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DEVOTIONS UPON EMERGENT OCCASIONS by John Donne I. INSULTUS MORBI PRIMUS. The first Alteration, the first Grudging, of the Sickness.
Meditation.
VARIABLE, and therefore miserable condition of man! this minute I was well, and
am ill, this minute. I am surprised with a sudden change, and alteration to
worse, and can impute it to no cause, nor call it by any name. We study health,
and we deliberate upon our meats, and drink, and air, and exercises, and we hew
and we polish every stone that goes to that building; and so our health is a
long and a regular work: but in a minute a cannon batters all, overthrows all,
demolishes all; a sickness unprevented for all our diligence, unsuspected for
all our curiosity; nay, undeserved, if we consider only disorder, summons us,
seizes us, possesses us, destroys us in an instant. O miserable condition of
man! which was not imprinted by God, who, as he is immortal himself, had put a
coal, a beam of immortality into us, which we might have blown into a flame,
but blew it out by our first sin; we beggared ourselves by hearkening after
false riches, and infatuated ourselves by hearkening after false knowledge. So
that now, we do not only die, but die upon the rack, die by the torment of
sickness; nor that only, but are pre-afflicted, super-afflicted with these
jealousies and suspicions and apprehensions of sickness, before we can call it
a sickness: we are not sure we are ill; one hand asks the other by the pulse,
and our eye asks our own urine how we do. O multiplied misery! we die, and
cannot enjoy death, because we die in this torment of sickness; we are
tormented with sickness, and cannot stay till the torment come, but
pre-apprehensions and presages prophesy those torments which induce that death
before either come; and our dissolution is conceived in these first changes,
quickened in the sickness itself, and born in death, which bears date from
these first changes. Is this the honour which man hath by being a little world,
that he hath these earthquakes in himself, sudden shakings; these lightnings,
sudden flashes; these thunders, sudden noises; these eclipses, sudden
offuscations and darkening of his senses; these blazing stars, sudden fiery
exhalations; these rivers of blood, sudden red waters? Is he a world to himself
only therefore, that he hath enough in himself, not only to destroy and execute
himself, but to presage that execution upon himself; to assist the sickness, to
antedate the sickness, to make the sickness the more irremediable by sad
apprehensions, and, as if he would make a fire the more vehement by sprinkling
water upon the coals, so to wrap a hot fever in cold melancholy, lest the fever
alone should not destroy fast enough without this contribution, nor perfect the
work (which is destruction) except we joined an artificial sickness of our own
melancholy, to our natural, our unnatural fever. O perplexed discomposition, O
riddling distemper, O miserable condition of man!
Expostulation.
IF I were but mere dust and ashes I might speak unto the Lord, for the Lord's
hand made me of this dust, and the Lord's hand shall re-collect these ashes;
the Lord's hand was the wheel upon which this vessel of clay was framed, and
the Lord's hand is the urn in which these ashes shall be preserved. I am the
dust and the ashes of the temple of the Holy Ghost, and what marble is so
precious? But I am more than dust and ashes: I am my best part, I am my soul.
And being so, the breath of God, I may breathe back these pious expostulations
to my God: My God, my God, why is not my soul as sensible as my body? Why hath
not my soul these apprehensions, these presages, these changes, these
antidates, these jealousies, these suspicions of a sin, as well as my body of a
sickness? Why is there not always a pulse in my soul to beat at the approach of
a temptation to sin? Why are there not always waters in mine eyes, to testify
my spiritual sickness? I stand in the way of temptations, naturally,
necessarily; all men do so; for there is a snake in every path, temptations in
every vocation; but I go, I run, I fly into the ways of temptation which I
might shun; nay, I break into houses where the plague is, I press into places
of temptation, and tempt the devil himself, and solicit and importune them who
had rather be left unsolicited by me. I fall sick of sin, and am bedded and
bedrid, buried and putrified in the practice of sin, and all this while have no
presage, no pulse, no sense of my sickness. O height, O depth of misery, where
the first symptom of the sickness is hell, and where I never see the fever of
lust, of envy, of ambition, by any other light than the darkness and horror of
hell itself, and where the first messenger that speaks to me doth not say,
"Thou mayest die," no, nor "Thou must die," but "Thou art dead;" and where the
first notice that my soul hath of her sickness is irrecoverableness,
irremediableness: but, O my God, Job did not charge thee foolishly in his
temporal afflictions, nor may I in my spiritual. Thou hast imprinted a pulse in
our soul, but we do not examine it; a voice in our conscience, but we do not
hearken unto it. We talk it out, we jest it out, we drink it out, we sleep it
out; and when we wake, we do not say with Jacob, Surely the Lord is in this
place, and I knew it not: but though we might know it, we do not, we will
not. But will God pretend to make a watch, and leave out the spring? to make so
many various wheels in the faculties of the soul, and in the organs of the
body, and leave out grace, that should move them? or will God make a spring,
and not wind it up? Infuse his first grace, and not second it with more,
without which we can no more use his first grace when we have it, than we could
dispose ourselves by nature to have it? But alas, that is not our case; we are
all prodigal sons, and not disinherited; we have received our portion, and
mispent it, not been denied it. We are God's tenants here, and yet here, he,
our landlord, pays us rents; not yearly, nor quarterly, but hourly, and
quarterly; every minute he renews his mercy, but we will not understand,
lest that we should be converted, and he should heal us.1
Prayer.
O ETERNAL and most gracious God, who, considered in thyself, art a circle,
first and last, and altogether; but, considered in thy working upon us, art a
direct line, and leadest us from our beginning, through all our ways, to our
end, enable me by thy grace to look forward to mine end, and to look backward
too, to the considerations of thy mercies afforded me from the beginning; that
so by that practice of considering thy mercy, in my beginning in this world,
when thou plantedst me in the Christian church, and thy mercy in the beginning
in the other world, when thou writest me in the book of life, in my election, I
may come to a holy consideration of thy mercy in the beginning of all my
actions here: that in all the beginnings, in all the accesses and approaches,
of spiritual sicknesses of sin, I may hear and hearken to that voice, O thou
man of God, there is death in the pot,2 and so refrain
from that which I was so hungerly, so greedily flying to. A faithful
ambassador is health,3 says thy wise servant Solomon.
Thy voice received in the beginning of a sickness, of a sin, is true health. If
I can see that light betimes, and hear that voice early, Then shall my light
break forth as the morning, and my health shall spring forth speedily.4 Deliver me therefore, O my God, from these vain
imaginations; that it is an over-curious thing, a dangerous thing, to come to
that tenderness, that rawness, that scrupulousness, to fear every
concupiscence, every offer of sin, that this suspicious and jealous diligence
will turn to an inordinate dejection of spirit, and a diffidence in thy care
and providence; but keep me still established, both in a constant assurance,
that thou wilt speak to me at the beginning of every such sickness, at the
approach of every such sin; and that, if I take knowledge of that voice then,
and fly to thee, thou wilt preserve me from falling, or raise me again, when by
natural infirmity I am fallen. Do this, O Lord, for his sake, who knows our
natural infirmities, for he had them, and knows the weight of our sins, for he
paid a dear price for them, thy Son, our Saviour, Christ Jesus. Amen.
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