John Donne on Repentance:

Thou hast made me, and

shall thy work decay?

1572 – 1631
John Donne’s Life
1571/72 Born of a mother from an eminent Roman Catholic family
1576 His father dies
1584 Begins study at Hart Hall, Oxford
1592 Studies law at Lincoln’s Inn (as a Roman Catholic, could not receive an
Oxford degree); begins writing “secular poetry”; becomes a “man about
town,” an admirer of “fair women.”
1593 Donne’s brother Henry dies in Newgate Prison after sheltering a Roman
Catholic priest; Donne tends toward scepticism
1596/97 “Military Adventure”: serves Earl of Essex in expedition against Cadiz, in
the Azores
1598? Conforms to Church of England; becomes secretary to Sir Thomas
Edgerton
1601-1615 Secretly marries Ann More, niece of Edgerton’s wife, a minor (age 17);
Donne is briefly imprisoned and they live in poverty. Ann gives birth to
12 children, five of whom die; Donne writes religious poetry and
controversial religious writings: Pseudo-Martyr; Essays in Divinity
John Donne’s Life
1615 Ordained to C of E at King James’s encouragement
1616 Divinity Reader, Lincoln’s Inn
1617 Ann More dies in childbirth (age 33); Donne deeply affected by her death
1621 Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral

1623 Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (during an illness)

1631 Preaches “Death’s Duel,” his final sermon; Dies March 31

Donne’s Writings

• Religious Poetry • Prose

– La Corona – Essays in Divinity
– Holy Sonnets – Sermons (Ten Volumes)
“Batter my heart, three – Devotions Upon Emergent
person’d God . . .” Occasions
– A Litanie
– The Crosse
– Hymne to God My God, in
My Sicknesse
– A Hymne to God the Father
• “Wilt thou forgive that
sinne . . . ?”
The Pattern of Repentance in Donne’s Poetry
and Sermons
• Meditation on the Word: The Word (Scriptures) and the
Words (preached and written)
• “The bold use of metaphor is the most constant and
memorable feature of Donne’s rhetoric . . . metaphor is often
the best means of applying God’s word directly to the human
heart.” Ellen F. Davis, “Holy Preaching.”
• Donne’s poetry and sermons are meditative in their approach.
In sermons, there is a three-fold pattern: Preparation (biblical
text and prayer); explication of the text; application of the text
to one’s life. A similar pattern occurs in the arrangement of his
poems, e.g., The Holy Sonnets. Donne’s poetry and sermons
are structured so as to lead the reader/hearer to repentance.
(John Booty)
The Pattern of Repentance in Donne’s Poetry
and Sermons
Donne’s reading of Scripture
“MY God, my God, thou art a direct God, may I not say a literal
God, a God that wouldst be understood literally and according
to the plain sense of all that thou sayest? but thou art also
(Lord, I intend it to thy glory, and let no profane misinterpreter
abuse it to thy diminution), thou art a figurative, a metaphorical
God too; a God in whose words there is such a height of figures,
such voyages, such peregrinations to fetch remote and precious
metaphors, such extensions, such spreadings, such curtains of
allegories, such third heavens of hyperboles, so harmonious
elocutions, so retired and so reserved expressions, so
commanding persuasions, so persuading commandments, such
sinews even in thy milk, and such things in thy words, as all
profane authors seem of the seed of the serpent that creeps,
thou art the Dove that flies.” Exposition 19, Devotions on
Emergent Occasions
The Pattern of Repentance in Donne’s Poetry
and Sermons
Love and Death:
– Two Key Themes in Donne’s Writings
– A Dialectic Between Love and Death, Grace and Sin
• Love  Death
• Death  Sin
• Sin  Redemption
• Redemption  Grace
• Grace  Repentance
• Repentance  Love
Beginning With Love: The Triune God
God’s goodness and grace prior to our sin
“It was the entertainment of God himself, his delight, his
contemplation, for those infinite millions of generations, when he
was without a world, without creatures to joy in one another, in the
Trinity: It was the Father's delight, to look upon himself in the Son;
and to see the whole godhead, in a threefold, and an equal glory. It
was God's own delight, and it must be the delight of every
Christian, upon particular occasions to carry his thoughts upon the
several persons of the Trinity. If I have a bar of iron, that bar in that
form will not nail a door; if a sow of lead, that lead in that form will
not stop a leak; if a wedge of gold, that wedge will not buy my
bread. The general notion of a mighty God, may less fit my
particular purposes. But I coin my gold into current money, when I
apprehend God, in the several notions of the Trinity . . .”
Beginning With Love: The Triune God
God’s goodness and grace prior to our sin
“That if I have been a prodigal son, I have a Father in heaven, and can go
to him, and say, Father I have sinned, and be received by him. That if I
be a decayed father, and need the sustentation of mine own children;
there is a Son in heaven, that will do more for me, than mine own, of
what good means or what good nature soever they be, can or will do.
If I be dejected in spirit, there is a holy Spirit in heaven, which shall
bear witness to my spirit, that I am the child of God. And if the ghosts
of those sinners, whom I made sinners, haunt me after their deaths, in
returning to my memory, and reproaching to my conscience, the heavy
judgments that I have brought upon them: if after the death of mine
own sin, when my appetite is dead to some particular sin, the memory
and sinful delight of past sins, the ghosts of those sins haunt me again;
yet there is a Holy Ghost in heaven, that shall exorcise these, and shall
overshadow me, the God of all comfort and consolation. God is the
God of the whole world, in the general notion, as he is so, God; but he
is my God, most especially, and most appliably, as he receives me in
the several notions of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.” PREACHED TO THE
KING, AT THE COURT, IN APRIL, 1629
Beginning With Love: The Triune God
God’s goodness and grace prior to our sin
“Anyone who wishes correctly to approach our subject must speak
first of the Gospel. . . . the Law followed the promise. It must follow
the promise, but it must follow the promise.” Karl Barth, “Gospel
and Law”

“But if we take this instrument, when God's hand tuned it . . . in the

promise of a Messiah, and offer of the love and mercy of God to all
that will receive it in him; then we are truly musicum carmen, as a
love-song, when we present the love of God to you, and raise you
to the love of God in Christ Jesus: for, for the music of the spheres,
whatsoever it be, we cannot hear it; for the decrees of God in
heaven, we cannot say we have seen them; our music is only that
salvation which is declared in the Gospel to all them, and to them
only, who take God by the right hand, as he delivers himself in
Christ.” A LENT SERMON PREACHED AT WHITEHALL, FEBRUARY 12,
1618.
Beginning With Love: The Triune God
We are made to know and love God
“Every man, even in nature, hath that appetite, that desire, to know
God.” Preached at S. Pauls, 28 January, 1626

“The soule of man brings with it, into the body, a sense and an
acknowledgment of God; neither can all the abuses that the body
puts upon the soule, whilst they dwell together . . . devest that
acknowledgement, or extinguish that sense of God in the soule.”
Preached at S. Pauls in the Evening, Upon the day of S. Pauls
Conversion 1628

“You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they
rest in You.” Augustine of Hippo, Confessions
Awareness of Death Leading to Awareness of Sin
“It is every mans case then every man dyes and though it may
perchance be but a meere Hebraisme to say that every man shall
see death, perchance it amounts to no more but to that phrase to
taste death yet thus much may be implied in it too that as every
man must dye so every man may see that he must dye as it cannot
be avoided so it may be understood.” Preached to the Lord’s on
Easter Day

“But then this exitus à morte is but introitus in mortem; this issue, this
deliverance, from that death, the death of the womb, is an
entrance, a delivering over to another death, the manifold deaths
of this world; we have a winding-sheet in our mother's womb which
grows with us from our conception, and we come into the world
wound up in that winding-sheet, for we come to seek a grave. “
Death’s Duel
Awareness of Death Leading to Awareness of Sin
“The church is catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she
does, belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action
concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that head which
is my head too, and ingraffed into that body, whereof I am a
member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me; . . .
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the
continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a
manor of thy friend's or of thine own were; any man's death
diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore
never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions
We sin constantly . . .

“ We sin constantly, and we sin continually, and we sin confidently and

we finde so much pleasure and profit in sin, as that we have made a
league, and sworn a friendship with sin; and we keep that perverse,
and irreligious promise over religiously; and the sins of our youth
flow into other sins, when age disables us for them.” A Lent -
Sermon Preached at White Hall February 20, 1628.
We sin constantly . . .
A HYMN TO GOD THE FATHER.
Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt thou forgive that sin, through which I run
And do run still, though still I do deplore?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done;
For I have more.
Wilt thou forgive that sin, which I have won
Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt thou forgive that sin, which I did shun
A year or two, but wallowed in a score?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done;
For I have more.
I have a sin of fear, that when I’ve spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
But swear by thyself, that at my death thy Son
Shall shine, as he shines now and heretofore:
And having done that, thou hast done;
I fear no more.
Incarnation and Redemption: Jesus Christ as the
resolution of the antimony between Love and Death
• “And therefore he made Christ, God and man in one person,
Creature and Creator together; One greater then the Seraphim, and
yet lesse then a worme; Soveraigne to all nature, and yet subject to
naturall infirmities; Lord of life, life it selfe, and yet prisoner to
death; Before and beyond all measures of Time, and yet Born at so
many moneths, Circumcised at so many days, Crucified at so many
years, Rose againe at so many Houres; How sure did God make
himselfe of a companion in Christ, who united himselfe in his
godhead, so inseparably to him, as that that Godhead left not that
body, then when it lay dead in the grave, but staid with it then as
closely as when he wrought his greatest miracles.” Preached to the
Earl of Exeter, and his company, in his Chappell at Saint Johns; 13.
Jun. 1624

• “If the treasure of the blood of Christ Jesus be not sufficient, Lord
what addition can I find, to match them, to piece out them! And if it
be sufficient of it selfe, what addition need I seek? Other mens
crosses are not mine, other mens merits cannot save me.” Untitled
[second sermon preached at the Hague]
Grace Leading to Repentance
“What great benefit (however the dignity had been great to all
mankind) had mankind had, if Christ had saved no more than that
one person whom he assumed? The largeness and bounty of Christ
is, to give us of his best treasure, knowledge, and to give us most at
last, to know Christ in me. For, to know that he is in his Father, this
may serve me to convince another, that denies the Trinity; to know
that we are in Christ, so as that he took our nature, this may show
me an honour done to us, more than the angels; but what gets a
lame wretch at the pool, how sovereign soever the water be, if no
body put him in? What gets a naked beggar by knowing that a dead
man hath left much to pious uses, if the executors take no
knowledge of him? What get I by my knowledge of Christ in the
Father, and of us in Christ so, if I find not Christ in me?” PREACHED
UPON WHITSUNDAY.
Grace Leading to Repentance
“He came to call sinners, and only sinners; that is, only in that capacity in that
contemplation, as they were sinners . . . He came for sinners; for sinners
onely; else he had not come. And then he came for all kind of sinners
[publicans, prostitutes] and yet for these, for the worst of these, for all
these, there is a voice gone out, Christ is come to call sinners, onely
sinners, all sinners.” Preached to the Household at Whitehall, April 30,
1626

“To make haste, the circumstance only required here, is that he be sought
early; and to invite thee to it, consider how early he sought thee; it is a
great mercy that he stays so long for thee; it was more to seek thee so
early: Dost thou not feel that he seeks thee now, in offering his love and
desiring thine? Canst not thou remember that he sought thee yesterday,
that is, that some temptations besieged thee then, and he sought thee out
by his grace, and preserved thee and hath he not sought thee so, so early,
as from the beginning of thy life? nay, dost thou not remember that after
thou hadst committed that sin, he sought thee by imprinting some
remorse, some apprehension of his judgments, . . . A SERMON PREACHED
TO QUEEN ANNE, AT DENMARK-HOUSE, DECEMBER 14, 1617
Grace Leading to Repentance
“Yet if we have omitted our first early, our youth, there is one early left
for us; this minute; seek Christ early, now, now, as soon as his Spirit
begins to shine upon your hearts. Now as soon as you begin your
day of regeneration, seek him the first minute of this day, for you
know not whether this day shall have two minutes or no, that is,
whether his Spirit, that descends upon you now, will tarry and rest
upon you or not, as it did upon Christ at his baptism.” A SERMON
PREACHED TO QUEEN ANNE, AT DENMARK-HOUSE, DECEMBER 14,
1617
Repentance as Return to Divine Love
Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?
Repair me now, for now mine end doth haste;
I run to Death, and Death meets me as fast,
And all my pleasures are like yesterday.
I dare not move my dim eyes any way,
Despair behind, and Death before doth cast
Such terror, and my feeble flesh doth waste
By sin in it, which it towards hell doth weigh:
Only thou art above, and when towards thee
By thy leave I can look, I rise again;
But our old subtle foe so tempteth me,
That not one hour myself I can sustain;
Thy grace may wing me to prevent his art,
And thou like adamant draw mine iron heart.
Holy Sonnets
Repentance as Return to Divine Love
Batter my heart, three-personed God, for you
As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand; o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like a usurpt town to another due,
Labour to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your victory in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue;
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy:
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you ’enthral me, never shall be free;
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
Repentance as Return to Divine Love
“T]he effect of Christ's calling, that whomsoever he calls, or how, or whensoever, it is
to repentance. . . . The Holy Ghost tells us; it is to repentance: Are ye to learn now
what that is? He that cannot define repentance, that he cannot spell it, may have
it; and he that hath written whole books, great volumes of it, may be without it. . .
it is a turning from our sins, and a returning to our God. . . . Christ justifies feasting;
he feasts you with himself: and feasting in an apostle's house, in his own house; he
feasts you often here: and he admits publicans to this feast, men whose full and
open life, in court, must necessarily expose them, to many hazards of sin: and the
Pharisees . . . This Christ, with joy and thanksgiving we acknowledge to be come;
to be come actually; we expect no other after him, we join no other to him: and
come freely, without any necessity imposed by any above him, and without any
invitation from us here: come, not to meet us, who were not able to rise, without
him; but yet not to force us, to save us against our wills, but come to call us, by his
ordinances in his church; us, not as we pretend any righteousness of our own, but
as we confess ourselves to be sinners, and sinners led by this call, to repentance;
which repentance, is an everlasting divorce from our beloved sin, and an
everlasting marriage and superinduction of our ever-living God.” PREACHED TO
THE HOUSEHOLD AT WHITEHALL, APRIL, 1626
Repentance as Return to Divine Love
“This Christ, with joy and thanksgiving we acknowledge to be come; to
be come actually; we expect no other after him, we join no other to
him: and come freely, without any necessity imposed by any above
him, and without any invitation from us here: come, not to meet us,
who were not able to rise, without him; but yet not to force us, to
save us against our wills, but come to call us, by his ordinances in
his church; us, not as we pretend any righteousness of our own, but
as we confess ourselves to be sinners, and sinners led by this call, to
repentance; which repentance, is an everlasting divorce from our
beloved sin, and an everlasting marriage and superinduction of our
ever-living God.” PREACHED TO THE HOUSEHOLD AT WHITEHALL,
APRIL, 1626
Death Overcome by Love
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

Holy Sonnets
Death Overcome by Love
Towards noon Pilate gave judgment, and they made such haste to
execution as that by noon he was upon the cross. There now hangs
that sacred body upon the cross, rebaptized in his own tears, and
sweat, and embalmed in his own blood alive. There are those
bowels of compassion which are so conspicuous, so manifested, as
that you may see them through his wounds. There those glorious
eyes grew faint in their sight, so as the sun, ashamed to survive
them, departed with his light too. . . . he gave up the ghost; and as
God breathed a soul into the first Adam, so this second Adam
breathed his soul into God, into the hands of God.
There we leave you in that blessed dependency, to hang upon him that
hangs upon the cross, there bathe in his tears, there suck at his
wounds, and lie down in peace in his grave, till he vouchsafe you a
resurrection, and an ascension into that kingdom which He hath
prepared for you with the inestimable price of his incorruptible
blood. Amen. Death’s Duel
O Lord and Ruler of Heaven’s Hosts
O God of Abraham
Lord God of Isaac, Jacob and
Of all their righteous clan
 You made the heavens and formed
the earth
With all their vast array
Before You all things quake with fear
And tremble in dismay
But yet Your love surpasses all
The measure of our mind
You Lord are patient, merciful
And infinitely kind
You do not judge as we deserve
In Your great goodness, Lord
You offer pardon that we may
Repent and be restored
 And now O Lord I bend my knee
And make my sure appeal
For I have sinned Lord and I know
My wickedness too well
Therefore I make this prayer to You
Forgive me, Lord, forgive
Let me not perish in my sin
Let me not die but live