after convenient instruction before the man be an heretick But how excusable soever Tertullian be herein in S. Augustines charitie there was a whole sect of hereticks an hundred yeares after Tertullian the Audiani who over literally taking those places of Scripture where God is said to have hands and feet and eyes and eares beleeved God to have a bodie like ours and accordingly interpreted this text that in that image and that likenesse a bodily likenesse consisted this image of God in man And yet even these men these Audians Epiphanius who first took knowledge of them calls but schismaticks not hereticks so loth is charitie to say the worst of any Yet we must remember them of the Romane perswasion that they come too neare giving God a bodie in their pictures of God the Father and they bring the bodie of God that bodie which God the Sonne hath assumed the bodie of Christ too neare in their Transsubstantiation not too neare our faith for so it cannot be brought too neare to our sense so it is as really there as we are there not too neare in the ubi for so it is there there that is in that place to which the Sacrament extends it self for the Sacrament extends as well to heaven from whence it fetches grace as to the table from whence it delivers bread and wine but too neare in modo for it comes not thither that way We must necessarily complain that they make religion too bodily a thing Our Saviour Christ corrected Marie Magdalenes zeal where she flew to him in a personall devotion and said Touch me not for I am not yet ascended John 20. 17. to my Father Fix your meditations upon Christ Jesus so as he is now at the right hand of his Father in heaven and entangle not your selves so with controversies about his bodie as to lose reall charitie for imaginarie zeal nor enlarge your selves so farre in the pictures and images of his bodie as to worship them more then him As Damascen sayes of God that he is Superprincipale principium A beginning before any beginning we can conceive and praeterea aeternitas an eternitie infinitely elder then any eternity we can imagine so he is superspiritualis Spiritus such a Superspirit as that the soul of man and the substance of angels is but a bodie compared to this Spirit God hath no bodie though Tertullian disputed it though the Audians preached it though the Papists paint it and therefore this image of God is not in the body of man that way Nor that way neither which some others have assigned That God who hath no bodie as God yet in the creation did assume that form which man hath now and so made man in his image that is in that form which he had then assumed Some of the ancients thought so and some other men of great estimation in the Romane Church have thought so too In particular Oleaster a great officer in the Inquisition of Spain But great inquirers into other men are easie neglecters of themselves The image of God is not in mans bodie this way Nor that third way which others have imagined that is that when God said Let us make man after our likenesse God had respect to that form which in the fulnesse of time his Sonne was to take upon him upon earth Let us make him now sayes God at first like that which I intend hereafter my Sonne shall be for though this were spoken before the fall of man and so before any occasion of decreeing the sending of Christ yet in the School a great part of great men adhere to that opinion That God from all eternitie had a purpose that his Sonne should become man in this world though Adam had not fallen Non ut medicus sed ut Dominus ad nobilitandum genus humanum say they Though Christ had not come as a Redeemer if man had not needed him by sinne but had kept his first state yet as a Prince that desired to heap honour upon him whom he loves to do man an honour by his assuming that nature Christ say they should have come and to that image that form which he was to take then was man made in this text say these imaginers But alas how much better were wit and learning bestowed to prove to the Gentiles that a Christ must come that they beleeve not to prove to the Jews that the Christ is come that they beleeve not to prove to our own consciences that the same Christ may come again this minute to judgement we live as though we beleeved not that then to have filled the world and torn the Church with frivolous disputations Whether Christ should have come if Adam had not fallen Wo unto fomentours of frivolous disputations None of these wayes not because God hath a bodie not because God assumed a bodie not because it was intended that Christ should be born before it was intended that man should be made is this image of God in the bodie of man nor hath it in any other relation respect to the bodie but as we say in the School arguitivè and significativé that because God hath given man a bodie of a nobler form then any other creature we inferre and argue and conclude from thence that God is otherwise represented in man then in any other creature and so farre is this image of God in the bodie above that in the creatures that as you see some pictures to which the very tables are jewels some watches to which the very cases are jewels and therefore they have outward cases too and so the picture and the watch are in that outward case of what meaner stuff soever that be so is this image in this bodie as in an outward case so as that you may not injure nor enfeeble this bodie neither by sinfull intemperance and licentiousnesse nor by inordinate fastings or other disciplines of imaginarie merits while the bodie is alive for the image of God is in it nor defraud the body of decent buriall and due solemnities after death for the image of God is to return to it But yet the bodie is but the outward case and God looks not for the gilding or enamelling or painting of that but requires the labour and cost therein to be bestowed upon the table it self in which this image is immediately that is the soul and that is truely the ubi the place where this image is And there remains onely now the operation thereof how this image of God in the soul of man works The sphere then of this Intelligence the gallerie for this picture the arch for this statue the table and frame and shrine for this image of God is inwardly and immediately the soul of man not immediately so as that the soul of man is a part of the essence of God for so essentially Christ onely is the image of God S. Augustine at first thought so Putabam te Deus corpus lucidum me
SIX SERMONS UPON SEVERALL OCCASIONS PREACHED before the King and elsewhere By that late learned reverend Divine JOHN DONNE Doctour in divinitie and Dean of S. Pauls LONDON ¶ Printed by the Printers to the Vniversitie of CAMBRIDGE And are to be sold by Nicholas Fussell and Humphrey Mosley at their shop in Pauls Church-yard 1634. TWO SERMONS PREACHED BEFORE KING CHARLES Upon the xxvi verse of the first Chapter of GENESIS By Dr. DONNE DEAN OF PAVLS ¶ Printed by the Printers to the Vniversitie of CAMBRIDGE MDCXXXIIII Genesis 1. 26. And God said Let us make man in our image after our likenesse NEver such a frame so soon set up as this in this chapter For for the thing it self there is no other thing to compare it with for it is all it is the whole world And for the time there was no other time to compare it with for this was the beginning of time In the beginning God created heaven and earth That earth which in some thousands of yeares men could not look over nor discern what form it had for neither Lactantius almost three hundred yeares after Christ nor S. Augustine more then a hundred yeares after him would beleeve the earth to be round That earth which no man in his person is ever said to have compassed till our age That earth which is too much for man yet for as yet a very great part of the earth is unpeopled That earth which if we will cast it all but into a Map costs many moneths labour to grave it nay if we will but cast a piece of an acre of it into a garden costs many yeares labour to fashion and furnish it all that earth And then that heaven which spreads so farre as that subtill men have with some appearance of probabilitie imagined that in that heaven in those manifold Spheres of the Planets and the Starres there are many earths many worlds as big as this which we inhabit That earth and that heaven which spent God himself Almightie God six dayes in finishing Moses sets up in a few syllables in one line In principio In the beginning God created heaven and earth If a Livie or a Guicciardine or such extensive and voluminous authours had had this story in hand God must have made another world to have made them a library to hold their books of the making of this world Into what wire would they have drawn out this earth Into what leaf-gold would they have beat out these heavens It may assist our conjecture herein to cōsider that amongst those men who proceed with a sober modestie and limitation in their writing make a conscience not to clog the world with unnecessary books yet the volumes which are written by them upon the beginning of Genesis are scarce lesse then infinite God did no more but say Let this this be done and Moses doth no more but say that upon Gods saying it was done God required not Nature to help him to do it Moses required not Reason to help him to beleeve The holy Ghost hovered upon the waters and so God wrought The holy Ghost hovered upon Moses too and so he wrote And we beleeve these things to be so by the same Spirit in the mouth of Moses by which they were made so in Gods hand Onely Beloved remember that a frame may be thrown down in much lesse time then it was set up A childe an ape can give fire to a cannon and a vapour can shake the earth and when Christ said Throw down this Temple and in three dayes I will raise it they never stood upon the consideration of throwing it down they knew that might be soon done but they wondered at the speedy raising of it Now if all this earth were made in that minute may not all come to the generall dissolution in this minute Or may not thy acres thy miles thy shires shrink into feet and so few feet as shall but make up thy grave when he who was a great lord must be but a cottager not so wel for a cottager must have so many acres to his cottage but in this case a little piece of an acre five foot is become the house it self the house and the land the grave is all lower then that the grave is the land and the tenement the tenant too He that lies in it becomes the same earth that he lies in they all make but one earth and but a little of it But then raise thy self to a higher hope again God hath made better land the land of promise a stronger citie the new Jerusalem inhabitants for that everlasting citie us whom he made not by saying Let there be men but by consultation by deliberation God said Let us make man c. We shall pursue our great examples God in Divisio doing Moses in saying and so make haste in applying the parts But first receive them and since we have the whole world in contemplation consider in these words the foure quarters of the world by application by fair and just accommodations of the words First in the first word that God speaks here Faciamus Let Vs in the plurall a denotation of divers persons in the Godhead we consider our East where we must begin at the knowledge and confession of the Trinity for though in the way to heaven we have travelled beyond the Gentiles when we come to confesse but one God the Gentiles could not do that yet we are still among the Jews if we think that one God to be but one person Christs name is Oriens Zech. 6. 12. the East if we will be named by him called Christians we must look to this East the confession of the Trinitie there is then our East in the Faciamus Let Vs Vs make man And then our West is in the next word Faciamus hominem Though we be thus made made by the councell made by the concurrence made by the hand of the whole Trinity yet we are made but men and man but in the appellation in this Text and man there is but Adam and Adam is but earth but red earth died red in bloud in bloud in soul the bloud of our own souls To that West we must all come to the earth The sunne knoweth his going down even Psal 104. 19. the sunne for all his glory and height hath a going down and he knows it The highest cannot devest mortality nor the discomfort of mortality When you see a cloud rise out of the Lue. 12. 54. west straightway you say There cometh a storm sayes Christ When out of the region of your West that is your latter dayes there comes a cloud a sicknesse you feel a storm even the best morall constancie is shaken But this cloud and this storm and this West there must be and that is our second consideration But then the next word designes a North a strong and powerfull NOrth to scatter and dissipate these
that so on both sides marriage should have such a degree of eternitie as to have had no beginning of marriage before marriage It should have this degree of eternitie too this qualitie of a circle to have no interruption no breaking in the way by unjust suspicions and jealousies Where there is spiritus immunditiei as S. Paul calls it A spirit of uncleannesse there will necessarily be spiritus zelotypiae as Moses calls it A spirit of jealousie But to raise the devil in the power of the devil to call up one spirit by another spirit by the spirit of jealousie and suspicion to induce the spirit of uncleannesse where it was not if a man conjure up a devil so God knows who shall conjure it down again As jealousie is a care and not a suspicion God is not ashamed to protest of himself that he is a jealous God God commands that no idolatrie be committed Thou shalt not bowe down to a graven image Exod. 20. 5 and before he accuses any man to have bowed down to a graven image before any idolatrie was committed he tells them that he is a jealous God God is jealous before there be any harm done And God presents it as a curse when he sayes My jealousie shall depart from thee and I will be Eze. 16. 42. quiet and no more angrie that is I will leave thee to thy self and take no more care of thee Jealousie that implies care and honour and counsel and tendernesse is rooted in God for God is a jealous God and his servants are jealous servants as S. Paul professes of himself I am jealous over 2. Cor. 11. 2 you with a godly jealousie But jealousie that implies diffidence and suspicion and accusation is rooted in the devil for he is The accuser of the brethren So then this secular marriage should be In aeternum eternall for ever as to have no beginning before and so too as to have no jealous interruption by the way for it is so eternall as that it can have no end in this life Those whom God hath joyned no man no devil can separate so as that it shall not remain a marriage so farre as that if those separated persons will live together again yet they shall not be new married so farre certainly the band of marriage continues still The devil makes no marriages he may have a hand in drawing conveyances in the temporall conditions there may be practise but the marriage is made by God in heaven The devil can break no marriages neither though he can by sinne break off all the good uses and take away all the comforts of marriage I pronounce not now whether adulterie dissolve marriage or no It is S. Augustines wisdome to say When the Scripture is silent let me be silent too and I may go lower then he and say Where the Church is silent let me be silent too and our Church is so farre silent in this as that it hath not said that adulterie dissolves marriage Perchance then it is not the death of marriage but surely it is a deadly wound We have authours in the Romane church that think Fornicationem non vagam that such an incontinent life as is limited to one certain person is no deadly sinne but there are none even amongst them that diminish the crime of adulterie Habere quasi non haberes is Christs counsel to have a wife as though thou hadst none that is for continencie and temperance and forbearance and abstinence upon some occasions But Non habere quasi haberes is not so not to have a wife and yet have her to have her that is anothers this is the devils counsel Of that salutation of the Angel to the blessed Virgin Mary Blessed art thou amongst women we may make ever this interpretation not onely that she was blessed amongst women that is above women but that she was Benedicta Blessed amongst women that all women blest her that no woman had occasion to curse her And this is the eternitie of this secular marriage as farre as this world admits any eternitie that it should have no beginning before no interruption of jealousie in the way no such approach towards dissolution as that incontinencie in all opinions and in all Churches is agreed to be And here also without any scruple of fear or of suspicion of the contrarie there is place for this benediction upon this couple Build O Lord upon thine own foundations in these two and establish thy former graces with future that no person ever complain of either of them nor either of them of one another and so he and she are married in aeternum for ever We are come now in our order proposed at Part. II first to our second part for all is said that I intended of the secular marriage And of this second the spirituall marriage much needs not to be said there is another priest that contracts that another preacher that celebrates that the Spirit of God to our spirit And for the third marriage the eternall marriage it is a boldnesse to offer to say any thing of a thing so inexpressible as the joyes of heaven it is a diminution of them to go about to heighten them it is a shadowing of them to go about to lay any colours or lights upon them But yet your patience may perchance last to a word of each of these three circumstances the persons the action the term both in this spirituall and in the eternall marriage First then as in the former part the secular marriage for the persons there we considered first Adam and Eve and after every man and woman and this couple in particular so in this spirituall marriage we consider first Christ and his Church for the persons but more particularly Christ and my soul And can these persons meet In such a distance and in such a disparagement can persons meet The Sonne of God and the sonne of man When I consider Christ to be Germen Jehovae the bud and blossome the fruit off-spring of Jehovah Jehovah himself and my self before he took me in hand to be not a potters vessel of earth but that earth of which the potter might make a vessel if he would and break it if he would when he had made it when I consider Christ to have been from before all beginnings and to be still the image of the Father the same stamp upon the same metall and my self a piece of rusty copper in which those lines of the image of God which were imprinted in me in my creation are defaced and worn and washed and burnt and ground away by my many and many and many sinnes when I consider Christ in his circle in glorie with his Father before he came into this world establishing a glorious Church when he was in this world and glorifying that Church with that glorie which himself had before when he went out of this world and then consider my self in my circle I
that which is naturally indifferent is necessarie to them who are under his obedience some things are sinnes at one time which are not so at another as all the ceremoniall Law created new sinnes which were not sinnes before that Law was given nor since it expired some things are sinnes in a man now which will not be sinnes in the same man to morrow as when a man hath contracted a just scruple against any particular action it is a sinne to do it during the scruple and it may be a sinne in him to omit it when he hath digested the scruple Onely God hath Judicium detestationis he knows and therefore detests evil and therefore flatter not thy soul with a Tush God sees it not or Tush God cares not doth it disquiet him or trouble his rest in heaven that I break his sabbath here doth it wound his bodie or draw his bloud there that I swear by his bodie and bloud here doth it corrupt any of his virgins there that I sollicit the chastitie of a woman here are his martyrs withdrawn from their allegeance or retarded in their service to him there because I dare not defend his cause nor speak for him nor fight for him here Beloved as it is a degree of superstition and an effect of an indiscreet zeal perchance to be too forward by making indifferent things necessarie and so to imprint the nature and sting of sinne where naturally it is not for certainly it is a most slipperie and irreligious thing to be too apt to call things meerly indifferent and to forget that even in eating and drinking walking and sleeping the glorie of God is intermingled as if we knew exactly the presence and foreknowledge of God there could be nothing contingent or casuall for though there be a contingencie in the nature of the thing yet it is certain to God so if we consider duely wherein the glorie of God might be promoted in every action of ours there could scarce be any action so indifferent but that the glorie of God would turn the scale and make it necessarie to me at that time but then private interests and private respects create a new indifferencie to my apprehension and call me to consider that thing as it is in nature and not as it is conditioned with the circumstance of the glorie of God and so I lose that judicium detestationis which onely God hath absolutely and perfectly to know and therefore to detest evil And so he is a Judge As he is a Judge so judicat rem he judges the nature of a thing he is so too that he hath judicium discretionis and so judicat personam he knows what is evil and he discerns when thou committest that evil Here you are fain to supply defects of laws that things done in our countrey may be tried in another and that in offences of high nature transmarine offences might be enquired and tried here but as the Prophet sayes Who hath measured the waters in the hollow Isa 40. 12. of his hand or meted out the heavens with a spanne who comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure or weighed the mountains in a scale so I say Who hath divided heaven into shires or parishes or limited the territories or jurisdictions there that God should not have and exercise judicium discretionis the power of discerning all actions in all places when there was no more to be seen nor considered upon the whole earth but the garden of Paradise for from the beginning Deliciae ejus esse cum filiis hominum Gods delight was to be with the sonnes of men and man was onely there Shall we not diminish God or speak too vulgarly of him to say that he hovered like a falcon over Paradise and that from the height of heaven the piercing eye of God saw so little a thing as the forbidden fruit and what became of that and the reaching eare of God heard the hissing of the serpent and the whispering of the woman and what was concluded upon that shall we think it little to have seen things done in Paradise when there was nothing else to divert his eye nothing else to distract his counsels nothing else done upon the face of the earth take the earth now as it is replenished and take it either as it is torn and crumbled in rags and shivers not a kingdome not a family not a man agreeing with himself or take it in that concord which is in it as all the kings of the earth set themselves and all the rulers of the earth take counsel together against Psal 2. 2. the Lord take it in this union or this disunion in this concord or this disconcord still the Lord that sitteth in the heavens discerns all looks at all laughs at all and hath them in derision Earthly judges have their districtions and so their restrictions some things they cannot know what mortall man can know all some things they cannot take knowledge of for they are bounded no cloud no darknesse no disguise keeps him from discerning and judging all our actions and so he is a Judge too And he is so lastly as he hath Judicium retributionis God knows what is evil and he knows when that evil is done and he knows how to punish and recompense that evil For the office of a judge who judges according to a law being not to contract nor to extend that law but to know what was the true meaning of the lawmaker when he made that law God hath this judgement in perfection because he himself made that Law by which he judges When he hath said Stipendium peccati mors est Every sinne shall be rewarded with death If I sinne against the 1. Sam. 2. 25 Lord who shall intreat for me who shall give any other interpretation any modification any Non obstante upon his Law in my behalf when he comes to judge me according to that Law which himself hath made who shall think to delude the Judge and say Surely this was not the meaning of the Law-giver when he who is the Judge was the Law-maker too And then as God is Judge in all these three respects so he is a Judge in them all Sine appellatione and Sine judiciis man cannot appeal from God God needs no evidence from man For the appeal first to whom should we appeal from the Soveraigne wrangle as long as we will who is chief Justice and which Countie hath jurisdiction one over another I know the chief Justice and I know the Soveraigne court the King of heaven and earth shall send his ministring spirits his Angels to the wombe and bowels of the earth and to the bosome and bottome of the sea and earth and sea shall deliver Corpus cum causa all the bodies of the dead and all their actions to receive a judgement in his court when it will be an erroneous and frivolous appeal to call to the hills to fall down