John Donne – Death’s Duell – Beginning of Lent 1630

Psalm 68:20 “Unto God the Lord belong the issues of death, i.e. from death

Our Critical day is not the very day of our death: but the whole course of our life. I thank him that prays for me when my bell tolls, but I thank him much more that catechizes me, or preaches to me, or instructs me how to live. There is my security - the mouth of the Lord hath said it – “Do this and thou shalt live”: But God never mentions, never seems to consider death, the bodily natural death. God doth not say, “Live well and thou shalt die well,” that is an easy, a quiet death; but live well here, and thou shalt live well forever. As the first part of a sentence pieces well with the last, and never respects, never hearkens after the parenthesis that comes between, so doth a good life here flow into an eternal life, without any consideration, what manner of death we die: But whether the gate of my prison be opened with an old key (by a gentle and preparing sickness) or the gate be hewn down by a violent death, or the gate be burnt down by a raging and frantic fever, a gate into heaven I shall have, for from the Lord is the cause of my life, and with God the Lord are the issues[1] of death. … This issue of death is God’s care that the soul be safe, whatever agonies the body suffers in the hour of death; there is a deliverance by the death of another, by the death of Christ.

[2]…Now see the end of the Lord, which is not that end that the Lord proposed to himself (salvation to us) nor the end which he proposes to us (conformity to him) but see the end of the Lord, the end that the Lord himself came to, death, and a painful and shameful death. But why did he die? And why die so? Because to this God our Lord belonged the issues of death. What can be more obvious, more manifest then the sense of these words? In former part of this verse, it is said, “He that is our God, is the God of salvation,” God must save us: who can that be but Jesus? Therefore that name was given him, because he was to save us. And to this Jesus, this Saviour, belongs the issues of death. Being come into this life in our mortal nature, he could not go out of it any other way then by Death. Therefore it is said, “To God the Lord belong the issues of death”; to show that his way to save us was to die. …More cannot be said, then Christ himself said of himself, “These things Christ ought to suffer.” He had no other way but by death. So then, this part of our Sermon must needs be a passion sermon; since all his life was a continual passion, all our Lent may well be a continual Good Friday. Christ’s painful life took off none of the pains of his death, he felt not the less then for having felt so much before. Nor will anything that shall be said before, lessen, but rather enlarge your devotion, to that which shall be said of his passion at the time of the due solemnization thereof. Christ bled not a drop the less at the last, for having bled at his Circumcision before, nor will you shed a tear the less then, if you shed some now. Therefore, be now content to consider with me how this God the Lord belonged the issues of death.

That God, this Lord, the Lord of life could die, is a strange contemplation; That the Red Sea could be dry, that the sun could stand still, that an oven could be seven times heat and not burn, that lions could be hungry and not bite, is strange, miraculously strange, but it is super miraculous that God could die; but that God would die is an exaltation of that. But even of that, also it is a super exaltation, that God should die, must die, and all this Christ ought to suffer, was bound to suffer. David said, “God is the God of revenges,” he would not pass over the sin of man unrevenged, unpunished. But then the God of revenge works freely, he punishes, he spares whom he will. And would he not spare himself? He would not; love is strong as death, stronger, it drew in death that naturally is not welcome.[3] …

He would not spare, nay he could not spare himself. There was nothing freer, more voluntary, more spontaneous then the death of Christ. He died voluntarily, but yet when we consider the contract that had passed between his Father and him, there was a kind of necessity upon him. All this Christ ought to suffer. And when shall we date this obligation? Certainly, this decree, by which Christ was to suffer all this, was an eternal decree and was there anything before that, which was eternal? Infinite love, eternal love, he pleased to follow this home, and to consider it seriously, that what liberty we can conceive in Christ, to die or not to die; this necessity of dying, this decree is as eternal as that liberty; and yet how small a matter made he of this necessity and this dying? His Father calls it but a bruising of his heel (the serpent shall bruise his heel) and yet that was, that the serpent should practice and compass his death. Himself calls it but a Baptism, as though he were to be the better for it. “I have a Baptism to be baptized with,” and he was in pain until it was accomplished, and yet this Baptism was his death. The Holy Ghost calls it Joy (for the Joy which was set before him he endured the Cross) which was not a joy of his reward after his passion, but a joy that filled him even in the midst of those torments, [a joy that arose from those torments.] …[4] When Christ calls his passion a cup and no worse, (can ye drink of my cup?) he speaks not odiously, not with detestation of it: Indeed, it was a cup, a health to all the world. And says David, “What shall I render to the Lord?” David answers, “I will take the cup of salvation”; take it, that cup of salvation, his passion, if not into your present imitation, yet into your present contemplation. And behold how that Lord that was God, yet could die, would die, must die, for your salvation.

That Moses and Elijah talked with Christ in the transfiguration, both St. Matthew and St. Mark tell us, but what they talked of, only St. Luke, “They talked of his decease, of his death which was to be accomplished at Jerusalem.” The word is of his Exodus, the very word of our text, “his issue by death.” Moses who in his Exodus had prefigured this issue of our Lord, and in passing Israel out of Egypt through the Red Sea, had foretold in that actual prophesy, Christ’s passing of mankind through the Sea of his Blood. And Elijah, whose Exodus and issue out of this world was a figure of Christ’s ascension, had no doubt a great satisfaction in talking with our blessed Lord of the full consummation of all this in his death…. Our meditation of his death should be visceral and affect us more because it is of a thing already done. The ancient Romans had a certain tenderness, and detestation of the name of death, they could not name death, no, not in their wills. There they could not say “not if,” or “when I die,” but when the course of nature is accomplished upon me. To us that speak daily of the death of Christ, (he was crucified, dead and buried) can the memory or the mention of our own death be irksome or bitter?[5] …Moses and Elijah talked with Christ of his death, only in a holy and joyful sense of the benefit, which they and all the world were to receive by that. Discourses of Religion should not be out of curiosity, but to edification. And then they talked with Christ of his death at that time, when he was in the greatest height of glory that ever he admitted in this world, that is, his transfiguration. And we are afraid to speak to the great men of this world of their death, but nourish in them a vain imagination of immortality, and immutability. But, as St. Peter said, “It is good to dwell here” in consideration of his death, and therefore transfer we our devotions through some of those steps which God the Lord made to his issue of death that day.

Take in the whole day from the hour that Christ received the Passover upon Thursday, unto the hour in which he died the next day in thy devotion, and consider what he did, and remember what you have done. Before he instituted and celebrated the Sacrament, he proceeded to that act of humility, to wash his disciples feet, even Peters, who for a while resisted him; In thy preparation to the holy and blessed Sacrament, hast thou with a sincere humility sought a reconciliation with all the world, even with those that have been averse from it, and refused that reconciliation from thee? If so thou hast spent that first part of this his last day, in a conformity with him. After the Sacrament, he spent the time till night in prayer, in preaching, in Psalms; hast thou considered that a worthy receiving of the Sacrament consists in a continuation of holiness after, as well as in a preparation before? If so, thou hast therein also conformed thy self to him, so Christ spent his time till night. At night, he went into the garden to pray, and he prayed much. How much? …It is collected that he spent three hours in prayer. I dare scarce ask thee whither thou went or how thou disposed of thy self, when it grew dark last night: If that time were spent in a holy recommendation of thy self to God, and a submission of thy will to his, it was spent in conformity to him.[6] … About midnight he was taken and bound with a kiss, art thou not too conformable to him in that? Is not that too literally, too exactly thy case? At midnight to have been taken and bound with a kiss? From thence he was carried back to Jerusalem, first to Annias, then to Ciaphas, and then he was examined and buffeted, and delivered over to the custody of those officers, from whom he received all those irrisions, and violences, the covering of his face, the spitting upon his face, the blasphemies of words, and the smartness of blows. In which compass fell that crowing of the cock, which called up Peter to his repentance. How thou passed all that time last night, thou knows. If thou didst anything then that needed Peter’s tears, and hast not shed them, let me be thy crowing cock, do it now, Now thy Master looks back upon thee, do it now. Betimes, in the morning, so soon as it was day, the Jews held a counsel in the high Priests hall, and agreed upon their evidence against him, and then carried him to Pilate, who was to be his Judge. Didst thou accuse thy self when thou woke this morning, and wast thou content to admit even false accusation rather to suspect actions to have been sin, which were not then to smother and justify such as were truly sins? Then thou spent that hour in conformity to him. Pilate found no evidence against him, and therefore to ease himself, and to pass a complement upon Herod, who was at that time at Jerusalem Pilate sent him to Herod, and rather as a madman then a malefactor, Herod remanded him back to Pilate to proceed against him; And this was about eight o’clock. Hast thou been content to come to this examination, this cribation, this pursuit of thy conscience, to sift it, to follow it from the sins of thy youth to thy present sins, from the sins of thy bed, to the sins of thy board, and from the substance to the circumstance of thy sins? That’s time spent like thy Saviour. Pilate would have saved Christ, by using the privilege of the day in his behalf, because that day one prisoner was to be delivered, but they choose Barabas; he would have saved him from death, by satisfying their fury, with inflicting other torments upon him, scourging and crowning with thorns, and loading him with many scornful and ignominious contumelies; But this redeemed them not, they pressed a crucifying. Hast thou gone about to redeem thy sin, by fasting, by alms, by disciplines and mortifications, in the way of satisfaction to the Justice of God? That will not serve, that is not the right way. We press an utter Crucifying of that sin that governs thee; and that conforms thee to Christ. Towards noon Pilate gave judgment, and they made such hast 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 light: so that the sun ashamed to survive them, departed with his light too. Then that Son of God, who was never from us, and yet had now come a new way unto us in assuming our nature, delivers that soul (which was never out of his Father hands) by a new way, a voluntary emission of it into his Fathers hands; for to this God our Lord, belonged these issues of death, so that considered in his own contract, he must necessarily die, yet at no breach or battery, which they had made upon his sacred Body, issued his soul, but 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 bath 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 purchased for you, with the inestimable price of his incorruptible blood. Amen

[2] Preceding sentence: Saint James said, “You have heard of the patience of Job.” For in every man - calamitous, miserable man - a Job speaks;

[3] Donne continues, “Christ said, “If it be possible, let this cup pass,” when his love expressed in a former decree with his Father, had made it impossible. Many waters quench not love, Christ tried many; he was baptized out of his love, and his love determined not there; he wept over Jerusalem out of his love, and his love determined not there; he mingled blood with water in his agony and that determined not his love; he wept pure blood, all his blood at all his eyes, at all his pores, in his flagellation and thorns and these expressed, but did not quench his love. ”

[5] “There are in these latter times amongst us, that name death freely enough, and the death of God, but in blasphemous oaths and execrations. Miserable men, who shall therefore be said never to have named Jesus, because they have named him too often; and therefore hear Jesus say, “I never knew you,” because they made themselves too familiar with him.”

[6] “In that time and in those prayers was his agony and bloody sweat. I will hope that thou dist pray; but not every ordinary and customary prayer, but prayer actually accompanied with shedding of tears and dispositively in a readiness to shed blood for his glory in necessary cases, puts thee into a conformity with him.”