John Donne - Delphi Poets Series (55 page)

Since we all are sheep of one fold, so in many cases we all are shepherds of one another and owe one another this duty of giving our temporal lives for another’s spiritual advantage, even for his temporal advantage. That I may abstain from purging myself when another’s crime is imputed to me is grounded in another text such as this one, where it is said, “The greatest love is to bestow his life for his friend” (John 15:13). In this matter and all of its kind we must remember that we are commanded to do as Christ did. How Christ gave his body we shall have to consider below.

4.—On these grounds, Saint Peter’s zeal was so forward and carried him so high that he wanted to die for the shepherd, for he says, “I will lay down my life for your sake” (John 13:37). All expositors say this was merely and purely out of natural affection, without examination of his own strength to do it, but soon nature carried him fully to that promise. In a more deliberate and orderly resolution Saint Paul testifies of himself, “I will gladly be spent for your souls” (II Cor. 12:15).

5.—A Christian nature does not rest in knowing that we may do it, that charity makes it good, that the good do it, and that we must always promise (that is, incline) to do it and do something towards it. A Christian nature will have the prefect fulness of doing it in the resolution, doctrine, and example of our blessed savior, who said, in fact, “I lay down my life for my sheep” (John 10:15). He used the present tense, says Musculus, because he was ready to do it, just as Paul and Barnabas, while still alive, are said to have laid down their lives for Christ. But I rather think that, because exposing oneself to danger is not properly called dying, Christ said this at that time because his passion had begun. All his doings here were steps toward laying down his life.

All words are defective to express the abundant and overflowing charity of our savior, for if we could express all that he did, even that would not come near to what he would do if need be. It is observed by Malloni—I confess too credulous an author, yet one who administers good and wholesome incitements to devotion—that Christ going to Emmaus spoke of his passion so slightly, as though he had in three days forgotten all that he had suffered for us.

Christ in an apparition to Saint Charles says that he would be content to die again, if need be. Yes, to Saint Bridgit he said that “For any one soul he would suffer as much in every limb as he had suffered for all the world in his whole body.” It is noted as an extremely high degree of charity, according to Anselm, that Christ’s blessed mother said, “Rather than he should not have been crucified, she would have done it with her own hands.” Certainly his charity was not inferior to hers. He did as much as any could be willing to do.

As he himself said, “No man can take away my soul,” and, “I have power to lay it down” (John 10:18). Without doubt, no man took it away, nor was there any other cause of his dying at that time than his own will, for many martyrs have hanged alive upon crosses for many days, and the thieves were still alive, and therefore Pilate marveled to hear that Christ was so soon dead. “His soul,” says Saint Augustine, “did not leave his body under constraint but because he willed it to happen and he willed when and how it happened.” Of this Saint Thomas Aquinas produced this sign, that he still had his body’s nature in its full strength, because at the last moment he was able to cry with a loud voice. Marlorat gathers that whereas our heads decline after our death by the slackness of the sinews and muscles, Christ first on his own bowed down his head and then gave up the ghost. Although it is truly said, “After they have scourged him, they will put him to death” (Luke 18:33), yet it is said thus because, maliciously and purposely to kill him, they inflicted upon him those pains that in time would have killed him. But nothing that they had done occasioned his dying so quickly.

Therefore Aquinas, a man neither of unholy thoughts nor of bold, irreligious, or scandalous phrase or elocution (still, I do not venture so far in his behalf as Mazzolini does, that “It is impossible that he should have spoken any things against faith or good manners”), does not stop short of saying that “Christ was so much the cause of his death as one is of his own wetting who might but would not shut the window when the rain beats in.”

This actual emitting of his soul is his death and was his own act, before his natural time. His best-loved apostle could imitate it who also died when he would and went into his grave and there buried himself, which is reported of only a very few others, and by not very credible authors. We find Christ’s emitting of his own soul thus celebrated: “That is a brave death which is accepted unconstrained, and that is a heroic act of fortitude if a man, when an urgent occasion is presented, exposes himself to a certain and assured death, as he did.”

It is said that Christ did just as Saul did, who thought it foul and dishonorable to die by the hand of an enemy. Also it is said that Apollonia and others who anticipated the fury of executioners and cast themselves into the fire were imitating this act by our savior of giving up his soul before he was constrained to do it. Therefore, if the act of our blessed savior, for whom there was no more required for death but that he should will that his soul depart, was the same as Saul’s and these martyrs’ actual helping further their own deaths (without which they could not have died), then we are taught that all those texts about “Giving up our bodies to death” and “Laying down the soul” signify more than yielding to death when it comes.

6. As I understand it, there is a further degree of cheerful readiness and proneness to such a death expressed in the phrase of John 12:25, “He who hates his life in this world shall keep it in life eternal”; also, in that of Luke 14:26, “Unless he hates his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” Such a loathing to live is what is spoken of in Hebrews 12:35, “Some were racked and would not be delivered, so that they might receive a better resurrection.” Calvin interprets John 12:25 as a readiness to die and expresses it elegantly as carrying our life in our own hands and offering it to God for a sacrifice. The Jesuits in their rule extend the matter this far, “Let everyone think that this was said directly to him, ‘Hate your life.’”

Those who, on the other hand, stand by this phrase, “No man hates his own flesh” (Eph. 5:29) must, to yield an argument against self- homicide in every case, also allow that the hate that is commanded here authorizes that act in some cases. Saint Augustine, apprehending the strength of this text, denies that by its authority the Donatists can justify their self-homicide when they wish to die. Still, in those cases that are exempt from his rules, this text may encourage a man not to neglect the honor of God for the sole reason that nobody else will take his life.

7.—The Holy Ghost proceeds more directly in the First Epistle of Saint John 3:16 and shows us a necessary duty, “Because he laid down his life for us, therefore we ought to lay down our lives for our brethren.” All these texts bring us to a true understanding of charity and to a contempt of this life in respect of charity.

As these texts inform us how ready we must be, so all the texts that direct us by the example of Christ to do as he did show that, in cases when our lives must be given up, we need not always wait for extrinsic force by others but, as he did in perfect charity so we in such degrees of it as this life and our nature are capable of, we must die by our own will rather than let his glory be neglected, whenever, as Paul says, Christ may be magnified in our bodies (Phil. 1:20), or the spiritual good of another whose good we are bound to advance importunes it.

8.—To this readiness of dying for his brethren Saint Paul had so accustomed himself and made it his nature that, except for his general resolution of always doing what would promote their happiness, he could hardly have obtained for himself permission to live. At first he says he did not know which to wish for, life or death. Therefore, unless some circumstance inclines or averts us, life and death are generally equal to our nature. Then, after much perplexity, he made up his mind, and he desired to be released and to be with Christ. Therefore, a holy man may wish it. Still, he corrected that again, because he says, “For me to abide in the flesh is more needful for you” (Phil. 1:24). Therefore, charity must be the rule of our wishes and actions in this matter.

9.—Another text, Galatians 4:15, although it does not extend to death, proves that holy men may be ready to express their loves to others by violence to themselves: “If it had been possible, you would have plucked out your own eyes and given them to me.” Calvin says, “This was more than to pour out one’s life.” Saint Paul does not reprehend this readiness in them.

10.—The highest degree of compassionate charity for others is that of the apostle in contemplating the Jews’ dereliction, “I would wish myself to be separated from Christ for my brethren’s sake” (Rom. 9:3).

The bitterness of this damnation he himself teaches us to understand when in another place he wishes the same “To those who do not love Jesus Christ” (I Cor. 16:22). This fearful wish that charity excused in him was utter damnation, as all the expositors say. Although I believe with Calvin that at this time, in a zealous fury, he deliberately did not remember his own election and therefore cannot in that respect be said to have resisted the will of God, still it remains as an argument to us that charity will recompense and justify many excesses that appear to be unnatural, irregular, and enormous ecstasies.

11. As in the apostle to the gentiles so in the law-giver of the Jews, the same compassion worked the same result—and more. Moses did not rest in wishing but argued face to face with God, “If you pardon them, your mercy shall appear, but if you will not, I pray you to blot my name out of the book that you have written” (Exod. 32:32).

I know that many, out of a reasonable idea that it became Moses to be reposed, dispassionate, and of temperate affections in his conversation with God, are of the opinion that he strayed no further in this wish and imprecation than to be content that his name be blotted out of the scriptures and so to lose the honor of being known to posterity as a remarkable instrument of God’s power and mercy. But since a natural infirmity could work so much upon Christ—in whom we may suspect no inordi- nateness of affections to divert him a little and make him slip a faint wish of escaping the cup (Matt. 26:39)—why might not a brave and noble zeal exalt Moses enough to desire to restore his nation to the love of God by his own destruction? As certainly as the first of these was without sin, so the other might be out of a habitual assuredness of his salvation. As Paulinus says to Amandus, “You may be bold in your prayers to God for me and say, ‘Forgive him, or blot me out,’ for you cannot be blotted out; justice cannot blot out the just.” Always keeping in our minds that our example is Christ and that he died unconstrained, it will suffice to have learned from these texts that in charity men may so die, have so done, and ought so to do.

The last thing that remains is to consider the examples reported in the scriptures. That cannot keep us long, because a few rules will include many examples, and the few rules that are applicable to these stories have already often been gone over. Other rules that may enlighten and govern us in all occurrences I postpone for many reasons to a maturer deliberation and discourse.

Distinction V

1. When I entered into the examination of texts from scripture, it seemed to me to have some weight that in all the judicial and ceremonial law there was no abomination of self-homicide. Just so, in relating the stories of those who killed themselves, the phrases of scripture never put them down by any aspersion or imputation for that act if they were otherwise virtuous, nor does it aggravate for that reason their former wickedness if they were wicked.

For my part, I am content to submit myself to the rule that is delivered by Irenaeus, “It does not become us to attack those things that the scripture does not reprehend but simply lays down, nor should we make ourselves more diligent than God; but if anything seems to us irregular, our endeavor must be to search out its type and signification.”

Nor shall I, for all of this, be in the danger of Beza’s answer to the argument of Ochino that some of the patriarchs lived unreprehended in polygamy. This is inconclusive, answered Beza, because the scripture is silent about Jacob’s (Gen. 29:21-30) and Lot’s (Gen. 19:30-38) incest and about David’s unjust judgment (II Sam. 11); but Ziba did not absolve them from guilt and transgression in these acts (I Sam. 9,16,19). Our case differs from all others, first, because this act of self-homicide is not shown to be sin by any text of the law, and second, because there is a concurrence of examples of this act without any reprehension. Thus Beza’s answer falls as far short from reaching us as it fell in not reaching home to the argument of Ochino against which it was opposed. If in debating these examples it is found that some very reverend authors have concluded a lack of repentance by self-homicide, and therefore utter desertion by God, and thus eternal perishing, then the circumstances as they appeared to that author then may have made his judgment just. But for anybody else to apply that case to others will not be safe. For according to Ennenckel, “Although a judge by reason of circumstances may interpret the law, that interpretation does not make law.”

2. Just as in the former distinctions we spoke of some approaches to the act of self-killing, so in this one we will pause briefly on two such steps. The first is the prophet “Who bade a stranger to strike him. Because the stranger would not, he pronounced a heavy judgment that was soon executed. Then he importuned another to strike him, who did it thoroughly, wounding him with a stroke” (I Kgs. 20:35). To the common understanding this was an unnatural thing that so holy a man would take such means to have his body violated. It seems that the first stranger so understood it, but it pleased God to enlighten the second one. This I bring forth not as though the prophet inclined to it of his own disposition, for it is expressly in the text that God commanded him to do it.