You that poor Petrarch's long-deceased woes

With newborn sighs and denizen'd wit do sing;

You take wrong ways; those farfet helps be such

As do bewray a want of inward touch,

And sure at length stol'n goods do come to light.

Shakespeare had passed in review the traditional hyperboles of the blazon--eyes like the sun, hair like golden wires, breasts white as snow--and dismissed them as "false compare"(CXXX). He had written the greatest sonnet-sequence in history to set forth a bisexual love-triangle with a rival employing spies and slander, with infidelity squared, with the poet himself sometimes revolted by his own sexuality and deeming himself "mad in pursuit and in possession so" (CXXIX).

Consequently, if one is serious about attaining a Calvinist salvation, one would hesitate to select the sonnet sequence as the method of celebrating such a feat. To address God Himself, in what amounts to prayer, using this meretricious idiom--and of Donne's Holy Sonnets, eleven out of nineteen do address God directly(5)--seems audacious. Because a sonnet sequence embodies and simultaneously records an attempt to change the mind of the beloved, it is presumptuous when addressed to Calvin's God, who can never hate a person after loving him, or the reverse. At one point, Donne seems aware of the disreputableness of his project. In an address to Christ, and may I add, not only to Christ, but to Christ weeping and bleeding on the cross, the poet says:

...as in my idolatrie

I said to all my profane mistresses,

Beauty, of pitty; foulnesse onely is

A signe of rigour; so say I to thee (XIII, 9-12).

The poet has no hesitation in reminding his Savior, "I had my time to score with profane mistresses, quite a few of them; that's how I learned one come-on line that never fails, and this time, you'll be the one to fall for it, won't you?"

I wish to accept the challenge that Lewalski declined, and find an order for the sonnets appropriate to a Calvinist "effectual calling." What follows is an attempt to accomplish this task.

Before I begin, let me note in passing that Donne, though born a papist, did not have to turn his coat to embrace Calvinism. Calvin sought only to restore to their due supremacy the ideas of St. Augustine,in Catholic tradition one of the Four Doctors of the Latin Church. In Biathanatos Donne wrote:

St. Augustin, for sharp insight and conclusive judgment in exposition of places of Scripture, which he always makes so liquid and pervious,hath scarce been equalled therein by any of all the writers in the church of God, except Calvin may have that honor,for whom (when it concerns not points of controversy) I see the Jesuits themselves, though they dare not name him, have a high degree of reverence (ed. Ernest W. Sullivan II, U. of Delaware Press,Newark,n.d.,p.77).

1. Total Depravity.This is the first of the Five Points of Calvinism, the first stage of every human being's journey in life, and the last for a reprobate's. Ann Bradstreet depicts a child in this condition:

Stained from birth with Adams sinfull fact,

Thence I began to sin as soon as act:

A perverse will, a love to what's forbid,

A serpent's sting in pleasing face lay hid:

A lying tongue as soon as it could speak

And fifth Commandment [Honor thy father and thy mother] do daily break.(6)

Total depravity is alive and well in the twenty-first century. An undergraduate student of mine recalled her shock when, in Sunday school, a Lutheran minister told her, "Even when you try to help your little sister, you are doing something bad."

Totally depraved people, including reprobates, may experience calling, also known as Calling Grace, which stirs them to vague longings for salvation, but no action. John Bunyan remembers, of his period of total depravity, "even in my childhood God did scare and affright me with fearful dreams."(7) Samuel Willard says the Holy Spirit makes many offers to reprobates, "and so they are said to resist and quench the Spirit:Though often such have contritions, compunctions, convictions,&c which yet never issue in the new birth."(8)

{1} XVIII (9)

Show me deare Christ, thy spouse, so bright and cleare.

What, is it she, which on the other shore

Goes richly painted? or which rob'd and tore

Laments and mournes in Germany and here?

Sleepes she a thousand, then peepes up one yeare?

Is she selfe truth and errs? now new, now'outwore?

Doth she'and did she, and shall she evermore

On one, on seaven, or on no hill appeare?

Dwells she with us, or like adventuring knights

First travaile we to seeke and then make love?

Betray kind husband thy spouse to our sights,

And let myne amorous soule court thy mild Dove,

Who is most trew, and pleasing to thee, then

When she'is embrac'd and open to most men.

In Satire III, Donne condemns exactly this attitude towards the various creeds of Christendom.

Graccus loves all as one, and thinks that so

As women doe in diverse countries goe

In diverse habits, yet are still one kinde;

So doth, so is religion; and this blinde-

nesse too much light breeds...(ll.65-69)

Graccus is too light, that is, too frivolous;he treats the quest for his salvation as if it were Sterne's sentimental journey, a matter of wandering from one country to the next and embracing the women in each. The I of "Show me deare Christ" likewise expects the Bride of Christ, a mild dove with a complacent husband, to yield easily to his embraces, a bitter irony given the terrible trials awaiting him in {3}I.

{2}III

O Might those sighes and teares returne againe

Into my breast and eyes,which I have spent,

That I might in this holy discontent

Mourne with some fruit, as I have mourn'd in vaine;

In my Idolatry what showres of raine

Mine eyes did waste? what griefs my heart did rent?

That sufferance was my sinne, now I repent;

Th'hydroptique drunkard, and night-scouting thiefe,

The itchy Lecher and selfe tickling proud

Have the remembrance of past joyes, for reliefe

Of comming ills. To (poore) me is allow'd

No ease; for,long, yet vehement griefe hath beene

Th'effect and cause, the punishment and sinne.

This is negative, and as the poet wishes for tears that may prove redemptive, it might be thought he has started down the path of salvation by means of its first step, Conviction of Sin. But on the contrary, in authentic Conviction of Sin, God "convinceth him that all this is righteously befallen him." (10) In place of acquiescence in God's righteousness,we get self-pity; poor me! cries the poet (l. 12). He thinks it unfair of God to prevent him from succeeding with his girls while drunks, thieves, narcissists and lechers all in various ways obtain the satisfaction they seek; and this in spite of the grief and pain of the amour courtoise tradition which he has undergone. He believes that if he could do it all again, this time in a religious vein, he could achieve (some degree of) salvation; to Calvinists, a damnable idea.

2. Conviction of Sin. This sudden feeling of plummeting into hell was often triggered by a small incident. William Perkins underwent Conviction of Sin when he overheard a woman in the street referring to him as "drunken Perkins."(11) John Bunyan's Conviction of Sin occurred when he had done some swearing in an Elstow street and a woman reprimanded him, saying "that I was the ungodliest fellow for swearing that ever she heard of in all her life.... At this reproof I was... put to secret shame" (Works, I, 9).

{3}I

Thou hast made me, and shall thy worke decay?

Repaire me now, for now mine end doth haste,

I runne to death, and death meets me as fast,

And all my pleasures are like yesterday,

I dare not move my dimme eyes any way,

Despaire behind, and death before doth cast

Such terrour, and my febled flesh doth waste

By sinne in it, which it t'wards hell doth weigh;

Onely thou art above, and when towards thee

By thy leave I can looke, I rise againe;

But our old subtle foe so tempteth me,

That not one houre I can my selfe, sustaine;

Thy grace may wing me to prevent his art

And thou like Adamant draw mine iron heart.

With I dare not move my dimme eyes,compare Samuel Willard, p. 448, col. 1; "this conviction puts them into horrible fear." With all my pleasures are like yesterday,compare: "It eats out all his comfort in any Creature enjoyment....They can taste no more relish in any thing here, than in the white of an egg."--p. 448, cols. 1-2. The poet's mention of sin which weighs his flesh towards hell shows that the criterion mentioned above ({2}III), that Conviction of Sin must make the subject feel that all this is righteouslybefallen him,is satisfied.

3. Legal Reformation.The subject responds to his fears by exercising his will to live according to the Ten Commandments. "I fell to some outward reformation, both in my words and life, and did set the commandments before me for my way to heaven; which commandments I also did strive to keep...for then I thought I pleased God as well as any man in England" (Bunyan, Works,I, 9). In Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, the symbol of legal reformation is that Christian turns aside from the path of salvation to listen to Mr Worldly-Wiseman, who urges him to go to the village of Morality and live there. Christian is on the way to Morality when he passes a mountain, Sinai(=the Ten Commandments) and becomes terrified that it will fall on him. He turns back and meets Evangelist, who expounds the magnitude of his offense.

Temporary success in obeying the law leads to self-esteem, as Bunyan notes, but sudden failure then causes hopelessness, in a manner akin to what we call today Bipolar Personality Disorder.

(4)IV

Oh my blacke soule! now thou art summoned

By sicknesse, deaths herald, and champion;

Thou art like a pilgrim, which abroad hath done

Treason, and durst not turne to whence hee'is fled,

Or like a thiefe, which till deaths doome be read,

Wisheth himself deliverd from prison;

But damn'd and hal'd to execution,

Wisheth that still he might be'imprisoned;

Yet grace, if thou repent, thou canst not lacke;

But who shall give thee that grace to beginne?

Oh make thy selfe with holy mourning blacke,

And red with blushing, as thou art with sinne;

Or wash thee in Christs blood, which hath this might

That being red, it dyes red soules to white.

The symbol of total depravity, blacke soule, contrasts with my mindes white truth in {14} VIII. Having taken a positive step, Conviction of Sin, the poet to a secular-humanist mind might seem to have improved over Total Depravity, but Calvinism is all-or-nothing.

The sestet combines the wrong solution to the predicament of Legal Reformation, efforts employing free will (make thy selfe) with the right solution, reception of Irresistible Grace (wash thee in Christs blood)."To be washed in Christ's blood means that God, by grace, has forgiven my sins..."(14)

{5}XIV

Batter my heart, three person'd God; for you

As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend;

That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow mee'and bend

Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new.

I, like an usurpt towne, to'another due,

Labour to'admit you, but Oh, to no end,

Reason your viceroy in mee, mee should defend,

But is captiv'd, and proves weake or untrue,

Yet dearely'I love you, and would be lov'd faine,

But am betroth'd unto unto your enemie,

Divorce mee,'untie, or breake that knot againe,

Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I

Except you'enthrall mee, never shall be free,

Nor ever chast,except you ravish mee.

The satisfied or manic phase of Legal Reformation is represented by the quote from Bunyan above. The frustrated or depressive side is described by Willard:"Elective power is gone, as to any divine Object, and his Will is utterly unable to chuse Christ, and refuse other objects for him." (15) Hence the metaphors of the town that cannot open its own gates,and the viceroy Reason (which "is choice," says Milton, PL III. 108) a captive.

Irresistible Grace, the fourth of the Five Points of Calvinism, means that when Adoption finally comes, it cannot possibly be refused, the proof-text being John 6:37,"All that the father giveth shall come to me." Calling Grace, as opposed to Irresistible Grace, reaches even reprobates. The recipient of this grace that does but knock, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend realizes its futility and begs for grace whose irresistible nature he expresses in shocking metaphors: he wants to be imprisoned, enslaved, kidnapped. The Calvinist distinction between the two Graces, Calling and Irresistible, is mirrored in the Seventeenth-Century Jesuit distinctionbetween two Graces, Sufficient and Efficacious. Sufficient Grace, providing the fact without confessing the name of Reprobation,was enough to save a person, yet never did. Pascal ridicules Sufficient Grace in the Provincial Letters.

{6}XIX

Oh, to vex me, contraryes meete in one:

Inconstancy unnaturally hath begott

A constant habit; that when I would not

I change in vowes, and in devotione.

As humorous is my contritione

As my prophane Love, and as soone forgott:

As ridlingly distemperd, cold and hott,

As praying, as mute; as infinite, as none.

I durst not view heaven yesterday; and to day

In prayers, and flattering speaches I court God:

To morrow'I quake with true feare of his Rod.

So my devout fitts come and go away

Like a fantastique Ague: save that here

Those are my best dayes, when I shake with feare.

The negative predominates in this expression of the bipolar quality of legal reformation; the poet's praise of God is insincere, flattering; his fear of punishment is true; the days when this fear is most overpowering are best. With an esthete's or moralist's discrimination, he finds his fear more authentic than his hope; in a like vein T.S. Eliot called the faith of Tennyson's In Memoriam a poor thing, but its doubt genuine and powerful.

{7}V

I am a little world made cunningly

Of elements, and an Angelike spright,

But black sinne hath betraid to endlesse night

My worlds both parts and (oh) both parts must die.

You which beyond that heaven which was most high

have found new sphears, and of new lands can write,

Powre new seas in mine eyes that so I might

Drowne my world with my weeping earnestly,

Or wash it if it must be drown'd no more:

But oh it must be burnt;alas the fire

Of lust and envie'have burnt it heretofore,

And made it fouler; Let their flames retire,

And burne me o Lord, with a fiery zeale

Of thee'and thy house, which doth in eating heale.

The quotation of the disciples' gloss on Jesus' driving the money changers out of the temple, "The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up"(John 2:17), qualifies this as the only sonnet in the series that refers to Donne's vocation as a priest in "thy house," the church. It may also allude to Calvinist tendencies as zeal was a Puritan catch-word, witness the following:

(Describing a Calvinist congregation in a state of high dudgeon against one of its members)"if he doe so, up starts their zeale."--William Walwyn, "A Still and Soft Voice from the Scriptures,"Historical Texts Online,website, Internet.

Sir Kenelm Digby approves the qualified fideism of Sir Thomas Browne, saying that he "makes a right use of the blind zeale that Bigotsloose themselves in."--"Observations upon Religio Medici," Sir Thomas Browne website, Internet.

Milton denounces "close ambition varnish't o'er with zeal,"meaning the scheming of the Presbyterians, PL. II. 485.

Jonson's comic Puritan is named Zeal-of-the-Land Busy.

{8}IX

If poysonous mineralls, and if that tree,

Whose fruit threw death on else immortall us,

If lecherous goats, if serpents envious

Cannot be damn'd; Alas; why should I bee?

Why should intent or reason, borne in mee,

Make sinnes, else equall, in mee, more heinous?

And mercy being easie, and glorious

To God, in his sterne wrath, why threatens hee?

But who am I, that dare dispute with thee?

O God,Oh!of thine only worthy blood,

And my teares, make a heavenly Lethean flood,

And drowne in it my sinnes blacke memorie.

That thou remember them,some claime as debt,

I thinke it mercy, if thou wilt forget.

Convicted of sin, but unadopted, the poet lives with continual vivid fears that he will be damned, represented by the word threatens in line 8, another Calvinist catchword; e.g., "there now remains to me nothing but threatenings,dreadful threatenings, fearful threatenings of certain Judgment and firy Indignation..."(16)The reflection that any animal is much better off than a reprobate occurs also in Bunyan's autobiography: "gladly would I have been in the condition of dog or horse, for I knew they had no soul to perish under the everlasting weights of hell for sin, as mine was like to do."(17) Michael Wigglesworth, a Calvinist versifier whom we shall hear more of in a moment, was also aware of the paradox that it was usually better to be subhuman than to be in receipt of the "love" and "justice" of Calvin's God:

Oh happy Dogs, and Swine, and Frogs:

Yea Serpents generation,

Who do not fear this doom to hear,

and sentence of Damnation! ("The Day of Doom," Stanza 184).

In Bunyan's autobiography, as in the Donne sonnet, this startling reflection occurs in the legal-reformation phase.

{9}VI

This is my playes last scene; here heavens appoint

My pilgrimages last mile; and my race

Idly, yet quickly runne, hath this last pace,

My spans last inch, my minutes latest point,

And gluttonous death, will instantly unjoynt

My body,'and soule, and I shall sleepe a space,

But my'ever waking part shall see that face,

Whose feare already shakes my every joynt:

Then, as my soule, t'heaven her first seate, takes flight,

And earth-borne body, in the earth shall dwell,

So, fall my sinnes, that all may have their right,

To where they'are bred, and would presse me, to hell.

Impute me righteous, thus purg'd of evill,

For thus I leave the world, the flesh, and devill.

Calvin writes:"... most strange to say, many who boast of being Christians, instead of...longing for death, are so afraid of it that they tremble at the very mention of it as a thing ominous and dreadful.... it is altogether intolerable that the light of piety should not be so powerful in a Christian breast as with greater consolation to overcome and suppress that fear." (18) Donne nearly reproduces Calvin's words by saying that fear shakes his every joint. The main work of salvation is still before him, yet he desires the right thing, that Christ's righteousness be imputed to him. This technical term of Calvinist theology, providing an explanation how a human soul polluted with original and actual sin can become acceptable to God, is turned upside down by Donne in a metaphysical conceit about "blinde Philosophers in heaven [Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus]whose merit Of strict life may be imputed faith." (19) That is, assuming a humanism diametrically opposed to Calvinism, the men by the exercise of their free will lived so well that God will take their lives in lieu of faith in Christ, whereas for Christians he does exactly the reverse.

Lewalski thinks the word "impute" so important that she considers this poem to be the turning-point of the series, but she ignores the fact that the word is in a petition; the poet has only a request for righteousness, not the thing itself.

{10}VII

At the round earths imagin'd corners, blow

Your trumpets, Angells, and arise, arise

From death, you numberlesse infinities

Of soules, and to your scattred bodies goe,

All whom the flood did, and fire shall o'erthrow,

All whom warre, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,

Despaire, law, chance, hath slaine, and you whose eyes,

Shall behold God, and never tast deaths woe,

But let them sleepe Lord, and mee mourne a space,

For if, above all these, my sinnes abound,

'Tis late to aske abundance of thy grace,

When wee are there; here on this lowly ground,

Teach mee how to repent; for that's as good

As if thou'hadst seal'd my pardon, with thy blood.

The statement that the souls of the dead must sleepetill the Last Judgment,line 9, must be compared with VI.6,"I shall sleep a space," and X.13, "One short sleep past, we wake eternally." All three must be compared with a variant on VI.7, noted by Grierson (I, 324, note): in place of "My ever-waking part shall see that face," this variant has "Or presently, I know not, see that Face."

All these lines express the heresy of the soul-sleepers, or mortalists, who, unable to believe that the soul was a completely immaterial substance, to be separated from the body at death, held that it entered a dormant state that continued to the Last Judgment. Milton too became a soul-sleeper and used Adam to express this idea, PL X. 782-93.

In this version of VI.5-7,

And gluttonous death, will instantly unjoint

My body and soul, and I shall sleep a space,

But my'ever-waking part shall see that face...

the word sleep means that his corpse will lie motionless in the grave, as if asleep, and the epithet ever-waking, applied to the soul, denies the mortalist heresy.

In a variant, Donne toys with that heresy:

...I shall sleep a space,

Or presently, I know not, see that Face...

Now there are two versions of Donne's post-mortem condition. Either he shall sleep, meaning the soul in its dormant state will rest with his body, or he shall presently (instantly) see Christ. The first concept is mortalism, the second orthodox Christianity. In these lines, at any rate, Donne is neither Calvinist nor papist.

4.Adoption.

{11}15

Wilt thou love God as he thee! then digest

My Soule, this wholesome meditation,

How God the Spirit, by Angels waited on

In heaven, doth make his Temple in thy brest,

The Father having begot a Sonne most blest,

And still begetting, (for he ne'r begonne)

Hath deign'd to chuse thee by adoption,

Coheire to'his glory,'and Sabbaths endlesse rest;

And as a robb'd man, which by search doth finde

His stolne stuffe sold, must lose or buy'it againe:

The Sonne of glory came downe, and was slaine,

Us whom he'had made, and Satan stolne, to'unbinde.

'Twas much, that man was made like God before,

But, that God should be made like man, much more.

In this climactic sonnet, the poet, in a mood of calm triumph, declares that he has undergone adoption. His body is the temple of the holy spirit. Eternal happiness in heaven, "endlesse rest," is his by inheritance. The octave states the happy news and the sestet gives the reason, Christ's mission to rescue man from Satan's bonds.

{12}XVI

Father, part of his double interest

Unto thy kingdome, thy sonne gives to mee,

His joynture in the knottie Trinitie,

Hee keepes, and gives to me his deaths conquest.

This Lambe, whose death, with life the world hath blest,

Was from the worlds beginning slaine, and he

Hath made two Wills, which with the Legacie

Of his and thy kingdome, doe thy Sonnes invest,

Yet such are those laws, that men argue yet

Whether a man those statutes can fulfill;

None doth, but thy all-healing grace and Spirit

Revive againe what law and letter kill.

Thy lawes abridgement, and thy last command

Is all but love; Oh let that last Will stand!

The poet now treats his election as an accomplished fact. In line four he announces that he has received the benefit of Christ's death (salvation). The Old Testament, which requires obedience to God's law, is replaced by the New, which offers "all-healing grace."

The Calvinists loved money-metaphors for both sin and salvation. Thus Bunyan compares his justification (the ontic aspect of what noetically is adoption) to a strongbox of gold while his virtues are the small change a wealthy merchant carries about and can afford to lose. Explaining why legal reformation gets one nowhere,he compares the sins of an unregenerate person to a one-hundred-pound debt to a shopkeeper; even if the customer pays for every subsequent purchase, the debt remains(Pilgrim's Progress intro. Edmund Venables,London: Oxford U.P., n.d., p.168.) He says that Biblical passages concerning the Perseverence of the Saints and other precious doctrines are worth more to him than all the gold and silver that could be placed between York and London piled up to the stars (A Few Sighs from Hellin John Brown, John Bunyan, ed. and rev. F.M. Harrison (London: Hulbert Publishing Co., 1928), p.112.)The word interest was transferred from banking to mean salvation when Robert South bade every believer "ask himself...what evidences he has of his interest in the second Covenant" (OED,s.v.,"interest"). So Donne receives salvation as a gift from Christ of interest, or a jointure, or a legacy.

{13}X

Death be not proud,though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not soe,

For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,

Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill mee;

From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,

Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee do goe,

Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.

Thou'art slave to Fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,

And poppie,'or charmes can make us sleepe as well,

And better than thy stroake; why swell'st thou then?

One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,

And death shall be no more, Death thou shalt die.

Now the poet can obey Calvin's behest, quoted above, "with greater consolation to overcome and suppress that fear" of death. Compare I.3, "I run to death, and death meets me as fast," and VI.5-6,"gluttonous death will instantly unjoint my body and soul,"with this unterrified mockery.

{14}VIII

If faithfull soules be alike glorifi'd

As Angels, then my fathers soule doth see,

And adds this even to full felicitie,

That valiantly I hels wide mouth o'rstride:

But if our mindes to these soules be descry'd

By circumstances, and by signes that be

Apparent in us not immediately,

How shall my mindes white truth in them be try'd?

They see idolatrous lovers weepe and mourne,

And vile blasphemous Conjurers to call

On Jesus name, and Pharisaicall

Dissemblers feigne devotion. Then turne

O pensive soule, to God, for he knowes best

Thy griefe, for he put it into my breast.

The tricky syntax of the octave makes the first quatrain seem an either and the second an or. That is, either my father's soul in heaven knows I am adopted, or he has only probable cause to think I am. However, the relation between the two quatrains is that of a positive statement followed by a strong qualification. My father knows I am adopted as well as anyone, even an angel, does; but that is still very fallible knowledge.

When Calvin declared that no one in the world knows whether he or anyone else is elect, the question arose: do the saints in heaven know who is and who is not elect? If not, their felicity must be marred by anxiety whether family and friends will burn in hell. But if they know, that might be worse, as they would have to live with the certainty that a given person held in affection on earth was doomed (a notion treated dramatically by Mark Twain in The Mysterious Stranger). Calvin dismissed the question:

I have no wish curiously to pry into what they [the blessed in heaven] do or meditate; but the probability is, that instead of being subject to the impulse of various and particular desires, they, with one fixed and immovable will, long for the kingdom of God, which consists not less in the destruction of the ungodly than in the salvation of believers.(20)

In short, my father's soul in heaven doesn't care whether I am adopted or not; he will be equally pleased to see me glorified at his side or weltering in hell, since either outcome will contribute equally to God's kingdom.

As far as I know, the most complete and ghastly exposition of this doctrine of the Contempt of the Elect for their Reprobate Kin is in "The Day of Doom" by Michael Wigglesworth, who with Anne Bradstreet (quoted above, pp.000-000)was one of the very few persons trying to write poetry in North America in the Seventeenth Century:

One natural brother beholds another

In this astonied fit,(sc. condemned to hell)

Yet sorrows not thereat a jot,

Nor pitties him a whit.

The godly wife conceives no grief,

Nor can she shed a tear

For the sad state of her dear Mate,

When she his doom doth hear.

He that was erst a Husband pierc't

With sense of Wives distress,

Whose tender heart did bear a part

Of all her grievances,

Shall mourn no more as heretofore

Because of her ill plight;

Although he see her now to be

A damned forsaken wight.

The tender mother will own no other

Of all her numerous brood,

But such as stand at Christ's right hand

Acquitted through his blood.

The pious father had now much rather

His graceless son should ly

In Hell with Devils, for all his evils

Burning eternally,

Than God most high should injury,

By sparing him sustain

And doth rejoyce to hear Christ's voice

Adjudging him to pain...(Stanzas 197-200)

Calvin's own expressions about the contempt of the elect for the reprobate, including siblings, spouses and offspring (but no contempt of offspring for parents! Wigglesworth never envisions God damning a father and saving his son) lack the rigor of this exposition. Hence the omission of elect children with reprobate parents is deplorable and I take the liberty of writing a surrogate stanza to remedy it:

The merry tot shall laugh a lot

At his progeni-tore,

And crying "Yes!" at Dad's distress

Shall wish his suff'rings more.

Lest it be thought Wigglesworth's mind was perverted only by Calvinism, see my essay, "A Source of Michael Wigglesworth's Short Discourse of Eternity," Harvard Library Bulletin,Oct., 1977: Vol XXV, pp.213-33, where I demonstrate that another of his hell-fire poems was heavily influenced by a Jesuit.

Now a strange sequel: after serving many years as a Calvinist minister, Wigglesworth married a teenaged girl who had never gone through any part of the spiritual pilgrimage I have described; she had never been convicted of sin, never attempted legal reformation, never stood up before the people to describe her adoption. When she appeared in public, Wigglesworth's scandalized congregation insulted her, and he resentfully quoted the proverb, "Love me, love my dog."That implies that in some sense of the word he loved her, yet he knew he would see her hurled into a lake of fire and "sorrow not thereat a jot, nor pity her a whit." Watch this website for a fuller treatment of the amazing life and works of Michael Wigglesworth.

Recoiling from the Calvinist notion of his deceased father's attitude towards him, Donne reverted to Roman Catholic doctrine. This states that in this life a person can have moral, but not metaphysical certainty of his own salvation, i.e., he can be sufficiently assured to set his mind at ease and get on with his life, but he cannot have the certainty one has about a theorem in Euclid. It follows that, though only God can read the heart, the saints and angels in heaven ought to have at least as much knowledge of the salvation/damnation of dwellers on earth as the latter themselves do; Aquinas teaches that this knowledge is attained by observation of

outward effects; and in this way not angels only, but men too can discern them;and the more subtly, the less obvious is the effect. A man's thoughts may show not only in his actions but in his face: doctors may tell the emotional state of a person by feeling his pulse. Inasmuch then as angels--or devils--have a much subtler perception of such less obvious changes in the body than we have, they can more accurately discern hidden thoughts and feelings...(21)

Donne repudiates the indifference of the blessed; his father's probabilistic knowledge of his adoption "adds...even to full felicity"(l.3).

The fine distinction that even angels are reduced to the interpretation of outward signs, forming the basis of Donne's speculation that the souls of the blessed are promoted to equality with angels, is cited by Grierson in a very useful note as the basis of a conceit in Donne's "The Dream." In this poem Donne lies abed one morning dreaming of his mistress and wakes to find she has just then entered the room, leading him to speculate that she knew what he was dreaming.

But when I saw thou sawest my heart,

And knew'st my thoughts, beyond an angel's art,...

I must confesse, it could not chuse but bee

Prophane, to think thee any thing but thee (Poems,I.37; II.33-35, note).

That is, Donne concluded that the mistress was God,Who alone can read the heart, or equal to Him. The poet's description of lovers as "idolatrous" in line 9 and two other places in these sonnets is no metaphor.

Donne's father died a papist, while Donne was an Anglican; this gave the son, but not the father, the right to believe that both would meet in heaven. The Catholics argued that it stood to reason that the true church should condemn all other churches as heresies and urged Christians to seek safety in the true church. The Anglicans, at least the high church party, held that Catholic laymen could be saved by their good intentions notwithstanding the superstitious ceremonies devised by their ecclesiastical superiors.William Chillingworth for the protestants compared the attitude of each church towards the other's members with the attitude of each concubine towards the other's claim of motherhood in the story of the Judgment of Solomon; a piece of Christian rhetoric that, for once, doesn't make one sick.

The mediated knowledge even of angels concerning mortals' intent can err in cases of wilful deception committed by lovers, magicians and religious hypocrites. It follows that only two beings in the universe are quite sure of Donne's adoption: Donne himself, and God.

5. Sanctification.

The pilgrim on the path of salvation now undertakes to live righteously, but owing to that irresistible grace pleaded for in {5}XIV, he enjoys greater success,in the long run amounting to a steady gain; and the struggle with self is now curiously inconsequential in that he cannot possibly lose-- cannot lose God's love, cannot lose eternal life.

,

{15}II

As due by many titles I resigne

My selfe to thee, O God, first I was made

By thee, and for thee, and when I was decay'd

Thy blood bought that, the which before was thine,

I am thy sonne, made with thy selfe to shine,

Thy servant, whose paines thou hast still repaid,

Thy sheepe, thine Image, and till I betray'd

My selfe, a temple of thy Spirit divine;

Why doth the devill then usurpe in mee?

Why doth he steale, nay ravish that's thy right?

Except thou rise and for thine owne worke fight,

Oh I shall soone despaire, when I doe see

That thou lov'st mankind well, yet wilt not chuse me.

And Satan hates mee, yet is loth to lose mee.

The sestet makes this seem to belong to the period before Conviction of Sin. The Devil kidnaps the soul of the poet who loses faith in his election (line 13).

Over against this is line 5, "I am thy son," stating in words of one syllable that the poet's adoption is a fact, and that the poet is "made" (predestined) "with thyself to shine" (to reign in heaven). The Calvinist slogan said Numerus electorum nec augeri nec minui potest,"The number of the elect can be neither increased nor diminished."The fact stated in line 5 cannot be changed.

Samuel Willard writes:"That a justifyed person may sin, is wofully true by daily experience" (p.566,col.1).However, by means of repentance he will always escape hell; to believe otherwise would be "contrary to the Doctrine of Perseverence"(loc.cit.), the Fifth Point of Calvinism.

Sanctificaton disappoints extremely as the last stage, before death, in this pilgrimage. Doubts of one's election, involving a fraudulent adoption, were so common that Perry Miller said Calvinism took man off the rack of fear only to strap him to the wheel of doubt. In theory, a person undergoing sanctification grew, in spite of many lapses, better and better, but many remained exactly as they had been before adoption and in The Barren Fig-Tree: Or, the Doom and Downfall of the Fruitless Professor,his last sermon, Bunyan gives these loafers the distinction of being the only persons in the world of whom one can be absolutely sure that they are not elect.

For those who kept the faith, sanctification was hard, and marked by calamities and periods of despair. In fact, the eye of atheism (of this website)can see no difference between it and legal reformation. During sanctification Bunyan's Christian wanders into a place called By-Path Meadow; that is, he takes some sort of short-cut in his spiritual life. He is captured by Giant Despair and imprisoned in Doubting Castle; that is, he doubts his election. So does John Donne in lines 12-14 of this sonnet. Christian, in Bunyan's allegory, remembers he has in his pocket a key (certain Biblical verses constituting a kind of contract with adopted persons) that will unlock every door in Doubting Castle.

The implication, in lines 7-8, that the holy spirit has deserted Donne because of a sin belongs to Catholic, not Protestant, faith.

{16} XIII

What if this present were the worlds last night?

Marke in my heart, O Soule, where thou dost dwell,

The picture of Christ crucified, and tell

Whether that countenance can thee affright,

Teares in his eyes quench the amasing light,

Blood fills his frownes, which from his pierc'd head fell,

And can that tongue adjudge thee unto hell,

Which pray'd forgivenesse for his foes fierce spight?

No, no; but as in my idolatrie

I said to all my profane mistresses,

Beauty, of pitty, foulnesse onely is

A signe of rigour: so I say to thee,

To wicked spirits are horrid shapes assign'd,

This beauteous forme assure a piteous minde.

The poet begins a program of self-improvement, using his love poetry, which in the past had been a waste of time,[{2}III], to praise God. The contrast between this beautiful face that fills the poet with confidence and the face that shakes his every joint with fear in {9} VI, line 8,shows how far sanctification has progressed.

{17}XI

Spit in my face yee Jewes, and pierce my side,

Buffet, and scoffe, scourge, and crucifie mee,

For I have sinn'd, and sinn'd, and onely hee,

Who could do no iniquitie, hath dyed:

But by my death can not be satisfied

My sinnes, which passe the Jewes impiety:

They kill'd once an inglorious man, but I

Crucifie him daily, being now glorified;

Oh let mee then, his strange love still admire:

Kings pardon, but he bore our punishment.

And Jacobcame cloth'd in vile harsh attire

But to supplant, and with gainfull intent:

God cloth'd himselfe in vile mans flesh, that so

Hee might be weake enough to suffer woe.

As sanctification advances, the dreadful sins confessed in lines 3 and 7-8, deserving the equally dreadful punishment solicited in 1-2, coupled with the confidence in the efficacy of Christ's sacrifice in 9-14, amount to a composite showpiece of Reformation theology. If one tried to keep one's sins few and small during sanctification, one could be suspected of legal reformation, that halfway-house of hell that is really part of it. A warfaring Christian does not live in the village of Morality. He crucifies Christ daily,and were he not adopted, would deserve to be himself crucified for this.

Martin Luther deplored the timidity of Philip Melancthon and accordingly counselled him:

Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong, but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides....No sin can separate us from him, even if we were to kill or commit adultery thousands of times each day(Letter of 1 Aug., 1521).

{18}XII

Why are wee by all creatures waited on?

Why doe the prodigall elements supply

Life and food to mee, being more pure then I,

Simple, and further from corruption?

Why brook'st thou, ignorant horse,subjection?

Why dost thou bull, and bore so seelily

Dissemble weaknesse, and by'one mans stroke die,

Whose whole kinde, you might swallow'and feed upon?

Weaker I am, woe'is mee, and worse then you,

You have not sinn'd, nor need be timorous,

But wonder at a greater wonder, for to us

Created nature doth these things subdue,

But their Creator, whom sin, nor nature tyed,

For us, his Creatures, and his foes, hath dyed.

The envy of animals for having no souls to be damned [{8}IX]now becomes conescension and pity at their inability to appreciate the Incarnation.

{19}XVII

Since she whome I lov'd, hath payd her last debt

To Nature, and to hers, and my good is dead

And her Soule early into heaven ravished,

Wholy in heavenly things my mind is sett.

Here the admyring her my mind did whett

To seeke thee God; so streames do show the head,

But though I have found thee, and thou my thirst hast fed,

A holy thirsty dropsy melts mee yett.

But why should I begg more Love, when as thou

Dost woe my soule, for hers offring all thine:

And dost not only feare lest I allow

My Love to Saints and Angels, things divine,

But in thy tender jealosy dost doubt

Least the World, fleshe, yea Devill putt thee out.

Now secure in the certainty of his election, the poet consigns his deceased wife to hell (see "How Anne More Became a Devil" in this website).In line 14 he puts her firmly on the wrong side of Judgment Day's great division of creatures; the Anglican litany petitions against "the deceits of the world, the flesh, and the Devil."One notices a resemblance to the Calvinist Indifference of the Saints to their Reprobate Kin, set forth in {14}VIII, above. Consistently with the doctrine that persons undergoingSanctification get better and better, we note that the poet has reached a high plateau of spirituality, previously unknown in these sonnets, for his mind is set "Wholy in heavenly things."

#

If this is a programmatic series of poems about Calvinist soteriology, should the fact be celebrated? To answer this question, let us look at the lines that stand out by employing the words grace; wash in Christ's blood; zeal; threaten; impute; adoption; world, flesh, devil; interest.

Thy grace may wing me to prevent his art {3}I:13

Or wash thee in Christ's blood, which hath this might{4}IV:13

And burn me O Lord, with a fiery zeal {7}V:13

...in his stern wrath why threatens he?{8}IX:8

O God, Oh! of thine only worthy blood {8}IX:10

Impute me righteous, thus purg'd of evil{9}VI:13

For thus I leave the world, the flesh, the devil{9}VI:14

The Father...

Hath deign'd to choose thee by adoption{11}XV:7

Father, part of his double interest {12} XVI:1

Lest the world, flesh, yea devil put thee out {19} XVII:14

This is all flat. A mediocrity like George Wither or Sir William Davenant could have written all these verses.The tenth line of {8}IX, with two expletives swelling two insignificant syllables into two feet, is especially deplorable, and in general one notices the literal bombast of the expletive "O" in this series. Flat, too, are the lines that express Calvinist (as opposed to generically Christian) ideas such as the fear and loss of affect experienced during Conviction of Sin:

All my pleasures are like yesterday {3}I:4

Despair behind, and death before doth cast

Such terror{3}I:6-7

Only when writing of traditional Christian or heterodox or papist ideas is Donne able to wield his tremendous powers. Thus, in the game of hide-and-seek with Christ's bride in {1}XVIII, the Last Judgment in {10}VII, jeering at death in {13}X, he gives us no reason to regret that he became a religious poet. Then, too, the sonnet on his father's knowledge of his salvation,

That valiantly I hell's wide mouth o'erstride{14}VIII:4

is an abomination to Calvinists and also a great poem.

One exception must be noted:{5}XIV, "Batter my heart, three-person'd God." Here the Calvinist distinction between Irresistible and Calling Grace is clearly defined and simultaneously expressed in the most powerful poetry.

As is well known, the reading of a poem that makes of it the best poem it can be is the best reading. I have done what I can to read these nineteen sonnets as a story of Calvinist conversion like The Pilgrim's Progress. Must all now concede that this makes of them the best sonnet sequence they can be?

No. Quite the contrary. The traits of Calvinist soteriology mostly do not augment, but detract from, the power of these poems. The Roman Catholic theology of {14}VIII and {17}XI forbids us to dogmatize about the sonnets' Protestantism. Grierson was right and Lewalski is wrong. The poems should be left in the random order of 1635-1669, and allowed to work their magic without being confined to a specific system.

Notes

(1)The poems of John Donne, Oxford U.P., London, 1912: p. 231.

(2) For example,{14}VIII, "If faithful souls be alike glorified" precedes {5}XIV, "Batter my heart, three-person'd God."

(3)Protestant Poetics and the Seventeenth-Century Religious Lyric, Princeton U.P., Princeton, N.J., n.d.: p.265.

(4)Loc. cit. The cited phrases are in "This is my playes last scene"[{9} VI],line 13; "Batter my Heart,"[{5}XIV], line 4;"Wilt thou love God as he thee,"[{11}XIV], line 7.

(5){3}I; {15}II; {7}V; {9}VI; {10}VII; {8} IX;{16}XIII; {5}XIV;{12} XVI;{19} XVII; {1}XVIII.

(6)Works(Gloucester, Mass., 1962), p. 152.

(7)Works, Blackie and Son,1856, ed. George Offor, I,6.

(8) A Compleat Body of Divinity intro. Edward M. Griffin, Johnson Reprint, 1969, p. 429, col. 2.

(9) The Arabic numeral denotes my ordering; the Roman, that of 1635-69.

(10)Compleat Body,p. 447, col.2. Emphasis in the original.

(11)M. van Beck , An Enquiry into Puritan Vocabulary,Groningen, 1969: page 17.

(12) Compleat Body, p.442, col.2.

(13) Page 447, col.2.

(14)Heidelberg Catechism,Question 70, www. CR Churches. Internet.

(15) Page 454, col.2.

(16) Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress, ed. J.B. Wharey, rev. Roger Sharrock, Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1960, p. 35.

(17)Works,I, 18, col.2.

(18)Institutes,Vol. III, Part x, Chap. 9,Paragraph 5. Tr. Henry Beveridge, 1846. Institute of Practical Bible Education, Internet.

(19)Satyre III,ll. 12-13.

(20)Institutes,Vol.3, Part 23, Paragraph 24.

(21)Summa Theologica,Eyre and Spottiswoode, London, n.d.,Vol. IX,p.137.