MADAM,

Of my ability to doe your Ladiship service, any thing spoken may be an

embleme good enough; for as a word vanisheth, so doth any power in me to

serve you; things that are written are fitter testimonies, because they

remain and are permanent: in writing this Sermon which your Ladiship was

pleased to hear before, I confesse I satisfie an ambition of mine own, but

it is the ambition of obeying your commandment, not onely an ambition of

leaving my name in your memory, or in the your Cabinet: and yet, since I

am going out of the Kingdom, and perchance out of the world, (when God

shall have given my soul a place in heaven) it shall the lesse diminish

your Ladiship, if my poor name be preserved about you. I know what dead

carkasses things written are, in respect of things spoken. But in things

of this kinde, that soul that inanimates them, never departs from them:

The Spirit of God that dictates them in the speaker or writer, and is

present in his tongue or hand meets himself again (as we meet our selves

in a glass) in the eies and ears and hearts of the hearers and readers:

and that Spirit, which is ever the same to an equall devotion, makes a

writing and a speaking equall means to edification. In one circumstance,

my preaching and my writing this Sermon is too equall: that that your

Ladiship heard in a hoarse voyce then, you read in a course hand now: but

in thankfulnesse I shall lift up my hands as clean as my infirmities can

keep them, and a voyce as clear as his spirit shall be pleased to tune in

my prayers for your Ladyship in all places of the world, which shall

either sustain or bury

_Your Ladiships humble servant

in Christ Iesus_

J. D.

[xi.]

_To Sir_ H. R. [_To Sir_ H. G.]

If a whole year be but _Annus ab Annulo_, because it returns into it self,

what _Annululus_ shall be diminutive enough, to express our weekly

revolutions? In chaines the least linkes have most curiosity, but that can

be no emblem of us: but they have also the most strength, and that may.

The first sphere onely which is resisted by nothing, absolves his course

every day; and so doth true friendship well placed, often iterate in act

or purpose, the same offices. But as the lower spheres, subject to the

violence of that, and yet naturally encouraged to a reluctation against

it, have therefore many distractions, and eccentricities, and some

trepidations, and so return but lamely, and lately to the same place, and

office: so that friendship which is not moved primarily by the proper

intelligence, discretion, and about the naturell center, vertue, doth

perchance sometimes, some things, somewhat like true friendship; but hath

many deviations, which are strayings into new loves, (not of other men;

for that is proper to true wise friendship, which is not a marr[y]ing; but

of other things) and hath such trepidations as keep it from shewing it

self, where great persons do not love; and it returns to the true first

station and place of friendship planetarily, which is uncertainly and

seldome. I have ever seen in _London_ and our Court, as some colours, and

habits, and continuances, and motions, and phrases, and accents, and

songs, so friends in fashion and in season: and I have seen them as

sodainly abandoned altogether, though I see no change in them, nor know

more why they were left, then why they were chosen. To do things by

example, and upon confidence of anothers judgment may be some kinde of a

second wisdome; but it is but writing by a copy: or indeed it is the

hardest of all, and the issue of the first wisdome, for I cannot know that

this example should be followed, except I knew that it is good, and so I

judge my Judge. Our assent therefore, and arrest, must be upon things, not

persons. And when we are sure we are in the right way, for great persons,

we may be glad of their company, if they go our way; we may for them

change our place, but not our end, nor our way, if there be but one, us

[as] in Religion. In persevering in it, it concerns as [us] much what our

companions be, but very much what our friends. In which I know I speak not

dangerously nor mis-appliably to you, as though I averted you from any of

those friends, who are of other impressions then you or I in some great

circumstances of Religion. You know I never fettered nor imprisoned the

word Religion; not straightning it Frierly, _ad Religiones factitias_, (as

the _Romans_ call well their orders of Religion) nor immuring it in a

_Rome_, or a _Wittemberg_, or a _Geneva_; they are all virtuall beams of

one Sun, and wheresoever they finde clay hearts, they harden them, and

moulder them into dust; and they entender and mollifie waxen. They are not

so contrary as the North and South Poles; and that [?] they are

connaturall pieces of one circle. Religion is Christianity, which being

too spirituall to be seen by us, doth therefore take an apparent body of

good life and works, so salvation requires an honest Christian. These are

the two Elements, and he which elemented from these, hath the complexion

of a good man, and a fit friend. The diseases are, too much intention into

indiscreet zeal, and too much remisnesse and negligence by giving

scandall: for our condition and state in this, is as infirm as in our

bodies; where physitians consider only two degrees; sicknesse, and

neutrality; for there is no health in us. This, Sir, I use to say to you,

rather to have so good a witnesse and corrector of my meditations, then to

advise; and yet to do that too, since it is pardonable in a friend: Not to

slack you towards those friends which are religious in other clothes then

we; (for _Amici vitia si feras facis tua_, is true of such faults) but to

keep you awake against such as the place where you must live will often

obtrude, which are not onely naked, without any fashion of such garments,

but have neither the body of Religion, which is morall honestly, and

sociable faithfulness, nor the soul, Christianity. I know not how this

paper scaped last week which I send now; I was so sure that I enwrapped it

then, that I should be so still, but that I had but one copy; forgive it

as you use to do. From _Micham_ in as much haste, and with as ill Pen and

Inke, as the letter can accuse me of; but with the last and the next weeks

heart and affection.

_Yours very truely and affectionately_

J. Donne.

[xii.]

_To Sir_ H. G.

_SIR_,

This letter hath more merit, then one of more diligence, for I wrote it in

my bed, and with much pain. I have occasion to sit late some nights in my

study, (which your books make a prety library) and now I finde that that

room hath a wholesome emblematique use: for having under it a vault, I

make that promise me, that I shall die reading, since my book and a grave

are so near. But it hath another unwholesomenesse, that by raw vapors

rising from thence, (for I can impute it to nothing else) I have

contracted a sicknesse which I cannot name nor describe. For it hath so

much of a continuall Cramp, that it wrests the sinews, so much of a

Tetane, that it withdraws and puls the mouth, and so much of the Gout,

(which they whose counsell I use, say it is) that it is not like to be

cured, though I am too hasty in three days to pronounce it. If it be the

Gout, I am miserable; for that affects dangerous parts, as my neck and

brest, and (I think fearfully) my stomach, but it will not kill me yet; I

shall be in this world, like a porter in a great house, ever nearest the

door, but seldomest abroad: I shall have many things to make me weary, and

yet not get leave to be gone. If I go, I will provide by my best means

that you suffer not for me, in your bonds. The estate which I should leave

behinde me of any estimation, is my poor fame, in the memory of my

friends, and therefore I would be curious of it, and provide that they

repent not to have loved me. Since my imprisonment in my bed, I have made

a meditation in verse, which I call a Litany; the word you know imports no

other then supplication, but all Churches have one forme of supplication,

by that name. Amongst ancient annals (I mean some 800 years) I have met

two Letanies in Latin verse, which gave me not the reason of my

meditations, for in good faith I thought not upon them then, but they

give me a defence, if any man to a Lay man, and a private, impute it as a

fault, to take such divine and publique names, to his own little thoughts.

The first of these was made by _Ratpertus_ a Monk of _Suevia_; and the

other by _S. Notker_, of whom I will give you this note by the way, that

he is a private Saint, for a few Parishes; they were both but Monks, and

the Letanies poor and barbarous enough; yet Pope _Nicolas_ the 5, valued

their devotion so much, that he canonized both their Poems, and commanded

them for publike service in their Churches: mine is for lesser Chappels,

which are my friends, and though a copy of it were due to you, now, yet I

am so unable to serve my self with writing it for you at this time, (being

some 30 staves of 9 lines) that I must intreat you to take a promise that

you shall have the first, for a testimony of that duty which I owe to your

love, and to my self, who am bound to cherish it by my best offices. That

by which it will deserve best acceptation, is, That neither the Roman

Church need call it defective, because it abhors not the particular

mention of the blessed Triumphers in heaven; nor the Reformed can

discreetly accuse it, of attributing more then a rectified devotion ought

to doe. The day before I lay down, I was at _London_ where I delivered

your Letter for S{r} _Ed. Conway_, and received another for you, with the

copy of my Book, of which it is impossible for me to give you a copy so

soon, for it is not of much lesse then 300 pages. If I die, it shall come

to you in that fashion that your Letter desires it. If I warm again, (as I

have often seen such beggers as my indisposition is, end themselves soon,

and the patient as soon) you and I shal speak together of that, before it

be too late to serve you in that commandment. At this time I onely assure

you, that I have not appointed it upon any person, nor ever purposed to

print it: which later perchance you thought, and grounded your request

thereupon. A Gent. that visited me yesterday told me that our Church hath

lost M{r} _Hugh Broughton_, who is gone to the Roman side. I have known

before, that _Serarius_ the Jesuit was an instrument from Cardinall

_Baronius_ to draw him to _Rome_, to accept a stipend, onely to serve the

Christian Churches in controversies with the Jews, without indangering

himself to change of his perswasion in particular deductions between these

Christian Churches, or being enquired of, or tempted thereunto. And I

hope he is no otherwise departed from us. If he be, we shall not escape

scandall in it; because, though he be a man of many distempers, yet when

he shall come to eat assured bread, and to be removed from partialities,

to which want drove him, to make himself a reputation, and raise up

favourers; you shall see in that course of opposing the Jews, he will

produce worthy things: and our Church will perchance blush to have lost a

Souldier fit for that great battell; and to cherish onely those single

Duellisms, between _Rome_ and _England_, or that more single, and almost

self-homicide, between the unconformed Ministers, and Bishops. I writ to

you last week that the plague increased; by which you may see that my

Letters--------opinion of the song, not that I make such trifles for

praise; but because as long as you speak comparatively of it with mine

own, and not absolutely, so long I am of your opinion even at this time;

when I humbly thank God, I ask & have, his comfort of sadder meditations;

I doe not condemn in my self, that I have given my wit such evaporations,

as those, if they be free from prophaneness, or obscene provocations.

S{r}, you would pity me if you saw me write, and therefore will pardon me

if I write no more: my pain hath drawn my head so much awry, and holds it

so, that mine eie cannot follow mine hand: I receive you therefore into my

prayers, with mine own weary soul, and commend my self to yours. I doubt

not but next week I shall be good news to you, for I have mending or dying

on my side, which is two to one. If I continue thus, I shall have comfort

in this, that my B. Saviour exercising his Justice upon my two worldly

parts, my fortune, and body, reserves all his mercy for that which best

tasts it, and most needs it, my soul. I professe to you truly, that my

lothnesse to give over now, seems to my self an ill sign, that I shall

write no more.

_Your poor friend, and Gods poor patient_,

Jo. Donne.

[xiii.]

_To my worthy and honoured friend M{r} George_ Garet.