Death's Duel
By
John Donne
With an Introduction by 
Edmund Gosse
And
Epitaphs by Henry King and Edward Hyde
Published by the Ex-classics Project, 2018
http://www.exclassics.com
Public Domain

Frontispiece 
 
Portrait of John Donne as if dead
<1>


CONTENTS
Frontispiece	2
Preface by the Ex-Classics Project	4
Title Page of the Original Edition	5
Introduction by Edmund Gosse	6
To the Reader	10
Death's Duel	11
Upon The Death Of My Ever Desired Friend Doctor Donne Dean Of Paul's 
by Henry King	22
On the Death of Dr Donne by Edward Hyde, afterwards Earl of Clarendon
	24
Notes	25
Glossary	28



Preface by the Ex-Classics Project

"Any man's death diminishes me," said John Donne in 1623, "because I 
am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the 
bell tolls; it tolls for thee." The bell tolled for him on 31st March 
1631, but before this, he rose from his deathbed to preach his last 
sermon before the King, on, appropriately, the subject of Death. It 
was published shortly afterwards, with as a frontispiece a portrait 
of Donne as if dead.

In it he considers death from various aspects, with copious 
references to the Scriptures. He confronts the physical reality of 
death before moving to the idea of the final resurrection. He 
ultimately discusses the life and death of Jesus Christ, .finally 
concluding that if he could confront the horrors of dying for 
mankind, than so can we.



Title Page of the Original Edition
DEATH'S DUELL;
or,
A Consolation to the Soule, against the dying Life, 
and living Death of the Body.
Delivered in a Sermon at White Hall, 
before the King's Maiesty, in the beginning of Lent, 1630. 
By that late learned and Reverend Divine, John Donne, 
Dr. in Divinity, & Deane of S. Pauls, London.
Being his last Sermon, and called by his Maiesties household 
The Doctor's owne Funerall Sermon.
London,
Printed by Thomas Harper, for Richard Redmer and Benjamin Fisher,  
and are to be sold at the signe of the Talbot in Alders-gate street.
MDCXXXII.



Introduction by Edmund Gosse

The value of this tiny quarto depends entirely, so far as the 
collector is concerned, on whether or no it possesses the 
frontispiece. So many people, not having the fear of books before 
their eyes, have divorced the latter from the former, that a perfect 
copy of Death's Duel is quite a capture over which the young 
bibliophile may venture to glory; but let him not fancy that he has a 
prize if his copy does not possess the portrait-plate. One has but to 
glance for a moment at this frontispiece to see that there is here 
something very much out of the common. It is engraved in the best 
seventeenth-century style, and represents, apparently, the head and 
bust of a dead man wrapped in a winding-sheet. The eyes are shut, the 
mouth is drawn, and nothing was ever seen more ghastly.

Yet it is not really the picture of a dead man: it represents the 
result of one of the grimmest freaks that ever entered into a pious 
mind. In the early part of March 1630 (1631), the great Dr. Donne, 
Dean of St. Paul's, being desperately ill, and not likely to recover, 
called a wood-carver in to the Deanery, and ordered a small urn, just 
large enough to hold his feet, and a board as long as his body, to be 
produced. When these articles were ready, they were brought into his 
study, which was first warmed, and then the old man stripped off his 
clothes, wrapped himself in a winding-sheet which was open only so 
far as to reveal the face and beard, and then stood upright in the 
little wooden urn, supported by leaning against the board. His limbs 
were arranged like those of dead persons, and when his eyes had been 
closed, a painter was introduced into the room and desired to make a 
full-length and full-size picture of this terrific object, this 
solemn theatrical presentment of life in death. The frontispiece of 
Death's Duel gives a reproduction of the upper part of this picture. 
It was said to be a remarkably truthful portrait of the great poet 
and divine, and it certainly agrees in all its proportions with the 
accredited portrait of Donne as a young man.

It appears (for Walton's account is not precise) that it was after 
standing for this grim picture, but before its being finished, that 
the Dean preached his last sermon, that which is here printed. He had 
come up from Essex in great physical weakness in order not to miss 
his appointment to preach in his cathedral before the King on the 
first Friday in Lent. He entered the pulpit with so emaciated a frame 
and a face so pale and haggard, and spoke with a voice so faint and 
hollow, that at the end the King himself turned to one of his suite, 
and whispered, "The Dean has preached his own funeral sermon!" So, 
indeed, it proved to be; for he presently withdrew to his bed, and 
summoned his friends around to take a solemn farewell. He died very 
gradually after about a fortnight, his last words being, not in 
distress or anguish, but as it would seem in visionary rapture: "I 
were miserable if I might not die." All this fortnight and to the 
moment of his death, the terrible life-sized portrait of himself in 
his winding-sheet stood near his bedside, where it could be the 
"hourly object" of his attention. So one of the greatest Churchmen of 
the seventeenth century, and one of the greatest, if the most 
eccentric, of its lyrical poets passed away in the very pomp of 
death, on the 31st of March, 1631.

There was something eminently calculated to arrest and move the 
imagination in such an end as this, and people were eager to read the 
discourse which the "sacred authority" of his Majesty himself had 
styled the Dean's funeral sermon. It was therefore printed in 1632. 
As sermons of the period go it is not long, yet it takes a full hour 
to read it slowly aloud, and we may thus estimate the strain which it 
must have given to the worn-out voice and body of the Dean to deliver 
it. The present writer once heard a very eminent Churchman, who was 
also a great poet, preach his last sermon, at the age of ninety. This 
was the Danish bishop Grundtvig. In that case the effort of speaking, 
the extraction, as it seemed, of the sepulchral voice from the 
shrunken and ashen face, did not last more than ten minutes. But the 
English divines of the Jacobean age, like their Scottish brethren of 
to-day, were accustomed to stupendous efforts of endurance from their 
very diaconate.

The sermon is one of the most "creepy" fragments of theological 
literature it would be easy to find. It takes as its text the words 
from the sixty-eighth Psalm: "And unto God the Lord belong the issues 
of death." In long, stern sentences of sonorous magnificence, adorned 
with fine similes and gorgeous words, as the funeral trappings of a 
king might be with gold lace, the dying poet shrinks from no physical 
horror and no ghostly terror of the great crisis which he was himself 
to be the first to pass through. "That which we call life," he says, 
and our blood seems to turn chilly in our veins as we listen, "is but 
Hebdomada mortium, a week of death, seven days, seven periods of our 
life spent in dying, a dying seven times over, and there is an end. 
Our birth dies in infancy, and our infancy dies in youth, and youth 
and rest die in age, and age also dies and determines all. Nor do all 
these, youth out of infancy, or age out of youth, arise so as a 
Phoenix out of the ashes of another Phoenix formerly dead, but as a 
wasp or a serpent out of a carrion or as a snake out of dung." We can 
comprehend how an audience composed of men and women whose ne'er-do-
weel relatives went to the theatre to be stirred by such tragedies as 
those of Marston and Cyril Tourneur would themselves snatch a sacred 
pleasure from awful language of this kind in the pulpit. There is not 
much that we should call doctrine, no pensive or consolatory 
teaching, no appeal to souls in the modern sense. The effect aimed at 
is that of horror, of solemn preparation for the advent of death, as 
by one who fears, in the flutter of mortality, to lose some 
peculiarity of the skeleton, some jag of the vast crooked scythe of 
the spectre. The most ingenious of poets, the most subtle of divines, 
whose life had been spent in examining Man in the crucible of his own 
alchemist fancy, seems anxious to preserve to the very last his 
powers of unflinching spiritual observation. The Dean of St. Paul's, 
whose reputation for learned sanctity had scarcely sufficed to 
shelter him from scandal on the ground of his fantastic defence of 
suicide, was familiar with the idea of Death, and greeted him as a 
welcome old friend whose face he was glad to look on long and 
closely.

The leaves at the end of this little book are filled up with two 
copies of funeral verses on Dean Donne. These are unsigned, but we 
know from other sources to whom to attribute them. Each is by an 
eminent man. The first was written by Dr. Henry King, then the royal 
chaplain, and afterward Bishop of Chichester, to whom the Dean had 
left, besides a model in gold of the Synod of Dort, that painting of 
himself in the winding-sheet of which we have already spoken. This 
portrait Dr. King put into the hands of Nicholas Stone, the sculptor, 
who made a reproduction of it in white marble, with the little urn 
concealing the feet. This was placed in St. Paul's Cathedral, of 
which King was chief residentiary, and may still be seen in the 
present Cathedral. King's elegy is very prosy in starting, but 
improves as it goes along, and is most ingenious throughout. These 
are the words in which he refers to the appearance of the dying 
preacher in the pulpit:
Thou (like the dying Swan) didst lately sing 
Thy mournful dirge in audience of the King; 
When pale looks, and weak accents of thy breath 
Presented so to life that piece of death, 
That it was feared and prophesied by all 
Thou thither cam'st to preach thy funeral.

The other elegy is believed to have been written by a young man of 
twenty-one, who was modestly and enthusiastically seeking the company 
of the most famous London wits. This was Edward Hyde, thirty years 
later to become Earl of Clarendon, and finally to leave behind him 
manuscripts which should prove him the first great English historian. 
His verses here bespeak his good intention, but no facility in 
rhyming.

It was left for the riper disciples of the great divine to sing his 
funerals in more effective numbers. Of the crowd of poets who 
attended him with music to the grave, none expressed his merits in 
such excellent verses or with so much critical judgment as Thomas 
Carew, the king's sewer in ordinary. It is not so well known but that 
we quote some lines from it:
The fire 
That fills with spirit and heat the Delphic choir, 
Which, kindled first by thy Promethean breath, 
Glow'd here awhile, lies quench'd now in thy death. 
The Muses' garden, with pedantic weeds 
O'erspread, was purg'd by thee, the lazy seeds 
Of servile imitation thrown away, 
And fresh invention planted; thou disdt pay 
The debts of our penurious bankrupt age.
* * * * *
Whatsoever wrong 
By ours was done the Greek or Latin tongue, 
Thou hast redeem'd, and opened us a mine 
Of rich and pregnant fancy, drawn a line 
Of masculine expression, which, had good 
Old Orpheus seen, or all the ancient brood 
Our superstitious fools admire, and hold 
Their lead more precious than thy burnish'd gold, 
Thou hadst been their exchequer…. 
Let others carve the rest; it will suffice 
I on thy grave this epitaph incise:— 
Here lies a King, that ruled as he thought fit 
The universal monarchy of wit; 
Here lies two Flamens, and both these the best,— 
Apollo's first, at last the True God's priest.

There was no full memoir of Dr. Donne until it was the privilege of 
the present writer, in 1900, to publish his Life and Letters in two 
substantial volumes. Since then, in 1912, his Poetical Works have 
been edited and sifted, with remarkable delicacy and judgment, by 
Professor Grierson. It is now, therefore, as easy as it can be 
expected ever to be to follow the career of this extraordinary man, 
with all its cold and hot fits, its rage of lyrical amativeness, its 
Roman passion, and the high and clouded austerity of its final 
Anglicanism. Donne is one of the most fascinating, in some ways one 
of the most inscrutable, figures in our literature, and we may 
contemplate him with instruction from his first wild escapade into 
the Azores down to his voluntary penitence in the pulpit and the 
winding-sheet.



To the Reader

This sermon was, by sacred authority, styled the author's own funeral 
sermon, most fitly, whether we respect the time or matter. It was 
preached not many days before his death, as if, having done this, 
there remained nothing for him to do but to die; and the matter is of 
death — the occasion and subject of all funeral sermons. It hath been 
observed of this reverend man, that his faculty in preaching 
continually increased, and that, as he exceeded others at first, so 
at last he exceeded himself. This is his last sermon; I will not say 
it is therefore his best, because all his were excellent. Yet thus 
much: a dying man's words, if they concern ourselves, do usually make 
the deepest impression, as being spoken most feelingly, and with 
least affectation. Now, whom doth it concern to learn both the danger 
and benefit of death? Death is every man's enemy, and intends hurt to 
all, though to many he be occasion of greatest good. This enemy we 
must all combat dying, whom he living did almost conquer, having 
discovered the utmost of his power, the utmost of his cruelty. May we 
make such use of this and other the like preparatives, that neither 
death, whensoever it shall come, may seem terrible, nor life tedious, 
how long soever it shall last.



Death's Duel
Psalm 68:20, in fine. 
And unto God the Lord belong the issues of death.

Buildings stand by the benefit of their foundations that sustain and 
support them, and of their buttresses that comprehend and embrace 
them, and of their contignations that knit and unite them. The 
foundations suffer them not to sink, the buttresses suffer them not 
to swerve, and the contignation and knitting suffers them not to 
cleave. The body of our building is in the former part of this verse. 
It is this: He that is our God is the God of salvation; ad salutes, 
of salvations in the plural, so it is in the original; the God that 
gives us spiritual and temporal salvation too. But of this building, 
the foundation, the buttresses, the contignations, are in this part 
of the verse which constitutes our text, and in the three divers 
acceptations of the words amongst our expositors: Unto God the Lord 
belong the issues from death, for, first, the foundation of this 
building (that our God is the God of all salvation) is laid in this, 
that unto this God the Lord belong the issues of death; that is, it 
is in his power to give us an issue and deliverance, even then when 
we are brought to the jaws and teeth of death, and to the lips of 
that whirlpool, the grave. And so in this acceptation, this exitus 
mortis, this issue of death is liberatio a morte, a deliverance from 
death, and this is the most obvious and most ordinary acceptation of 
these words, and that upon which our translation lays hold, the 
issues from death. And then, secondly, the buttresses that comprehend 
and settle this building, that he that is our God is the God of all 
salvation, are thus raised; unto God the Lord belong the issues of 
death, that is, the disposition and manner of our death; what kind of 
issue and transmigration we shall have out of this world, whether 
prepared or sudden, whether violent or natural, whether in our 
perfect senses or shaken and disordered by sickness, there is no 
condemnation to be argued out of that, no judgment to be made upon 
that, for, howsoever they die, precious in his sight is the death of 
his saints<2>, and with him are the issues of death; the ways of our 
departing out of this life are in his hands. And so in this sense of 
the words, this exitus mortis, the issues of death, is liberatio in 
morte, a deliverance in death; not that God will deliver us from 
dying, but that he will have a care of us in the hour of death, of 
what kind soever our passage be. And in this sense and acceptation of 
the words, the natural frame and contexture doth well and pregnantly 
administer unto us. And then, lastly, the contignation and knitting 
of this building, that he that is our God is the God of all 
salvations, consists in this, Unto this God the Lord belong the 
issues of death; that is, that this God the Lord having united and 
knit both natures in one, and being God, having also come into this 
world in our flesh, he could have no other means to save us, he could 
have no other issue out of this world, nor return to his former 
glory, but by death. And so in this sense, this exitus mortis, this 
issue of death, is liberatio per mortem, a deliverance by death, by 
the death of this God, our Lord Christ Jesus. And this is Saint 
Augustine's acceptation of the words, and those many and great 
persons that have adhered to him. In all these three lines, then, we 
shall look upon these words, first, as the God of power, the Almighty 
Father rescues his servants from the jaws of death; and then as the 
God of mercy, the glorious Son rescued us by taking upon himself this 
issue of death; and then, between these two, as the God of comfort, 
the Holy Ghost rescues us from all discomfort by his blessed 
impressions beforehand, that what manner of death soever be ordained 
for us, yet this exitus mortis shall be introitus in vitam, our issue 
in death shall be an entrance into everlasting life. And these three 
considerations: our deliverance a morte, in morte, per mortem, from 
death, in death, and by death, will abundantly do all the offices of 
the foundations, of the buttresses, of the contignation, of this our 
building; that he that is our God is the God of all salvation, 
because unto this God the Lord belong the issues of death.

First, then, we consider this exitus mortis to be liberatio a morte, 
that with God the Lord are the issues of death; and therefore in all 
our death, and deadly calamities of this life, we may justly hope of 
a good issue from him. In all our periods and transitions in this 
life, are so many passages from death to death; our very birth and 
entrance into this life is exitus a morte, an issue from death, for 
in our mother's womb we are dead, so as that we do not know we live, 
not so much as we do in our sleep, neither is there any grave so 
close or so putrid a prison, as the womb would be unto us if we 
stayed in it beyond our time, or died there before our time. In the 
grave the worms do not kill us; we breed, and feed, and then kill 
those worms which we ourselves produced. In the womb the dead child 
kills the mother that conceived it, and is a murderer, nay, a 
parricide, even after it is dead. And if we be not dead so in the 
womb, so as that being dead we kill her that gave us our first life, 
our life of vegetation, yet we are dead so as David's idols are dead. 
In the womb we have eyes and see not, ears and hear not <3> There in 
the womb we are fitted for works of darkness, all the while deprived 
of light; and there in the womb we are taught cruelty, by being fed 
with blood, and may be damned, though we be never born. Of our very 
making in the womb, David says, I am wonderfully and fearfully made, 
and such knowledge is too excellent for me<4>, for even that is the 
Lord's doing, and it is wonderful in our eyes<5>; ipse fecit nos, it 
is he that made us, and not we ourselves<6> nor our parents neither. 
Thy hands have made and fashioned me round about, saith Job, and (as 
the original word is) thou hast taken pains about me, and yet (says 
he) thou dost destroy me.<7> Though I be the masterpiece of the 
greatest master (man is so), yet if thou do no more for me, if thou 
leave me where thou madest me, destruction will follow. The womb, 
which should be the house of life, becomes death itself if God leave 
us there. That which God threatens so often, the shutting of a womb, 
is not so heavy nor so discomfortable a curse in the first as in the 
latter shutting, nor in the shutting of barrenness as in the shutting 
of weakness, when children are come to the birth, and no strength to 
bring forth<8>.

It is the exaltation of misery to fall from a near hope of happiness. 
And in that vehement imprecation, the prophet expresses the highest 
of God's anger, Give them, O Lord, what wilt thou give them? Gve them 
a miscarrying womb<9>. Therefore as soon as we are men (that is, 
inanimated, quickened in the womb), though we cannot ourselves, our 
parents have to say in our behalf, Wretched man that he is, who shall 
deliver him from this body of death?<10> if there be no deliverer. It 
must be he that said to Jeremiah, Before I formed thee I knew thee, 
and before thou camest out of the womb I sanctified thee<11>. We are 
not sure that there was no kind of ship nor boat to fish in, nor to 
pass by, till God prescribed Noah that absolute form of the ark<12>. 
That word which the Holy Ghost, by Moses, useth for the ark, is 
common to all kind of boats, thebah; and is the same word that Moses 
useth for the boat that he was exposed in, that his mother laid him 
in an ark of bulrushes. But we are sure that Eve had no midwife when 
she was delivered of Cain, therefore she might well say, Possedi 
virum a Domino, I have gotten a man from the Lord<13>, wholly, 
entirely from the Lord; it is the Lord that enabled me to conceive, 
the Lord that infused a quickening soul into that conception, the 
Lord that brought into the world that which himself had quickened; 
without all this might Eve say, my body had been but the house of 
death, and Domini Domini sunt exitus mortis, To God the Lord belong 
the issues of death. But then this exitus a 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. And as prisoners discharged of actions may lie for fees, so 
when the womb hath discharged us, yet we are bound to it by cords of 
flesh, by such a string as that we cannot go thence, nor stay there; 
we celebrate our own funerals with cries even at our birth; as though 
our threescore and ten years' life were spent in our mother's labour, 
and our circle made up in the first point thereof; we beg our baptism 
with another sacrament, with tears; and we come into a world that 
lasts many ages, but we last not. In domo Patris, says our Saviour, 
speaking of heaven, multae mansiones, divers and durable; so that if 
a man cannot possess a martyr's house (he hath shed no blood for 
Christ), yet he may have a confessor's, he hath been ready to glorify 
God in the shedding of his blood. And if a woman cannot possess a 
virgin's house (she hath embraced the holy state of marriage), yet 
she may have a matron's house, she hath brought forth and brought up 
children in the fear of God. In domo Patris, in my Father's house, in 
heaven, there are many mansions<14>; but here, upon earth, the Son of 
man hath not where to lay his head<15>, saith he himself. Nonne 
terram dedit filiis hominum? How then hath God given this earth to 
the sons of men?<16> He hath given them earth for their materials to 
be made of earth, and he hath given them earth for their grave and 
sepulchre, to return and resolve to earth, but not for their 
possession. Here we have no continuing city<17>, nay, no cottage that 
continues, nay, no persons, no bodies, that continue. Whatsoever 
moved Saint Jerome to call the journeys of the Israelites in the 
wilderness<18>, mansions; the word (the word is nasang) signifies but 
a journey, but a peregrination. Even the Israel of God hath no 
mansions, but journeys, pilgrimages in this life. By what measure did 
Jacob measure his life to Pharaoh? The days of the years of my 
pilgrimage<19>.And though the apostle would not say morimur, that 
whilst we are in the body we are dead, yet he says, perigrinamur, 
whilst we are in the body we are but in a pilgrimage, and we are 
absent from the Lord<20>:he might have said dead, for this whole 
world is but an universal churchyard, but our common grave, and the 
life and motion that the greatest persons have in it is but as the 
shaking of buried bodies in their grave, by an earthquake. That which 
we call life is but hebdomada mortium, a week of death, seven days, 
seven periods of our life spent in dying, a dying seven times over; 
and there is an end. Our birth dies in infancy, and our infancy dies 
in youth, and youth and the rest die in age, and age also dies and 
determines all. Nor do all these, youth out of infancy, or age out of 
youth, arise so, as the phoenix out of the ashes of another phoenix 
formerly dead, but as a wasp or a serpent out of a carrion, or as a 
snake out of dung. Our youth is worse than our infancy, and our age 
worse than our youth. Our youth is hungry and thirsty after those 
sins which our infancy knew not; and our age is sorry and angry, that 
it cannot pursue those sins which our youth did; and besides, all the 
way, so many deaths, that is, so many deadly calamities accompany 
every condition and every period of this life, as that death itself 
would be an ease to them that suffer them. Upon this sense doth Job 
wish that God had not given him an issue from the first death, from 
the womb, Wherefore thou hast brought me forth out of the womb? Oh 
that I had given up the ghost, and no eye seen me! I should have been 
as though I had not been<21>. And not only the impatient Israelites 
in their murmuring (would to God we had died by the hand of the Lord 
in the land of Egypt)<22>, but Elijah himself, when he fled from 
Jezebel, and went for his life, as that text says, under the juniper 
tree, requested that he might die, and said, It is enough now, O 
Lord, take away my life<23>. So Jonah justifies his impatience, nay, 
his anger, towards God himself: Now, O Lord, take, I beseech thee, my 
life from me, for it is better to die than to live. And when God 
asked him, Dost thou well to be angry for this? he replies, I do well 
to be angry, even unto death<24>. How much worse a death than death 
is this life, which so good men would so often change for death! But 
if my case be as Saint Paul's case, quotidie morior, that I die 
daily, that something heavier than death fall upon me every day; if 
my case be David's case, tota die mortificamur; all the day long we 
are killed, that not only every day, but every hour of the day, 
something heavier than death fall upon me; though that be true of me, 
Conceptus in peccatis, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my 
mother conceive me<25> (there I died one death); though that be true 
of me, Natus filius irae, I was born not only the child of sin, but 
the child of wrath, of the wrath of God for sin, which is a heavier 
death: yet Domini Domini sunt exitus mortis, with God the Lord are 
the issues of death; and after a Job, and a Joseph, and a Jeremiah, 
and a Daniel, I cannot doubt of a deliverance. And if no other 
deliverance conduce more to his glory and my good, yet he hath the 
keys of death<26>, and he can let me out at that door, that is, 
deliver me from the manifold deaths of this world, the omni die, and 
the tota die<27>, the every day's death and every hour's death, by 
that one death, the final dissolution of body and soul, the end of 
all. But then is that the end of all? Is that dissolution of body and 
soul the last death that the body shall suffer (for of spiritual 
death we speak not now). It is not, though this be exitus a morte: it 
is introitus in mortem; though it be an issue from manifold deaths of 
this world, yet it is an entrance into the death of corruption and 
putrefaction, and vermiculation, and incineration, and dispersion in 
and from the grave, in which every dead man dies over again. It was a 
prerogative peculiar to Christ, not to die this death, not to see 
corruption. What gave him this privilege? Not Joseph's great 
proportion of gums and spices, that might have preserved his body 
from corruption and incineration longer than he needed it, longer 
than three days, but it would not have done it for ever. What 
preserved him then? Did his exemption and freedom from original sin 
preserve him from this corruption and incineration? It is true that 
original sin hath induced this corruption and incineration upon us; 
if we had not sinned in Adam, mortality had not put on immortality 
(as the apostle speaks), nor corruption had not put on 
incorruption<28>, but we had had our transmigration from this to the 
other world without any mortality, any corruption at all. But yet 
since Christ took sin upon him, so far as made him mortal, he had it 
so far too as might have made him see this corruption and 
incineration, though he had no original sin in himself; what 
preserved him then? Did the hypostatical union of both natures, God 
and man, preserve him from this corruption and incineration? It is 
true that this was a most powerful embalming, to be embalmed with the 
Divine Nature itself, to be embalmed with eternity, was able to 
preserve him from corruption and incineration for ever. And he was 
embalmed so, embalmed with the Divine Nature itself, even in his body 
as well as in his soul; for the Godhead, the Divine Nature, did not 
depart, but remained still united to his dead body in the grave; but 
yet for all this powerful embalming, his hypostatical union of both 
natures, we see Christ did die; and for all his union which made him 
God and man, he became no man (for the union of the body and soul 
makes the man, and he whose soul and body are separated by death as 
long as that state lasts, is properly no man). And therefore as in 
him the dissolution of body and soul was no dissolution of the 
hypostatical union, so there is nothing that constrains us to say, 
that though the flesh of Christ had seen corruption and incineration 
in the grave, this had not been any dissolution of the hypostatical 
union, for the Divine nature, the Godhead, might have remained with 
all the elements and principles of Christ's body, as well as it did 
with the two constitutive parts of his person, his body and his soul. 
This incorruption then was not in Joseph's gums and spices, nor was 
it in Christ's innocency, and exemption from original sin, nor was it 
(that is, it is not necessary to say it was) in the hypostatical 
union. But this incorruptibleness of his flesh is most conveniently 
placed in that; Non dabis, thou wilt not suffer thy Holy One to see 
corruption<29>; we look no further for causes or reasons in the 
mysteries of religion, but to the will and pleasure of God; Christ 
himself limited his inquisition in that ita est, even so, Father, for 
so it seemeth good in thy sight<30>. Christ's body did not see 
corruption, therefore, because God had decreed it should not. The 
humble soul (and only the humble soul is the religious soul) rests 
himself upon God's purposes and the decrees of God which he hath 
declared and manifested, not such as are conceived and imagined in 
ourselves, though upon some probability, some verisimilitude; so in 
our present case Peter proceeds in his sermon at Jerusalem, and so 
Paul in his at Antioch<31>. They preached Christ to have been risen 
without seeing corruption, not only because God had decreed it, but 
because he had manifested that decree in his prophet, therefore doth 
Saint Paul cite by special number the second Psalm for that decree, 
and therefore both Saint Peter and Saint Paul cite for it that place 
in the sixteenth Psalm<32>; for when God declares his decree and 
purpose in the express words of his prophet, or when he declares it 
in the real execution of the decree, then he makes it ours, then he 
manifests it to us. And therefore, as the mysteries of our religion 
are not the objects of our reason, but by faith we rest on God's 
decree and purpose—(it is so, O God, because it is thy will it should 
be so)—so God's decrees are ever to be considered in the 
manifestation thereof. All manifestation is either in the word of 
God, or in the execution of the decree; and when these two concur and 
meet it is the strongest demonstration that can be: when therefore I 
find those marks of adoption and spiritual filiation which are 
delivered in the word of God to be upon me; when I find that real 
execution of his good purpose upon me, as that actually I do live 
under the obedience and under the conditions which are evidences of 
adoption and spiritual filiation; then, so long as I see these marks 
and live so, I may safely comfort myself in a holy certitude and a 
modest infallibility of my adoption. Christ determines himself in 
that, the purpose of God was manifest to him; Saint Peter and Saint 
Paul determine themselves in those two ways of knowing the purpose of 
God, the word of God before the execution of the decree in the 
fullness of time. It was prophesied before, said they, and it is 
performed now, Christ is risen without seeing corruption. Now, this 
which is so singularly peculiar to him, that his flesh should not see 
corruption, at his second coming, his coming to judgment, shall 
extend to all that are then alive; their flesh shall not see 
corruption, because, as the apostle says, and says as a secret, as a 
mystery, Behold I show you a mystery, we shall not all sleep (that 
is, not continue in the state of the dead in the grave), but we shall 
all be changed in an instant<33>, we shall have a dissolution, and in 
the same instant a reintegration, a recompacting of body and soul, 
and that shall be truly a death and truly a resurrection, but no 
sleeping in corruption; but for us that die now and sleep in the 
state of the dead, we must all pass this posthume death, this death 
after death, nay, this death after burial, this dissolution after 
dissolution, this death of corruption and putrefaction, of 
vermiculation and incineration, of dissolution and dispersion in and 
from the grave, when these bodies that have been the children of 
royal parents, and the parents of royal children, must say with Job, 
Corruption, thou art my father, and to the worm, Thou art my mother 
and my sister<34>. Miserable riddle, when the same worm must be my 
mother, and my sister and myself! Miserable incest, when I must be 
married to my mother and my sister, and be both father and mother to 
my own mother and sister, beget and bear that worm which is all that 
miserable penury; when my mouth shall be filled with dust, and the 
worm shall feed, and feed sweetly upon me<35>; when the ambitious man 
shall have no satisfaction, if the poorest alive tread upon him, nor 
the poorest receive any contentment in being made equal to princes, 
for they shall be equal but in dust. One dieth at his full strength, 
being wholly at ease and in quiet; and another dies in the bitterness 
of his soul, and never eats with pleasure; but they lie down alike in 
the dust, and the worm covers them<36> In Job and in Isaiah, it 
covers them and is spread under them, the worm is spread under thee, 
and the worm covers thee<37>. There are the mats and the carpets that 
lie under, and there are the state and the canopy that hang over the 
greatest of the sons of men. Even those bodies that were the temples 
of the Holy Ghost<38> come to this dilapidation, to ruin, to rubbish, 
to dust; even the Israel of the Lord, and Jacob himself, hath no 
other specification, no other denomination, but that vermis Jacob, 
thou worm of Jacob. Truly the consideration of this posthume death, 
this death after burial, that after God (with whom are the issues of 
death) hath delivered me from the death of the womb, by bringing me 
into the world, and from the manifold deaths of the world, by laying 
me in the grave, I must die again in an incineration of this flesh, 
and in a dispersion of that dust. That that monarch, who spread over 
many nations alive, must in his dust lie in a corner of that sheet of 
lead, and there but so long as that lead will last; and that private 
and retired man, that thought himself his own for ever, and never 
came forth, must in his dust of the grave be published, and (such are 
the revolutions of the grave) be mingled with the dust of every 
highway and of every dunghill, and swallowed in every puddle and 
pond. This is the most inglorious and contemptible vilification, the 
most deadly and peremptory nullification of man, that we can 
consider. God seems to have carried the declaration of his power to a 
great height, when he sets the prophet Ezekiel in the valley of dry 
bones, and says, Son of man, can these bones live? as though it had 
been impossible, and yet they did; the Lord laid sinews upon them, 
and flesh, and breathed into them, and they did live<39>. But in that 
case there were bones to be seen, something visible, of which it 
might be said, Can this thing live? But in this death of incineration 
and dispersion of dust, we see nothing that we call that man's. If we 
say, Can this dust live? Perchance it cannot; it may be the mere dust 
of the earth, which never did live, never shall. It may be the dust 
of that man's worm, which did live, but shall no more. It may be the 
dust of another man, that concerns not him of whom it was asked. This 
death of incineration and dispersion is, to natural reason, the most 
irrecoverable death of all; and yet Domini Domini sunt exitus mortis, 
unto God the Lord belong the issues of death; and by recompacting 
this dust into the same body, and remaining the same body with the 
same soul, he shall in a blessed and glorious resurrection give me 
such an issue from this death as shall never pass into any other 
death, but establish me into a life that shall last as long as the 
Lord of Life himself.

And so have you that that belongs to the first acceptation of these 
words (unto God the Lord belong the issues of death); That though 
from the womb to the grave, and in the grave itself, we pass from 
death to death, yet, as Daniel speaks, the Lord our God is able to 
deliver us, and he will deliver us.<40>

And so we pass unto our second accommodation of these words (unto God 
the Lord belong the issues of death); that it belongs to God, and not 
to man, to pass a judgment upon us at our death, or to conclude a 
dereliction on God's part upon the manner thereof.

Those indications which the physicians receive, and those 
presagitions which they give for death or recovery in the patient, 
they receive and they give out of the grounds and the rules of their 
art; but we have no such rule or art to give a presagition of 
spiritual death and damnation upon any such indication as we see in 
any dying man; we see often enough to be sorry, but not to despair; 
we may be deceived both ways: we use to comfort ourself in the death 
of a friend, if it be testified that he went away like a lamb, that 
is, without any reluctation; but God knows that may be accompanied 
with a dangerous damp and stupefaction, and insensibility of his 
present state. Our blessed Saviour suffered colluctations with death, 
and a sadness even in his soul to death<41>, and an agony even to a 
bloody sweat in his body, and expostulations with God, and 
exclamations upon the cross. He was a devout man who said upon his 
death-bed, or death-turf (for he was a hermit), Septuaginta annos 
Domino servivisti, et mori times? Hast thou served a good master 
threescore and ten years, and now art thou loth to go into his 
presence<42>? Yet Hilarion was loth. Barlaam<43> was a devout man (a 
hermit too) that said that day he died, Cogita te hodie caepisse 
servire Domino, et hodie finiturum, Consider this to be the first 
day's service that ever thou didst thy Master, to glorify him in a 
Christianly and a constant death, and if thy first day be thy last 
day too, how soon dost thou come to receive thy wages! Yet Barlaam 
could have been content to have stayed longer forth. Make no ill 
conclusions upon any man's loathness to die, for the mercies of God 
work momentarily in minutes, and many times insensibly to bystanders, 
or any other than the party departing. And then upon violent deaths 
inflicted as upon malefactors, Christ himself hath forbidden us by 
his own death to make any ill conclusion; for his own death had those 
impressions in it; he was reputed, he was executed as a malefactor, 
and no doubt many of them who concurred to his death did believe him 
to be so. Of sudden death there are scarce examples be found in the 
Scriptures upon good men, for death in battle cannot be called sudden 
death; but God governs not by examples but by rules, and therefore 
make no ill conclusion upon sudden death nor upon distempers neither, 
though perchance accompanied with some words of diffidence and 
distrust in the mercies of God. The tree lies as it falls, it is 
true, but it is not the last stroke that fells the tree, nor the last 
word nor gasp that qualifies the soul. Still pray we for a peaceable 
life against violent death, and for time of repentance against sudden 
death, and for sober and modest assurance against distempered and 
diffident death, but never make ill conclusions upon persons 
overtaken with such deaths; Domini Domini sunt exitus mortis, to God 
the Lord belong the issues of death. And he received Samson, who went 
out of this world in such a manner (consider it actively, consider it 
passively in his own death, and in those whom he slew with himself) 
as was subject to interpretation hard enough. Yet the Holy Ghost hath 
moved Saint Paul to celebrate Samson in his great catalogue<44>, and 
so doth all the church. 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 the bell tolls, but I thank him much more that catechises me, 
or preaches to me, or instructs me how to live. Fac hoc et vive, 
there is my security, the mouth of the Lord hath said it, do this and 
thou shalt live<45>. But though I do it, yet I shall die too, die a 
bodily, a natural death. But God never mentions, never seems to 
consider that death, the bodily, the 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 for ever. 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 oiled 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 of death. And further we carry not this second acceptation of 
the words, as this issue of death is liberatio in morte, God's care 
that the soul be safe, what agonies soever the body suffers in the 
hour of death.

But pass to our third part and last part: As this issue of death is 
liberatio per mortem, a deliverance by the death of another. 
Sufferentiam Job audiisti, et vidisti finem Domini, says Saint James, 
You have heard of the patience of Job<46>, says he: all this while 
you have done that, for in every man, calamitous, miserable man, a 
Job speaks. Now, see the end of the Lord, sayeth that apostle, 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, says he, the end that the Lord himself came to, 
death, and a painful and a shameful death. But why did he die? and 
why die so? Quia Domini Domini sunt exitus mortis (as Saint 
Augustine<47>, interpreting this text, answers that question), 
because to this God our Lord belonged the issues of death. Quid 
apertius diceretur? says he there, what can be more obvious, more 
manifest than this sense of these words? In the former part of this 
verse it is said, He that is our God is the God of salvation; Deus 
salvos faciendi, so he reads it, the God that must save us. Who can 
that be, says he, but Jesus? For therefore that name was given him 
because he was to save us<48>. And to this Jesus, says he, this 
Saviour, belong the issues of death; Nec oportuit eum de hac vita 
alios exitus habere quam mortis: being come into this life in our 
mortal nature, he could not go out of this life any other way but by 
death. Ideo dictum, says he, therefore it is said, to God the Lord 
belonged the issues of death; ut ostenderetur moriendo nos salvos 
facturum, to show that his way to save us was to die. And from this 
text doth Saint Isidore prove that Christ was truly man (which as 
many sects of heretics denied, as that he was truly God), because to 
him, though he were Dominus Dominus (as the text doubles it), God the 
Lord, yet to him, to God the Lord belonged the issues of death; 
oportuit eum pati; more cannot be said than Christ himself says of 
himself; These things Christ ought to suffer<49>; he had no other way 
but 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 the devotion, to that which shall be said of his 
passion at the time of 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. And 
therefore be now content to consider with me how to 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 
heated and not burn, that lions could be hungry and not bite, is 
strange, miraculously strange, but 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 non exitus (said Saint Augustine), God the Lord had no issue but 
by death, and oportuit pati (says Christ himself), all this Christ 
ought to suffer, was bound to suffer; Deus ultimo Deus, says David, 
God is the God of revenges, he would not pass over the son of man 
unrevenged, unpunished. But then Deus ultionum libere egit (says that 
place<50>), the God of revenges works freely, he punishes, he spares 
whom he will. And would he not spare himself? he would not: Dilectio 
fortis ut mors, love is strong as death<51>; stronger, it drew in 
death, that naturally is not welcome. Si possibile says Christ, if it 
be possible, let this cup pass<52>, when his love, expressed in a 
former decree with his Father, had made it impossible. Many waters 
quench not love<53>. Christ tried many: he was baptised 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 (to the Lord our God belonged the issues of blood), and 
these expressed, but these did not quench his love. He would not 
spare, nay, he could not spare himself. There was nothing more free, 
more voluntary, more spontaneous than the death of Christ. It is 
true, libere egit, he died voluntarily; but yet when we consider the 
contract that had passed between his Father and him, there was an 
oportuit, a kind of necessity upon him: all this Christ ought to 
suffer. And when shall we date this obligation, this oportuit, this 
necessity? When shall we say that began? Certainly this decree by 
which Christ was to suffer all this was an eternal decree, and was 
there anything before that that was eternal? Infinite love, eternal 
love; be pleased to follow this home, and to consider it seriously, 
that what liberty soever 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 bruise, and but a bruising of 
his heel (the serpent shall bruise his heel<54>), and yet that was, 
that the serpent should practise 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 baptised with<55>, and he was in pain 
till 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)<56>, which was not a joy of his reward after his 
passion, but a joy that filled him even in the midst of his torments, 
and arose from him; when Christ calls his calicem a cup, and no worse 
(Can ye drink of my cup<57>), he speaks not odiously, not with 
detestation of it. Indeed it was a cup, salus mundo, a health to all 
the world. And quid retribuam, says David, What shall I render to the 
Lord? Answer you with David, Accipiam calicem, I will take the cup of 
salvation<58>; take it, that cup is 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 our salvation. That Moses and Elias talked with Christ in the 
transfiguration, both Saint Matthew and Saint Mark<59> tells us, but 
what they talked of, only Saint Luke; Dicebant excessum ejus, says 
he, They talked of his decease, of his death, which was to be 
accomplished at Jerusalem<60>. The word is of his exodus, the very 
word of our text, exitus, 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 
prophecy, Christ passing of mankind through the sea of his blood; and 
Elias, whose exodus and issue of this world was a figure of Christ's 
ascension; had no doubt a great satisfaction in talking with our 
blessed Lord, de excessu ejus, of the full consummation of all this 
in his death, which was to be accomplished at Jerusalem. Our 
meditation of his death should be more 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, Si 
mori contigerit, but si quid humanitas contingat, 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? 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, Nescivi vos, I never knew you<61>, because they made 
themselves too familiar with him. Moses and Elias 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 bonum est nobis esse hic (as 
Saint Peter said there), It is good to dwell here<62>, in this 
consideration of his death, and therefore transfer we our tabernacle 
(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. Make this present day that day in thy 
devotion, and consider what he did, and remember what you have done. 
Before he instituted and celebrated the sacrament (which was after 
the eating of the Passover), he proceeded to that act of humility, to 
wash his disciples' feet, even Peter's, 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, and not else, thou hast spent that 
first part of 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 thyself 
to him; so Christ spent his time till night. At night he went into 
the garden to pray, and he prayed prolixious, he spent much time in 
prayer, how much? Because it is literally expressed, that he prayed 
there three several times<63>, and that returning to his disciples 
after his first prayer, and finding them asleep, said, Could ye not 
watch with me one hour<64>, it is collected that he spent three hours 
in prayer. I dare scarce ask thee whither thou wentest, or how thou 
disposedst of thyself, when it grew dark and after last night. If 
that time were spent in a holy recommendation of thyself to God, and 
a submission of thy will to his, it was spent in a conformity to him. 
In that time, and in those prayers, was his agony and bloody sweat. I 
will hope that thou didst 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. 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 Annas, then to Caiaphas, and (as late as 
it was) 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, which that 
gospel mentions: in which compass fell that gallicinium, that crowing 
of the cock which called up Peter to his repentance. How thou 
passedst all that time thou knowest. If thou didst anything that 
needest Peter's tears, and hast not shed them, let me be thy cock, do 
it now. Now, thy Master (in the unworthiest of his servants) looks 
back upon thee, do it now. Betimes, in the morning, so soon as it was 
day, the Jews held a council in the high priest's hall, and agreed 
upon their evidence against him, and then carried him to Pilate, who 
was to be his judge; didst thou accuse thyself when thou wakedst this 
morning, and wast thou content even with false accusations, that is, 
rather to suspect actions to have been sin, which were not, than to 
smother and justify such as were truly sins? Then thou spentest that 
hour in conformity to him; Pilate found no evidence against him, and 
therefore to ease himself, and to pass a compliment upon Herod, 
tetrarch of Galilee, who was at that time at Jerusalem (because 
Christ, being a Galilean, was of Herod's jurisdiction), Pilate sent 
him to Herod, and rather as a madman than a malefactor; Herod 
remanded him (with scorn) to Pilate, to proceed against him; and this 
was about eight of the clock. Hast thou been content to come to this 
inquisition, this examination, this agitation, this cribration, 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 is time spent like thy Saviour's. 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 Barabbas; 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 they regarded him not, they pressed a crucifying. 
Hast thou gone about to redeem thy sin, by fasting, by alms, by 
disciplines and mortifications, in 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 
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. And 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's 
hands) by a new way, a voluntary emission of it into his Father's 
hands; for though 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 emisit, 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.
FINIS



Upon The Death Of My Ever Desired Friend Doctor Donne Dean Of Paul's 
by Henry King
To have lived eminent in a degree 
Beyond our loftiest flights, that is like thee; 
Or t'have had too much merit is not safe; 
For such excesses find no epitaph. 
At common graves we have poetic eyes 
Can melt themselves in easy elegies; 
Each quill can drop his tributary verse, 
And pin it with the hatchments, to the hearse: 
But at thine, poem or inscription 
(Rich soul of wit and language); we have none; 
Indeed a silence does that tomb befit 
Where is no herald left to blazon it. 
Widowed invention justly doth forbear 
To come abroad knowing thou art not here, 
Late her great patron; whose prerogative 
Maintained and clothed her so, as none alive 
Must now presume to keep her at thy rate, 
Though he the Indies for her dower estate: 
Or else that awful fire, which once did burn 
In thy clear brain, now fall'n into thy Urn. 
Lives there to fright rude empirics from thence, 
Which might profane thee by their ignorance: 
Who ever writes of thee, and in a style 
Unworthy such a theme, does but revile 
Thy precious dust, and wake a learned spirit 
Which may revenge his rapes upon thy merit. 
For all a low-pitched fancy can devise, 
Will prove at best but hallowed injuries. 
Thou, like the dying swan, didst lately sing 
Thy mournful dirge in audience of the King; 
When pale looks, and faint accents of thy breath, 
Presented so to life that piece of death, 
That it was feared and prophesied by all 
Thou thither cam'st to preach thy funeral. 
O! hadst thou in an elegiac knell 
Rung out unto the world thine own farewell; 
And in thy high victorious numbers beat 
The solemn measure of thy grieved retreat: 
Thou might'st the Poets service now have missed, 
As well as then thou didst prevent the priest: 
And never to the world beholden be, 
So much as for an epitaph for thee. 
I do not like the office. Nor is't fit 
Thou, who didst lend our age such sums of wit, 
Should'st now reborrow from her bankrupt mine 
That ore to bury thee, which once was thine. 
Rather still leave us in thy debt; and know 
(Exalted soul!) more glory 'tis to owe 
Unto thy hearse what we can never pay, 
Then with embased coin those Rites defray. 
Commit we then thee to thy self: nor blame 
Our drooping loves, which thus to thine own fame 
Leave thee executor: since but thy own 
No pen could do thee justice, nor bays crown 
Thy vast desert; save that we nothing can 
Depute to be thy ashes guardian. 
So jewellers no art or metal trust 
To form the diamond, but the diamonds dust. 




On the Death of Dr Donne by Edward Hyde, afterwards Earl of Clarendon
I CANNOT blame those men, that knew thee well, 
Yet dare not help the world, to ring thy knell 
In tuneful elegies; there's not language known 
Fit for thy mention, but 'twas first thy own; 
The epitaphs thou writ'st, have so bereft 
Our tongue of wit, there is not fancy left 
Enough to weep thee; what henceforth we see 
Of Art or Nature, must result from thee. 
There may perchance some busy gathering friend 
Steal from thy own works, and that, varied, lend, 
Which thou bestow'st on others, to thy hearse, 
And so thou shalt live still in thine own verse; 
He that shall venture farther, may commit 
A pitied error, shew his zeal, not wit. 
Fate hath done mankind wrong; virtue may aim 
Reward of conscience, never can, of fame, 
Since her great trumpet's broke, could only give 
Faith to the world, command it to believe; 
He then must write, that would define thy parts: 
Here lies the best divinity, all the arts.



Notes
1. Corporis haec animae sit syndon syndon Jesu (beneath the 
portrait): "This is the shroud of my body; may Jesus be the shroud of 
my soul." 
EFFIGIES REVERENDISS. VIRI IOHANNIS DONNE NUPER ECCLES. PAULINAE 
DECANI (Around the edge): "Portrait of the most reverend John Donne 
late Dean of St. Paul's Church"
2. Precious in his sight is the death of his saints: Psalm 116:15
3. We have eyes and see not, ears and hear not: Psalm 115:5-6.
4. I am wonderfully and fearfully made, and such knowledge is too 
excellent for me: Psalm 139:14 & 6.
5. That is the Lord’s doing, and it is wonderful in our eyes: Psalm 
118:23.7.
6. It is he that made us, and not we ourselves: Psalm 100:3.
7. Thine hands have made me and fashioned me together round about; 
yet thou dost destroy me: Job 10:8
8. Children are come to the birth, and no strength to bring forth: 
Isaiah, 37:3.
9. Give them, O Lord, what wilt thou give them? Give them a 
miscarrying womb: Hosea 9:14
10. Wretched man that he is, who shall deliver him from this body of 
death: Romans 7:24.
11. Before I formed thee I knew thee, and before thou camest out of 
the womb I sanctified thee: Jeremiah 1:5
12. God prescribed Noah that absolute form of the ark: Genesis 6:14-
16.
13. I have gotten a man from the Lord: Genesis 4:1.
14. In my Father’s house, there are many mansions: John 14:2.
15. The Son of man hath not where to lay his head: Matthew 8:20.
16. How then hath God given this earth to the sons of men: Psalm 
115:16
17. Here we have no continuing city: Hebrews: 13:14.
18. The journeys of the Israelites in the wilderness: Exod. 17:1. 
19. The days of the years of my pilgrimage: Genesis. 47:9.
20. We are absent from the Lord: 2nd Corinthians 5:6.
21. Wherefore thou hast brought me forth out of the womb? Oh that I 
had given up the ghost, and no eye seen me! I should have been as 
though I had not been: Job 10:18-19.
22. Would to God we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of 
Egypt: Exodus 16:3.
23. It is enough now, O Lord, take away my life: 1 Kings, 19:4.
24. Now, O Lord, take, I beseech thee, my life from me, for it is 
better to die than to live &c. &c.: Jonah, chapter 4
25. I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me: 
Psalm 51:5
26. He hath the keys of death: Revelations 1:18.
27. Omni die: Every day; Tota die: All day.
28. Mortality had not put on immortality nor corruption had not put 
on incorruption: 1st Corinthians. 15:53.
29. Thou wilt not suffer thy Holy One to see corruption: Psalm 16:10, 
quoted in Acts 13:35.
30. Even so, Father, for so it seemeth good in thy sight: Matthew 
11:26
31. Peter in his sermon at Jerusalem and Paul in his at Antioch.: 
Acts 2:31 and 13 35.
32. That place in the sixteenth Psalm: "For thou wilt not leave my 
soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see 
corruption." Psalms 16:10.
33. Behold I show you a mystery &c.: 1 Corinthians 15:51
34. Corruption, thou art my father, and to the worm, Thou art my 
mother and my sister: Job 17:14
35. The worm shall feed, and feed sweetly upon me: Job 24:20.
36. One dieth at his full strength &c.: Job 21:23, 25-26.
37. the worm is spread under thee, and the worm covers thee: Isaiah 
24:11.
38. The temples of the Holy Ghost: 1 Corinthians 6:19.
39. Can these bones live &c.: Ezekiel 37.
40. The Lord our God is able to deliver us, and he will deliver us: 
Daniel 3:17.
41. Sadness even in his soul to death: Mark 14:34 & Matthew 26:38
42. Hast thou served a good master threescore and ten years, and now 
art thou loath to go into his presence &c.: Hilarion (291–371) was an 
anchorite who spent most of his life in the desert. He is considered 
to be the founder of Palestinian monasticism and is venerated as a 
saint by Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches. Quotation is 
from St. Jerome, Life of Hilarion, 45.
43. Barlaam of Seminara c. 1290–1348, was a philosopher and 
theologian, first Orthodox, later Catholic. 
44. The Holy Ghost hath moved Saint Paul to celebrate Samson in his 
great catalogue.: Hebrews 11:31
45. Do this and thou shalt live:  Luke 10:28
46. You have heard of the patience of Job: James 5:11.
47. Augustine: City of God, Bk.17 Ch. 18.
48: That name [Jesus] was given him because he was to save us: 
Matthew 1:21.
49: These things Christ ought to suffer:  Luke, 24:26.
50. The God of revenges &c.: Psalm 94:1
51. Love is strong as death: Song of Solomon 8:6.
52. If it be possible, let this cup pass: Luke 22:42
53. Many waters quench not love: Song of Solomon 8:7
54. The serpent shall bruise his heel: ref Genesis 3:15, which says 
"her heel."
55. I have a baptism to be baptised with: Luke 12:50.
56. For the joy which was set before him he endured the cross: 
Hebrews 12:2.
57. Can ye drink of my cup: Matthew 20:22.
57. What shall I render to the Lord? I will take the cup of 
salvation: Psalm 116:12-13.
59. Matthew 17:3; Mark 9:4.
60. They talked of his decease, which was to be accomplished at 
Jerusalem: Luke 9:31.
61. I never knew you: Matthew 7:23.
62. It is good to dwell here: Matthew 17:4.
63. He prayed there three several times: Matthew 36:29-44.
64. Could ye not watch with me one hour: Matthew 36:40.



Glossary

Of obsolete words, or words used in an obsolete sense.
Colluctation: Struggle, conflict
Contignation: The joining together of the components of a 
building
Contumelies: Insults
Cribration: Sifting
Damp: A state of depression or stupor
Hypostatical: A theological term, referring to the union of 
the two natures, human and divine, in the one body of Christ
Irrisions: Mockery, contemptuous laughter
Presagition: A sign or symptom which acts as a foretelling 
or warning that something is about to occur. 
Prolixious: At great length
Vermiculation: Infestation by worms


THE END