section calls for obedience, but also informed respect for the institutions and processes by which laws are made. In the family, Donne’s advice is not to call “light faults” by “heavie Names” (VI, 259). And like states, families should keep their chancery and parliament within doors and “compose and determine all emergent differences there” (VI, 259). In the last house, our selves, Donne’s counsel is to enjoy the “Evidence, and the Verdict, and the Iudgement, and the Possession of a good Conscience” (VI, 260–1). In this sermon, then, Donne issues his manifesto to the new reign. In its structure of argument, and the middle nature of its rhetoric, this sermon is typical of Donne’s style of instruction and of his commitment to foundations – and a testament to his ability to teach the processes of discrimination by which such judgments are formed. Several points made by contrast with the foundations he discusses confirm Donne’s sense of how the Roman Church errs and how it deludes. For Donne the similarities between churches, their points of agreement, must be constantly tested so that the faithful can distinguish the good from the evil themselves. Donne’s sermon on foundations, much more than the funerary exercises over the body of King James, says a great deal about the future of the English church in the 1620s and later. The active discretion of Donne’s performance at court, and the strenuous reiteration of foundational principles, mark precisely the anxieties of the incoming monarch’s church, but also the ethical demands of preaching in the public sphere in 1625. In the new reign, Donne himself would find his position less secure, his course less true, as the polarities and divisions that permeated even the funeral moment took firmer hold in the centre and shattered the equilibrium of the old king’s church without providing a viable new one in its place.

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Chapter 11 “BLESSED SOBRIETY”: JOHN DONNE, THE PUBLIC SPHERE, AND CAROLINE CONFORMITY

I

N 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.1 And yet, more than any of his contemporaries, Donne embodied a vision of the church as a self-consciously inclusive English institution. The doctrine of that church was articulated in a set of articles that did not simply paper over the cracks dividing its most extreme critics (both external and internal), but offered a way of seeing, thinking, and discoursing about religion that could negotiate a stable ground between these views. Some divines, notably the English delegates to the international Synod of Dort, had participated in the compromises required for a harmony of confessions.2 These delegates persisted in that process because the public good deriving from such 1

2

In large part we can explain this neglect by the inadequacy of the instruments used to measure his contribution. Donne’s impact cannot be calculated by the narrow standard of direct political influence, for example: numerous officially invited sermons, an extensive publication record, or promotion through the church’s administrative ranks. Nor can even his most prominent sermons be easily interpreted as the direct cause of any discernible material effect. In most recent historical narratives about the character and identity of the English church, then, Donne figures, if at all, in footnotes or appendices. Historical scholarship on the role of the English delegation at the Synod is clear on the labour of consensus enacted by most of the delegates, and particularly the English who reported on the degree

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John Donne, the Public Sphere, and Caroline Conformity debate compensated in religious as well as political terms for the points conceded, in no small part by instructing delegates in principles of negotiation and dispute that would be necessary in the national public sphere. Although Donne’s vision was impossible to sustain under pressure of the radicalizing and polarizing forces threatening the church, he attempted in his sermons and public life to articulate the principles by which his vision was achieved. Himself a baptized Catholic, he understood and spoke for continuities with a Catholic past, purged of the corruptions of the pest-house, but not in the counter-Reformation style of the Council of Trent, and not in the political mold of continental Catholic polities. At the same time, he was profoundly “Jacobean,” committed to excluding only those few extremists at the margins from communion within the English church. Temperamentally and doctrinally inclined to the most generous interpretation of the Reformed confession, he was committed to a church that could accommodate all but the most rigid predestinarians, on the one hand, or the neo-Pelagians on the other. What was important for Donne was imagining a church that was not bound finally to “over-precise” doctrinal positions, but that was continually engaged in a public and open process of adjudication and negotiation and whose aim was conversion to salvation rather than correctness. This effort to be whole marks his sermons. Their rhetoric of moderation expresses Donne’s commitment to the shared values of a specifically English protestantism, and to the processes by which conversion to that Church is enabled. The results of this effort of moderation are many and complex. They include the ethical imperative, enacted in his Devotions, that “No man is an island,” that private actions, particularly of public figures, have public consequences. Largely in response to the crises of censorship and controversy in which they were preached, Donne’s sermons also model the flexibility and discernment, the casuistical weighing and balancing of competing authorities, that enables conscientious conformity. The action of this “active discretion” on “passive obedience” enables Donne to interpret conversion to the Church of England as a “transubstantiation” and a “circumcision” through the “means” and “ordinances” provided there. The consequence of the crises of these late Jacobean years is to confirm that religion for Donne is not in private persons or performed in secret – at masses or conventicles – but a public and communal experience, mediated in the English church through its ordinances of preaching, prayer, and sacraments, and figured in the sermons as a “voice.” Most important, Donne’s sermons contribute to the construction of a set of principles governing public religious discourse established to counter the effects of personal revilings and provocative absolutist rhetoric so prominent – for all their talk of moderation – in the preaching and polemic of his contemporaries. Several of Donne’s sermons explicitly deny their participation in a public sphere outside the homiletic circle (“that is not our sphear, the Publick, the State” [IV, 140]), but the principles of analogy he establishes make such separations difficult of courtesy, harmony, and compromise with which decisions on doctrine and wording were achieved. As Milton observes “Despite all the conflicts of Dort, . . . the Synod still gave clear expression to the harmony of the Confessions of the different Reformed Churches” (Catholic and Reformed, p. 421). Although condemning much anti-Calvinist doctrine, for example, the English delegates vehemently opposed published, personal condemnation of the Remonstrants, and Bishop Carleton contrasted the delegates’ care of “mutuall consent sought” with Montagu’s attacks on the Contra-Remonstrant Calvinists (Catholic and Reformed, p. 422). W. B. Patterson describes the decrees as “discursive,” “aimed more at edifying the faithful than at resolving intractable philosophical and theological difficulties” (p. 276).

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis to sustain. Moreover, as this study has shown, Donne’s most important contribution to this public sphere is his discourse of “perspective,” a constant practice of reminding auditors of their ability to adjust point of view – to correct the “perceptual” handicaps that leave them squint-eyed, half-deaf, and left-handed. While other preachers were using the pulpit to deliver “position papers,” Donne saw its potential as a place of conversion. Donne’s radical faith in the English church as an institution informs his sermons. Publicly, they enact the casuistical processes of moral debate, thus linking the most private of arbiters – conscience – to the most public of media – the sermon. Among many contributors to this discourse, Donne’s exercises in interpretation stand out for the inclusiveness of their reach, the accommodation of their rhetorical gestures, and the imagination of their renovation of controverted terms. His sermons present him as an ethical model of integrity and as a force of cohesion in a fractured institution. Although it is not my purpose to extend this study very far into the Caroline period, certain continuities with the new reign can be observed. On 7 February 1626, the clergy of the province of Canterbury met in Convocation at Westminster Abbey and elected John Donne as their prolocutor.3 Although the incident has been dismissed as insignificant, Donne’s election by the lower clergy to this office signals once more his reputation as a middle voice on controversial matters. Furthermore, Donne’s oration delivered on the occasion betrays his anxieties about speaking publicly in an atmosphere rendered controversial by public debate over Montagu’s allegedly Arminian publications on the one hand and the Dort articles signed by English divines on the other. In June 1626, Charles responded to this climate by issuing a proclamation intended to ensure a “Rule of sobrietie”4 in handling disputed doctrinal points; it effectively banned predestinarian dispute without resolving the conflicts that had stimulated its resurgence. As prolocutor to Convocation, the body which by rights ought to have been discussing issues of doctrinal orthodoxy, Donne’s job was to convey the united sense of the lower house to the upper, and to convey the upper house’s commands to his peers.5 The sensitivity of the task in an openly divided body must have been 3

4

5

On Wednesday, 8 February, Donne delivered a Latin oration to the full Convocation, to which Dr. Leonard Mawe, Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge, responded. In the absence of the Archbishop of Canterbury (George Abbot) and the Bishop of London (George Montaigne), Samuel Harsnett, Bishop of Norwich, responded to the speeches by Mawe and Donne. An eyewitness evaluated the entire event. Bald knew only of Donne’s oration, which was first published in the 1650 Poems, and he included it as Appendix D, part VII, of his John Donne (pp. 573–5). The two eye-witness documents are described and discussed in Bawcutt and Kelliher. The proclamation commanded all subjects “that from hencefoorth they cary themselves so wisely, warily, and conscionably, that neither by Writing, Preaching, Printing, Conferences, or otherwise, they raise any doubts, or publish, or maintaine any new inventions, or opinions concerning Religion, then such as are clearly grounded, and warranted by the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England, heretofore published, and happily established by authoritie” (Larkin II, 92). The penalty for breaking this “Rule of sobrietie” and for willfully breaking “that circle of Order, which without apparent danger to Church and State, may not be broken” is to incur “exemplary punishments” as a warning to others (Larkin, II, 92–3). The procedural question of where these doctrinal debates ought to take place stirred considerable contention. Bishop Carleton, leader of the English delegation to Dort, wanted Convocation to discuss and approve the Dort articles, in this procedural respect at least, supporting the Durham House group who saw the issue as jurisdictional as much as doctrinal and believed Convocation’s right to establish canons of orthodoxy to be threatened (Peter White, pp. 242–4). In particular, they wanted to resist determining doctrine in Parliament. However, in the end the debate took place at York House, largely on the advice of Andrewes (Heylyn, Cyprianus Anglicus, p. 153).

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John Donne, the Public Sphere, and Caroline Conformity exacerbated by the heightened climate of religious controversy surrounding Montagu, which had only intensified since the 1624 parliament with the publication of Appello Caesarem. Donne himself would have held several views both on Montagu’s publications and on the question of debate of the Dort articles. On the one hand, Donne in his sermons continued to articulate distinctions between Pelagianism and Church of England doctrine.6 On the other hand, he understood the need for “sobriety,” a quality he attributed to Dort for its way of handling disputes and a quality conspicuously absent from most discussions of Montagu in these months. Donne would have had to exercise considerable tact in expressing the consensus of the lower house where there was clearly division and in conveying the instructions of the upper house. That Donne was considered acceptable to both houses, themselves internally divided, confirms his reputation for learning, fairness, and eloquence, and, more importantly, for independence from increasingly sectarian allegiances. The oration Donne delivered on 7 February betrays anxieties about his fitness for the position and, more importantly, about the burden of the highly-public profile of prolocutor. To this point, commentators have not taken seriously the extent of these anxieties, concluding that they are hyperbolic, self-dramatizing tropes, perhaps designed to enhance Donne’s status in a job no one else considered important. In his oration Donne says “I see myself cast down, suddenly placed under a Burden, unequal and ill-adapted to my strength, and from the shore, where I might have thought to have done my duty satisfactorily by praying to all and assenting to the more rational, [I see myself] thrust into the public arena into the raging of a sea of speaking openly and speaking first, of Conciliating and Consulting, Collecting and Referring, Bringing forth proofs and Accusations. . . .”7 This anxiety is alleviated somewhat by his professed confidence that Convocation is a consultative body, modelled on God’s consultative Trinity. Donne suggests further that a religious “athlete” rather than a man “out of shape” (“homine inexercito”) would have been a better choice, but he shoulders what he takes to be his public duty in confidence that God can use weak means to accomplish his ends. Donne’s anxiety about speaking openly and speaking first might seem exaggerated or insincere, especially when he also asserts that there is “no Goliath” rising against us “for neither are there heresies for us to contend against, nor are schisms occurring to be minded.”8 This is a remarkable statement given the ongoing public debate over Montagu and Buckingham. But what Donne suggests here – and consistently in his sermons – is that these labels ought not to be applied subjectively or lightly. Donne makes the same point in his oration saying that the assembled clergy have the power to avoid unproductive controversy: “just as books are in the comprehension of their readers, so deeds in the minds of their recipients have their fate.”9 So he invites his audience, particularly those of the upper house, to “remember weaker stars from the kindly point of view of the stronger,”10 and to remember that heresies and schisms are serious charges, not to be alleged frivolously in a “sober” body charged with debating difficult religious points. 6 7

8 9 10

VII, 240; IX, 67. “. . . dejectum me video, Oneri, viribus meis impari, & importuno, repente suppositum, & a litore, ubi omnibus adprecando, & sanioribus annuendo, satis officio meo fecisse putari possem, in arenam, in aestum maris jam protrusum, proloquendi & praeloquendi, Conciliandi & Consulendi, Colligendi & Referendi, Argumentandi & Arguendi. . . .” (Bald, p. 574). “(nec enim haereses a nobis debellandae, nec schismate occurunt resarcienda . . .)” (Ibid., p. 575). “sicut & libri a captu lectorum, ita & opera ab animis recipientum, sua fata habere . . .” (Ibid.). “ut meminisse dignentur, imbecilliores stellas, a benigno fortiorum aspectu . . .” (Ibid.).

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis In fact, the sermons for the first half of 1626 articulate a coherent set of principles for governing public religious debate. In the preface to the king preceding a 24 February 1626 sermon, Donne says, “Wee are in Times when the way to Peace is Warre, but my Profession leades not me to those Warres; And wee are in Times when the Peace of the Church, may seeme to implore a kinde of Warre, of Debatements and Conferences in some points; but my disposition leades mee not to that Warre neither” (VII, 72–3). England in 1626 was on the verge of open war with both France and Spain, and Donne seems to be referring to that political situation in the first part of his statement. The second part, however, alludes directly to a number of current church “warres,” specifically the York House debates on Arminianism. Just seven days before this sermon was preached, the second of the York House debates had been concluded. The subject of the debates on 11 and 17 February had been Montagu’s published views, particularly those regarding perseverance and justification. Donne’s friend Thomas Morton had been one of the chief spokesmen on the Calvinist side against Bishop Buckeridge of Rochester and Montagu himself, who attended the second meeting. Accounts of the debates written from both sides show that the doctrinal issues raised were not resolved conclusively, and Tyacke sees the conference as “the approximate point at which the circle of clerics patronized by Bishop Neile of Durham emerged as the effective spokesmen of the English church.”11 As prolocutor to Convocation, Donne must have felt considerable pressure from both sides. We know from Donne’s oration that he preferred to observe from the shore, rather than to speak first, but that occasionally he entered the controversial “fray.”12 When he does so, however, as in his “meerely Polemicall” (VII, 166) sermon of 21 May against the Catholic doctrine of purgatory, he justifies this “handling of a Controversie” in light of James’s Directions against “all impertinent handling of Controversies, meerly and professedly as Controversies, though never by way of positive maintenance of Orthodoxall and fundamentall Truths” (VII, 166). The earlier directions, he maintains, had urged “a discreet and temperate forbearing of personall, and especially of Nationall exasperations,” made precarious by the prince’s journey to Spain when he was “then taken in their pits” (VII, 166). Things having changed, however, so that the prince, now king, is safely returned and all peace with Spain is removed, Donne shifts the focus to the “supplanting, and subverting of [Romish] error” by “beating of our Drums in the Pulpit” (VII, 167).13 This religious war, he contends, is the decorous counterpart of the beating of the drums abroad, and a fitting turn from civil dissension to the common enemy, Rome. In commenting on the dangers of internal religious division, Donne’s sermon preached 18 April 1626 asks its hearers to contrast the “blessed sobriety” (VII, 127) 11 12

13

Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, p. 180. In a sermon debating the nature of God’s eternal decree of election, he says, his “onely purpose was, that no Bystander, should bee hurt, whilest the Fray lasted, with either Opinion” (VII, 73). In an earlier sermon, at Lincoln’s Inn, in which Donne had articulated his own rule governing controversial debate, Donne had warned against defaming or separating from the Church because it contained lions who abused their power or vipers who shook the articles of religion. “It is the chafing of the Lion,” he says, “and the stirring of the Viper, that aggravates the danger; the first blow makes the wrong, but the second makes the fray; and they that will endure no kind of abuse in State or Church, are many times more dangerous then that abuse which they oppose” (III, 184). Only ten days before this 21 May sermon, Buckingham had been named as “the principall patron and supporter of the Semi-Pelagian[s],” an identification he had stoutly denied, claiming he had never heard of the Pelagian opinion before (Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, p. 165). So, too, in his efforts to cast off the name “Arminian,” Montagu had denied reading Arminius, and Calvinist bishops rejected the name “puritan” applied to them by Montagu and his supporters (Milton, Catholic and Reformed, pp. 538–9).

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John Donne, the Public Sphere, and Caroline Conformity with which doctrines were delivered by the English delegates at the Synod of Dort with the contentious wrangling of the Council of Trent. Primarily an attack on Trent’s premature determination of many points that Donne says are as yet “in debatement and disputation” (VII, 124), the sermon concludes: “Therefore have so many sad and sober men amongst them, repented, that in the Councell of Trent, they come to a finall resolution in so many particulars; because how incommodious soever some of those particulars may prove to them, yet they are bound to some necessity of a defence, or to some aspersion if they forsake such things as have been solemnly resolved in that manner” (VII, 125). Donne is willing to grant the Trent delegates “a prudent, and discreet abstinence” in forbearing to determine precisely “how far the secular Lawes of temporall Princes binde the Conscience of a Subject” (VII, 125), but he nevertheless charges them with putting too much authority in the pope’s pronouncements. At the same time, he accuses the pope of failing to determine the cause because he saw the advantage of holding it undetermined. Donne is equally critical of the pope’s refusal to rule on “the concurrence of the Grace of God, and the free will of man” (VII, 125), especially since he forbids publication of the debates, reserving decision to his “secret judgement” (VII, 126) rather than to scriptures. By contrast with the absolutism of the pope and this Council, Donne offers the example of the English divines at Dort who modified the narrow views of those “over-good husbands of Gods large and bountifull Grace” (VII, 126), the Gomarist Calvinists, with their sentence “That all men are truly, and in earnest called to eternall life, by Gods Minister” (VII, 127). Unlike the articles of faith, which Donne says were invented just “the other day” (VII, 202) at the Council of Trent, the Dort decrees are characterized as the product of sober and painstaking deliberation, the kind of deliberation vetoed by the prerogative of the pope at Trent. In particular, the doctrine of hypothetical universalism to which the English delegates had led the entire Synod, after much deliberation, was an example of the constructive consequences of debate and compromise,14 constructive, at least, to those delegates interested in expanding the English church and in limiting the number of conscientious objectors to its doctrine and discipline. The Synod of Dort may have been Donne’s model of temperate consultation on contentious doctrinal issues, but Donne’s own experience with the foreign synod, and perhaps more recently with Convocation, parliament, and the York House conference, had made him acutely aware of the difficulty of sustaining decorum even in such sober councils. On 18 April Donne had already attacked the privy whispering of the backbiting Pharisees as outside the proper sphere of discourse (which included “Legal and Juridical Accusation” or “private reprehension done with discretion, and moderation” [VII, 151]). Now, in June, when articles of impeachment against Buckingham and charges of heretical opinion against Montagu had been aired in parliament, Donne extends this discussion to comment on how Councils ought to handle controversy.15 Specifically, Donne comments on the inappropriateness and

14 15

W. B. Patterson, pp. 271–5; Peter White, pp. 187–92. Donne explains that in great councils as well as in councils of state, “an immature and indigested, an intempestive and unseasonable pressing of present remedies against all inconveniences, may suffocate the heart of the businesse, and frustrate and evacuate the blessed and glorious purpose of the whole Councell.” In great councils, “every man puts off his owne person.” Donne here is urging the sharp-sightedness of the eagle (who looks to “evident” dangers to state and church) rather than that of the basilisk (who sees “so that he may kill” [VII, 204]).

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis ineffectiveness of personal revilings in disputes, suggesting that “occassionall displeasure” against particular adversaries should not obscure a “holy zeale” for “the maine doctrinall points” (VII, 203). Even Augustine, he concedes, may have been “transported sometimes with vehemency against his present adversary, whether Pelagian, or Manichean” (VII, 203). Donne adds that “even some great Councels in the Church, and Church-affaires have felt, that for collaterall and occasionall, and personall respects, which were risen after they were met, the maine doctrinall points, and such as have principally concerned the glory of God, and the salvation of soules, and were indeed the principall and onely cause of their then meeting there, have been neglected. Men that came thither with a fervent zeale to the glory of god, have taken in a new fire of displeasure against particular Heretiques, or Schismatiques, and discontinued their holy zeale towards God, till their occasionall displeasure towards those persons might be satisfied, and so those Heresies, and Heretiques against whom they met, have got advantage by that passion. . . .” (VII, 203). Donne’s references to Augustine versus the Pelagians and great Councils versus heretics suggest that Donne is alluding here to one aspect of the Synod of Dort that had appalled the English delegates: namely, the virulent, personal denunciation of the Remonstrants that accompanied the Dort articles, not least by associating them directly with Pelagianism. Donne’s own strategy of using the names of ancient heretics – Pelagians and Catharists – to describe contemporary holders of heretical opinions is, from one point of view, a thin veneer of civility in an otherwise highly polemical assault. However, it accords with Donne’s own rejection of “personal revilings” and can be interpreted as an invitation to apply the example only if it fits, and as an illustration of the “nearnesse” that is the aim of Donne’s homiletics. Donne continues his articulation of the appropriate style of public religious debate in 1626 by considering the examples of Luther and, especially, Melanchthon. Melanchthon is an expositor whom Donne praises on several occasions, primarily for being “a man freest of any from contention,” and “a man of more learning and temperance then perchance have met in any one, in our perverse and froward times” (VII, 206–7). Donne’s admiration of Melanchthonian Lutheranism is entirely consonant with his comments on the discursive and interpretive practices appropriate to controversial debate: Melanchthon is “no bold, nor rash, nor dangerous expressor of himself” (III, 94), according to Donne. And, in fact, it is Melanchthon’s rhetorical handling of controverted matters, what W. B. Patterson calls his “unpolemical and conciliatory Protestantism,”16 that earns from Donne respect for the substance of the matters discussed. However, Donne’s endorsement of Melanchthon focuses primarily on the interpretive practices of this Lutheran reformer rather than on his doctrine, commenting on the Augsburg Confession (1530) that it “was written after all things were sufficiently debated, and had siftings and cribrations enow” (VII, 181). Donne’s support for this achievement also recalls that James had cautioned the English delegates to Dort not to say anything that would preclude reconciliation with Lutherans and, ultimately, with Catholics.17 16 17

W. B. Patterson, p. 138. Montagu also cited Melanchthon as representing “moderate and temperate” reformers on the question of free will (Appello Caesarem, pp. 95, 83), and Milton notes that during the interregnum some Laudians “associated the Church of England more directly and systematically with Melanchthonian Lutheranism’s moderate views” (Catholic and Reformed, p. 444). Wallace notes, however, that “English coupling of Melanchthon with moderate predestinarianism had surfaced long before the Arminian controversy” (“The Anglican Appeal,” 358–9).

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John Donne, the Public Sphere, and Caroline Conformity Any interpreter receives Donne’s approbation if he can avoid the “vehemency against his present adversary” (VII, 203) that Donne sees as the greatest obstacle to reform and conversion. Donne cites Calvin, for example, for his willingness to compromise for the sake of confessional unity, even on important matters that had not been locally determined, such as how the Eucharist ought to be administered. The significance of quoting from Calvin requires careful interpretation. Donne’s increasing use of Calvin does not necessarily prove that Donne was a Calvinist, but does show that, unlike Montagu and other Arminians, Donne was not “anxious to denigrate him.”18 Milton argues that in the 1620s Calvinists objected that, “in Laudian hands, the boundary between ‘controlling’ and ‘traducing’ Calvin was too readily breached.”19 Donne, on the other hand, is engaged in a program of reinterpreting Calvin to support his own generous interpretations of the Thirty-Nine Articles, the foundational doctrinal articles of the Church of England. In this case, Donne explains that Calvin believed the sacrament might be administered in prisons, but departed from his personal opinion because the Church in Geneva thought differently, thus supporting Donne’s view that national churches might develop very different interpretations of such important disciplinary questions. In this respect, Calvin becomes Donne’s authority against what he calls “Morositatem”: “a certain peevish frowardnesse, which, as he calls in one place deterrimam pestem, the most infectious pestilence, that can fall upon a man, so, in another, he gives the reason, why it is so, semper nimia morositas est ambitiosa, that this peevish frowardnesse, is always accompanied with a pride, and a singularity, and an ambition to have his opinions preferred before all other men, and to condemn all that differ from him” (X, 175). The example reinforces how far Donne thought men should be willing to go, and how broad a latitude he allowed for matters indifferent. Calvin’s compromise on the administration of the sacrament in Geneva also allows Donne to observe “that greater matters then are now thought fundamentall, were then thought but indifferent, and arbitrary” (VII, 175), and to castigate “men, who trouble the Church now, about things of lesse importance, and this of private Sacraments in particular” for making themselves believe that “they are his Disciples, and always conclude that whatsoever is practised at Geneva was Calvin’s opinion” (X, 175–6). The references to Augustine’s controversy with the Pelagians and Manicheans, to Melanchthon’s modesty and sobriety, and to Calvin’s reproof of singularity point not so much to a confessional allegiance as to a rhetorical style and a willingness to distinguish opinion from dogma that Donne holds as the only practice of a “civill man” at a council table (X, 175). The conciliating efforts of Calvin, of Melanchthon, and of the English delegates to Dort contrast sharply with those of Montagu who publicly attacked Calvin, the Church in Geneva, and even the Synod of Dort, dismissing the council as an irrelevance, and the Dort doctrines as the private opinions of individual delegates. In interpreting all of these comments on private, personal revilings versus a publicly developed rhetoric of consensus, it is important to read them as comments on a style of public debate. Donne clearly favours what Luther, and especially Melanchthon, achieved with the Augsburg Confession, and what the English delegates achieved in modifying the rigours of the extreme contra-Remonstrant (Calvinist) position at Dort. Donne recognized 18 19

Milton, Catholic and Reformed, p. 427. Ibid., p. 453.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis that a public rhetoric of conciliation and civility was not only a style to which he was more temperamentally suited, but also an effective means of marginalizing those few genuinely separatist clergy whose overzealous labeling (of heretics and schismatics) actually produced the conditions within which heresies and schisms might occur. The charges of contention, personal revilings, and labeling apply equally, it seems, to those opposed to Montagu and his “innovations” as to Montagu’s provocative enlargement of the category of “puritan” to include doctrinal Calvinists, such as the Dort delegates. But they also apply to neo-Augustinian opponents of “Pelagian” heretics who, like Augustine, lose sight of their doctrinal focus and become “transported” with vehemency against their “present adversaries,” the Pelagians (who “overadvanced” man’s free will) and the Manicheans (who “annihilated” it). For all Donne’s dislike of heated debate, however, his sermons for this period comment explicitly on controverted doctrine. Committed to debating doctrinal issues in the professional public sphere, Donne was bound by his office to disentangle from controversial discourse some pastorally effective statements on doctrines necessary to salvation. Many of these sermons qualify rigid Calvinist positions on election, the atonement, and perseverance. Consequently, Donne’s theological qualifications of Calvinism have been interpreted to mean that Donne was taking advantage of the space opened up by the publication of Montagu’s works to express his own pro-Arminian views more openly.20 McCullough has argued that Donne was doctrinally an Arminian while rejecting political association with them.21 However, Donne’s public statements on these doctrinal issues suggest that, like the English delegates to Dort, Donne was working with “blessed sobriety” to moderate the practical consequences of predestination (a doctrine that he accepts), and to articulate for the Church of England a place between those who limit God’s scriptural offers of grace unduly, and those who exaggerate human free will. This place is not identified with any specific reformer or church Father, or with any other national church; rather, it is one that answers the specific needs of the English church. Donne believes that the proper place for this doctrinal discourse is in Synods or Convocations, not in the press. His articulation of the “mediocrity” with which religious and civil debate should be conducted is demonstrated in these sermons of early 1626 in Donne’s comments on the best interpretive practices and in his rhetorical efforts to balance doctrinal with experiential belief.22 In these sermons of early 1626, Donne’s stress on a wise mediocrity of interpretation culminating in a practical or experiential faith is accompanied by a mediocrity of expression, signalled by Donne’s overriding insistence that in the Bible we are reading God’s public records rather than his unrevealed decrees, 20 21 22

Guibbory, passim. McCullough, “Donne as Preacher at Court.” Whalen’s discussion of Donne’s religion in 1626 focuses on his Christmas 1626 sermon. He concludes that “Unlike Benjamin Carier in 1613 and the proto-Laudian divines of the early Caroline era, Donne at Christmas 1626 was determined to maintain a moderately predestinarian Calvinism while advancing sacrament and ceremony as essential elements of Christian worship. The result is an idiosyncratic contribution to the elusive English via media, one that promoted ceremonial law and order while careful to maintain that election is finally a private matter” (p. 109). Whalen’s discussion of the religious controversial context of 1626 supports the view of Donne advanced in this chapter.

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John Donne, the Public Sphere, and Caroline Conformity records that admit of several interpretations. Donne speaks openly of differences in interpretation that can be accommodated within “our” church, noting for example that the English delegates disagreed with the other participants at the Synod of Dort on the issue of Christ’s descent into hell but could agree to the Articles nonetheless. On a more controversial issue such as election, however, achieving mediocrity of expression is not only Donne’s rhetorical strategy but also the foundation of his belief. Although many of Donne’s sermons handle this doctrine his 18 April 1626 sermon on John 14.2 shows clearly how Donne’s rhetorical handling of election positions the Church of England between rigid Calvinist and Arminian views, primarily by focusing on the experience rather than the doctrine.23 In this sermon, Donne reminds his hearers that controversy over election is not a new thing. Even before the Reformation the church was divided over election: most before Augustine, Donne explains, “placed the cause of our Election in Gods foresight, and foreknowledge of our faith and obedience” (VII, 123), while most after “placed it in the right Center, that is, onely in the free goodnesse and pleasure of God in Christ” (VII, 123). Of course, holding that election proceeds from foreseen faith was the charge levied against Montagu and the Arminians, their opponents claiming the victory at York House by making White “disclaim” and Montagu “retract” this view.24 In the contemporary Catholic Church this controversy is played out between Jesuit and Dominican opponents, and the Council of Trent, which erred in coming “to a finall resolution in so many particulars” (VII, 125) failed to resolve this crucial difference (VII, 125). In contrast to this Council, Donne notes the “blessed sobriety” of the English delegates to the Synod of Dort who “delivered their sentence, That all men are truly, and in earnest called to eternall life, by Gods Minister” (VII, 127). They knew, he said, “That we must receive Gods promises so, as they be generally set forth to us in the Scriptures; And that for our actions and manners, for our life and conversation, we follow that will of God, which is expresly declared to us in his Word” (VII, 127). The scriptural evidence, appropriated from Article XVII of the Thirty-Nine Articles, allowed the English delegates to retain their interpretive independence and to make any doctrine confirmed by any synod dependent on that interpretive consensus. What the Synod of Dort confirmed for English divines, according to Donne, was the freedom to establish doctrine according to their interpretation of scriptures, and the “sobriety” of the Synod lay as much in ensuring that latitude of interpretation was established as in any particular doctrinal formulation. The point is that – in the Church of England – the details of doctrine are left to ministers to interpret, although the fundamentals remain. This both legitimates Donne’s own idiosyncratic doctrinal formulation of a theology of grace and marginalizes those more inflexible interpreters who would have branded his statements as heretical, or perhaps, deliberately incomprehensible. Only following that moment of “blessed sobriety” does Donne paraphrase the Synod’s statement on election: “conditionall salvation is so far offered to every man, as that no man may preclude himselfe from a possibility of such a performance of those Conditions which God requires at his hands, as God will accept at his hands, if either he doe sincerely endevour the performing, or sincerely repent the not performing of them” (VII, 127–8). That is, while no one can be absolutely assured of his election, 23 24

The text is “In my Fathers house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you.” Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, p. 179.

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John Donne and Conformity in Crisis neither can he be so certain of his reprobation as to justify his spiritual inertia. This statement expresses the theology of grace in conditional rather than absolute terms. The key words here are “no man may preclude himselfe” with their focus not on what God has done or can do but on what human beings can know. In a sermon for Whitsunday, dated 1626, Donne handles the doctrine of grace by examining justification as an interlinked chain, in which faith is “but one of those things, which in severall senses, are said to justifie us” (VII, 228). The efficient cause is God, so it can be truly said God only justifies us since “nothing can effect it, nothing can worke towards it, but only the meere goodnesse of God.” Christ is the material cause since “nothing enters into the substance and body of the ransome for our sins, but the obedience of Christ.” It is equally true to say faith alone justifies since “nothing apprehends, nothing applies the merit of Christ to thee, but thy faith.” Works are the declaratory justification since “Only thy good life can assure thy conscience, and the World, that thou art justified” (VII, 228). All of these are interconnected, so “Neither of these can be said to justifie us alone, so, as that we may take the chaine in pieces, and thinke to be justified by any one link thereof; by God without Christ, by Christ without faith, or by faith without works; And yet every one of these justifies us alone, so, as that none of the rest enter into that way and that meanes, by which any of these are said to justifie us” (VII, 228). However, Donne’s treatment of the metaphor is unique in its effort to explain the “right signification of that word, cause” (VII, 227) as it applies to salvation. “Alas,” he begins, “let us be content that God is the cause and seek no other” (VII, 227). But, in the end, what justifies is the contractual process – Crede & vives – a chain of which the nearest link is “A good life” of good works. Donne’s practical advice is to “keepe a fast and inseparable hold upon that” (VII, 228). The motion is twofold. “God comes downeward to us; but we must go upward to God; not to get above him in his unrevealed Decrees, but to go up towards him, in laying hold upon that lowest linke” (VII, 229). In Donne’s treatment, the chain is not static, but a living chain of causality in which the works of faith – the “good life” – though most removed from God’s eternal decree, make salvation most accessible. Later in 1626, after parliament and Convocation had been prorogued, Charles issued his proclamation for maintaining the “circle of order” in church and state intact, and Donne, who had just completed his time as prolocutor, now embraced the “good life” as one of the governors of the Charterhouse in London. From 1626 until 1631, Donne attended each Assembly of the Governors of this charitable “hospital” for educating and lodging needy men and boys. As Robert Evans has shown, Donne participated actively in administering this institution, which handled many issues – some routine, some controversial – in the five years of his tenure. Evans indicates that this hospital was seen in its day as “a symbol of the philanthropy of the reformed religion.”25 Donne’s commitment to service in the public sphere – in government, in the pulpit, and, lastly, in the Charterhouse – can be added to our picture of Donne in his last years as a person taking hold firmly of the “good life,” that lowest link on the chain of salvation. At least in the first half of 1626, in the heated controversial context established by parliamentary debate, doctrinal debate in Convocation, the public medium of print – and Richard Montagu – we find Donne focusing on a place of “mediocrity” for the Church of England not simply between Catholics and radical Protestants 25

Evans, p. 134.

282

John Donne, the Public Sphere, and Caroline Conformity (the older, Jacobean extremes), but between Calvinists and Arminians, a considerably smaller space. It was a pulpit space Donne hoped to model on the “blessed sobriety” of the English delegates at Dort rather than on the contentious wrangling of the Council of Trent. In understanding this place, we have attached insufficient significance to Donne’s role as prolocutor, a position founded on Donne’s reputation for conciliation and for doctrinal and rhetorical sensitivity to current controversies. He seems to have been ideally suited to these delicate rhetorical situations, providing a voice of discretion at a time of increasingly zealous attacks on personal adversaries. It seems unlikely that Donne was moving toward the new-style Pelagianism of Montagu and his supporters. The qualifications of Calvinism that he articulates in his sermons suggest positions remarkably similar to those of the English delegates to Dort, especially hypothetical universalism to which the Synod agreed primarily because of the efforts of these delegates. By expressing his reservations about the perseverance and assurance of the elect as discursive rather than doctrinal formulations, he rejects the absolutist language (This person has not been elected) in favour of the common-sense affirmation (we don’t know who they are, or, we cannot be sure). The consequence of this concentration on human beings rather than God, on election as experienced in time rather than as existing in eternity, is an affirmation of salvation resonating between God’s decrees and human perceptions – the good news “heard” with both ears. It is also a focus on the links of the chain of salvation, with emphasis on seizing and practising the “good life” of public service. Donne’s public religious identity as constructed in his sermons, his role as prolocutor, and his charitable service with the Charterhouse express how completely discreet service in the public sphere was for him the ethical and rhetorical embodiment of religious community that marks him as one of the foundational voices of the Reformed English church.

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WORKS CITED

MANUSCRIPT SOURCES: SERMONS Donne, John, 5 November 1622 (BL MS Royal 17.B.XX) Donne, John (BL MS Harleian 6946) Loe, William, The Kings Sworde (BL MS Royal 17.A.XL) Lushington, Thomas (Bodleian MS Add. B. 12) Lushington, Thomas (Bodleian MS Eng. hist. e. 28) Simpson, Edward, October 1617 (CUL MS Ff. V. 25; BL Add. MS 5960) Stoughton, John, 1623 (Bodleian MS Rawlinson E. 148)

MANUSCRIPT SOURCES: OTHER Bodleian Library, University of Oxford MS Rawlinson 89 MS Tanner 73 MS Tanner 137 MS Tanner 142 MS Tanner 265 MS Tanner 290 MS Tanner 299

Miscellaneous Correspondence Miscellaneous Correspondence Miscellaneous Correspondence Miscellaneous Correspondence Miscellaneous Correspondence Miscellaneous Correspondence Miscellaneous Correspondence

British Library, London Harleian 6356 Additional 72271 Additional 72275 Additional 72276 Additional 72415 Additional 72254 Additional 72255 Additional 72364 Additional 72242 Additional 72299

Miscellaneous Tracts and Sermons Carleton–Trumbull Correspondence Castle–Trumbull Correspondence Castle–Trumbull Correspondence Recusant papers Beaulieu–Trumbull Correspondence Beaulieu–Trumbull Correspondence Miscellaneous Correspondence to William Trumbull 1622–5 Abbot–Trumbull Correspondence Locke–Trumbull Correspondence

Public Record Office, London SP 14 SP 15

Domestic State Papers, James I Domestic State Papers, James I

PRINTED SERMONS Adams, Thomas. The Barren Tree. 1623. Adams, Thomas. The Sinners Movrning Habite. In Three Sermons. 1625.

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UNPUBLISHED THESES AND PAPERS Achtzehner, Donna. “ ‘That I have spoken as his Majestie intended’: Ambiguity and Communication in Two Sermons of John Donne.” Unpublished paper, University of Regina, 1993. Elliott, Jennifer. “Meddling with the Differences Betwixt Princes and the People: Joseph Hall’s ‘sentence of short sound but large extent.’ ” Unpublished paper, University of Regina, 1993. Hunt, Arnold. “The Books, Manuscripts and Literary Patronage of Mrs. Anne Sadlier (1585–1670).” Unpublished paper, Trinity College, Cambridge, 19 June 1999. Jacobsen, Kenneth. “Prophecy, Performance, and Persuasion: Sermon Art and Dramatic Art in England 1575–1630.” Unpublished dissertation, Queen’s University, 1997. Lake, Peter. “The Problem of Puritanism.” Unpublished paper, Millersville conference on “The Worlds of John Winthrop,” 18 September 1999. Morrissey, Mary. “Rhetoric, Religion, and Politics in the St. Paul’s Cross Sermons 1603–1625.” Unpublished Cambridge Ph.D. thesis, 1998.

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GENERAL INDEX Specific references to John Donne are indexed separately in the Index to John Donne and the Index to John Donne’s Sermons. All three indexes are intended for use together. Entries in the Donne indexes do not duplicate entries in the General Index.

Abbot, George, Archbishop of Canterbury 185, 186 and n.24, 234, 256 n.1, 274 n.3 and Directions 1, 75 n.1, 105–6, 113 n.39, 121, 123, 126, 165, 198 and licensing 17 and use of converts from Catholicism 20 n.73, 24, 78, 147, 194–5 letter attributed to him 170, 184 patronage of 63, 102, 169, 194, 198–200, 211, 224, 229, 233 relations with Donne 10, 20 n.73, 77–9, 113 n.39, 115 sermons of 102 n.1, 219–20 and n.22, 230 n.38 Abbot, Robert, Bishop 78 Achtzehner, Donna 110 n.30 Adams, Simon 212 n.1 Adams, Thomas 7, 126 n.94, 140, 193–4, 247–8, 265 Ailesbury, Thomas 148–9 Albigenses 161 Amboyna massacre 257–8 Anabaptist, Anabaptism 70, 72, 106, 119–20 and authority 51, 68 and n.108, 128 as label 51, 56, 218 elided with puritans 56, 120 Andreasen, N. J. C. 202 n.60 Andrewe, George 150 and n.22 Andrewes, Lancelot 7 and n.28, 8, 69 n.110, 77, 102–4, 105, 167 n.2, 254–5, 274 n.5 and Directions 123 and n.80 association with Donne 79 contrasts with Donne 8, 134–7, 178–80 and n.37, 182, 222–5, 253–5 Andrews, John 55 Anne of Denmark (Queen consort to James I) 6, 34 n.120, 147, 247 anti-Arminian rhetoric see under Arminian anti-Calvinist see under Arminian

anti-papist rhetoric see also conversion; Council of Trent; errors of under Church of Rome; Jesuits; papist-puritan rhetoric; rhetoric of under John Donne aimed at conversion of Catholics to Church of England 58, 146–7 and n.15, 149, 174, 194, 197, 217 aimed at unsettled protestants 146–7 and n.15, 149–50, 171, 194–5, 217–18 anti-Spanish see also patriot coalition 42 n.33, 148, 178, 183, 184, 185, 186–8, 192–3, 198, 211, 217, 234, 241, 258 n.8 Arminian anti-papism 58, 185 as common cause uniting protestants 56, 58, 72, 146, 235 as dominant discourse for defining Church of England 2, 20, 24–5, 35, 39, 42, 58–64, 67, 102, 139, 146–9, 160, 170, 184, 188, 198, 217, 233, 234, 239, 241, 246 as evidence of reformed credentials 24, 59, 186 deployed against nonconformists 51–2, 59, 163 officially sanctioned occasions see also Blackfriars disaster; Gowry conspiracy; Gunpowder plot 18, 60, 102–04, 132, 195, 211, 216–17, 247–8, 251–2 old-fashioned see also conformist political theology and mainstream under conformity 24, 59–64, 147, 170, 193, 197 papist as label 15, 16, 30, 31, 51, 59, 60, 71, 106, 118, 119, 128, 170, 199 papist as Pharisee 190, 249–50 papists as “Syrians” 98 puritan anti-papism 24, 58, 146, 196, 197, 219, 230, 235–6, 247–8 qualified by interactions with actual Catholics 25, 155

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General Index anti-papist rhetoric (continued) virulent 58, 104, 108–9, 146, 148–9, 161–2, 194–5, 196–7, 199–200, 217–18, 219–20, 224–5, 229–30, 239–42, 246–7, 250–2 anti-puritan rhetoric see also papist-puritan rhetoric; puritan, puritanism; rhetoric of under John Donne 2, 51, 66, 160, 223, 234 charges of hypocrisy against 56, 229, 230 and n.39, 262 charges of personal revilings see also under peace, and proscribed topics, under Directions to Preachers 61 criticism of their ceremonial wrangling 61, 72, 163, 223 defined as moderate 18–19 puritan as label 9, 15, 30, 46, 51–2, 56, 59, 65–6, 71, 72, 139, 149, 169, 196, 210, 217, 232 called Catharists 59, 278 called Pharisees 104, 157, 262, 277 called precise 104, 149, 154 called professors 56, 104, 257 n.5 called scrubbers 63 elided with Anabaptists 56 elided with Jesuits 52 elided with recusants 59, 140, 146, 149–50 labeling of orthodox divines as puritan 31 n.115, 66, 118, 244, 276 n.13, 280 satiric view of puritan love of sermons 65, 223, 254–5 anti-separatist rhetoric see also papist-puritan rhetoric; recusant; schism; sedition; sermons of and rhetoric of under John Donne 58, 61, 62–3, 66, 72–3, 74, 76 n.5, 120, 122 n.72, 128, 139, 149–50, 158–9, 175, 234, 235, 245–6 Apsley, Sir Allen 224 Arianism 70 Arminian, Arminianism see also identity of under Church of England; Montagu, Richard; Pelagian, Pelagianism; religious identity of under John Donne anti-Arminian rhetoric 15, 59, 64–5, 66, 74, 120, 153, 258 as anti-Calvinism 16, 58, 66, 78, 180, 182, 221 as confessional label 9, 10 n.42, 15, 16, 48, 65, 139, 152, 154 n.28, 216, 221, 274, 276 n.13 as place on religious spectrum 16, 23, 147, 185 between Calvinists and Lutherans 152 association with Catholicism 15, 54, 64–5, 118, 149, 152, 210, 233 association with Pelagianism 19 n.68, 64, 65, 152, 153, 215 and n.12 censorship of 38, 48, 167, 257 and n.5 debates at York House 10, 274 n.5, 276, 281 politicized by Amboyna massacre 257–8

theology of grace election from foreseen faith 152, 281 free will 167, 215 universality 38, 64, 152, 167, 221 non-perseverance of elect 49 Arminius, Jacobus 38 and n.11, 70, 72, 118, 276 n.13 assurance, doctrine of 49, 54, 67, 124, 248 atheism atheist as polemical label 15, 80–1, 93, 190, 235, 238, 242 associated with Arminianism 258 associated with papistry 98, 147, 247 Augustine, Augustinianism 23 n.86, 72, 81, 209 n.83, 210, 278, 279, 280, 281 authority civil 67–70, 139 as masculine 103 duties of magistrates 6, 50–1, 57, 63, 67–8, 69, 133, 158–9, 160, 218, 224, 225, 230, 233, 234, 235, 237, 239, 242, 253, 255, 264–5 obedience to lawful authority 18, 48–53, 57, 66, 70, 102, 103–4, 116, 128, 160, 191, 238, 239, 253, 258 distinguished from “subjection” 68–9 doctrine of “passive” obedience 52, 59, 68, 120, 128, 133, 253 of magistrates, kings 49, 52–3, 103–4, 120, 128, 133, 189, 191, 237 and obedience to God 128 balanced by responsibilities 53, 250 compared to gods 52–3, 105, 126, 224, 248 contrasted with gods 52, 126, 162, 248, 264–5 divine right absolutism 128, 133 prerogative 53, 68, 104, 133, 250 resistance to 45–7, 50–1, 53, 59, 62, 103–5, 128, 248 prayer as only recourse 51, 62, 131, 162 ecclesiastical (relations to state authority) 50, 68–9, 70, 159, 162, 242, 265 spiritual see vocation Bachiler, Samuel 162–3 Bacon, Francis 91, 180 Balcanquhall, Walter 177, 180, 225 Bald, R. C. 8, 10, 22 n.83, 25 n.101, 76 and n.4, 77, 78, 114 n.44, 126 and n.96, 202 n.57 and 58, 204 n.67, 227 n.34, 274 n.3 Ball, Thomas 39 n.17 and 18 Bargrave, Isaac 73, 150, 215, 217 Barnes, Thomas 163–4 Barrell, Robert 198–200, 211 Barrowists 66 Bawcutt, Nigel 274 n.3 Beal, Peter 102 n.1 Beard, Thomas 69 n.111

298

General Index Beaulieu, John 46 n.51, 106, 110, 117, 168 Bedford, Thomas 54 n.76 Bedingfield, Robert 250 Bellarmine, Robert 10 n.42, 56 Bennett, H. S. 3 n.5 Bertius 72 Beza, Theodore 64 Bezite as confessional label 16 Birch, Thomas 42 n.30, 43 n.35 and 40, 108 n.19 and 20, 109, 125 n.92, 167 n.6, 168 n.9, 169 n.14, 184 n.9, 185 and n.18, 186 n.19, 256 n.1 and n.3 Blackfriars disaster see also providentialism 183 and n.4, 193–8, 211, 250, 251–2 Bohemia see Thirty Years War; see also matters of state, discussion of under sermons Bolton, Robert 67–8 Book of Common Prayer see under Church of England Book of Homilies see under Church of England Bridges, Gabriel 48 n.65, 167 and n.4, 257 Bristol, Earl of see Digby Brooke, Christopher 77 Brown, Meg Lota 21 n.76, 80 n.17 and 18 Browne, Abraham 149–50 Brownists 66, 70, 72, 120, 218 Bucer, Martin 64 Buckeridge, John, Bishop 78, 79, 135 n.107, 276 Buckingham, Duke of see Villiers Buggs, Samuel 59, 64–5 Bunny, Francis 16 Burgess, John 37–8 Burton, Henry 168 Byfield, Adoniram 148 Cade, Anthony 38 n.9 Caesar, Sir Julius 77 Cain, T. G. S. 77 n.9 calling see vocation Calvert, Sir George 167, 170, 184 Calvin, John 23, 64, 82, 87 and n.32, 128 Donne’s respect for 279 on administration of the eucharist 279 on Christ’s descent into hell 180 n.37 Calvinism 15, 18, 47 n.59 Calvinist as confessional label 16, 18, 31, 146, 151, 152, 216, 217, 221 associated with Anglicanism 249 n.24 of Prince Henry’s court see also Henry, Prince of Wales; war 6, 188 theology of 49, 54, 56, 67, 144, 153, 170–1, 200, 239, 249 and n.24 Cantrel, Nicholas 229–30 Carey, John 10, 11, 22 n.83, 77, 94 n.41, 204 n.67 Carier, Benjamin 280 n.22 Carleton, Dudley 38, 44, 45, 106, 185 n.17, 186 n.24, 213 n.3 Carleton, George, Bishop 273 n.2, 274 n.5

Carr, Sir Robert 224 Carrithers, Gale and James D. Hardy, Jr. 19 n.68 Carter, Bezaleel 56–7 Castle, John 45 n.46 and n.47, 47, 107, 184, 234 n.1 casuistry see under conscience; see also conformity; public sphere; conscience under John Donne Cecil, Thomas, Earl of Exeter 242 censorship see also controversy; Directions to Preachers; sermon defending the Directions under John Donne; see also under James I and under Charles I and importing controversial material 36 n.1 and licensing 13, 14–15, 42, 62–3, 196 and patronage 5, 43–4, 108, 186 and self-censorship 1, 14, 35, 37–8, 48, 167 at universities 45, 213 n.9, 220, 257 benign 42 crisis of 1–2, 12, 13–15, 34, 75, 102, 105–11, 134, 166–8, 174, 186, 231, 256 created by James for political purposes 120 effects on public sphere 13, 45–8, 67, 75, 114, 122, 125, 146, 183, 184, 196, 257 effects on religious controversy 2, 14–15, 39, 114, 118, 168, 169, 183 evasion of 122, 196–7 enforcement 44, 46, 62–3, 66, 122, 168–9, 185, 220, 221, 230–3, 256 of manuscripts and private papers 36, 204 n.67, 215 of sermons 5, 17, 36–45, 62–3, 75, 108, 122, 125, 166–7, 169, 182, 185–6, 220, 221 proclamations 41–2, 44, 100, 229, 234, 256, 274 and n.4, 282 regulation of lectureships 231 rules governing allowable discourse 36–9, 44, 48, 63, 69, 122, 146, 167, 196, 220–1, 230 ceremonies see under Church of England; Church of Rome; vision of English Church under John Donne Chaloner, Edward 58 n.83, 68 n.108, 146, 225 Chamberlain, John 36 n.2, 38 and n.9 and 11 and 13, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43 and n.38, 44, 45, 46, 61, 106, 109, 110, 111, 112, 114, 134 n.104, 167 and n.2, 168 n.13, 169, 172 n.24, 177, 185 n.17, 207 n.74 and n.75, 208, 209 n.80, 213 n.3, 256, 257 Charles see also lamentation, discourse of; thanksgiving, discourse of; patriot coalition; Villiers Prince of Wales 1, 4, 6, 44, 230 n.38 and patronage 44, 45, 64, 178, 188, 189, 193, 202, 264 anti-Spanish campaign of 189, 211, 234 constancy of 163, 166, 167, 168, 192, 193, 205, 233

299

General Index Charles (continued) Prince of Wales (continued) journey to Spain 139, 155, 158, 160–1, 166, 167 and n.4, 170, 171–2, 174–8, 184, 188, 192, 201, 204 n.67, 206, 207 n.75, 208, 214 pro-Dutch policy 211, 212, 229, 258 return from Spain 139, 149, 181, 182 n.41, 183, 185, 189, 190, 191, 192, 194, 209, 211, 212, 264 King Charles I 2, 4, 17, 59, 138 accession of 139, 140, 246 n.20, 248 sermons marking the occasion 263, 264–5, 269–71, 272 and censorship 17, 37, 124–5, 274 patronage of 269 Church of England see also vision of English church under John Donne articles of faith (Thirty-Nine Articles) 20, 37, 47, 124, 168, 281 Book of Common Prayer 37, 90, 150, 168, 231–2 Book of Homilies 47, 107, 114, 128, 129, 132 and n.101, 231 n.43 ceremonies in 55, 61, 68–9, 71, 73, 127, 134–5 and n.107, 150, 151–2, 163, 168, 199, 213 and n.9, 223, 231, 252–3, 268 Convocation of 47, 215, 216, 217 as authorized public sphere for the Church of England 216, 217 as consultative 274 as place for formal doctrinal debate 34, 274 and n.5, 282 as place for recanting doctrinal positions 47, 48, 167 crisis of identity in 1–2, 12, 17–19, 21, 35, 55, 74, 102, 105, 114, 139, 165, 197, 198, 217, 242, 257, 263, 265 continuities with primitive church 72, 161, 246 identity as “Anglican” 15, 23, 249 n.24 identity as Calvinist 15, 54, 152, 167 n.4, 170–1, 198–9, 249 and n.24, 250, 257 new strain 246, 257 identity as “Catholic” 216, 230, 245–6 identity as Christian 149, 216, 217, 245 identity as communion of believers 62–3, 73, 74, 76, 149, 150, 154, 216, 217, 242, 245–6 identity as not-Arminian 149, 246 identity as not-Calvinist 35 identity as not-Catholic see anti-papist rhetoric identity as not-puritan see anti-puritan rhetoric identity as “true” church 20, 155, 198 defined as puritan 230 defined to include papists 155, 216

300

identity as uniquely reformed national church 74, 101, 140, 246 identity as via media 53, 73 identity as visible, institutional means of salvation 134, 149, 155, 171, 174 energized by controversy 72, 114, 198 episcopal duties in 105, 119, 167, 199, 213 n.9, 216, 231, 242 fault lines in 1–2, 5, 75, 105, 134, 139, 150, 155, 158, 198, 253, 255, 257 inclusivity of 17, 58, 128, 216, 234, 242, 245–6 papist charges against 54, 216, 235, 238 place of prayer in 64, 154, 201, 204 controversy over set forms 40 and n.19, 127, 150, 163–4, 231 place of works in 54, 151, 193, 199, 218, 223, 239, 247, 250 relations to international Protestantism 71, 105, 140, 162, 196, 197, 216, 235, 278 spectrum of religious belief in 5, 15–16, 18, 24, 104, 114, 146 unsettled nature of 128, 217, 238, 247, 248 word and sacrament in 63, 76 n.5, 151, 155, 163, 213 n.9, 217, 235, 258 Church of Rome see also anti-papist rhetoric; Blackfriars disaster; Gowry anniversary; Gunpowder Plot; recusant in General Index; see also Church of Rome and rhetoric of (anti-papist rhetoric) under John Donne apostolic succession in 24–5 as Babylon (whore of) 146, 163, 184, 195, 198, 224, 234, 235, 251 ceremonies in 55, 59, 63, 152, 187, 252–3 communion with 25, 61–3, 216, 217 debate over Rome as “true” 20, 24 deception of 64, 187, 217 errors of 219 exorcism 187, 251 equivocations 197, 240 faulty scriptural interpretations 54 and n.76, 53–5, 60, 65, 128, 140 and n.3, 141, 240 heresy (apostasy) of 24, 184, 199, 235, 250 idolatry 24, 39, 43, 58, 61, 62, 104, 127, 147 n.15, 148 and n.18, 150, 152, 171, 195, 199, 200, 204, 214 and n.10, 219–20, 224, 229, 236, 238, 247–8, 256, 264, 268 indulgences 29, 199, 239 innovations see also Council of Trent; rhetoric of (anti-papist rhetoric) under John Donne 59, 149, 217, 239 invocation to saints 29, 154, 199, 236, 239, 247, 264 meritorious works 64 n.98, 65, 104, 147, 190, 193, 199, 215, 217, 224, 239, 247, 250, 251

General Index miracles 54, 141, 187, 193, 195, 221, 251 mutilation of the sacrament 240 papal infallibility 199 pilgrimages 239 prayers for the dead 29 purgatory 29, 54, 56, 171, 239 reliance on traditions 29, 57, 148 n.18, 199, 247 superstition 55, 109, 127, 148 and n.18, 150, 187, 195, 199, 200, 218, 245, 247, 253 suppression of scriptures 240 fallen from primitive purity 251 injustice of 239 internal divisions 147–8 political aspirations of 239, 251 Court of Rome 86 n.30, 251 pope 43, 51, 52, 60, 68, 108, 128, 154, 184–5, 187, 199, 217, 246, 247, 251, 253, 258 as antichrist 24, 53, 60 n.91, 64 n.98, 140 n.3, 148 n.18, 171, 196, 197, 214 sedition of 62, 128, 170, 236, 238, 241, 256 treason 43, 60, 62, 68, 104, 128, 182, 236, 240, 248, 250, 265 protestant accommodations to 236, 257 reconciliation with 169 n.14, 197, 235, 246, 247, 278 spectrum of religious belief and practice in 147 and n.15 church-papism, church-papists 6, 34 n.120, 60, 104, 118, 147, 149, 155, 242 charges of dissembling against 150, 217, 229, 230 Clarendon see Hyde Claydon, Tony 2 n.1 Clayton, Mr. 108, 109, 110 Clough, William 5 Clifford, Lord 203 n.66 Cockburn, J. S. 67 Cogswell, Thomas 3 n.4, 4, 7, 46, 60 n.91, 71, 106 n.10, 107 n.17, 112 n.33, 123–4, 126 and n.97, 146, 158 n.31, 183, 186 and n.24, 187, 191, 194, 211, 212 n.1, 213 n.6, 214 n.11, 215, 216, 217, 218, 230, 237 n.6, 239, 246–7, 258 n.8 Coke, Edward 153 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 24 Collier, Jeremy 112 n.37 Collinson, Patrick 215 n.13 conformity see also moderation; see also conformity of and moderation of under John Donne and boundaries defined by censorship 1, 13, 35, 38, 48, 53, 152, 185, 186–91, 230, 231 and Calvinism 15, 24, 56, 59–61, 67, 144, 150, 152, 188, 198–9, 213 and moderation 17–18, 252–3

and radicalization of the pulpit 1, 13, 148, 150, 152, 203 avant-garde conformity 15–16, 255 conformist political theology 48–52, 65–6, 170–3, 178, 237–41, 255, 258 disciplinary conformity 14, 39, 65, 223, 231–2 difficulty of defining 17, 43, 105, 109–10, 213 justification of enforced conformity 219 mainstream 15, 24, 52, 56, 59, 61, 67, 72, 159, 228, 258 nonconformity 17, 58, 59, 61, 66, 71, 120, 122, 153, 213, 223, 232 n.49 occasional 155 outward 46, 58, 60, 104, 146, 217, 249 ultraconformity 18 n.67, 102 and n.2, 104, 119, 120, 146 conscience see also and conscience under John Donne; authority; public sphere; exegesis and authority 18, 50–1, 57, 105, 106, 109 n.27, 116, 119, 224, 252–3, 258 and preacher’s public identity 43, 45, 57, 139, 188 cases of conscience (casuistry) 17, 59, 103, 197, 238 thematic emphasis in sermons 18, 128, 186–8, 252–3 constancy (as theme in sermons) see also constancy of under Charles and fear of relapse under James I 58, 64, 161–2, 198–200, 250–2 contra-Remonstrant 273 n.2 controversy see also censorship; Directions to Preachers; peace; rules governing discourse under public sphere; see also controversy and sermon defending Directions under John Donne and public sphere 2, 20, 51, 53, 56–7, 62, 63, 67, 71, 74, 146, 174, 180, 221, 248, 251 crisis of 12, 15–17, 45–8, 50, 55–8, 120, 124, 160, 174, 234, 248–9, 257 and n.6, 275 legitimized by authorized public debates 183 conventicles associated with puritanism 31, 134, 137, 150, 232 n.49, 242 associated with Roman Catholicism 199, 221, 250 associated with separatism (both recusant and puritan) 66, 72, 90, 92, 250, 266, 273 conversion, converts see also and conversion under John Donne; recusant; church-papist alleged conversions 64 as “shuffler” 240, 242 church-papists as intended audience 62, 146, 229 from popery 108, 250, 257 impossible for the reprobate 144 recusants as intended audience 146, 193, 194, 197, 217–18

301

General Index conversion, converts (continued) through preaching 55, 58, 106, 119, 258 to Anabaptism 119 to Calvinism 217 to popery 111, 119, 120, 186 to separatism 119 Conway, Edward 65, 124, 169, 184, 185, 207 n.75 Cooper, J. P. 203 n.66 Cooper, Robert 202 n.58 and n.59, 208–9, 210 Corbet, Richard, bishop of Norwich 213 n.9 Corshes, Mr. 168 Corthell, Ron 7 n.29, 115 n.46 Cosin, John 244 n.13, 257 n.6 Cottington, Francis 208 Council of Trent see also anti-papist rhetoric; Jesuits; papist-puritan rhetoric; and antipapist rhetoric under John Donne, rhetoric of 58, 65, 199, 216, 239, 246 as conventicle 199, 250 counter-Reformation see also Council of Trent; Jesuits; Church of Rome 37, 84, 99, 139, 160–1, 165, 246 Crakanthorp, Richard 67 Cranfield, Lionel 122, 181 n.40, 229 Crosfield, Thomas 111 n.31 Crystal and Davy 21 n.77 Curll, Walter 48, 49–50 Cust, Richard 4, 17 and n.63 Daley, Koos 132 n.102, 202 n.57 Danvers, Lord and Lady (Magdalen Herbert) 77 Davenant, John 59 n.89, 231 n.43 Davenport, John 65–6, 124 Davies, Godfrey 3 n.5, 4 Davies, Horton 9 n.36 Davies, John Conway 3 n.6 Davies, Julian 123 Denison, John 70, 71–2 Denison, Mr. [Stephen] 256 n.3 Dering, Edward 215 descent into hell, doctrine of 180 and n.37, 281 Calvinist vs. Lutheran interpretations 180 n.37 parameters of the dispute 180 n.38 DeVere, Henry, Earl of Oxford 45 D’Ewes, Simonds 3, 46 n.55, 48, 107–8 and n.21, 109–10 and n.27, 111, 166, 168, 177, 183, 202 n.57, 215 n.12, 219 and n.21, 257 n.5, 264 Digby, John, Earl of Bristol 208 Directions to Preachers see also censorship; controversy; matters of state under sermons; rules governing discourse under public sphere; sermon defending Directions under John Donne 1, 257 catechetical impulse of 110, 114, 118, 121, 144, 198, 232–3 and n.50, 245 consequences of

302

conflict between conscience and authority 18, 100–01, 116, 188, 224 efforts of moderation 35, 216 elevation of ceremonial debates to fundamental rather than indifferent status 150, 213 n.9, 223 increased catechizing 121, 127, 169, 199, 231, 233 and n.50 increased preaching 199, 218, 232 increasing subtlety of exegesis 125 modulation of anti-puritan into antiseparatist rhetoric 149 opening of space for anti-Calvinist sermons 116, 118, 196 polarizing of religious positions 17, 118, 125, 139, 148, 184, 195, 221 reduction of controversial sermons 116, 121, 123, 124, 169, 211 reduction of Sunday sermons 110, 113, 117 n.52, 121, 123, 124, 129, 231–2 restoring order 102, 113, 116, 118, 119, 120, 123, 211 self-censorship 35 enforcement of 1, 13–14, 15, 105–6, 108, 109, 119, 121, 122, 123, 168–9, 183, 230–3, 231 and n.43 control of public sphere 53, 116, 186, 188, 196, 199, 211, 216, 230–3 ineffectual 123, 124, 249 n.24 immediate causes of 13, 15, 40, 46, 100, 102, 113, 120, 234 homiletic context 102–05 implementation of 105–6, 107–8, 115, 125–6, 175 in context of James’s foreign policy 113, 119–20, 124 interpretations of before Donne’s sermon 41 immediate 109–11, 112, 115, 116 misinterpretations and distortions 115, 117–20, 221, 222 modern 117, 123–4 seventeenth-century 116, 118–23 popular perception of their intentions to curb controversial divinity 53, 119, 120, 123, 136, 139 to curb number and content of sermons 75 n.3, 106, 112, 113, 125 to beat down popery 110 to encourage rapprochement with Catholics 75 n.3, 110, 116 to quell Arminianism 119 to repress lecturers 117 n.52, 119, 120, 122, 169, 230 and n.40 to stifle criticism of the state (sedition) 119–20 to substitute the catechism for preaching 121, 123, 144

General Index proscribed topics 53, 198 deep points of reformed theology 53, 67, 70, 119–120, 121, 124, 136, 152, 153, 211, 276 exception made for deans and bishops 121, 143, 154 matters of state 1, 67, 74, 107, 108, 109 n.27, 118, 119, 124, 127, 139, 166, 175, 211, 240, 276 personal revilings or slanders see also antipuritan rhetoric; puritan 67, 108–9, 113, 118, 119–20, 122, 124, 127, 139, 145, 146, 149, 152, 196, 276 virulent anti-papism see also anti-papist rhetoric 63, 102, 108–9, 139, 146, 149, 196–7 discretion see also zeal; and discretion under John Donne; moderation 50, 57, 106, 112 n.37, 121, 145 and n.10, 165, 189, 193, 197, 230, 253 indiscretion 1, 13, 39, 44, 47, 109, 119, 120, 169, 213 n.9, 252 Doerksen, Daniel 9 n.38, 21 n.75, 210 Donatists 66 Doncaster embassy see relations with Donne under Hay Donne, Daniel 64 n.98, 102, 104–5, 137 n.11 Dort, Synod of 16, 20, 38, 100, 120, 123, 177, 180, 215 n.12, 274 n.5, 275 Calvinist resolutions of 49, 65, 246, 257, 274, 279, 281 hypothetical universalism 244–5, 277, 283 importing controversy from 121, 274 contrasted with Council of Trent 65, 276–7, 281, 283 Donne’s medal 10, 79 harmony of confessions 272 and n.2 interpretive latitude 281 labour of consensus 272 and n.2, 277, 279, 281 opposition to personal condemnations 272 n.2, 278 sobriety of English delegates 275, 276–7, 281, 283 Dove, John 231 n.43 Drury, Robert, Jesuit 183 n.4 Dudley, Robert, Earl of Leicester 188 n.30 Durham House group see under Neile Dutch East India Company 257–8 Dyke, Jeremy 150–1 Eales, Jacqueline 213 Edward VI, king of England 171, 195 election, doctrine of see also theology of grace under John Donne; theology of grace under Arminian, Arminianism 53–4, 67, 118, 120, 144, 152, 153, 170, 200, 248–9, 250 as a chain 155, 199

inner and outer 154 man’s will as God’s instrument 249 Elector Palatine (Frederick, King of Bohemia) 1, 37, 39, 78, 83 n.28, 84, 113, 166, 182, 209, 215, 268 Eliot, T. S. 7, 8 Elizabeth I (Queen of England) 5, 103 and n.4, 164–5, 169, 171, 218, 220, 225 as Deborah 200 Elizabeth (of Bohemia, daughter of James I) 1, 39, 84, 113, 166, 181–2, 209, 215, 268 relations with Donne 114, 204 and n.67 Elton, Edward works burned at Paul’s Cross 256 Erskine, John, Earl of Mar 170, 207 n.75, 209 Erskine, Thomas, Earl of Kellie 170, 207 n.75, 209 Esther and conscience 93 and resistance to lawful authority 93, 236–7 eucharist administration of 257 lawfulness of private 256 n.3 eucharistic presence, doctrine of 62–3, 164, 221 transubstantiation 164, 197, 217 ubiquitarianism 164, 221 Eusden, John 81 n.21 Evans, Robert 282 Everard, John 43, 44, 106–7, 109, 112 n.33, 167–8, 213 exegesis, scriptural battles for interpretive control 37, 41, 53, 67, 74, 140, 146, 152, 186, 188, 216, 222 double construction 185, 222 preacher’s intention 37, 38, 44 commentary on the literal sense 44, 54, 55, 117, 122, 124–5, 140 and n.3, 168, 180, 193–4, 247 interpretive self-consciousness 53–5 interpretive strategies analogy 12, 18, 45, 55, 108, 174, 192, 237 application of Biblical texts and examples 18, 51, 54, 57, 60, 108, 110, 122, 124, 145, 152, 168, 177, 182, 191, 192, 200–2, 212 n.3, 229 separation of exegesis from application 107, 111–12, 124, 125 topical application 44, 48, 70–4, 108, 139, 160–5, 172, 180, 186, 192, 204, 215 and n.13, 230 and n.38, 236, 239, 240, 241, 247, 251, 257–8, 264–5, 268 choice of text 18, 39–40, 42, 69, 73, 106–7, 109 n.27, 123 and n.76, 125–6, 133, 153, 169, 174, 185, 222, 236, 249, 264, 265 gestures and oral delivery 45 whole rule of scriptures 141 partisan interpretations 50, 141 Exeter, Earl of, see Cecil

303

General Index Family of Love (familists) 199 Featley, Daniel 62, 63, 185 Ferrell, Lori Anne 3 n.4, 7 n.27, 8 n.34, 17, 18 n.67, 21 n.75, 58, 59 n.86, 78 and n.12, 102 n.2 Ferrell, Lori Anne and Peter McCullough 3 n.4, 7 n.27, 9 n.36 Fincham, Kenneth 6 n.25, 13, 15, 16 n.60, 17, 78 and n.12 and n.13, 123 and n.80, 231 and n.42 and n.43 Fincham, Kenneth and Peter Lake 16 n.60, 38 n.8 Fisher, John, the Jesuit, see John Percy forced loan (1626) 17, 59 Flynn, Dennis 10 n.40–41, 25 n.99, 41 n.26, 178 n.35, 203 n.62 Foster, Andrew 42 n.33 French match 139, 160, 205, 213, 214 and n.11, 229, 230, 234, 241–2, 246, 256, 257, 259–60 Frost, Kate Gartner 202 n.58, 203 n.65, 204–5, 206 n.72, 210 Fuller, Thomas 120–23 and n.72 and 76 Gardiner, Richard 48, 51–2 Gardiner, Samuel R. 36 n.2, 41 n.28, 46 n.53, 47, 170, 207 n.74, 208 n.77, 209 n.80 Garnons, John 213 n.9 Gataker, Thomas 7, 10, 17, 52–3, 69 n.111, 70–1, 77, 81, 147–8, 149, 160, 163 and n.39, 200–2, 211, 256, 257 relations with Donne 10, 77 Gee, Edward 69, 112 Gee, John 194–5, 250–2 Gifford, Dr. 168 Gifford, William 91 glorification, doctrine of 155, 171, 199–200 Goad, Thomas 36 n.1 Goldberg, Jonathan 22 n.83, 267 Goodyer, Henry 41, 77, 79, 114, 204 n.67 Goodyer, Lucy (marriage to Sir Francis Nethersole) 40–1 and n.27 Gosse, Edmund, 112, 203 n.64 Gouge, William 195–6 Gowry conspiracy 6, 18, 60, 72, 102–04, 211, 247–8 Gray, Dave 158 n.32, 172 n.25, 202 n.58 Grey of Ruthyn, Henry, Earl of Kent relations with Donne 79 Guibbory, Achsah 8 n.34, 9 n.38, 10 n.39 and 42, 18–19, 19 n.68, 25 n.99, 31 n.115, 78 n.12, 87 n.32, 244–5, 280 n.20 Gunpowder Plot 3 n.3, 6, 18, 29, 33 and n.119, 34, 42–3, 54, 59, 60, 68, 72, 99, 102 and n.1, 130–4, 142, 147 n.15, 196, 218, 225, 251 Hacket, John 49 n.68, 120, 123 Hakewill, George 78 Hales, John 45

Hall, Joseph 3 n.7, 7, 9 n.36, 15, 16, 17, 18, 40 n.25, 59 n.89, 80 n.18, 115–16, 147, 171–2, 174, 186–8, 189–90, 197, 201, 211, 214 n.10, 215–6, 217 n.19, 218, 234, 238–41, 248 n.23, 255 relations with Donne 79, 115 Hall, Robert 216 Hamilton, James, Marquis of 164 Harley, Lady Brilliana 201 Harley, Sir Robert 201, 213 Harris, Robert 69, 161, 237 n.6 Harsnett, Samuel, Bishop 230–3, 274 n.3 Haskin, Dayton 24 n.92, 35 n.121, 135 n.104, 136 Hay, James, Viscount Doncaster and Earl of Carlisle 207 n.75, 234 relations with Donne 25 n.101, 75, 78–9, 102 n.1, 202 n.59 Hayes, William 236–7 Henriette Marie, of France, bride of Charles I 256 marriage articles 241 Henry, Prince of Wales 6 militant Protestantism of 161, 188, 257 n.7, 263 n.14 style of patronage 6, 263, 264, 265 Henry VIII, king of England 195 Herbert, William, Earl of Pembroke 186 and n.24, 224 n.31, 265 heresy, heretic see also errors of under Church of Rome; anti-papist rhetoric under John Donne, rhetoric of 5, 37, 70, 141, 159, 161, 199, 275 heretic as label 15, 17, 27, 32, 45, 71, 76, 190, 199, 226, 240, 242, 275 Hering, Theodore 153, 160 Hester, M. Thomas 10 n.40, 25 n.99 Heylyn, Peter 46, 112 n.37, 117 and n.51, 118, 119–20, 122 n.72, 123, 274 n.5 Hezekiah 65, 103 n.4, 126–8 and prayer 127 as pattern of godly religious behaviour 126, 203–5, 238 as governor of the Church 127, 238 High Commission 10, 13, 21, 43, 213, 240 Hinton, Mr. 111 n.21 Hobart, Sir Henry 52, 77, 104 Hodson, Phineas 265, 268 Holland, Randolph 257 n.5 Holyday, Barten 180 n.37, 263 Hoskyns, John 77 Howson, John, Bishop 105, 263 Hughes, John 58–9 Hunt, Anthony 75–6 Hunt, Arnold 3 n.6 Huntley, Frank 7 Hurd, Edward 47–8 Hus, John 195

304

General Index Huygens, Constantijn 132 n.102 Hyde, Edward, Lord Clarendon 120, 122 Infanta Maria see under Spain interpretation see exegesis Jackson, Thomas 189–91, 197, 211 Jacobsen, Kenneth 220 n.27 James I, King of England see also authority and Arminianism 38–9, 123, 167, 185–6, 231 and censorship 4, 13, 36–41, 45–8, 59, 61, 107, 166–7, 168, 185, 186, 206, 231 and Directions 12, 13, 105–7, 110, 111, 113–14, 115, 118–19, 123, 127, 128, 136, 138, 184, 245 and patronage of preachers 5–6, 65, 108–9, 138, 178, 193, 205, 224, 263, 268 confessional inclusivity of 5, 6, 17, 58, 263 and policies regarding Catholics 1, 98, 106, 111, 129, 131, 132, 133–4, 148, 169, 170, 184, 196, 220, 232, 234, 246 penal laws 34, 35, 61, 63, 67, 68, 99, 100, 106 n.14, 112, 132, 133, 166, 194, 196, 218, 219–20, 237, 246, 256, 259–60 anti-puritanism of 65, 231 as consultative 237–8 as ecclesiastical authority 67, 127, 128, 139, 185, 239, 263 as exemplar 48–9, 72–3, 127, 129, 133, 164–5, 171, 174, 192, 235, 236, 241, 266–7, 268–9 as via media 73, 265 as Solomon 51, 115–16, 200, 240, 242, 247, 266–7, 268–9 attendance at sermons 38, 41, 72–3, 94, 134, 167, 169, 177, 180, 185, 219, 237, 240, 245, 268 counselors of 129, 164, 184, 185, 206, 240, 241, 264 death of 19, 139, 257, 263–4, 269 sermons marking the occasion 257, 263–269 fear of relapse 40, 42, 49, 98–9, 111, 129, 170, 259 constancy in the reformed religion 49, 61, 64, 84, 110–11, 114, 119, 127, 132, 164, 171, 193, 198, 205, 211, 233, 241, 264, 268, 269 foreign policy of 13, 111, 119, 134, 148, 186, 191, 198, 269 peace policy 48, 50, 71–2, 84, 96, 112, 113, 126 n.97, 136, 162, 165, 169, 188–9, 192, 199–200, 204 n.67, 211, 212, 214, 239, 240, 241, 247, 268, 269 Spanish policy 4, 37, 99, 100, 117, 120, 124, 131, 136, 166, 168, 184, 186–8, 192, 204 n.67, 212, 223

praise of 49, 50, 51, 73, 103 n.5, 127, 129, 187, 192, 237, 240, 248, 263, 267, 268–9 relations with Donne 23, 24, 266–7 settling of Church (peace and religious unity) 128, 237–8, 241, 263 settling of state 263 writings of 58, 68, 73, 109, 119, 133, 146, 164–5, 168, 198, 202, 268 Jemmatt, William 144 Jenison, Robert 42 Jesuits 58, 102, 106, 118, 129, 147, 162, 164, 171, 183 n.4, 185, 189, 190, 193, 194, 195, 215, 234, 235, 237, 251, 264 and politics 51, 54 n.76, 59, 64, 104, 169, 199, 209, 229 elided with puritans 52 Jesuitesses 251 Jews, Judaism 128, 151–2, 190, 219, 220–1, 242, 243, 253, 259–60 Johnson, Jeffrey 8 n.34, 10 n.41, 20 n.71 and 72, 25 n.101, 27 n.105, 207 n.76, 244 n.14 Johnson, Robert 192–3, 211 Jones, Inigo 169 Judson, Margaret 133 justification, doctrine of 54, 155, 164, 171, 199, 200, 239, 250, 276 Kellie, Earl of see Erskine Kelliher, Hilton 274 n.3 Kent, Earl of see Grey Ker, Sir Robert, Earl of Ancrum relations with Donne 79, 203, 204 n.67 King, Henry 57–8, 64, 79 King, John, Bishop of London (to 1621) 41 and n.27, 64 and n.98, 72–3, 78, 79, 102, 216 King of Bohemia see Elector Palatine Kirk, Rudolph 115 n.47 Klemp, P. J. 3 n.3, 7 n.28 Klotz, Edith 3 n.5 Kneidel, Greg 260 n.11, 261 Knight, John 36, 45–8, 105, 234 official reporting of the incident 46–7 sermons surrounding the case 48–53 Lake, Arthur 78, 154, 231 n.43 Lake, Peter 9 and n.36, 11, 15, 16 n.60, 17, 18, 26 n.104, 37 n.6, 66, 78 and n.12, 135 n.107, 158 n.31, 197 n.54, 203 n.62, 252 n.28 Lake, Peter and Michael Questier 2 n.1, 4 n.9, 5 n.15, 19 n.70, 146 n.12, 183 n.3, 186 n.19 Lambert, Sheila 13 n.50, 14 lamentation (as a theme in sermons) 160, 176–7, 264–5 discourse of weeping 175, 176–7, 182, 225, 264 uses of affliction 160, 248, 264–5 Lapworth, Edward 155 Larkin, James 274 n.4

305

General Index Laud, William 5, 9, 10 and n.42, 18, 25, 37, 46, 48–9, 52, 112 n.37, 115, 118, 135 n.108, 185, 213, 219 n.21, 244 and n.13, 263 and Directions 123 Arminianism of 49, 257 relations with Donne 9, 10, 77, 79 Laudianism 14, 16, 19 n.68, 49, 63, 78, 119, 146, 211, 257, 279, 280 n.22 anti-Laudianism 59, 118, 135 n.108, 213–14 and n.9 Lawrence, John 159, 224–5 Lee, Richard 217–18 Leicester, Earl of see Dudley Levy, F. J. 4 n.8 Levy-Navarro, Elena 20 n.72, 267 Lewalski, Barbara 9 n.36 Ley, Roger 40 n.25 Lindsell, Augustine 257 n.6 Locke, Thomas 185 n.17 Loe, William 102 n.1, 128–9, 182 n.41, 188–9 London, Bishop of see Montaigne Lossky, Nicholas 7 n.28, 103 Lougher, Robert 159 Love, Harold 102 n.1 Love, Richard 213 n.9 Love, William 102 n.1 Lucy, William 48, 167 n.4, 257 luke-warmness see under moderation Lumley, Martin 224 Lushington, Thomas 220–2 Luther, Martin 24, 64, 72, 82, 87, 133, 152, 180 n.37 and Donne 31, 87, 278 Lutherans, Lutheranism 221, 278 Lutheran as label 16, 31, 151, 152, 216, 217 Machiavelli, Nicolo 71, 150, 217 Maclure, Millar 5, 37 n.5, 169 n.15, 212 Maie, Edward 62–3, 66, 76 Manicheans 278, 279, 280 Manwaring, Roger 17, 59 n.85 Mar, Earl of see Erskine Marotti, Arthur 28 n.108, 29 n.113, 99, 102 n.1 Marprelate, Martin 51 n.73, 69 marriage (as topic of sermons and pamphlets) see also French match; discussion of Spanish Match under sermons, discussion of matters of state; Spanish match under Spain 39, 40–1, 73, 93, 139, 160, 163–4, 174–5 and n.31, 178, 182, 200–02, 211, 212–13 between Christ and his Church 163, 182, 214–15 and n.10, 241 with idolaters 42, 43, 44, 60, 163, 168, 174, 241, 247, 260 Marten, Henry 107 Martz, Louis 245 n.17 Mary I, queen of England 190, 200

Masselink, Noralyn 143 n.6 Matthew, Toby, Archbishop of York 111, 231 n.43 Matthew, Toby, Jr. 111, 202 n.57 Mawe, Leonard 168, 274 n.3 McCabe, Richard 186 n.25, 187 McCullough, Peter see also Ferrell, Lori Anne and Peter McCullough 3 n.4, 5, 6, 7 n.27–28, 8 n.34, 20 n.73, 34 n.120, 37, 38, 49 n.71, 134 and n.104, 147 n.16, 167 n.2, 168, 188, 213, 219 n.22, 220 n.26, 241, 257 n.7, 263 and n.14, 265, 280 McIlwain, Charles 202 n.61 Mead, Joseph 42, 43 and n.35, 44, 108, 112 n.33, 125, 167, 168, 169, 185, 256 Melanchthon, Philip 216 and Donne 278–9 and n.17 Meroz, curse of 61, 69–70 and n.111, 71 Michel, Sir Francis 91 Middleton, Thomas A Game At Chesse 194, 237 and n.6, 246 Milton, Anthony 9 n.36, 14, 15, 16 and n.60 and 62, 17, 19, 20 n.71, 24, 25, 26 n.103 and 104, 27 n.106, 28 n.108, 36 n.1, 39 n.15, 42 and n.33, 47 n.59, 58, 59 and n.89, 62–3, 69 n.111, 72, 81 n.20, 86 n.30, 87 n.32, 108 n.25, 213 n.9, 236 n.3, 270 n.30, 273 n.2, 276 n.13, 278 n.17, 279 moderation see also conformity; papist-puritan rhetoric; peace; public sphere; see also conformity of, moderation of, rhetoric of (especially rhetorical “middle way”) under John Donne as Christian liberty 252–3 distinguished from private interpretations 252 distinguished from Roman superstitions 253 as establishing priorities 61, 72 as reconciling impossible opposites 137, 221, 235, 236, 247 difficulty in defining 17, 19 n.70, 273 as “Ambi-dexters” 148 as luke-warmness 61, 71, 144, 155, 159, 190–1, 197, 229 as neutrality 70, 109, 112, 118, 191, 235, 236 as spiritual weakness 148 as timeserving 148, 230 middle ground 5, 12, 15, 16, 17 and n.63, 19 n.70, 24, 58, 64, 65, 72, 73, 112, 120, 221, 245, 252–3 “moderate” as prized name 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 61, 64, 82, 115, 219–20, 238 sobriety see also Dort, Synod of “Rule of sobrietie” 120, 127, 274 and n.4 tactical 9, 18 and n.67, 73, 115, 120, 194 and n.41, 216, 219, 246 as strategy for marginalizing opponents 15, 18–19, 62, 72 associated with licensing 19, 196 Mompesson, Sir Giles 91

306

General Index Montaigne, George, Bishop of London 40, 44, 107, 124, 125–6, 134 n.104, 167, 169, 274 n.3 Montagu, Richard 9, 10 and n.42, 16, 31 n.115, 66, 78 n.12, 87 n.32, 152 n.24, 154 n.28, 244–5, 257 and n.6, 272 n.2, 274, 275, 276 and n.13, 277, 278 n.17, 281, 282, 283 Morrison, Sir Richard 224 Morrissey, Mary 2 n.2, 3 n.4, 5, 6 n.26, 7 n.27, 7–8, 8 and n.34, 9 n.36, 112 n.34, 113 and n.39, 114 n.40 and 41, 124 Morton, Sir Albertus 78 Morton, Thomas 59 n.89, 78, 266 n.21, 276 Mueller, Janel 205 n.70, 210 Myriell, Thomas 164, 170–1, 174, 257–8 Narveson, Kate 18 n.65, 23–4, 210–11 negative popery 26 and n.103, 63, 154 and n.28, 224, 236 Neile, Richard 10, 42 n.33 Durham House Group 77–8, 257, 274 n.5, 276 relations with Donne 10, 77, 79 Nethersole, Sir Francis 40–1 Nicholls, David 207 n.76, 244 n.14 nonconformity see under conformity Norbrook, David 19 n.68, 77 n.9, 107 and n.17 Northumberland, Earl of see Percy Oath of Allegiance 30 n.114, 37, 62, 75 n.3, 106, 108, 222 Oath of Supremacy 37, 90, 92, 106, 117 n.52, 236 obedience see authority Old Archdeaconry of St. Albans 107 and n. 16 Olivares, Gaspar de Guzman, Count of 204 n.67 order (as a theme in sermons) see also authority 51, 56, 64, 67–70, 72, 102–5, 113, 144, 170–1, 248, 255 and disorder 59, 63, 69, 120 state as body politic 6, 67, 69, 71, 92, 103, 225, 239, 240, 247 Oxford, Bishop of see Howson Oxford, Earl of see DeVere Palatinate see discussion of the Palatinate under sermons, and matters of state; affairs in the Palatinate under Thirty Years’ War; politics of under John Donne Palmer, James 188 n.30 Papazian, Mary (Arshagouni) 23 and n.86, 202 n.58 and n.59, 208–10, 209 n.83 papist-puritan rhetoric see also anti-papist rhetoric; anti-puritan rhetoric; papistpuritan rhetoric under John Donne, rhetoric of 122, 221 James I’s ecclesiastical policy 28 n.107, 64, 104, 108–9, 119, 120, 146, 156, 178, 238, 273

papist-protestant as label 147 n.15, 217 papist-separatist variation 140, 149, 242, 245 polarization on ceremonial issues 150–2, 213 n.9, 252 used to establish identity of Church of England 53, 105, 149–50, 154, 171, 238, 252–3 used to identify extremists 51, 57, 59, 70, 72, 79, 104, 127, 146, 150, 153, 229, 250, 252 Pareus 45 works burned at Paul’s Cross 45–7 parliament 73, 165, 184, 203 n.62, 217, 218, 274 n.5 (1614) 77 (1621) 37, 53, 61–2, 66, 73, 100, 212 (1624) 147 n.15, 181 n.40, 194, 211, 212 and n.3, 218, 219, 220, 223, 224 and n.31, 225, 229, 230, 231, 232, 234 and n.1, 235, 237, 242, 244, 246, 256 (1626) 10, 275, 277, 282 Paton, Henry 170, 207 n.75, 209 n.80 patriot coalition 186, 189, 193, 202, 211, 212, 213, 217, 218, 220, 224, 229, 231, 234, 237 Patterson, Annabel 8 n.34, 10 n.39, 13 n.50, 22 n.83, 77 and n.9, 83 n.27, 112, 114, 203, 204 n.67 Patterson, W. B. 20 n.71, 123, 273 n.2, 277 n.14, 278 peace see also controversy; discretion; foreign policy of under James I; security; see also controversy; discretion under John Donne 240 as absence of controversy 33, 62, 70, 71–2, 79, 84–5, 87, 94, 95–6, 136, 169, 216, 224, 231, 248, 255 as controversial topic 223–4 as refraining from personal revilings 33, 76, 79, 108–9, 113, 119–20, 124, 127, 145, 152 as religious unity 242–6, 247, 255 as war 144, 165, 189, 192, 200, 239–41 blessings of 49–50, 71–2, 96, 126, 161–2, 171, 191, 241 civil and ecclesiastical 50, 59, 87, 239 of conscience 73, 87, 126 n.97, 200 Peacham, Edmond 36–7, 38, 102 n.1 Pelagianism, Pelagius see also Arminian, Arminianism 19 n.68, 64, 65, 72, 87, 152, 153, 209 and n.83, 215 and n.12, 273, 275 and n.6, 276 n.13, 278, 279, 280, 283 semi-Pelagianism 49, 66, 250, 276 n.13 Peltonen, Markku 203 n.62 Pembroke, Earl of see Herbert penal laws, see policies regarding Catholics under James I Percy, Henry, Earl of Northumberland relations with Donne 25 n.101 Percy, John, the Jesuit (alias Fisher) 183, 185–6 Percy-Fisher debates see under public sphere

307

General Index perseverance, doctrine of 49, 54, 120, 124, 153, 248, 276 Peters, Robert 107 n.16 Petley, Elias 126–8, 137 n.111, 204 Petrie, Sir Charles 207 n.73, 208 n.77 Phelips, Robert 77 Philip IV, king of Spain 166, 184 Phillips, Jerome 163 Phillips, John 155–6 Phillips, Samuel 44 Pierce (Piers), William, Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University 220 Poland (Polonia) bad effects of toleration there 60 spiritual exemplar 189 Potter, George and Evelyn Simpson 41 n.26, 82 n.25, 83 n.26 and 28, 85, 86, 88, 97, 137, 156 n.30, 172 n.26, 175, 178, 179 preaching see under censorship; Directions to Preachers; exegesis; public sphere; sermons; see also under sermons of and principles of exegesis under John Donne predestination, doctrine of 67, 135–6, 170–1, 278 n.17 censorship of doctrinal discussion 38, 53, 121, 122, 152, 153, 211, 274 and n.4 disputes about God’s secret will 65, 70 experimental 153 Preston, John 39–40, 65, 77, 81 and n.21, 124, 138 Preston, Richard 149 Price, Daniel 263–5, 268 Price, Sampson 162 Price, Theodore 43–4 Prideaux, John 7, 47 n.59, 54, 56 and n.81, 59–61, 65, 72, 147, 150, 184, 237–8, 242, 257 Primerose, Gilbert 144–5, 161–2, 164 Prior, Gerald 40 Proctor, William 249 providentialism see also Blackfriar’s disaster; thanksgiving, discourse of 160, 181–2, 183, 188, 193, 195–6, 201, 222, 258 anti-Catholic 43 and n.34, 188, 191–2, 194, 218, 225, 251–2 puritan 153, 196, 201 public sphere as site for conversion of hearers see also conversion in General Index and under John Donne 58, 78 battle for control of 9 n.37, 15, 37, 45–8, 59, 61, 63–4, 69, 109, 220–2 battle for interpretive control of doctrinal issues 15, 35, 53, 55–6, 67, 72, 105, 114, 140, 143, 186, 258 battle for interpretive control of matters of state 188, 200 battle for interpretive control of public events 194–8, 220–2

heightened stakes of publicly debated topics 141,146, 155, 183–4, 268 impact of private words on 36, 117, 184 origins at the establishment’s center 5 n.15, 235, 239, 253–5 Percy-Fisher debates 185–6 pressures shaping it see also censorship; controversy; Directions to Preachers 12, 100, 114, 170–3, 183, 198, 263–9 public witness to beliefs 139, 143, 186, 250 reporting of sermons 41, 116 role of hearers in 41, 56–7, 58, 114, 171–2, 177, 239, 257 and n.6 role of international synods in 216, 240 role of parliament in 220, 231–3, 235–6, 237, 256, 257, 274 n.5, 277 role of pulpit in construction of see also exegesis; sermons; controversy in General Index and principles of exegesis; rhetoric of; sermons of under John Donne 2 and n.1, 3–5, 17, 40–1, 59, 62, 109, 183 role of pulpit in forming public opinion 82, 146 n.12, 220–1, 245 rules governing discourse in 20, 53 rumour in 41, 50, 64, 84, 91, 106 n.13, 119, 166, 171, 183, 205–7, 207 n.74, 230, 240 Purchas, Samuel 102, 103–4, 105 puritan, puritanism see also anti-puritan rhetoric; papist-puritan rhetoric in General Index and rhetoric of under John Donne Index as place on religious spectrum 5, 10, 15, 31 as threat to political order 30, 46, 51, 57, 65, 72, 118, 119 preaching of excessive 65, 120 factious 46, 65, 150 gadding 111, 149 seditious 51, 57, 65, 119, 169 turbulent 51, 169 Questier, Michael see also Lake, Peter and Michael Questier 17, 20 n.73, 30 n.114, 34 n.120, 40 n.20, 78 n.12, 147, 194–5 Ramsay, John, Viscount Holderness 104, 108 Randes, Richard 44 Rawley, William 180–1 Rawlinson, John 163 n.39, 178 Reading, John 66 real presence see eucharistic presence, doctrine of recusant see also under anti-papist rhetoric, papist-puritan rhetoric, and under John Donne, rhetoric of 219–20, 235, 236 as label for non-conforming Catholics 17, 20, 59, 146, 149–50, 170, 193, 217–18, 219, 235, 242

308

General Index as metaphor 227 elided with church-papism 34, 155, 217, 230 “occasional” recusancy 155 elided with Puritanism 59, 150 elided with separatism 20, 34 n.120, 127, 149–50 associated with women 61, 127, 194, 235 religious distinguished from political 106, 170, 250 Reeve, Thomas 191–2 Reformation, English 16, 20, 25, 37, 238, 243 as apostasy 235 as providential narrative 195, 222 betrayed by moderates 148 injunctions against labeling 76 separation from Rome 28, 35, 216, 235 as circumcision 33 as plague 32, 81 n.20, 88, 246 as necessary departure rather than separation 61, 72, 88, 216, 246 Church before Luther 24–5 Reidy, Maurice 7 n.28 Remonstrant as confessional label 16, 215 n.12 repentance, doctrine of 164, 190, 265 reprobation, doctrine of see also under Church of England; theology of grace under John Donne 67, 118, 144, 152, 153, 221, 249 Rich, Henry, Lord Kensington, Earl of Holland 43, 213, 214, 215, 241 Richardson, John 169 Roe, Sir Thomas 130–1 Rowlandson, James 149, 150 Rowles, Mr. 256 n.3 Rudyerd, Sir Benjamin 224 and n.31 Ruigh, Robert 207 n.75, 209 n.80 Sadlier, Anne 3 sanctification, doctrine of 155, 164, 199–200, 239, 250 Sanderson, Robert 7, 9 n.36, 17, 18, 54, 55, 57, 58, 66, 252–3, 255 Sanderson, William 119 Sarpi, Paoli 10 n.41 relations with Donne 10 schism, schismatic see also anti-separatist rhetoric; recusant; anti-separatist rhetoric under John Donne, rhetoric of associated with controversy 29, 66, 275 associated with separatism 50, 72, 92, 128, 149, 159, 178 ecclesiastical penalties for 90 schismatic as polemical label 32, 62, 71, 76, 149, 169, 240, 242 separation from means of salvation 153, 193, 242

Scodel, Joshua 8 n.34, 10 n.39, 23, 80 n.17 Scotland, Scots 119 depictions of 103 n.5 Scott, Jonathan 160 n.33 Scott, Thomas 112, 141, 150 n.21, 158–9, 162, 196–7, 203 n.62 Scull, John 145 n.10 Seaver, Paul 4, 37 n.3, 123, 230 n.40, 249 n.24 security see also peace; war dangers of 58, 60, 62, 70, 96, 99, 105, 112, 119, 128, 136, 144, 148, 159, 189, 191, 199–200, 204, 213, 214–15, 218, 224, 236, 241, 249 sedition associated with Catholicism 62, 83, 128, 189, 250, 256 see also Gowry Conspiracy; Gunpowder Plot; Oath of Allegiance associated with puritanism 30, 51, 57, 65, 92, 169, 196–7 associated with separatism 31, 83, 92, 228 burning of seditious books 5, 45–7, 256–7 laws against seditious libel 14, 47 separatism, separatist see anti-separatist rhetoric; schism; anti-separatist rhetoric, papistpuritan rhetoric under John Donne, rhetoric of Sellin, Paul 9 n.36, 10 n.41, 20 n.71, 23, 75 n.2, 202 n.58 semi-Pelagianism see under Pelagianism sermon locations Artillery Garden 148 assizes 6, 67–9, 149, 150 n.22, 236 Blackfriars 195 Boston 57, 165 Bury St. Edmunds 231 Cambridge commencement 48 Canterbury 224 Canterbury, cathedral church 189 Clare, Suffolk 56 Convocation 47, 48, 215, 216 “court” 5–6, 39, 120, 167, 177, 182, 202, 219–20, 238–41, 261–2, 263, 265 Denmark House 6, 265 n.19, 266–7, 268 Epping, Essex 151 French Church, London 161 Gorichem 162 Gray’s Inn 171 Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, Church of 191 Greenwich 122 Hampton Court 185 Hanworth 140 n.1 Lincoln’s Inn 8, 62–3, 76, 82 and n.25, 83 and n.28, 83–8, 89, 90–1, 95, 97, 98, 140 n.1, 143, 149, 151, 172 n.26, 276 Otelands 43–4 Oxford 50, 51, 60 n.91, 67, 242 Oxfordshire 229 parliament 61–3, 150, 215, 235–6

309

General Index sermon locations (continued) Paul’s Cross, 4–5, 8, 14 and n. 57, 19, 32, 37, 42, 46, 55, 57, 59, 66, 69, 72, 75, 80, 102, 104, 105, 107–8, 109–10, 112 and n.34, 114 n.41, 126, 127, 130, 131, 132, 137, 140 n.3, 147 n.15, 152, 154, 159, 169 n.15, 170, 171, 198, 200, 211, 212, 224, 241, 246–53, 263 Royston 38, 39 St. Dunstan’s-in-the-West 8, 140 n.1, 145, 159, 225–9, 259 St. James’s 6, 19, 140 n.1, 192, 269 St. James’s chapel (Exeter College) 150 St. John’s chapel (Cambridge) 213 n.9 St. Mary’s, Cambridge 213 n.9 St. Mary’s, Oxford 47, 167, 220, 236 St. Mary’s Spittle 76, 177, 180 St. Michael’s, London 168 St. Paul’s 8, 41, 44, 55, 83, 108, 134, 157–8, 172 n.26, 173, 178, 202, 217–18, 253, 260 Sergeant’s Inn 140 n.1 Southwark 68 n.107 Temple Church 168 the Hague 181 Theobald’s 115, 128, 186, 248 n.23 Trinity College (Cambridge) 213, 241 visitations 6, 57, 66, 165, 224 Wanstead 245 Warwick 68–9 Westminster Abbey 132 Whitehall 5–6, 8, 91, 94, 120, 134, 140 n.1, 175, 178, 180, 182 n.41, 188, 219 n.21, 254 Winchester 149 Woodstock 237 sermons and matters of state 1, 36, 38, 42, 44, 53, 67–74, 120, 127, 166, 184 criticism of the state 76, 167, 182, 189, 196, 230, 240 discussion of authority and jurisdiction 120, 139, 160 discussion of Bohemia 41, 69 n.111, 161 discussion of La Rochelle 43, 46 n.55, 48 discussion of the Palatinate 37, 43, 113, 161, 200, 221 advocating war 50, 67, 69 n.111, 188, 198, 214 miseries of co-religionists 50, 61, 67, 71, 139, 145, 153, 160–2, 182, 196, 212 n.3, 214, 215, 249 discussion of the Spanish journey 166–8, 171–2 see also lamentation, discourse of; thanksgiving, discourse of discussion of the Spanish match 4, 5, 13, 37, 41, 42–3, 44, 45, 46, 109 n.27, 113, 118, 119–20, 122, 123, 126, 132, 172, 178, 186–8, 190–1, 196, 201, 214, 220, 221, 247

resistance to tyrannical kings 45–7, 50–1, 53, 59, 103–5, 234, 248 and news 4, 5, 170, 220–1 and women 40–1, 127, 161–2, 221 and patronage 3 n.6, 5, 6, 43, 45, 108, 186, 188, 198 critical abuse of (as evidence) 2, 7–12, 60 n.91 politics of quotation 9–12, 22, 81 critical neglect of 3, 6–7, 8 dedications to 18, 51, 52, 64, 76 n.5, 111–12, 126, 153, 155, 162, 164, 178, 180, 181–2, 186, 188, 193, 198, 211, 213, 218, 224, 235, 242, 243, 257–8, 263 flattery in 58, 69, 103, 116, 127, 165, 169, 172, 179, 182, 265 oral vs. printed 2–3, 2 n.2, 3 n.6, 14, 20, 56, 104–5, 111, 185, 220 manuscript circulation of 14 n.57, 85, 102 n.1, 175 n.31, 182 n.41, 188, 212 and n.3, 213 and n.9, 215 methodology for reading sermons 2–3, 12 popularity of 3 propaganda function of 1, 4, 5–6, 123, 146, 184, 194–8, 274 satire in 58, 69, 76 n.5, 97, 120, 122, 127, 137, 196–7, 234, 252, 254 Sharpe, Kevin 17 n.63 Sheldon, Richard 63, 108–10, 140, 141, 147, 148, 164 Sherwood, Terry 20 n.74, 80 n.17, 92 n.39, 203 n.65 Shuger Debora 11–12 and n.45, 22 n.83, 94 n.41, 172–3 Sibbes, Richard 9, 42 Sibthorpe, Robert 17 Siebert, Frederick 14 n.51 Simmons, Judith 3 n.5 Simpson, Edward 38–9, 102 n.1, 257 Simpson, Evelyn see under Potter, George and Evelyn Simpson Sisera 70, 112, 116 and n.49, 218 Skinner, Robert 9 n.36, 18 Slights, Camille 21 n.76, 80 n.17, 82 n.23, 93 n.40 Sloan, Thomas 80 n.17 Smith, Don Noel 202 n.60 Smith, Henry 3, 9 Socinianism 72 Sommerville, J. P. 11 n.43 Southampton, Earl of see Wriotheseley Spain ambassadors 44, 115, 169, 170, 185, 204 n.67, 229, 234 as antichrist 192 cruelty of 257 defeat of Armada (1588) 29, 42, 103, 218 Inquisition 154, 239, 240, 258 king of see Philip IV Spanish authors 178, 204 n.67

310

General Index Spanish match 1, 39, 44, 60 n.91, 99–100, 108, 111, 124, 129, 131, 139, 155, 158, 160, 165, 166, 177, 181–2, 183, 185, 194, 201, 203 n.66, 204 n.67, 205, 209, 214, 221, 241, 247, 256, 257 see also discussion of matters of state under sermons Infanta 43, 111, 136, 160, 163, 166, 177, 178, 186, 188, 198, 220 and n.26, 230 n.38 marriage articles 170, 183, 204 n.67, 207, 218, 230 war with 146, 149, 186–8, 204 n.67, 212–13 and n.3, 214, 218, 223, 229, 234, 241, 276 Spinke, Richard 213 n.9 Spinola, Ambrosio, Spanish general 45 Spottiswood, John 118, 119 Squire, John 147 n.15 Stanhope, John 161 Star Chamber, Court of 13, 41, 93 Stoughton, John 2 n.2, 14 n.57, 102 n.1, 212–15, 241 Strier, Richard 10 n.39, 83 n.27, 107 n.17, 112 n.37, 206 n.71, 208, 209–11 Stuteville, Martin 42, 43 n.35, 112 n.33, 125, 167, 168, 256 Sullivan, Ernest W. II 82 n.22 Sutton, Thomas 68 n.107, 148 Swale, Christopher 73 Sydenham, Humphrey 152–3 Taylor, Thomas 235–6, 242 thanksgiving, discourse of 183, 185, 188–94, 209, 211, 212, 241 Thirty Years’ War 4, 60 n.91, 100, 139, 161, 204, 276 affairs in the Palatinate 37, 43, 45, 83 n.28, 114–15, 119, 132 n.102, 166, 207 n.75, 208, 209, 211, 214, 215, 221, 234, 268 toleration (of religion) 61, 108 arguments against toleration of Catholics 60, 186–8, 219 at Court 118, 196, 197 fear of 83, 106 and n.14, 120, 125, 169, 183–4, 211, 214–15, 236–7, 242, 247, 256 perceived alteration in religion 44, 68, 75 n.3, 111, 115, 117, 166, 184, 212, 224, 230, 232 Townson, Robert 40 Traske, John 144 Trumbull, William 46 n.51, 47, 78, 105, 106, 110, 117, 168, 184, 234 n.1 Tyacke, Nicholas 5 n.13, 7 n.28, 10 n.42, 20 n.71, 38 n.9 and 13, 39, 48 n.65, 49, 78, 123, 152 n.24, 249 n.24, 257 n.6, 276 n.13, 281 n.24 Udny, Alexander 224 Ussher, James 7, 61–3, 234, 242, 245–6, 257 n.5

Valaresso 46 n.55, 106 n.13, 108, 117–18, 169–70, 184–5, 207 Van Seters, John 259 n.9 Vase, Robert 248–9 Venetian ambassador see Valaresso Venn, John 213 n.9 Vicars, John 21–2 Villiers, George, Duke of Buckingham 15, 124, 158, 186, 211, 229, 230 n.38, 234, 275, 276 n.13 attempt to impeach 277 family relapses to popery 111, 129, 185, 186, 246 journey to Spain 166, 167, 170, 172, 174–5, 177, 184, 192, 201, 204 n.67, 207 n.75 patronage of 48, 269 relations with Donne 25 n.101, 77, 111–12, 204 n.67 vocation see also authority; vocation of and on preaching under John Donne 6, 199, 200 and authority 17, 36, 222 doctrine of callings 53, 55 duties of hearers 57–8, 76, 252, 255 as “babes” 121, 144 “itch” of hearing 57, 66, 76 and n.8 to hear God’s voice in the preacher 144, 145 duties of preachers 6, 67, 79, 158–9, 160, 213 n.9, 224, 225, 233, 234, 239, 240, 242, 245, 255 as pastors 250 as prophets 5, 58, 145, 240, 242, 247 Amos 58 and n. 83, 89, 145 as trumpets 144, 145, 159, 228 boundaries of calling 67, 120, 139, 213 n.9, 222, 238 catechizing 245 counsel 18, 128–9, 188, 211, 240, 241 interpretation 55–6 obedience to state authority 69, 71, 76, 79 preaching in and out of season 57, 143, 242 Vorstius 70, 72 Wadkins, T. H. 186 n.20 Wall, John 161, 242 Wall, John and Terry Burgin 132 n.101 Wallace, D. D. 180 n.37 Walsham, Alexandra 43 n.34, 183 n.4, 194 n.41, 194–7, 252 Walton, Izaak 25–6 relations with Donne 10 war (as topic of sermons) see also under controversy; peace; discussion of matters of state under sermons; Thirty Years’ War 53, 70–2, 79, 136, 139, 160, 211, 234 anti-war 50, 71, 171 as way to peace 136, 188–9, 214, 241

311

General Index war (continued) militant Protestantism see also under Henry, Prince of Wales 188, 198–200, 224–5, 240, 241, 242, 246, 247, 250, 255, 268 pro-war 62, 71, 162, 186–8, 196, 247, 268 spiritual 144, 148, 200, 215, 225, 233, 240, 242 Ward, Samuel, Master of Sidney Sussex Cambridge 42 Ward, Samuel, preacher of Ipswich 42–3, 44, 53–4, 109, 191, 231 n.42 Webster, Tom 3 n.5, 9 n.37, 121 n.71 Weldon, Anthony 118–19 Wentworth, Sir Thomas 203 n.66 Whalen, Robert 280 n.22 Whateley, William 5, 163 n.39, 174–5 White, Christopher 48, 50–1 White, Francis 167, 185, 281 White, Dr. 109 n.27, 166, 185 White, Peter 20 n.71, 38 n.13, 39 and n.14, 123, 167 n.4, 274 n.5, 277 n.14 Whitebrook, J. C. 213 Whiteway, William, 42 n.29, 65 and n.100 Whiting, Dr. 109 n.27, 185, 185 n.17, 186, 188, 211 Wickliffe, John 195 Wilkinson, Robert 257 and n.6, 258 Willan, Robert 132–4, 138 Willet, Andrew 39 and n. 15 Williams, Griffith 64, 66 Williams, John 45, 106, 111, 112 n.37, 123, 126, 169, 213 n.9, 231 n.43, 242, 265, 268–9 Wilson, Arthur 118–19, 122 Wilson, Dr. 169 n.15 Wilson, Edmund 169 Wilton Hall H. R. 107 n.16

Wing, John 54, 181–2 Winniffe, Thomas 45, 102 n.1, 219 and n.22, 230 n.39 Winwood, Ralph 78 Wood, Anthony à 44, 45 n.44 and 49, 47, 48 n.63, 167 and n.4, 220 Woolf, Daniel 118 Worden, Blair 14 Worship, William 165 Wotton, Sir Henry 78 Woudhuysen, Henry 102 n.1 Wren, Matthew 168 Wright, Louis 4 Wright, Nancy 92 n.38, 112–13, 129 Wriothesley, Henry, 3rd Earl of Southampton 234 relations with Donne 79 Yonge, Walter 46 n.55, 106 n.14, 117 and n.52 York House debates see under Arminian Young, Richard 41 zeal associated with converts from Catholicism 108 associated with puritans 19 n.68, 61, 107, 120 balanced with discretion 144, 165 contrasted with discretion 19 n.68, 61, 136–7 distinguished from sectarian fervour 71, 242 excess of 67, 71, 165, 242 lack of 159, 190, 230 good forms of 69, 71, 114, 127, 144, 145, 241 Zwingli, Ulrich Zwinglian as confessional label 16, 66, 216

312

INDEX TO JOHN DONNE REFERENCES authority civil (of kings and magistrates) 22, 83–4, 90, 99, 129, 131, 142, 159–60, 173, 203 n.62, 204, 228, 254, 259–60, 266–7 distinction of “passive” from “blind” obedience 22, 160, 259 distinction between obedience to men and to God 159–60, 259 fit places to debate laws 259, 271 ecclesiastical 23, 26, 90–1, 92–4, 99, 100, 110, 112–13, 130, 152, 159 disciplinary conformity 226, 266 frailty of kings 266–7 interpretive 28, 129–30 rejection of authority of any single commentator see also rejection of singularity under rhetoric of 82, 87, 141 of conscience 130, 160, 173, 174, 176, 226, 228, 260, 271 of the law 12, 22, 34, 77, 79, 90, 93, 100, 130, 145, 208, 271, 277 vocational 91–2, 129, 130, 172–3, 179, 218, 267 biography of 9, 10, 25 n.101 and 102, 25–6, 75–9, 78 n.12, 91, 99–100, 107, 137–8, 140 n.1, 202, 227, 266 n.21, 270 and n.29, 274–6, 274 n.3, 282–3 Church of Rome 24–30, 98–100 apostolic succession 28–9, 82 as Babylon 29, 33, 81 n.20, 88 communion with Rome 32, 34, 135 n.108, 137 communion with papists within the Church of England 137, 155 reconciliation with 32, 33–4, 135 n.108, 137, 210 Reformation 28, 32–4, 76, 81, 88, 89, 210, 222, 273 as miracle 243 charges against Reformed churches 151, 244, 270 reformed Catholicism 98 Rome as metaphor 98 younger than Reformed churches 227 and n.36

conformity of 1, 19–24, 34, 41, 75–6, 77–8, 81, 90, 101, 111–12, 210–11, 223, 229, 243, 253–4, 262, 273 conscience 20, 21–3, 24, 28, 87, 89, 94, 100, 111–12, 116, 128, 129, 130, 132, 136, 173, 174, 176, 177, 255 casuistical habits of thought 21 and n.76, 22 and n.82, 28, 76–7, 80 and n.17, 82 and n.23, 93 and n.40, 142, 159–60, 253, 258, 259–60, 262, 271, 273, 274 integration of public duty with private conscience 20, 23, 41, 89, 93, 94, 111–12, 113, 116, 129, 184, 204, 205, 272, 273, 274, 275 controversy 12, 23, 28, 29, 75, 76, 100, 137, 156, 157, 172, 180, 228, 274, 275 condemnation of public personal attacks 30, 32, 33, 76, 79, 113, 127, 270, 273, 277–80, 283 distinguished from “holy zeal” 278 inappropriate to sermons and public councils 20–1, 34, 76, 80, 94–6, 97, 137, 140, 234, 266 n.21, 276, 277–8 and n.15, 279 edifying rather than controversial preaching 76, 95, 227 fit places for doctrinal debate 34, 156, 172, 223, 276, 280, 283 reluctance to enter the “fray” 84, 276 and n.12 renovation of controverted terms 26, 31–2, 87, 95, 98, 152, 228, 235, 243–4, 254, 258, 260–1, 262, 274 resistance to polarizing rhetoric 30–1, 181, 270 return issues to problematical status 30, 32, 180, 243, 271, 277 rules governing controversial discourse see also rhetoric of 22–3, 34, 76, 81–2, 137, 156, 272, 273, 276–80, 283 conversion 23, 25, 27, 32, 92, 97, 98, 145, 260–1, 262–3, 273, 274 as circumcision 259, 273 as eucharistic sacrament 261, 273 Donne as convert see also relations with Donne under Abbot, George in General Index 24, 78 obstacles to 279

313

Index to John Donne References conversion (continued) occasional 260 of church-papists 23, 34 and n.120, 174, 259 of recusants 259 of unsettled protestants 255, 259 performance of conversion 20, 23, 24, 259, 273, 274 discretion 19 n.68, 22–3, 22 n.81, 24, 75, 89–90, 91, 110, 111, 113, 126, 130, 132 n.102, 136, 137, 139, 151, 193, 228–9, 253–4, 255, 258, 271, 273, 283 balanced with zeal 114, 137, 145, 165, 176, 228, 229, 255, 283 contrasted with vehement zeal 89, 90, 93 and n.40, 280 distinguished from hypocrisy 23 moderation of 19, 23–4, 29, 35, 83, 112 as “blessed sobriety” 157, 275, 276–7, 279–80, 283 distinguished from religious indifference 270 middle ground 22–3, 34, 80–9, 96, 129, 131, 135, 137–8, 141, 158, 179, 181, 235, 247, 271, 283 “nearnesse” 21–2, 38, 76, 91, 111, 145, 278 on preaching as ordinance 22, 113, 121, 128, 156, 157, 227–8, 229, 261 as a sacrament 142 n.5 boundaries of that sphere see also sermon defending Directions 75, 80, 272, 273 dignity of 255 duties of hearers 130, 145–6, 173, 176, 225 interpretive authority 114, 130, 180, 255 to hear and apply the word preached 145–6, 227, 261–2, 267 duties of preachers 83–4, 92, 100, 145, 225, 227–8 as ambassadors 130 as force of cohesion 274 commission 92 and n.39, 113–14, 129 distinguished from prophets 89–92, 90 n.34 ethical demands on 271 interpretation 129, 142, 143, 222, 226, 243, 255, 267, 274 preachers as stars 91, 113, 218 preaching in and out of season 83–4, 89, 227 vocation of preacher 89–92, 128, 129–30, 143, 145, 172, 179, 218, 226, 229, 233, 267 pastoral aims of 12, 21, 28, 113, 156, 218, 223, 225–6, 227, 233, 246, 255, 280 courtly and civil language 91, 178–9, 223, 254, 280

poetry of 9 Lamentations of Jeremy 132 n.102 The Indifferent 24 n.92 Satyre II 21 Satyre III 222 and n.29 politics of 8, 9, 77–8, 80, 131, 178 absolutism of 11–12, 75 and n.3, 77, 131–2, 138, 267 enabled by casuistry see also under conscience 80, 259–60 Palatinate 114, 132 n.102, 202 n.58 oblique commentary on matters of state 175, 176–7, 202–3, 259–60 use of political metaphors and analogies see also topical application under principles of exegesis 83 and n.27, 90–1, 93–4, 172–3, 202–3, 204 and n.67, 205–6, 260, 267 principles of exegesis 21–2 analogy 83, 93–4, 95, 99, 273 choice of text 243, 259, 269 discourse of perspective 142, 157, 253–4, 262, 274 equivocal application 131–2 focus on the middle course 75, 80 and n.17, 84, 88–9, 135, 158, 179, 224, 226, 229, 253–4, 262 foregrounding issues of interpretation 80, 114, 131–2, 140, 141–2, 177, 253–4 inclusivity 80, 135, 156, 222 preacher’s intention 112, 131 relations of literal to metaphorical 80–2, 80 n.18, 82 n.22, 95, 141–2, 222, 245 rule of charity 128, 151, 262 topical application 135, 136, 143, 145, 146, 176, 180, 258, 267 undogmatic 180 n.38, 181, 255 whole rule of scriptures 81–2, 85–8, 96–7, 135, 141, 143, 145–6 vs. private interpretation 130, 141 prolocutor to Convocation see also Convocation of under Church of England in General Index 10, 274–6, 274 n.3, 282, 283 prose of (excluding sermons) Biathanatos 81–2 Conclave Ignati 28 Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions 24, 126, 128, 158 n.32, 172 and n.26, 184, 202–11, 240 and censorship 203 and Donne’s religious identity 208–11 and providentialism 202, 208 and public sphere 202–3, 206 and reputation 202–3, 206 and rumour 205, 206–7 and n.74 and secrecy 203, 206–8 dedication to Charles 202–5, 264 example of Hezekiah 202–5, 203 n.65 king as heart 206

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Index to John Donne References political counsel in 158 n.32, 202, 204–8, 209 public and private in 202–3, 203 n.65, 205 responsibilities of kings 206, 207, 240 Trinitarian model of government 207–8, 226 Letters 33, 77, 79, 114, 115 Pseudo-Martyr 28, 75 n.3 religious identity of 8, 9, 20, 23, 228 and international Protestantism 10, 20, 23, 78, 101, 140, 204 n.67 as “apostate” 10, 20 as Arminian (anti-Calvinist) 9, 10, 19, 25 n.99, 31 n.115, 78 and n.12, 208–10, 244 and n.13, 245 and n.17, 280 as Calvinist 19, 23, 79, 208, 279, 280 new strain of see also qualifications of rigid Calvinism under theology of grace 247, 273, 279, 280, 283 as Christian 33, 85–6, 98, 101, 210, 211 as Jacobean 30, 156, 243, 262, 265, 273, 282–3 see also papist-puritan rhetoric in General Index as moderate Calvinist 24, 79 as not-Arminian 23, 24, 79, 86 and n.31, 87 n.32, 210, 244–5, 247 as not-Calvinist 31, 86 and n.31 as not-Laudian 23, 210 as not-Lutheran 31 as not-puritan 23, 209 as puritan 9, 10, 19, 107, 135, 210 sympathy with puritans at Lincoln’s Inn 10, 77 as puritano-papismus 260 n.11 Catholicism of 10, 20, 24, 25, 75 n.3, 99–100, 107, 147, 266 n.21, 273 as Old Religion 25, 32 role of reason 135, 179 reputation of 272 n.1, 274, 275, 283 rhetoric of see also General Index under antipapist rhetoric; anti-puritan rhetoric; antiseparatist rhetoric; papist-puritan rhetoric; errors of under Church of Rome anti-papist rhetoric 26–30, 98–100, 131–2, 174, 179, 270–1, 276 acts outside law 113 confusion of fundamental and indifferent 29–30, 157, 270, 277, 279 Council of Trent 27–8, 30, 32, 34, 76 and n.7, 82, 87, 98, 100, 107, 131, 179, 210, 227 and n.36, 244, 247, 273, 277 denies the use of scriptures 271 doctrinal absolutism of 29, 227, 244, 273 faulty scriptural interpretation 29–30, 81, 82, 228 heresy of 27, 87, 157, 172, 227 idolatry 29, 87, 93–100, 129, 194, 222, 226, 266 innovations of 27, 29, 32, 179, 227, 277

internal divisions 137, 281 Jesuits 26, 27, 28, 83, 84, 92, 99–100, 137, 209, 281 meritorious works 83, 87, 158 miracles 141, 228, 254 political interventions 24, 27, 29, 92, 99–100, 157, 222, 273 Court of Rome 32, 86 and n.30, 270 and n.30 pope 27, 28, 86, 91, 100, 157, 179, 222, 226, 244, 277 infallibility of 28, 222, 277 purgatory 100, 276 singularity of Roman Church 26, 28, 32, 129, 157, 179 traditions of men 32, 96, 157, 227, 271 treason of 29, 99, 100, 103, 131, 136 anti-puritan rhetoric 92, 129, 173, 210, 222, 228, 243, 244, 266 anti-separatist rhetoric 19 n.68, 23, 30–1, 33, 76, 79, 88, 90, 92–3, 96, 156, 157, 178, 182, 226, 227, 243, 244, 273, 280 papist-puritan rhetoric 30–1, 92, 95, 99, 114, 128, 156, 157, 158, 178–9, 223, 226, 227, 228, 233, 243, 260 n.11, 266, 273 rhetorical “middle way” 23, 30–1, 80–9, 92, 96, 129, 130, 135, 137, 156, 158, 173, 179, 229, 271, 280–3 flexibility of 80, 89, 130, 181, 244, 274 independence of 272, 275 moderation of 19, 83, 254, 273 perceptual wholeness see also discourse of perspective under principles of exegesis 80–1, 274, 283 rejection of singularity 81–2 and n.19, 92, 135, 142–3, 226, 255, 279 sermons dedicated to 104, 126 and n.94, 137 and n.111, 193, 202 n.57, 204 sermons of see also principles of exegesis; see also sermon defending the Directions as public models 23, 35, 80, 137 discourse of lamentation 175–7 Index to 8, 9 n.36, 11 manuscript circulation of 102 n.1 use of sermons as evidence 7, 8–12 sermon defending the Directions 2, 12, 19, 53, 75, 79, 100, 109 n.27, 111–15, 122, 133, 137, 139, 159, 218, 272 as defining moment in the pulpit 13, 53, 102 and n.1, 107, 165 choice of text 110 and n.30, 111, 112, 114 n.41, 131 contemporary assessments of 107–11 counters popular perceptions of Directions 113, 166

315

Index to John Donne References sermon defending the Directions (continued) liberty of interpretation allowed within 121, 123, 124, 245 model for preaching 110, 114, 126, 128, 138, 139, 165, 218, 228 politics of 113, 114, 133–4, 137 reasons for Donne’s selection 75–6, 79–80, 107, 115, 138 support for controversial divinity 114, 166, 276 support for orderly preaching 113–14 sermon on foundations (3 April 1625) 19, 247 n.20, 272 manifesto to the new reign 140, 269–71 structured by contrast with Roman church 270–1 theory of foundations 270 sermon on the Gunpowder Plot (1622) 33 and n. 119, 102 n.1, 130 theology of grace assurance, doctrine of 85, 97, 130, 156, 209, 243, 262, 281, 283 election, doctrine of 12, 85–7, 95–6, 97–8, 136, 156–8, 208, 262, 276, 280 and n.22, 281 conditional 77, 96, 157, 179, 281–2 not from foreseen faith 87, 281 danger of despair 86, 95, 96–7, 98, 157 glorification 86, 98 justification, doctrine of 85–6, 91, 97–8, 282 perseverance, doctrine of 23 n.86, 158, 209, 280, 283 predestination, doctrine of 85–6, 95, 97–8, 129–30, 135, 156, 172, 262, 277, 280 and n.22 qualifications of rigid Calvinism 23, 86, 95–6, 97–8, 129, 135–6, 156–8, 172, 243, 245 and n.17, 258, 261–2, 273, 277, 280–2, 283 justification as an interlinked chain 89, 282, 283 salvation as a ring 97–8 repentance, doctrine of 90, 130, 143, 176 reprobation, doctrine of 76 and n.8, 83, 86, 97, 156–8, 159, 245 n.17, 282 sanctification, doctrine of 91, 98 universality of grace 20, 141, 243, 244, 277, 283 vision of English church 2, 19–20, 26, 35, 269–71 adiaphora (matters indifferent) 22–3, 26, 27, 29–30, 32, 88, 141, 151, 243–5, 270, 279 articles of faith 26, 34, 90, 95, 114, 157, 179, 180 n.38, 210, 226, 245, 272, 279 as accommodating recusants 34 as Christian 16, 26–7, 31, 32, 80–1, 85–6, 87, 89, 101, 141, 179, 210, 223, 262, 266 Christ as the voice of God’s word 261, 266 example of Christ 84, 143, 176 as doctrinally and politically unique Reformed English institution 34, 89, 140, 210, 211, 226, 229, 245, 246, 255, 265–7, 273, 274, 279, 280

as related to other Reformed churches 79, 87, 229, 245, 246 as imperfect 84, 92, 266 as inclusive 34, 81, 156, 234, 242, 243–4, 255, 260 n.11, 272, 282, 283 as “true” church 26, 87, 88, 156, 229 as visible, established means to salvation 20–1 and n.72, 76 and n.7, 86, 89, 92–3, 95, 101, 129, 137, 152, 153, 156, 157, 174, 182, 209, 210, 226, 265–7, 273 God’s calling of men through the ministry of men 159, 229, 261–2, 265 experience of salvation 85, 89, 95–6, 229, 280–2, 283 ceremonies of 22, 28, 29, 31–2, 42, 68, 81, 88, 90, 140, 151–2, 173, 209–10, 226, 228–9, 266, 280 n.22 continuities with primitive church 30–1, 90, 92, 151–2, 210, 243, 266 fault lines in 75, 229, 272, 273 foundations of 95, 269–71 fundamentals of baptism 26–7 and n.106, 29, 32, 33, 86, 227, 229, 243 prayer 90, 151, 152, 158, 173, 204, 273 orderly doctrinal debate 223, 243, 273 see also under sermon defending Directions preaching 20, 22, 26, 29, 34, 85, 86, 89, 92, 95, 152, 157, 158, 173, 210, 222, 226, 227, 261, 273 sacraments 20, 22, 26, 29, 34, 85, 86, 89, 92–3, 95, 152, 157, 158, 210, 227, 262, 273, 280 n.22 eucharistic presence, doctrine of 95 real presence 95, 254 transubstantiation 254, 261 internal divisions 225, 260 n.11, 271, 276–7 interpretive authority of 34, 81, 245 “mediocrity” of 31, 34, 155–6, 226, 244, 245, 255, 260 n.11, 271 between Calvinist and anti-Calvinist 86 and n.31, 281, 283 between papist and puritan extremes see also papist-puritan rhetoric under rhetoric of 23, 223 between Laudian/Arminians and nonconforming puritans 23 between papist and sectarian see also antiseparatist rhetoric under rhetoric of 79, 223 in scriptural interpretation 81, 85, 255, 262, 281 shifting 23, 86 n.31, 131, 273 place of works in 130, 158, 226, 229, 243, 282 relations to state authorities 89–91, 93–4, 113, 159 rooted in Catholicism 25–6, 87, 246, 273 vocation of 12, 20 and n.74, 35, 137–8, 155, 204, 209, 225–9, 271

316