John donne and conformity in crisis in the late jacobean pulpit

Studies in Renaissance LiteratureVolume 13 JOHN DONNE AND CONFORMITY IN CRISIS IN THE LATE JACOBEAN PULPIT This book considers the professional contribution of John Donne to anemerging

JOHN DONNE AND CONFORMITY IN CRISIS IN THE LATE JACOBEAN PULPIT

Jeanne Shami

Studies in Renaissance Literature

Volume 13

JOHN DONNE AND CONFORMITY IN CRISIS

IN THE LATE JACOBEAN PULPIT

This book considers the professional contribution of John Donne to anemerging homiletic public sphere in the last years of the Jacobean EnglishChurch (1621–25), arguing that his sermons embody the conflicts, tensions,and pressures on public religious discourse in this period; while they are in

no way “typical” of any particular preaching agenda or style, they articulatethese crises in their most complex forms and expose fault lines in the lateJacobean Church

The study is framed by Donne’s two most pointed contributions to the

public sphere: his sermon defending James I’s Directions to Preachers and his

first sermon preached before Charles I in 1625 These two sermons emergefrom the crises of controversy, censorship, and identity that converged in thelate Jacobean period, and mark Donne’s clearest professional interventions

in the public debate about the nature and direction of the Church ofEngland In them, Donne interrogates the boundaries of the public sphereand of his conformity to the institutions, authorities, and traditionsgoverning public debate in that sphere, modelling for his audience anactively engaged conformist identity

Professor JEANNESHAMIteaches in the Department of English at the University

of Regina

Studies in Renaissance Literature offers investigations of topics in English literature focussed

in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; its scope extends from early Tudor writing, including works reflecting medieval concerns, to the Restoration period Studies exploring the interplay between the literature of the English Renaissance and its cultural history are particularly welcomed.

Proposals or queries should be sent in the first instance to Graham Parry at the address below, or to the publisher; all submissions receive prompt and informed consideration Professor Graham Parry, Department of English, University of York, Heslington, York YO1 5DD, UK

Previously published volumes in this series are listed at the back of this volume

JOHN DONNE AND CONFORMITY

IN CRISIS IN THE LATE

JACOBEAN PULPIT

Jeanne Shami

D S BREWER

All Rights Reserved Except as permitted under current legislation

no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,

published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast,

transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means,without the prior permission of the copyright owner

First published 2003

D S Brewer, Cambridge

ISBN 0 85991 789 4

D S Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd

PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK

and of Boydell & Brewer Inc

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website: www.boydell.co.uk

A catalogue record for this title is available

from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0–85991–789–4 (alk paper)

1 Donne, John, 1572–1631 – Prose 2 Donne, John,

1572–1631 – Religion 3 Christian literature, English – History and criticism 4 Dissenters, Religious – England – History – 17th century.

5 Clergy – England – History – 17th century 6 Sermons,

English – History and criticism 7 England – Church history – 17th century I Title II Series: Studies in Renaissance literature

(Woodbridge, Suffolk, England) ; v 13.

PR2248.S44 2003

This publication is printed on acid-free paper

Printed in Great Britain by

St Edmundsbury Press Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

3 “the fishing of whales”: John Donne’s Sermons, 1620–2 75

4 “faire interpretation”: The Directions and the Crisis of Censorship 102

5 “wise as Serpents, and innocent as Doves”: Zeal and Discretion 139

in the Pulpit, 1623–5

6 “Jesus Wept”: The Journey to Spain and Pulpit Lamentation 166

7 “blinde buzzards in the choise of a wife”: Sermons and the 183Moral Marketplace

8 “The Lovesick Spouse”: Parliament, Patriots, and the Public Sphere 212

9 “Church-quakes”: Post-Parliamentary Faultlines 234

10 “If the Foundations be Destroyed”: Rules of Engagement 256

11 “blessed sobriety”: John Donne, the Public Sphere, and 272Caroline Conformity

decencie, this peaceablenesse, this discretion, this order, zeale is butfury, and such preaching is but to the obduration of ill, not to the edification of good Christians.

(John Donne, Sermons, IV, 197, sermon defending

James’s Directions to Preachers)

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the financial support of thePresident’s Publications Fund, University of Regina, in the production

of this volume

This book is the product of many years of reading, thinking, and writing aboutJohn Donne It is not the last word on the subject of Donne’s Jacobean career, nor

is it likely to be my final foray into the rich world of Tudor and Stuart sermons It

is a book that would not have been possible without the assistance of a number ofpeople and institutions, mentioned below What is lacking in this study is entirely

my responsibility, but it has been immeasurably improved by the support Iacknowledge here

First, to my parents I owe the largest debt Their trust in my abilities and myjudgment and their confidence in whatever I accomplished, however small, hasgiven me the courage to take on big tasks Their work ethic has been myinspiration

I was introduced to the study of Renaissance literature at the University ofWestern Ontario by two great minds and incomparable teachers: BalachandraRajan and Arthur Barker At the University of Toronto, Hugh MacCallumprovided a steady and judicious eye to my studies And over the course of 20 years,the John Donne Society has been the source of my most long-lasting friendshipsand collaborations Dennis Flynn, Tom Hester, Dayton Haskin, Gary Stringer,Ernie Sullivan, and Achsah Guibbory have supported my work and my spirit, andhave pushed me to think about Donne’s sermons in new ways I owe them atremendous debt of gratitude

Other colleagues have also been supportive in scholarly and intellectual as well

as other ways I cannot name them all, but would like to thank Peter Beal, MartinButler, Tom Cogswell, David Colclough, Dan Doerksen, Ken Fincham, JeffJohnson, Peter Lake, Peter McCullough, Anthony Milton, Mary Papazian, AnnabelPatterson, and Michael Questier for their ready assistance and the inspiration oftheir own scholarship on my project Annabel Robinson and Cameron Louis ofthe University of Regina assisted me with Latin translations of some materials inthis book, and Donna Achtzehner and Jennifer Elliott, former graduate students

at the University of Regina, thought through some parts of Chapter 4 with me.The editors at Boydell & Brewer have been encouraging, helpful, andprofessional in their handling of this manuscript I want to thank Caroline Palmerand Pru Harrison of the press, and, in particular, Susan Dykstra-Poel for herfriendship and support for this project

The University of Regina has assisted me over the years in many ways:sabbatical leaves, research grants, and in the last months financial assistance in theform of a publication subvention from the President’s Publication Fund Mostly,

I want to thank the former Dean of Arts, Dr Murray Knuttila, for indulging thislong project and for making the University of Regina a supportive base fromwhich to conduct the research that has gone into this book

The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada has assistedwith research grants to support this project, as has the Bibliographical Society ofAmerica, and I thank them.

To the staff of the major research libraries where I have conducted this research Iowe considerable debts of gratitude Here I would like to acknowledge the BritishLibrary (and especially Dr Hilton Kelliher, former Curator of WesternManuscripts), the Cambridge University Library, the Bodleian Library, LambethPalace Library, St Paul’s Cathedral Library, the National Library of Scotland, thePublic Record Office, and the Folger Shakespeare Library None of this work,however, could have been accomplished without the assistance of the InterlibraryLoan Department of the University of Regina, especially Marion Lake and SusanRobertson-Krezel

Finally, to my family, Ken, Andrew, and Julia Mitchell, I owe the greatest debt.They have supported my obsession with Donne and with early modern sermons fortoo long now – Julia since before she was born! If, as Donne says, this world is aparenthesis, they have filled it immeasurably and enriched the grammar of my life

BL British Library

CSPD Calendar of State Papers, Domestic

CSPV Calendar of State Papers, Venetian

CUL Cambridge University Library

ELH English Literary History

JEGP Journal of English and Germanic Philology

LIT Literature, Interpretation, Theory

PBSA Publications of the Bibliographical Society of America PMLA Publications of the Modern Language Association of America

PRO Public Record Office

SP State Papers

Chapter 1

“DISCREET OR RELIGIOUS PREACHERS”:

JOHN DONNE AND THE LATE JACOBEAN

PUBLIC SPHERE

MOMENT OF CRISISHIS STUDY proposes to examine the late Jacobean pulpit, and particularly the sermons of John Donne, as an index of “conformity” and its expression in theyears immediately preceding and including the transition from the Jacobean to the Caroline monarchy (1621–5) During these years, sermons, always important inJacobean religious and political culture, became sites of contention for importantmatters of religious and national identity, contention epitomized by James I’s

Directions to Preachers These Directions, issued on 4 August 1622 by George Abbot,

Archbishop of Canterbury, were an attempt to reduce to order a pulpit that hadbecome increasingly critical of and outspoken about the implications for religiousbelief and practice of James’s domestic and foreign policies The uncertainty created

by James’s inconsistent policies regarding Catholics, his negotiations for a Spanishmarriage for his son Charles, and his apparent indifference to the affairs of hisdaughter Elizabeth, her husband the Elector Palatine (now claiming the title of King

of Bohemia), and James’s grandchildren on the continent contributed to the ened religious tension Even the decision to issue such directions attested to James’sdesperation, or perhaps to his waning political acuity Such an edict was practicallyunenforceable, especially outside London, and subject to the energy, commitment,and political agenda of James’s bishops and their agents Whether or not the

height-Directions were actually effective in controlling the kinds of pulpit discourse that

James intended, however, their issuing exposed fault lines in the Church of Englandthat contributed to a reconfigured Caroline church and the demise of the Jacobeanorder The crisis they both reflected and precipitated was, to some, barely percepti-ble at the time But the pressures they exerted worked a tectonic shift in the balance

of forces within the English church, the effects of which were profound

The crisis in the late Jacobean English church is evidenced first by the pressures

of censorship to make language conform to certain “acceptable” standards at a timewhen these standards were not well understood or articulated, nor the consequences

of unacceptable speech clear Under pressure, some preachers exceeded the aries of conformity, and paid the legal and political consequences, while othersapplied strict laws of self-censorship to their words The forces brought to bear alsoradicalized formerly conformist divines, many of whom became increasingly aware

bound-of the pulpit’s persuasive power and attempted to manipulate it Efforts to control

T

the number, content, and location of sermons also intensified rather than ishing religious controversy A dominant anti-papist discourse was fractured amongdivines, all of whom had differing motives and styles for distinguishing themselvesfrom the Church of Rome In the last years of James’s reign, this discourse was com-plicated by increasingly open anti-puritan and anti-Calvinist rhetoric All of thesecircumstances were exacerbated by the extension of pulpit debate into print Atstake for all of these preachers and controversialists was the definition of the Church

dimin-of England, through a process dimin-of public and communal debate that would have profound consequences for religion – and politics – in decades to follow.1

In particular, this study attempts to place the sermons of John Donne in thecontext of these historical circumstances affecting pulpit discourse, and ofDonne’s personal circumstances and vocational responsibilities during these

years Donne’s crucial role in the events surrounding the Directions in 1622 to the

death of James and Charles’s accession make him the ideal barometer of thesepolitical and religious crises, and a test case for responding to historical claimsabout late Jacobean sermons Although he is no way “typical” of any particularpreaching agenda or style, his sermons articulate these crises in their most complex forms and expose fault lines in the late Jacobean English church that produced their most profound effects only after Donne’s death in 1631 Donne’svision for the Church of England meant that he resisted the pressure to radicalize,although his sermons bear all the marks of the tension to stay whole

READING SERMONSThe methodology for approaching late Jacobean sermons – and particularly thesermons of John Donne – must attend to problems of neglect and of evidence.Scholars generally have not acknowledged adequately the power and popularity ofearly-modern English sermons as a medium of instruction, debate, propaganda,and polemic But, as a discourse not easily controlled by any authority or interestgroup, sermons served a public cultural function, and contributed to the con-struction of a post-Reformation English church Moreover, since scholarly study ofsermons relies primarily on printed sources, it presents the difficulty of determin-ing with any certainty how closely extant printed materials correspond to what wasactually said in the pulpit Frequently, sermons were amplified, revised, and other-wise made coherent for publication.2Moreover, most sermons were spoken from

1 Claydon discusses how sermons as much as coffee houses or parliamentary debates contributed to the creation of a “public sphere” following the Restoration He comments on the role preaching might have played in maintaining active public discussion on controversial matters of public inter- est before 1640, referring specifically to the molding of public opinion on such matters as “the future direction of the Church of England” (p 225) Lake and Questier extend the term back to the Elizabethan regime in “Puritans, Papists, and the ‘Public Sphere’.” They argue that, in particular, “the ideological imperatives of antipopery helped to introduce and underwrite the public, national, and common interests that rendered the public sphere genuinely public” (591).

2 Prefaces of most published sermons assume differences between oral and printed versions;

Stoughton’s claim in XV Choice Sermons to reproduce “the Author’s mind, as nearly as can be

expressed in his own words, without additions or deletions” is unusual and ironic given the existence

of a substantially different manuscript version of one sermon, The Lovesick Spouse This manuscript

dates the sermon in 1623/4, and differs substantively from the printed version Morrissey dates this sermon in 1623 from the evidence of the Rawlinson MS and from an incomplete copy in Emmanuel College Library (Cambridge), MS 96 (“Rhetoric, religion, and politics,” pp 1, 205–6).

notes, or from memory, and were transcribed, if at all, after the event, and oftenpublished in much different circumstances than those under which they weredelivered.3Some authors’ prefaces indicate how sermons were altered for publica-tion, and occasionally manuscript and printed versions are available for compari-son, but the majority of printed Jacobean sermons offer few clues as to theiroriginal delivery Body language, gestures, tone of voice, dramatic pauses, and pac-ing, of course, are all lost to us, and yet these would undoubtedly have influencedthe reception of the sermon message So, too, we must be careful when we gener-alize about sermons to remember that most surviving printed sermons chroniclethe voices of the early-modern pulpit elite The thousands of sermons delivered inpoor country parishes by barely educated parsons no longer speak to us, and weare left to form conclusions on the basis of a few sermons delivered by great men,

at important pulpits, on special occasions Despite these limitations, the printedremains and historical reports of the period make sermons by far the most cultur-ally pervasive medium for influencing and reflecting public opinion

Given their importance in forming public opinion, and the sheer volume ofsermons preached and published in early-modern England, it is surprising thatthey have not received sustained attention from literary scholars and historians.4Scholarly estimates of the number of sermons preached have foundered on themethods used to calculate them The call for frequent reprints of the works ofeminent preachers such as Henry Smith, for example, revises estimates upward, asdoes the observation that single entries in the STC might contain anywhere fromone to one hundred sermons, perhaps an author’s complete works.5And if we takeinto account sermons collected, published, and edited since that time, the num-ber increases substantially Furthermore, many members of the congregation,such as Simonds D’Ewes, took notes at sermons, or recorded them in shorthand,for further study and contemplation at home Others, such as Anne Sadlier, eldestdaughter of Sir Edward Coke, became collectors of sermons and patrons ofparticular preachers.6In the years preceding James’s Directions, the demand for

sermon literature was especially high, or so it seemed to contemporaries.7

John Donne and the late Jacobean Public Sphere

3 See my edition of John Donne’s 1622 Gunpowder Plot Sermon, which discusses material conditions

affecting the transmission of this and other sermons See also Klemp, “ ‘Betwixt the Hammer and the Anvill’.”

4 New work by McCullough and Ferrell is correcting this problem See McCullough, Sermons at Court; Ferrell, Government by Polemic In addition, Morrissey’s dissertation noted above promises further

insights into sermons of this period The state of sermon scholarship is considered in my

“Introduction: Reading Donne’s Sermons”; Ferrell and McCullough, “Introduction,” The English

Sermon Revised, pp 2–21; Morrissey, “Interdisciplinarity.” Cogswell, Blessed Revolution, p 325, makes

explicit the profound impact of such a saturated medium.

5 See Godfrey Davies,“English Political Sermons,” Klotz, and Simmons Webster says “it must be

acknowl-edged that the surviving material is a negligible fragment” (Godly Clergy, p 105) Bennett, pp 108–9.

6 BL MS Harleian 6356 contains copies of two sermons by Donne, inscribed to Anne Sadlier, “Donum

honoretissimae & amicissimae foeminae Annae Sadlier” (fo 230r ) John Conway Davies describes manuscripts donated by Anne Sadlier to the Inner Temple Library (I, 85–88) In answer to the ques- tion “how far is a sermon preached the same thing as a sermon published?”, see Hunt, “The Books, Manuscripts and Literary Patronage of Mrs Anne Sadlier.” Webster observes that the audience for published sermons is “substantially different” on the grounds that “it takes a great deal more com- mitment to buy a substantial volume than to attend a parish church” (p 105) I am concerned less with evidence of ownership of sermons than with the possibility that printed sermons bore sufficient resemblance to those preached to justify generalizations about homiletics in this period.

7 Hall, for example, in Pharisaisme and Christianity, sig A2r observed “there is a store of sermons extant The pulpit scarce affordeth more than the presse.”

Of course, precisely because of their popularity, sermons could be and wereappropriated for purposes other than edification Sermons supplemented themeagre printed sources of news, and often offered editorial commentary on cur-rent events to a broad social cross-section, which included women, the poor, andthe illiterate.8Consequently, the pulpit became an energetic locus for the dissem-ination of ideas, and the power that it commanded became the prize in the religious and ideological conflicts of the age Godfrey Davies terms it “the mostinfluential of all the organs of public opinion.”9

As an integral part of the political process, sermons in the early Stuart period, and particularly in the 1620s, served to enhance the political polarizationthat Cust has observed as an effect of newsgathering and dissemination Sermonswere part of the news industry of the 1620s whose growth paralleled England’sinvolvement in the Thirty Years’ War, alongside newsletters, corantoes, separates,pamphlets, and alehouse verses – and especially word of mouth Ecclesiastical andstate officials were particularly sensitive to the propaganda value of the pulpit and vied for influence over what was said and published As Seaver points out, however, the pulpit was open to exploitation by exponents of many points

of view, and, as a consequence, competing ideologies were also able to make their views known in this way The pulpit was at best an unpredictable politicaltool.10

That the pulpit served a propaganda function for a multiplicity of causes

is well documented Louis Wright discusses the campaign against the king’sSpanish policy after the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War in 1618 as a “consistentand violent” opposition designed to undermine the negotiations for a Spanishmarriage for Charles It was successful, he argues, in that it was “clearly influen-tial” in arousing public opinion against the match James, he says, was “powerless

to silence the whole body of the Protestant clergy” who were unified in theiropposition.11The pulpit, however, was not simply the instrument of a coherent

“opposition.” Cogswell has persuasively demonstrated that the Stuarts, and ticularly Charles, were acutely aware of propaganda and sought to manipulate it,and that for Charles, “the pulpits of England represented a formidable platformfor disseminating the royal line.”12 Preachers were becoming more activelyengaged in propaganda for and against public policies in this period

par-While it was generally true that the pulpits of England became the focus

of political commentary in the early Stuart years, the most influential pulpit

of the day was at Paul’s Cross in London Originally a site from which mations were read, this pulpit came to combine the functions of news and

procla-8 See work by Cust (“News and Politics”) and Levy.

9 Davies, 7 This stress on public opinion in a more general sense anticipates the argument of Lake and Questier in “Puritans, Papists, and the ‘Public Sphere’ ” that the public sphere to which the pul- pit contributed was not defined as always “autonomously apart from the state” but rather “in terms

of struggles to gain the ideological and political initiative within an ideologically, politically, and even institutionally variegated establishment or regime” (591) They suggest that this public space, once opened, became “a crucial means whereby a variety of groups and factions sought to influence and alter not merely the policies and personnel but also, in the case of both Presbyterian Puritans and Catholics, the very structures of the Protestant state itself ” (627).

10 Seaver, pp 56–60.

11 Wright, “Propaganda against James I’s ‘Appeasement’ of Spain,” 149, 150, 154.

12 Cogswell, “The Politics of Propaganda,” 215, 196.

propaganda.13This was the place where distinguished preachers were summoned

at certain seasons and special occasions, where aspiring prophets such as WilliamClough of Bramham dreamed of exposing the evils of government, where the rit-uals of public penance were enacted, where heretical and seditious books wereburned Because the preachers selected to preach at the Cross were appointed atthe discretion of the Bishop of London, one might assume that comment on stateaffairs would be unlikely However, the importance of the pulpit and its location

at the hub of the London newsgathering network drew many preachers, not all ofwhom could be relied on to preach official doctrine or to steer clear of matters ofstate, especially when these were matters of religion as well, as in the case of theSpanish match negotiations As Maclure has shown, the influence of patrons wasalso a factor to consider in any analysis of the impact of censorship on the pulpitand the press during this period And in times of crisis, the Bishop of London tookadvice from the Council before selecting preachers or issuing specific instructions

to them Paul’s Cross was, in fact, not only the instrument of the Council and theChurch of England, as Maclure has shown, but of God’s English ministers, “hisprophets to the fallen city, the architects of a new and holy order.”14It was also theinstrument of many preachers, neither voices of the administration, nor vehe-ment critics of it, and this study addresses these voices of a “middle nature.”15Morrissey observes that no single issue monopolised Paul’s Cross during James I’sreign, and so this period “gives the broadest sample of issues addressed by preach-ers.”16In addition, Morrissey notes that extant printed sermons include “the fullspectrum of religious opinion from William Laud to the notorious puritanWilliam Whateley.”17

While the Paul’s Cross pulpit was important for the reasons noted above, otherpulpits gave expression to theological and political counsel in the 1620s as part of

an emerging public sphere McCullough has demonstrated James’s remarkablepatronage of sermons at court, and analyzed their impact on the court’s culturallife and the polity of the Jacobean church He concludes that “court preachingrotas, with their striking juxtaposition of spokesmen for very different interests inthe English church, attest to a commendable inclusivity on James’s part,” althoughsome of the lists for particular seasons also reveal the “fault lines” that would rendthe church during the next reign.18James’s delight in appointing chaplains is indi-cated by the fact that at his death he was attended by 62 royal chaplains toElizabeth’s 17, an increase which would have made tight personal control overcourt sermon rotas “practically impossible.”19Perhaps the most significant change

John Donne and the late Jacobean Public Sphere

13 The standard work on this pulpit is Maclure, The Paul’s Cross Sermons, revised by Pauls and Boswell,

Register of sermons See, as well, Morrissey’s dissertation, “Rhetoric, religion, and politics,” and

the discussion of the changing doctrinal tenor of Paul’s Cross sermons in Appendix I of Tyacke’s

Anti-Calvinists.

14 Maclure, p 141.

15 Lake and Questier argue that “modes of action and communication appropriate to the sort of lic sphere we are discussing here could be and were used by both the Catholic opponents and the Puritan critics of the [Elizabethan] regime, but these practices and techniques originated in the actions of groups or factions located at or near the center of the establishment” (“Puritans, Papists, and the ‘Public Sphere’,” 591–2) The concept of “middle nature” is explored in my “Donne’s Protestant Casuistry,” 53–66.

pub-16 Morrissey, “Rhetoric, religion, and politics,” p 2.

17 Ibid.

18 McCullough, Sermons at Court, p 113.

19 Ibid., p 116.

instituted by James was the creation of Tuesday sermons commemorating hisdeliverance from the Gowry conspiracy of 5 August 1600 After the GunpowderPlot was discovered, also on a Tuesday, both days were kept with great solemnity,observed in every church with a specially appointed service and sermon.20James’s enthusiasm for sermons elevated a mundane, perhaps optional,observance to a twice-weekly court obligation, and “galvanized a small but very prominent group of clergy to focus their attention on the court as a crucial battleground in a long campaign to reorient the ecclesiology of the Englishchurch.”21

McCullough also describes the court sermons delivered specifically at DenmarkHouse and St James’s to Queen Anne and Prince Henry respectively by colleges ofsworn chaplains similar to those who preached at Whitehall before James Thesethree Jacobean courts tripled the number of royal centres of ecclesiastical patron-age, and, together, dramatize “the ecclesiological varieties – and divisions – thatmarked the Jacobean church.”22 McCullough demonstrates that despite Anne’sCatholicism, her patronage, both religious and secular, observed no neat confes-sional boundaries She was a church papist in the matter of weekly services,although she appears to have abstained from public communion in the Church ofEngland Prince Henry’s chaplains, too, bear the mark of their patron, imbued inthe “progressive and politicized Calvinism of the Leicester–Sidney–Essex tradi-tion.”23Henry was confirmed by these in a “brand of English Protestantism thatwas doctrinally Calvinist, vehemently anti-Catholic, and sympathetic to militaryevangelism.”24Such an agenda needs to be compared to the balancing of politicaland ecclesiological interests that marked James’s court The competing interests ofthese three courts would come to a head in the years immediately precedingCharles’s accession to the throne in 1625

Outside London and its tradition of court and public sermons appointed forcertain days, sermons at visitations, assizes, and other occasions contributed topulpit discourse as well Sermons were part of the triennial diocesan visitations,generally devoted to issues of vocation appropriate to preachers and ecclesiasticaladministrators.25 Assize sermons, delivered by preachers who were, strictly speaking, chaplains of the sheriff, commonly concerned themselves with thehealth of the body politic to stress the importance of justice, authority, and order

to national stability, and the concomitant duties of magistrates and civil ties to maintain justice Clearly, awareness of the conventional nature of thesetypes of sermons allows for more effective analysis of particular examples ofthe genre.26

authori-For the most part, however, the sermons of the period have not been well served

by literary critics or historians Although sermons are acknowledged as powerfulmedia for propaganda, instruction, prophecy, and polemic, they have not been

25 Fincham, Prelate as Pastor, p 117.

26 For an account of the genre of the Paul’s Cross Jeremiad see Morrissey, “Elect Nations and prophetic preaching.”

treated thoroughly as important components of an emerging public sphere.27This lack of attention to sermons in general has not prevented scholars from mining sermons for quotations to prove certain political theses, but very little sustained analysis has been devoted to the sermons of even the most well knownpreachers To some extent, scholars have examined sermons with literary as well

as historical interest, but on the whole sermons have tended to fall between the disciplines in the construction of seventeenth-century political and religiousculture

Scholarly use of Donne’s sermons is not different in kind from that made of thesermons of Andrewes, Hall, or any number of early-modern preachers whosework is deemed to have literary as well as theological or historical merit In fact,despite T S Eliot’s preference for the pulpit eloquence of Andrewes, there is verylittle written specifically about his sermons.28Huntley passes over Hall’s sermons

in a survey of his literary career, while the sermons of such popular and prolificseventeenth-century preachers as Thomas Adams, John Prideaux, RobertSanderson, James Ussher, and Thomas Gataker have been virtually ignored.29Cogswell’s advice to historians to pay closer attention to the sermons and pam-phlets that poured from the press during the 1620s is particularly important fordetermining contemporary political attitudes apart from those documented inofficial sources relating to royal administration Cogswell cautions that while theresults will be sparse and impressionistic, they will provide practically the onlyclues we possess to the complex dynamics of early Stuart political life True, thesematerials do represent “one of the largest underutilized veins of information onthe early seventeenth century”;30however, the rules of scholarly engagement withthese sources have not been clear Cogswell’s own work on the diplomatic andpolitical history of the 1620s offers readings of some of these underutilizedarchival resources, but points as well to some of the oversimplifications that arethe necessary byproduct of a focus on sermons as prooftexts rather than as objects

of scholarly investigation in their own right.31Morrissey’s survey of the use of mons as primary sources rather than as texts lays out this problem in more detail,

ser-John Donne and the late Jacobean Public Sphere

27 This methodological point, first made in my “Introduction” to a special issue of the John Donne

Journal, has been updated and extended in the editorial introduction to The English Sermon Revised

and in Morrissey’s review of the historiography of sermons in “Interdisciplinarity.” Morrissey concurs with my point, made also by McCullough and Ferrell in their monographs, that “there is considerable research still needed before we can claim to have a methodology that uncovers a sermon’s full engagement with its historical moment” (1123).

28 See for example works by Reidy and Lossky McCullough has recently published a treatment of the printing history of Andrewes’s sermons before the Civil War entitled “Making Dead Men Speak.”

We await McCullough’s edition of Andrewes’s works and his biography of Andrewes, both in progress See also Tyacke, “Lancelot Andrewes and the Myth of Anglicanism.” For a review of two recent editions of Andrewes’s texts that analyzes the “construction” of Andrewes as a preacher, see Klemp, “Editing Renaissance Sermons.”

29 See Corthell, “Joseph Hall.” Huntley’s monograph contains no chapter on the sermons There is some treatment of sermons in McCabe’s study of Hall Work by Lake cited throughout this study is the exception to these claims.

30 Cogswell, “Politics of Propaganda,” 215.

31 Cogswell’s brief discussion of the ways in which preachers exploited the horrors of continental wars

of religion “to encourage as well as to stifle criticism of royal policy” (Blessed Revolution, pp 27–9)

groups preachers together without engaging fully in analysis of the political intentions or effects of the sermons cited Cogswell’s aim to construct a political history makes these sermons illustrative, but implicitly less authoritative than other documentary sources.

and outlines the “methodological laziness” that she says characterizes many tigations of the relations between preaching styles and philosophies.32

inves-USING DONNE’S SERMONS AS EVIDENCEThe problem of scholarly neglect of sermons in general is mirrored unexpectedly

in scholarship on the sermons of John Donne, despite his reputation and theundisputed literary merit of his work Among many fine preachers, Donne was popular in the city pulpits of Lincoln’s Inn, St Paul’s, Whitehall, and

St Dunstan’s-in-the-West The high esteem in which he was held at Lincoln’s Inn

is well documented; even after he had been promoted to the deanery of St Paul’s

in 1621, he was made an honourary bencher of the Inn, and asked to preach thesermon at the official dedication of its new chapel Bald speaks of Donne’s laterreputation as one of the great preachers of his age; and reports of Donne’s sermons preached at Paul’s Cross appear in contemporary letters of newswritersand diarists.33Despite the revival in Donne studies, and more recently the revival

of interest in Donne’s prose, however, sermon scholarship is not sufficiently developed

Donne’s sermons have been studied for their style, imagery, and poetic bility, the primary interest in them being that they are the sermons of a poet.Some important textual, critical, and contextual studies have been produced, ofcourse, and increasingly Donne’s sermons have been used to provide evidence ofhis philosophical, religious, and epistemological habits of thought However, verylittle work has been done on historical contexts for the sermons.34This is not tosay that the sermons have not been cited In many recent studies, they form thetexture and weave of the critical fabric, but remain stubbornly invisible, inacces-sible except as cryptic references in footnotes and fragmentary quotations Rarelyare the sermons cited in indices, despite pervasive quotation; however, even themost passing reference to a poem by Donne finds its way into a book’s index.Even when the sermons emerge from their condition of neglect, the difficulties

sensi-of using them as evidence for political and theological generalizations is apparent

T S Eliot predicted that “Donne will always have more readers than Andrewes, forthe reason that his sermons can be read in detached passages and for the reasonthat they can be read by those who have no interest in the subject.”35But, as crit-icism of his sermons bears out, such popularity, on such terms, has exacted its toll.Most readers of Donne’s sermons, trained as literary critics, approach the sermons

with the aid of the Index, to argue from the sermons to the poems, to Donne’s

biography, and increasingly, to Donne’s religion and politics In fact, readers whoprofoundly mistrust the literal in poetry and appreciate the witty complexity of

Donne’s poetic strategies, find nothing anomalous in reading the sermons literally,

assuming that Donne’s views are here straightforwardly expressed At the same

32 Morrissey, “Interdisciplinarity,” 1121.

33 See the account of Donne at Lincoln’s Inn in Bald, p 315 and passim.

34 Exceptions include the work cited by McCullough, Ferrell, and Morrissey above In addition, important work using historical contextualism as part of the methodology includes Guibbory;

Johnson, pp 16–27, 77–84 and passim; Annabel Patterson, “Donne in Shadows: Pictures and

Politics”; Scodel; Shami, “Pulpit Crisis of 1622.”

35 Eliot, p 23.

time, readers quote selectively from among Donne’s apparently contradictorystatements to support their general impression of Donne’s religious and politicalalignments Clearly, more rigorous interpretive paradigms for historical contextu-alism need to be developed.36

If arguing from within the sermons to generalize about Donne’s theology istreacherous, arguing from the sermons to Donne’s poems, his life, or his politicalbeliefs is even more perilous Historians, for example, have commented only spo-radically, and tentatively, on Donne, discouraged perhaps by the sheer volume ofhis work, or by his ambiguous political profile Generally, the sermons are read asauthoritative proof texts, a compendium of quotations that can be appropriatedliterally by readers to provide glosses on Donne’s poetry and earlier writings,

to confirm a biographical profile, or to support generalizations about Donne’sbeliefs.37

The practice of “selective” quotation, of using the sermons as prooftexts orglosses, is bolstered by a second, closely related practice that pairs Donne withother figures by means of brief quotation This method of pairing sometimesallows verbal similarities to modulate into biographical and then full-fledged reli-gious identifications Even where it doesn’t, quotations showing where Donnesounds like puritan preachers Richard Sibbes or Henry Smith have been used tosupport the claim that Donne’s imagination was “puritan,” while pairings withquotations by Laud and Montagu have supported the contradictory claim for anArminian Donne.38 Both of these observations are instructive, but insufficient.For the terms “Arminian” and “puritan” to have any significant meaning in rela-tion to Donne, or for any other preacher, these larger contexts, based on detailedand comprehensive historical reading, need to be constructed

To some extent, all quotation and comparison participates in the interpretivepractice outlined above, and the habit of noticing linguistic similarities is a defin-ing feature of the best literary scholarship But what one “sounds like” has to begauged much more precisely in terms of context, and larger patterns of emphasisand rhetorical strategy Rhetorical moderation could be sincere or tactical, asLake’s studies of Hall demonstrate, and it is often difficult to gauge the degree ofsimilarity between like-sounding rhetorical formulations Donne himself felt thesting of this sort of guilt by association when he was called before Laud in 1627 to

John Donne and the late Jacobean Public Sphere

36 Early attempts to define Donne’s religion using sermons include Horton Davies, pp 195–203;

Lewalski, p 17; Sellin, passim Lake’s work on Sanderson, Hall, and Skinner exemplifies the kind of

analysis such complex bodies of work require See especially “Serving God and the Times,” “The moderate and irenic case for religious war,” and “Joseph Hall, Robert Skinner and the Rhetoric of Moderation.” Work by Milton, although not focused in a detailed or systematic way on particular authors, exemplifies the kind of rhetorical reading of texts called for in the reviews of sermons scholarship by Shami, Ferrell and McCullough, and Morrissey, noted above On the reliability of the

Index to Donne’s sermons see my review of Troy D Reeves’s Index to the Sermons of John Donne.

37 See my “Introduction: Reading Donne’s Sermons” for discussion of the faulty assumptions lining this methodology I share Webster’s suspicion of analyses that depend on the published works

under-of seventeenth-century divines as “rounded systems under-of theology” (p 106), and the historically textualized treatment of Donne in this book is intended to mitigate this weakness Webster observes that printed sermons tell us “most about those ministers held in highest esteem by their colleagues and about the subjects they were most prepared to release into the uncontrollable public sphere of print” (p 106).

con-38 See especially, Doerksen, “Saint Paul’s Puritan” and the article by Guibbory noted above I am ful to Achsah Guibbory for many productive discussions on these issues.

grate-justify one of his sermons.39In many cases the minute rhetorical and contextual

differences are more important than the similarities.

Finally, use of Donne’s biography to establish the network of Donne’s religiousallegiances has proven problematic because scholars have not agreed on whichdetails to emphasize or ignore, if they challenge at all, the biographical narrative(from apostasy to ambition) constructed by Bald and Carey.40But, the importance

of rewriting the narrative of Donne’s biography cannot be overestimated In hisown day, Donne was not identified with any particular faction within the Englishchurch; in fact, his associates included a wide range of people, connected with virtually every named religious party This record has been difficult to interpretfor modern scholars My own work has stressed Donne’s political and social con-nections with people along the full spectrum of religious positions in England,and, especially, with continental protestantism So, I have emphasized Donne’sconnections with Archbishop Abbot in 1622 (at a time when Abbot was out offavour); his connections with Lincoln’s Inn puritans, including Thomas Gataker;his participation in a coded correspondence among continental protestant sup-porters; his medal commemorating the Synod of Dort; his election as prolocutor

of Convocation.41Others have stressed his Catholic baptism, his status as royalchaplain, his possession of a controversial Arminian book, his gift of that book toIzaak Walton, and his participation on the High Commission with Neile andLaud.42 Even where the record has been silent, scholars have interpreted thatsilence I have noted for example, that Donne was not promoted to the bishopricthat his absolutist theology might have predicted, that he was not a participant atthe York House debates on Arminian theology, and that, while Donne was electedprolocutor of the 1626 Convocation, Richard Montagu was absent from the proceedings altogether

A number of interpretive problems result from these assumptions and from the

“politics of quotation” that expresses them Some of these problems can be uted directly to difficulties of access to the large and complex body of materialthat constitutes Donne’s sermons, and can be applied to use of sermons in general The usual approach to the sermons is synecdochal, the use of fragments

attrib-to represent the whole, whether these fragments are selected by reference attrib-to

the Index to Donne’s sermons, or whether they depend on the pre-selection of

“significant” texts by earlier critics

39 This sermon has provoked considerable interest among scholars because it is one recorded example

of Donne’s failure to satisfy the authorities For discussion of the sermon see Annabel Patterson,

Censorship and Interpretation; Shami, “Kings and Desperate Men”; Strier; Scodel; Shami,

“Anti-Catholicism,” pp 147–8; Guibbory, 434–5.

40 For reappraisals of Donne’s biography that call into question these formulations and reassess

Donne’s Catholicism see, especially, Flynn, John Donne and the Ancient Catholic Nobility; Hester,

“ ‘this cannot be said’: a Preface to the Reader of Donne’s Lyrics.” Flynn’s contributions to the ect of rewriting Donne’s biography have altered the course of Donne studies.

proj-41 See especially Shami, “Pulpit Crisis of 1622”; Shami, “ ‘Speaking openly’ ”; Flynn, “Donne’s Politics” (outlining Donne’s possible associations with Paolo Sarpi, the Italian republican); Sellin; Johnson.

42 Guibbory, 437–8 At Laud’s trial, the prosecution associated Laud with Montagu on the grounds that Laud had Montagu’s books in his study Laud denied having given his approbation to

Montagu’s published views, adding “I have Bellarmine in my study [and] therefore I am a Papist, or

I have the Alcoran in my study [and] therefore I am a Turk, is as good an argument as I have

Bishop Montague’s books in my study [and] therefore I am an Arminian” (Works, IV, 289–90) Tyacke notes that Laud appears here to acknowledge that Montagu was indeed an Arminian (Anti-

Calvinists, p 268).

Although many examples might be adduced, the evolution of a tradition ofscholarship that finds Donne’s politics to be “absolutist” relies on such anapproach In itself, such a claim is unobjectionable, if by “absolutist” one meansadvocating obedience to a king whose power derived “either from a direct divinegift or an irreversible grant from the people,” who was “under a moral obligation

to obey the laws of the land,” but who, theoretically at least, was “free to overrideany of the legal rights of their subjects in case of necessity.43Donne’s theoreticalsupport of absolutism is readily demonstrable However, if by “absolutism” one

means simply a lust for power, and if one cites Donne’s comments on God’s power

to support a claim about Donne’s politics, the situation is altered One of the

founding claims of Carey’s study is that Donne was most fascinated by God’sattribute of power as something that somehow compensated for his own politicalpowerlessness As Carey expresses it, “when Donne entered the Church he found

in God, and in his own position as God’s spokesman, a final and fully adequateexpression of his power lust If we ask what positive quality Donne most con-sistently reverences in the sermons, the answer is neither beauty, nor life, nor love, but power His God is a heavenly powerhouse, with all circuitsablaze Further it is God’s destructive power that Donne particularly rel-ishes dwelling on It is God as killer and pulverizer that Donne celebrates.”44The proof for such provocative claims hides in terse footnotes that even someone

armed only with the Index might challenge Even a cursory glance at the Index under GOD: Attributes of would have sent Carey to 204 places that mention God’s

Mercy (III, 82) as compared to 41 that mention Power (III, 83) One of these

places actually celebrates the power of God to comfort, “a power to erect and

set-tle a tottering, a dejected soule, an overthrowne, a bruised, a broken, a troden, aground, a battered, an evaporated, an annihilated spirit” (III, 270) Nor does Careyconsider how, across the sermons, Donne regularly invokes the Son’s attribute ofwisdom, and the Spirit’s attribute of goodness to balance the focus on powerattributed to the Father

The practice of quotation that I am describing can best be illustrated fromDebora Shuger’s recently reprinted chapter on Donne’s sermons.45Shuger takesthe single phrase “Measure God by earthly Princes” as the epigraph to an analysis

of how Donne uses the analogy between God and king.46In fact, the reference inthe sermon from which it is taken qualifies, if it does not negate, the meaningShuger intends and epitomizes the misinterpretability of isolated quotations fromthe sermons Donne continues the analogy in parentheses: “(for we may measurethe world by a Barly corne)” (V, 371), nullifying Shuger’s claim that Donne differsfrom his contemporaries in the degree to which he stresses the analogy betweenGod and kings Clearly, the parenthetical material undercuts the epigraph’simperative, revealing a complex irony that Shuger’s quotation masks

John Donne and the late Jacobean Public Sphere

43 Lake, Anglicans and Puritans?, p 7 Sommerville refutes the revisionist definition of “absolutism” as

the power to “rule by proclamation” without any obligation to “consult with their subjects or uphold old constitutional agreements,” pp 228–34.

44 Carey, John Donne, pp 122–3.

45 Shuger, Habits of Thought The chapter on Donne is reprinted, without revision or correction,

in The English Sermon Revised It is possible to trace the genealogy of Shuger’s view of Donne’s

absolutism to her quotation of Carey’s quotations (Shami, “Politics of Quotation,” p 406, n.12).

46 Shuger, p 165.

Similarly, in a paragraph discussing Donne’s habit of depicting divine/humaninteraction as analogous to seventeenth-century absolute monarchy and its sub-jects, Shuger focuses on the highly politicized language in which Donne speaks ofGod’s unrevealed decrees Donne associates these, she notes, with royal prerogativeand absolute power, implying that a reserve of power exists behind the ordinarylawful operations of the monarch (or divinity) that can neither be questioned norlimited To prove this point, Shuger cites this “passage” from the sermons “It is notmerely unnecessary,” she concludes, “to probe God’s secrets, but ‘Libell’ to publishthem, ‘an injury to God, and against his Crowne’ ” [4.12.78–81].47 Donne’s ownwords are much more ambivalent, however, and reveal a concern for decorum andaudience, for the “fit” place in which to discuss controversial matters, specificallythe doctrine of election Donne’s wording is far more tentative than Shuger’s (it

“may” be a libel, it “may” be an injury to God), suggesting in fact that the error is

not in questioning and knowing, but in publishing, particularly in public sermons

where the abilities of the congregation to discern the subtle points of controversymight not be sufficient to render that place fit for arguing mysterious points ofdoctrine Furthermore, the passage is not attempting to argue for the absolutism,whether religious or political, of particular doctrines, but stressing the pastoralaims of preaching these doctrines in the public sphere

Donne’s sermons, then, are paradigmatic of the use of sermons by modernscholars The intriguing problems of evidence offered by sermons, and particu-larly those of a preacher so resistant to labeling as Donne, indicate that a study ofDonne as a unique pulpit voice outside the context of other pulpit voices is nottenable To some extent, then, while this book is not strictly a contribution topolitical or church history as those disciplines are commonly understood, it contributes, nonetheless, to an understanding of the broader political aspects ofthe pulpit at precisely those points where Donne’s career intersects with that insti-tution By putting his sermons into a broader context, I hope to place him morefully than has hitherto been attempted among his peers, as a professional voicewithin the Church of England This aim has created problems of proportion andlength, mitigated to some extent by my decision to focus on Donne’s sermonsduring the last years of James’s pulpit I have done so for a variety of reasons

Primary among these is the fact that through his Directions to Preachers, James

attempted to intervene directly to control pulpit discourse in this period of crisis

Furthermore, the spotlight focused on sermons by the Directions and their efforts

at censorship highlights a particularly rich sample of sermons within which to testthe evidentiary methodologies I am developing and to contextualize Donne’s own

contributions, including his sermon defending the Directions of 15 September

1622 Focus on sermons of these late Jacobean years also allows concentration onthe most difficult evidence to interpret, that provided by conformist preachers ofthe middle ground under pressures both internal and external within the Englishchurch The pressures brought to bear on sermons by the three crises I have calledthe crisis of censorship, the crisis of controversy, and the crisis of religious andnational identity provide a context for interpreting Donne’s contributions to thereconstruction of the early Stuart church

47 Ibid., p 167.

CRISIS OF CENSORSHIP

Examining the circumstances surrounding the issuing of the Directions and

the sermons preached or reprinted in the years directly following them can illuminate one of the crucial historical debates of the period The question

remains of what James hoped to gain by issuing such Directions, and whether in

fact they succeeded in taming the pulpits So a consideration of what could

reasonably constitute conformity in sermons after James I issued his Directions in

1622 leads directly to questions regarding the nature, extent, and effectiveness ofcensorship of sermons in the last years of his reign The first is the question of how

ecclesiastical and state authorities enforced these Directions, if at all, particularly

outside of London and the university towns Historical reporting of such tion is by no means complete, but we can fill out our sense of what was allowed

regula-by examining printed sermons from the period, including sermons that were ularly reprinted In addition we can reach tentative conclusions about what wasnot allowed by examining Visitation Articles, correspondence, diaries, pamphlets,and other evidence scattered among historical archives

pop-The Directions to Preachers, then, and the pulpit response to them, must be

viewed in the larger context of state efforts to control speech in the Jacobeanperiod Fincham has shown that churchmen of all persuasions recognized regula-tion of preaching as necessary He notes that 14 canons of 1604 were devoted tothis matter, “with the aim of ensuring a plentiful supply of edifying sermons fromlicensed preachers.”48He also observes that James’s ambivalence towards preach-ing, balancing a desire for “good preaching and preachers” against the fear of such

as are “factious and turbulent,” was in fact a destabilizing force in the pulpit, used

by those Arminian bishops who wanted to curb contentious preaching,49 and radicalizing marginal conformists

Not surprisingly, how to control the most powerful public medium for encing opinion in the nation became particularly important in the 1620s with thegrowing opposition to James’s foreign policy and its domestic consequences.However, the debate about the nature and extent of censorship – of the pulpit, thetheatres, and the press – though wide-ranging, is inconclusive.50James’s Directions

influ-for Preachers were his most explicit attempt to control and regulate speech during

his reign, and, whatever their success, their issuing marked an important moment

in the history of the English pulpit This was not the first time, however, that Jameshad been disturbed by the unruliness of his preachers In 1604 the Venetian ambas-sador reported James’s anger against preachers who spoke against the peace withSpain, for example More recently, in 1620 and 1621, James had issued proclama-tions prohibiting interference with affairs of state, although a specific injunctionnot to discuss the Spanish match in sermons was apparently not obeyed Thosewho were indiscreet could be examined legally and before the Privy Council,and suppressed judicially by the Courts of High Commission or Star Chamber

John Donne and the late Jacobean Public Sphere

48 Fincham, Prelate as Pastor, p 240.

They could also be examined by the bishops during diocesan visitations, andforced to answer to specific articles relating to discipline and conformity in thechurch A small but significant number were interrogated, imprisoned, fined, ordeprived of their clerical livings While these courts could not punish with death,the remedies of corporal punishment such as pillory, whipping, branding, andmutilation, were available to them as punishments for seditious libel.51

However, control of what was said in the pulpit remained tenuous and lawsagainst seditious speech difficult to enforce, even at Paul’s Cross In fact, theunpredictable nature of law enforcement was perhaps the most effective deterrent

to explicitly political sermons Preachers could never be certain what wouldattract the attention of the authorities or how severely they would be punished.And while measuring the degree of self-censorship exercised by preachers duringthis period is difficult, there can be no doubt that the climate of uncertainty contributed to a more cautious approach by all but the most zealous critics

Documenting the conditions affecting censorship of printed sermons in this

period is somewhat easier Until 1640, when Parliament initiated its own controls,regulation of the press proceeded from the crown, the Stationers Company, thechurch, and the licensing system Not all of these influenced the printing ofsermons directly, but together they affected the dissemination of religious works,and particularly controversial material Increasingly, however, scholars questionthe notion of censorship as sufficient to explain the non-appearance or delayedpublication of any particular book Lambert, for one, cites social, economic, andpractical explanations to qualify the distortions of such a narrowly political analy-sis, concluding: “we should not extrapolate the well-known special cases, most ofwhich were originally enumerated for purely political purposes, into a crushingweight of bureaucratic censorship intended to stifle all discussion Sermons ofall complexions were preached and printed.”52 Worden also questions claimsmade for the impact of censorship, arguing that it was the ineptitude rather thanthe existence of censorship to which writers objected.53Even registering the effects

of censorship primarily in terms of the non-publication of books or interference

in their production may be misleading Milton’s reconsideration of the subjectfocuses on the connections between licensing, censorship, and religious ortho-doxy,54 acknowledging that “there was an effective tightening of regulations ofprinting of religious literature in the 1630s, but there were also other means ofvarying subtlety deployed by the authorities to influence the nature of what wasprinted in this decade.”55As he observes, “In the increasingly polarized atmos-phere of these years, licensing and censorship could be (and were) used asweapons to block texts and embarrass opponents.”56Laudian government policyand the hegemony of Laudian opinion succeeded in marginalizing those opposed

57 A case in point is Stoughton’s The Lovesick Spouse, published in 1640 but circulating in manuscript

with other Cambridge anti-Laudian sermons after its delivery at Paul’s Cross in 1623/4 The sermon

is discussed in Chapter 9 below.

In the end, Milton argues that “censorship” may not be the most useful way ofdescribing the influence of licensers in this period “The notion of ‘censorship’ wasitself a weapon in the controversies of the period, and our obsession with proving

or denying its existence may prove to be something of a red herring.”58Instead,Milton argues that different establishment groups acted against each other inseeking to claim to speak for the Church of England, using the official licensingsystem as an instrument for determining which religious group appeared moder-ate and which marginal The apparent radicalization of puritans in the 1630s,

on this account, may have more to do with licensing, and jockeying for the middle ground of orthodoxy, than with doctrine and belief, a topic to which

I shall return shortly

CRISIS OF CONTROVERSY

What I call the crisis of controversy was the immediate cause of the Directions, the

playing out in the public sphere not only of longstanding differences with papists,but now, as well, increasing differences with co-religionists The pressures ofcensorship, whether subtly deployed as in the licensing practices described by

Milton, or ostentatiously imposed, as in the Directions and the administrative

apparatus established to support them, succeeded in intensifying rather thanameliorating the divisions of religious controversy While preachers wereinstructed to move away from a polemical preaching style and to raise their debate

to less rancorous and personal levels, sermons continued to inveigh against trinal enemies in vitriolic terms and to label opponents with the polemical names

doc-of “puritan,” “Arminian,” “papist,” “heretic,” and “atheist.” In this period, we findmany examples of controversial labels applied polemically, misapplied, rejected,

or contested The resulting atmosphere of controversy – a crisis in the making –has created a crisis of sorts in the modern historiography of this moment For onething, although it is convenient to classify or label preachers according to theirspecific religious orientation, such attempts have obscured the relationshipsamong these preachers Nor was it always the case that sermons were either onething or the other The sermons of Donne, Hall, and many others suggest thatmany preachers were using the pulpit to work out their own theological positions,not readily assimilated to any system of classification

In scholarship of the specifically religious history of the Jacobean church, Lake,Fincham, and Milton, in particular, have moved discussion away from binaryterms – Anglican and puritan – to a full acknowledgement of the complexity ofthe religious spectrum of positions, ranging from radical to moderate puritanism

on the one end, through various versions of largely Calvinist conformity in thecentre, to Arminianism and crypto-popery on the other end.59But the problems

of definition and classification that arise from early-modern religious discoursehave created difficulties for historians of this period Furthermore, Buckingham’scrude distinction in 1625 between “o” (for “orthodox”) and “p” (for puritan) hasbeen amplified today to include Calvinists, puritans, conformists, avant-garde

John Donne and the late Jacobean Public Sphere

58 Ibid., 650.

59

See works by Fincham, Milton, and Lake cited above.

conformists, Laudians, Arminians, anti-Calvinists – groupings which overlap orcollapse doctrinal, ecclesiological, and political categories And yet, the sophisti-cation promised by these categories hardly improves upon the oversimplification

of “o” vs “p.”

If that isn’t complicated enough, we also have to remember that much religiouscontroversy, particularly in moments of crisis, was conducted in polarized rhetor-ical terms, thus inscribing in the historiography the very binaries that scholars havebeen at pains to dismiss.60 The names of sectarian religious controversy used

in current scholarship were already freighted with their own historical baggage inDonne’s time Consequently, after the Reformation, churchmen of all stripesclaimed to prefer the name of Christian to that of Calvinist, Lutheran, or any otherreligion named after men Francis Bunny, a puritan, felt the sting of such labelingfrom the Catholic side, and rejected their use of “reprochfull names of ‘Lutherans,Zwinglians, Calvinistes, Bezites’, and such like.”61Richard Montagu, charged withArminianism, noted that his opponents were willing to be called Calvinists,but asserted that he did not wish to be accounted “Arminian, Calvinist, orLutheran but a Christian.”62 Called by King James to adhere to a commonreformed faith at the Synod of Dort, Joseph Hall asked what, then, to make of thoseinfamous names of Remonstrant, Counter-Remonstrant, Calvinist and Arminian

In the end, he exhorted his hearers to remember that “We are Christians, let us also

be ‘of like spirit.’ We are one body, let us also be of one mind” (X, 361) Donne statesthe point clearly, managing to include Catholics among these religions named aftermen by calling them “papists”: “If we will goe farther then to be Christians, andthose doctrines, which the whole Christian Church hath ever beleeved, if wewill call our selves, or endanger, and give occasion to others, to call us from theNames of men, Papists, or Lutherans, or Calvinists, we depart from the true gloryand serenity, from the lustre and splendor of this Sunne; Here in the ChristianChurch, God hath set a tabernacle for the Sunne; And, as in nature, Man hath lightenough to discerne the principles of Reason; So in the Christian Church, (consid-ered without subdivisions of Names, and Sects) a Christian hath light enough of allthings necessary to salvation” (VII, 310)

Milton has suggested that one of the prized names that opponents battled toclaim was the name of “moderate,” an observation that further complicates ourunderstanding of religious discourse in the sermons under examination The his-torical impact of James’s most extravagant pulpit critics and supporters has beenrecorded, but these voices at the extremes tell only part of the story This studyarises out of a general sense that the middle ground has been written out of thehistory of the pulpit in early-modern England, in part because post-revisionisthistorians are suspicious – and rightly so – of self-proclaimed moderates, andeven of moderate-sounding preachers This might explain why the extreme voices

60 Milton, Catholic and Reformed, pp 7–9; Fincham and Lake, “The Ecclesiastical Policies of James I

and Charles I”; Fincham, “Clerical Conformity from Whitgift to Laud”; Lake, “The Problem of Puritanism.”

61 Bunny, sig Cc7 v

62 Montagu, Appello Caesarem, p 10 Milton, Catholic and Reformed, observes that “Montagu’s

rejec-tion of ‘names of division’ represented not just a standard distaste for exclusive terminology, but a more radical detachment from the churches to which this terminology was generally applied” (p 447).

of dissent or endorsement have been recorded, while sermons of the majority

of preachers have been ignored or, as in the case of Donne, appropriated for other political agendas But it is at the risk of misrepresenting the nature andextent of public discussion in the sermons that we neglect this vast body ofmaterial

CRISIS OF IDENTITYThe crisis precipitated by the pressure of censorship and exacerbated by theincreasingly controversial nature of religious discourse led to the third crisis, thecrisis of identity for the Church of England Many scholars have taken James’sdepiction of the English church as an inclusive institution, balancing within itsboundaries all but the most extreme religious voices, as the reality The modera-tion of his claim to exclude only seditious or heretical men, however, has beenchallenged by Ferrell, Lake, Questier, and Milton who describe a much morepolemical, less moderate, substratum beneath the moderate exterior Focus onsermons rather than on more polemical tracts modifies this conclusion, suggest-ing that a great many preachers – particularly those we identify as conformists –were working to interpret, define, and express the religious values of the Church

of England by resisting as well as by participating in religious controversy.Evidence of “moderation” or “conformity,” of course, is difficult to gather andinterpret In the 1620s, it was rare to find the hardened ideological positions andpolarized political attitudes that precipitated the constitutional and religious

crises of the 1640s, although certain events, like the Directions to Preachers and the

Forced Loan, succeeded in raising the stakes of the debates sufficiently to polarizesome opponents, and to lure them out of their imagined or pretended

“middle way.”63

Another question to be addressed is what could reasonably constitute ation” in the late Jacobean pulpit According to Fincham, the Jacobean policy wasone of “accommodation of moderate nonconformity,” a policy challenged underCharles, who attempted a tighter regulation of preaching and lecturing than hitherto, and a binding of lecturers more closely to a parochial ministry.64Clearlythe sermons of Sibthorpe and Manwaring, which aroused such bitter controversylater in the decade, took the most extreme royalist position in making obedience

“moder-to the king’s demand for the forced loan a case of conscience, and in labelingrefusers of the loan with the politically loaded name of “recusants.” These sermonstaxed the tolerance of many of the clergy, including the Archbishop ofCanterbury, who refused to license Sibthorpe’s sermon and was eventually over-ruled by the king himself

But what avenues were open for preachers like Donne, Hall, Gataker, Sandersonand others who, though not enthusiastic about all royal policies or their imple-mentation, offered their advice through authorized pulpit discourses, choosing to

John Donne and the late Jacobean Public Sphere

63 Cust’s narrative of the “erosion of the middle ground” in his discussion of the political impact

of the forced loan of 1626 has some explanatory power in relation to this earlier crisis as well

(The Forced Loan, p 329) See also Sharpe, “Parliamentary History.”

64 Fincham, “Conformity,” pp 10–13.

work for change within the English church by pressing from the centre to themargins? Certainly preachers had at their command many resources of biblicaland historical interpretation In particular, they could rely on choice of text,application of biblical example to present circumstances, and analogy to com-ment discreetly on the spiritual and political condition of England In addition,traditions such as those encouraging anti-papist rhetoric in sermons commemo-rating the Gunpowder Plot, the Gowry anniversary, liturgical feasts, and otherimportant preaching occasions allowed a measure of free speech against commonenemies of the church and state Thematic emphasis on issues of conscience,obedience, and authority also foregrounded these questions, and not always

to preach unquestioning obedience Even dedications and introductory materialattached to printed sermons could alert readers to the sermon’s political alignment Within the limits of allowable discourse, many preachers found room

to speak their minds freely and yet obediently A study of late Jacobean sermonsreveals that preachers in the 1620s were increasingly challenged by the competing

claims of conscience and authority, particularly following the Directions It is

possible, and I will argue, likely, that conscience rather than fear or political expediency alone persuaded many of these preachers to support existing struc-tures of authority and urged them to concentrate on lawful means of effectingchange and offering counsel In this respect, they were still absolutists, but their theoretical absolutist framework was often qualified considerably by theirsermons

Making claims for the “moderation” of any preacher, however, is problematic.Almost all scholars who talk about moderation warn us that even apparentlymoderate statements of doctrine and attitude were tactical (especially among con-formists), designed to cast opponents (especially puritan opponents) as extrem-ists.65Lake, for example, describes Sanderson as “a moderate of sorts: a moderateCalvinist, a moderate supporter of the Laudian church and the Personal Rule,

a moderate supporter of iure divino episcopacy, a moderate (or at least inactive)Royalist – a moderate in virtually everything, therefore, except in his hatred ofPuritanism That and that alone determined the style of piety that he drew out ofhis formal Calvinism; it determined the extent and nature of his collaborationwith Laud, of his royalism, and eventually it prompted him heavily to modify ifnot repudiate his long-standing commitment to Calvinist orthodoxy.”66Lake alsodemonstrates that both Hall and Skinner, divines at some distance from eachother on the spectrum, employed the same moderate rhetoric in part because

“they both recognized the considerable polemical and political advantages to behad from selling themselves to wider audiences in precisely those same moderateterms.”67Guibbory agrees that most of the rhetoric of moderation was distinctly,

65

Lake, “Moderation at the Early Stuart Court”; Ferrell, Government by Polemic; Narveson; Milton,

“Licensing”.

66

Lake, “Calvinist Conformity,” 114.

67 Lake, “Moderation at the Early Stuart Court,” p 181 Ferrell is less open to suggestions that the erate rhetoric of mainstream conformists could ever be taken at face value “The ultraconformists’ pursuit of a ‘moderate’ course was at its heart a rhetorical strategy aimed at eliminating the

mod-Puritans’ own claim to moderation” (Government by Polemic, p 62) Ferrell finds in Jacobean

“moderation” a “peculiarly provocative quality” (p 87) She argues that this kind of rhetoric was dominant at court and “was capable of relegating moderate Puritans and the bishops who indulged them to roles as dangerous schismatics” (p 174).

and immoderately, anti-puritan.68Milton suggests that perhaps “official licensing”was “decisive in determining which religious group appeared moderate and main-stream, and which appeared radical and marginal, in early Stuart England.”69Weclearly need much more detailed discussion of how the language of moderationwas used before we can formulate, with certainty, the codes by which it can be

interpreted But surely, excluding puritans, or wanting to appear mainstream, were

only two of many possible motives for speaking moderately This study suggests

that Donne’s rhetoric of moderation was tactically inclusive rather than exclusive,

and that his goal was to expand rather than to limit the grounds of conformity

to the Church of England However, Donne’s rhetoric of moderation will have to

be measured against that of his contemporaries in order to comprehend its natureand effects.70

CONFORMITY IN CRISIS: THE CASE OF JOHN DONNE

On 15 September 1622, Donne delivered a sermon at Paul’s Cross defending the

Directions to Preachers and interpreting their practical consequences for

preach-ers On 3 April 1625, following the death of King James, Donne preached beforethe new king at St James’s, laying out his vision of the English church Theseperformances frame a crucial period in Donne’s relations with this church, andreveal an identity formed in the crucible of censorship and controversy thatmarked the late Jacobean pulpit Scholarly assessment of Donne’s religiousidentity, in fact, mirrors the crises and uncertainties of these historical conditionsand the rhetorical practices that emerged to deal with these pressures, producing

a full range of Donnes: Donne of the puritan imagination; Donne the “Calvinistepiscopalian”; Donne the conformist; Donne the avant-garde conformist; Donne

John Donne and the late Jacobean Public Sphere

68 Guibbory concedes that “people on both sides of the controversies accused their opponents of lack

of charity,” but also claims that “charity” became “the particular code word of the Arminians and the Laudians” who charged the puritans with uncharitable zeal (422) Donne has a great deal to say about

“zeal,” not all of it negative See my “Donne’s Protestant Casuistry,” 60–1, where I argue that, while Donne warns his hearers against inordinate zeal, he is also careful to warn against extremes of dis- cretion Two examples to which Donne returns here are Abraham, who was not zealous enough on behalf of the Sodomites, and Peter, whose advice to Christ to retire from evident danger shows the danger of labeling lack of zeal and retirement from the duties of one’s calling “discretion.” I agree entirely with Carrithers’s and Hardy’s qualifications of my false distinction between discretion and zeal, preferring their emphasis on Donne’s “zealous alertness that tried to avoid the dejection of spirit

or uncharitable disputatiousness he associated with Separatism and to avoid the power-mongering tendentiousness he associated with spiritual complacency, Pelagianism, and Rome” (pp 151–2) These authors are following Norbrook’s suggestion that Donne “preferred evangelical ‘zeal’ to the decency that was so much a feature of High Church rhetoric” (p 23).

69 Milton, “Licensing,” 651.

70 In their introduction to Conformity and Orthodoxy, Lake and Questier warn against expanding the

available lexicon of analytic terms “by thus privileging the supposedly moderate middle” and

“inventing a third term for a soggy middle to which the majority of people, sitting neither at one extreme or the other, can be assimilated” (p xv) Such an approach risks “preserving rather than transcending” these dichotomies, while conferring a “false coherence” of a middle way, “a coherence blessed with that peculiarly English and indeed very contemporary term of approval – the moder- ation of the third way” (pp xv–xvi) By shifting analysis away from the “circular mode of category formation” to “the constitution and reconstitution of the boundaries which contemporaries used to form their own categories of approbation and disapprobation,” Lake and Questier prefer to think

of orthodoxy and conformity “not as stable quantities but rather as sites of conflict and contest” (p xx), a conclusion with which I concur.

the Arminian These Donnes occupy a spectrum from reluctant to enthusiasticconformity to the Church of England, from an emphasis on godly preaching to apreference for sacrament and ritual, from connection with internationalprotestantism to connection with Rome, from predestinarian theology to a stress

on universal grace and good works Rather than refuting some identifications andendorsing others, however, one should ask the more interesting question of whyDonne can be so readily assimilated to such radically different perspectives andpositions In what follows, I hope to show that, in response to the crises ofcensorship and controversy, Donne developed a professional and personal iden-tity that embodied his capacious vision of the English church, and its mandate tointegrate and convert all but the most determined recusants

Donne’s late Jacobean sermons clearly express an emerging early-modernawareness of the impact of public discourse on the expression of religious belief,and the importance of establishing principles governing this discourse One of thefirst tasks of each generation of the post-Reformation church in England was toexpress itself in relation to competing versions of the “true” church Whereas mostElizabethan and Jacobean ministers had defined themselves in large part in oppo-sition to the Church of Rome, the Synod of Dort had ensured that public religiousdiscourse now also took into account the relations between the Thirty-NineArticles and the confessions of the reformed Churches.71To some degree, Donne’sprofessional status in the 1620s was constructed in the larger international con-text and in opposition to the professional print controversialists who had usurpedpublic discussion of the Church of England’s identity by means of their provoca-tive polemics Donne’s own sense of service implied a public religious identity, notsimply a private discourse of conscience His sermons continually speak of thechurch as an institutional necessity: those means and ordinances by which God’sscriptural promises are fulfilled.72So the notion of Donne as a “professional” voicecounters the notion of Donne the apostate or church-papist.73Moreover, it speaks

to the integrity rather than the ambition of Donne’s vocation, the correspondence

in his sermons between rhetoric and conscience.74 Construing Donne’s formity” in these terms makes sense of his radical faith in an institution that hedefended not simply as the unfortunate remnant of a lost devotion, but as the authorized means for achieving salvation Donne rejects controversy in hissermons not because he lacks principles or skill in disputation, but because hisprofessional aims differ fundamentally from those of controversialists At stake forpublic controversialists may have been a particular view of the Church of Englandand its doctrine, but at stake for Donne is the application of doctrines necessary

“con-71 Several scholars have discussed the significance of the Synod of Dort for the formulation of English

doctrinal positions See, especially, Sellin, pp 105–8; Milton, Catholic and Reformed, pp 395–426;

W B Patterson, pp 260–92; White, pp 175–202; Johnson, pp 120–7; Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists,

pp 87–105.

72 See, for example, II, 253, where Donne says that “the knowledge which is to salvation, is by being in Gods house, in the Houshold of the Faithfull, in the Communion of Saints.” See also I, 29 and IV,

106; Levy-Navarro; and Johnson, pp 33–6, 69–72 and passim.

73 See Shami, “Politics of Quotation,” 401–3; McCullough, “Preaching to a Court Papist?” In this text, it is profitable to think of Donne in terms of those converts from Catholicism recruited by Abbot to persuade wavering Protestants to continue membership in the Church of England and to persuade wavering Catholics to join the communion of a visible church See Questier’s “John Gee.”

con-74 For a detailed, theoretical reading of Donne’s vocational self, see Terry G Sherwood, “ ‘Ego videbo’: Donne and the Vocational Self.”

for the salvation of his hearers within the existing institution So when we ine Donne’s theological vocabulary, it is important to interpret his discourse asthat of a pastor more than a controversialist.75Although his rhetoric is deeplyoccasional, it is not useful to think of this vocabulary as careerist, changing withthe times, except insofar as the Church of England was itself an institution chang-ing with the times, responding to both Catholic and Reformed impulses, andengaging in a process of self-definition and interpretation by no means complete

exam-in the 1620s

Part of Donne’s conformity, and perhaps the primary way in which his religiousindividuality is evidenced, is in his casuistical discourse and habits of thought.These, too, were intensified in the religious climate of the late Jacobean church.These habits cut across genre and occasion, and reflect a lifelong pattern of adju-dicating conflicting moral claims rather than polarizing them.76Donne’s casuisti-cal discourse is a flexible medium, deriving from the traditions of both legalinterpretation and biblical exegesis in which he was experienced The casuisticalthrust of legal discourse is inherent in the fact that, as a general rule, legal dis-course proposes for its audience a hostile listener or interpreter.77It is constructed

on the premise that the author must choose words that even the most thetic listener cannot turn against him, and is acutely aware of the literal sense hiswords convey In the sermons, Donne characteristically uses language that willdischarge his responsibilities of counsel without putting him within the “vast

unsympa-reach of th’huge statute lawes” (Satyre II, 112).78More positively, legal discoursechannels stories and events that are technically outside the law into legally relevant forms In his sermons, Donne uses this aspect of legal discourse to create

a framework within which his audience can resolve cases of conscience with somedegree of certainty He does this by treating the Bible as a whole as a formal contract, a digest of legal precedents and concepts pertaining to salvation withinwhich human actions find their moral meaning And although no single prece-dent can be extracted from the Bible as a rule for action, the process of compar-ing texts yields certain patterns for salvation

Biblical exegesis, on the other hand, aims at the ethical and moral reform of thelistener Its goal is what Donne calls “nearenesse,” the recognition by the audiencethat the preacher “speaks to my conscience, as though he had been behinde thehangings when I sinned, and as though he had read the book of the day ofJudgment already” (III, 142) However, as some preachers discovered, penetratingthe consciences of the congregation could be politically and legally dangerous.The High Commission reports cite the unfortunate, but typical, case of JohnVicars who was punished for coming “too near” describing an actual member ofhis congregation in a sermon He was charged for preaching “that it was lawfull

John Donne and the late Jacobean Public Sphere

75 On Donne as “pastor” see Doerksen, “Preaching Pastor versus Custodian of Order”; Ferrell, “Donne and his Master’s Voice.”

76 On Donne’s casuistical habits of thought see work by Slights (Casuistical Tradition; “Notaries,

Sponges, and Looking-glasses: Conscience in Early-modern England”), Brown, and Shami,

“Donne’s Protestant Casuistry.” Scholars have not adequately taken up the discourse of conscience

in Donne, hence my insistence that this discourse and its attendant habits of thought are not only fruitful, but also essential, for understanding Donne.

77 Crystal and Davy, p 193.

78 Quotations from Donne’s poetry are taken from John Donne: The Complete English Poems, ed.

C A Patrides.

for a minister to preach soe particularly that his auditors might knowe what andwhome he meant, but yet to do it so covertly that noe legall advantage might betaken against him.”79Clearly, Donne and Vicars were following the same exegeti-cal principle, although Donne was demonstrably more skilful in choosing wordswhose “literal and ordinary” sense was less open to hostile interpretation The

“personal middle course” afforded by this discourse marks Donne’s intellectualapproach, creating a theology that authorizes the choices made by individual con-sciences, even as it expresses these choices in conformity to the prescribed cere-monies, sacraments, doctrines, and institutions of the church, including itsprimary ordinance for Donne: preaching

Increasingly, external pressures on Donne’s preaching resulted in a pattern of

“discreet” obedience, which, I have argued, governed his public discourse.80Always, for Donne, “discretion” is the active and strenuous principle that acts asthe complement, perhaps even as the corrective, to obedience Donne’s discretioncannot, except anachronistically, and with violence, be interpreted simply as arhetorical obedience at odds with his conscience Such a reading of “discretion”was not common in Donne’s time, “discretion” almost always referring to dis-cernment, judgment, and decorum, rather than prudential self-regard.81Further-more, Donne contrasts “passive” obedience (non-resistance to the laws oflegitimate authorities) with “blind” or “implicit obedience” (unthinking or undis-cerning obedience) which he considers the root evil of the contemporary CatholicChurch.82 However, fragmentary and uncontextualized readings have allowedDonne “discretion,” but have used what is primarily a religious term (the con-trasting complement to “passive obedience” in the sermons) in its modern,clichéd, political sense In this latter sense, discretion means something like

“toeing the line,” or “speaking out of both sides of your mouth.” And there aremany willing to grant Donne that sort of discretion.83

But this description of Donne’s complex rhetorical practices cannot do justice

to the strenuous balance between law and authority that Donne strikes as he adjudicates among competing claims in his sermons For Donne, “obedience,” or

“conformity,” must be understood in the context of his consistently-held views on

a number of subjects, including the importance of orderly rules of engagement

in handling controversy and the ongoing discrimination of fundamental from

79 Reports of Cases, ed Gardiner, p 199.

80 For the importance of “discretion” for Donne see my “Donne on Discretion” and “Politics of Quotation,” pp 390–2 The complementary relationship between “passive obedience” and “active

discretion” is made in Sermons IV, 49.

81 OED, “discretion”, III.6a, includes “circumspection,” which may be construed negatively, as

self-serving The adjective “discreet” extends the conception to mean “showing discernment or ment in the guidance of one’s speech and action; judicious, prudent, circumspect, cautious, esp that can be silent when speech would be convenient.”

judge-82 Abraham’s obedience to God’s requirement of circumcision at the age of 99 is examined as a case

of conscience more fully in Chapter 10 In a Lincoln’s Inn sermon, Donne states “thou canst not excuse thy selfe upon the unjust command of thy superiour; that’s the blinde and implicite obedi-

ence practised in the Church of Rome” (II, 105) See the discussion of this same topic in a Trinity

Sunday sermon for 1627 (VI, 49).

83 The view of Donne as propagandist for a state church and apologist for the most extreme version

of the absolutist authority of the monarch is most plainly advanced by Bald, Carey (John Donne),

Shuger, and Goldberg See my “Politics of Quotation” and particularly “Pulpit Crisis of 1622,” for a qualification of this view, and a bibliography of sources that counter it Annabel Patterson,

“Afterword,” has provided an overview of the entire debate.

indifferent matters in religion Obedience is a much more complex category thanmere verbal “discretion.” It is a commitment to the “meanes which God hathordained” (VIII, 309), established in a particular time and place for fulfilling apersonal as well as a communal spiritual life Far from requiring the suppression

of Donne’s “true” religious identity, an unparalleled example of sustainedhypocrisy, discretion was a creative principle, with epistemological as well asrhetorical consequences Discretion required Donne to examine the body of con-troverted divinity, and to decide to what extent he could use his unique placement

as a baptized Catholic, an ecumenical and international intellectual, and a royalchaplain to ameliorate the divisive consequences of “militant” Christianity, whileremaining committed to personal sanctity, political stability, and institutionalintegrity Donne is conscious of and sensitive to the pulpit as a sphere where pol-itics is engaged and conducted; a place where the institutional foundations of theEnglish church are negotiated; a place where controversies are defused, exposed,and “managed”; a place where uncomfortable conformists can be “converted”;and, finally, a place where Donne’s own conscience is publicly satisfied in what I

am calling his “performance of conversion.” Within the public sphere created bythe pulpit, I believe Donne is attempting to do several things First, his sermonsmarginalize as extremists those who do not play by accepted rules of public controversial discourse Secondly, his sermons try to move doctrinal consensustowards a more generous interpretation of Calvin and the theology of grace Thegoal here is to define the Church of England, “our” church, as an institution towhich all but a handful of genuine separatists can belong Third, Donne’s sermonsmodel principles of discourse most likely to achieve all of these ends

Those who have discussed Donne as a moderate and a conformist, however, arethemselves divided as to the nature of his conformity Building on work by Sellin,Doerksen has argued that, for Donne, whose approach he identifies as “moderate”and “conformist,” true conformity “means conformity with Christ,”84 expressedrhetorically in “constructive and conciliatory” terms,85 and framed betweenLaudians and Arminians on the one hand, and nonconforming puritans on theother Papazian also rejects the Anglican/Puritan dichotomy, describing Donne as

a “conforming protestant episcopalian.”86Scodel defines Donne’s moderation andconformity by offering a complex middle way for Donne, one that is “closelybound up with Donne’s own claims to adhere to a mean that allows him a certaincritical distance from the very church he represents and upholds.”87Rather thanpositioning Donne between immovable fixed points, Scodel identifies Donne’schurch “both as a normative mean between [Catholic and puritan] extremes and aprovisional, open-ended midpoint on the way to the best position.”88 Finally,Narveson has coined the phrase “contented conformity” to describe Donne’s reli-gion Such attention to its experiential force allows her to conclude that Donne’s

John Donne and the late Jacobean Public Sphere

84 Doerksen, Conforming to the Word, pp 112, 108.

85 Ibid., p 107.

86 Papazian, “Literary ‘Things Indifferent’,” p 328 Whereas Doerksen locates Donne’s moderation in his interpretations of Calvin, Papazian finds it in “the strongly Reformed dimension of his Augustinianism,” particularly his emphasis on what she calls “things essential”: “authority of Scripture, original sin, predestination, the perseverance of the saints, grace, and eventual salvation through faith, not works” (p 329).

87 Scodel, p 69.

88 Ibid., p 65.

particular brand of conformity was “contented” in that it “endorsed the establishedchurch not simply as a compromise but as a well-reformed institution uniquely fit-ted to edify and promote true worship, and to avoid the errors of extremists oneither side.”89 In particular, Narveson finds evidence of the “confession-centred”piety in which Donne publicly professed his “ongoing (and non-Arminian) sense

of simultaneous sin and Grace, thereby ignoring questions about God’s decreesthat he found over-curious and harmful to faith, and resisting the Puritan drifttoward privatized self-examination at the same time that he rejected an anti-Calvinist distaste for intense self-examination.”90Her conclusion that Donne

conforms to a moderate, essentially Calvinistic church in the Devotions supports

earlier work on the nature of Donne’s conformity, and offers a strong generic argument for “renewed attention on conformity as the forgotten middle.”91The crises of censorship, controversy, and identity converge in Donne’s profes-sional relationship to the Church of Rome This was arguably the most importantcase of conscience Donne faced, and his “performance of conversion” was hismost significant religious contribution to the identity of the English church In hisannotations on Donne’s sermons, Coleridge suggested that Donne “was aProtestant, because it enabled him to lash about to the Right & the Left – and

without a motive to say better things for the Papists than they could say for

them-selves.”92The suggestion here that Donne’s anti-Catholic rhetoric was a way of

speaking for as well as against papists corresponds to the patterns of discretion

already identified in Donne as a high-profile convert from Catholicism, loyalchaplain to James, and Dean of the most important English Reformed cathedralparish in London Donne’s anti-Catholic rhetoric must be seen as part of thebroader religious polemic that defined positions along the religious spectrum inthe early Stuart period, but which was often expressed in “rigidly dualisticterms.”93Milton argues that at least in the first half of James’s reign anti-papistwritings “were the most distinctive feature of English protestant theology andoccupied the energies of all the principal members of the Jacobean episcopate.”94Rarely a statement of belief, this rhetoric was a way of registering the particularnature of one’s protestant credentials, as well as a public commitment to bothchurch and state

Several features marked this discourse Fundamental to it were the rejection ofthe pope as Antichrist, and, at least at the outset, a “radically polarizing and polit-ically activist form of apocalypticism,” flourishing primarily among puritans.95Debates raged over Rome as a “true” Church “in some sense”; Roman errors, par-ticularly idolatry and heresy; and Rome’s political and jurisdictional aspirations.The very existence of the protestant church before Luther and questions of apos-tolic succession had to be defended against Catholics in an effort to assert the

legitimacy of the English church This language played out in contexts relating tocommunion with the Church of Rome by offering changing views of theReformation All of these aspects of the rhetorical attacks on Rome changed overtime, particularly during the transition from the Jacobean to the Caroline churchunder Laud’s ascendancy More recently, Milton has demonstrated that “while

confessionally driven anti-Catholicism was a prominent discourse in modern England, it was not the single dominant one.”96Anti-Catholicism was

early-“not confined simply and exclusively to presenting the division between the twoChurches and religions in absolute, polarized terms.”97 In fact, the precepts ofanti-Catholicism were “effectively undermined on a daily basis by the norms ofintellectual inquiry, political behaviour, commercial calculation, and social inter-course” and returned to their simple, polarized forms most often only in moments

at the time of these homiletic attacks, Donne’s Catholic mother resided with him

in the deanery of St Paul’s; that Donne retained his connections with the Earls

of Northumberland and others of the Catholic nobility;101 and that Donne’sextended family was committed to specifically Catholic forms of piety in exile onthe continent;102and it is easy to see why the apparent contradictions of his liferequire explanation

Several biographical hypotheses have been advanced to explain these contradictions, beginning with the “conversion” theory (traceable to Izaak

John Donne and the late Jacobean Public Sphere

96 Milton, “A Qualified Intolerance.”

97

Ibid., p 90.

98 Ibid., p 110.

99

The most extensive studies have been by Flynn and Hester See Flynn, John Donne and the Ancient

Catholic Nobility; and the following works by Hester, “Donne’s (Re)Annunciation of the Virgin(ia

Colony) in Elegy XIX”; Kinde Pitty and Brave Scorn; “ ‘this cannot be said’.” Recently, Guibbory has

argued that Donne’s move towards Arminianism in the late 1620s was perhaps motivated by Arminianism’s ceremonial and doctrinal connections to the Catholicism of Donne’s early years (“Donne’s Religion,” 415, 427).

100

In a sermon preached at St Dunstan’s, 11 April 1624, Donne redefines contemporary Catholicism

to show that it is a “yonger Religion” than “the ancient Religion, of Christ, and his Apostles,” and

warns his hearers not to be “adopted into the slavery, and bondage of mens traditions” which marks the “new Rome, that endevours to adopt all, in an imaginary filiation” (VI, 98).

101

On 25 August 1622, for example, Donne preached at Hanworth, to an audience which included Lord Doncaster, the Earl of Northumberland, and the Marquis of Buckingham Bald, p 439, sug- gests that Donne and Northumberland had renewed their acquaintance at Hanworth, but does not explain why he thinks the friendship had lapsed since the time of Donne’s marriage when the Earl served as Donne’s messenger to bring the news to Sir George More, Donne’s father-in-law Johnson, pp 77–85, discusses this sermon in terms of the different audiences Donne was address- ing on this occasion.

102 See biographical notes and works by Helen Gertrude More, Bridget More, Anne More, and Grace

More in “Glow-Worm Light,” ed Latz Gertrude and Bridget More were daughters of Cresacre

More, the great-grandson of Thomas More; Anne More was their cousin, the daughter of Edward More; Grace More was the daughter of John More, and was also a first cousin to the other More women mentioned in this note.

Walton’s Life of Donne) that Donne’s anti-Catholicism resulted from his

total rejection of Catholicism This view is bolstered by variations on the serving” theory, the view that since preaching against Catholics was conventionaland even expected in England – not to do so was to risk the charge of “negativepopery”103– Donne conformed to the requirements of the times.104

“time-However, crucial to an understanding of the sometimes contradictory facets ofDonne’s churchmanship is our ability to determine, in the first instance, how it isarticulated as part of an ongoing relationship with the Church of Rome, and sec-ondarily how it identifies with the reformed religions So it is important to con-sider what Donne thought of as fundamental to English Christianity, what heconsidered indifferent, what he thought could be salvaged from Catholicism, andwhat things were entirely repugnant to him In particular, this means examiningspecific sermons in context to understand how far Donne was willing to use hisability to “read” contemporary Catholicism to advance the political and doctrinalaims of the Church of England

Donne’s anti-Catholic rhetoric, then, allows us to discern his commitment tocertain fundamentals of religion, and his subordination of marginal or indifferentmatters Citing Article XIX of the Thirty-Nine Articles in a Christmas 1628 ser-mon, Donne identifies, first, the conventionally accepted marks of a true Church

as one “where the word is truly preached, and the Sacraments duly administred.”

“But,” Donne goes on to say,

it is the Word, the Word inspired by the holy Ghost; not Apocryphall, not Decretall, not Traditionall, not Additionall supplements; and it is the Sacraments, Sacraments instituted by Christ himself, and not those super-numerary sacraments, those

posthume, post-nati sacraments, that have been multiplyed after: and then, that

which the true Church proposes, is, all that is truly necessary to salvation, and nothing but that, in that quality, as necessary So that Problematical points, of which, either side may be true, and in which, neither side is fundamentally necessary to salvation, those marginal and interlineary notes, that are not of the body of the text, opinions raised out of singularity, in some one man, and then maintained out of partiality, and affection to that man, these problematicall things should not be called the Doctrine of the Church, nor lay obligations upon mens consciences; They should not disturb the general peace, they should not extinguish particular charity towards one another (VIII, 309)

Donne’s sermons of the 1620s are dominated by criticisms of the contemporaryRoman Church in handling these matters essential to salvation and by his efforts

to “renovate” the opinions of his congregation and to teach by rhetorical examplethe soteriological importance of rhetorical precision

Fundamental to Donne’s religion is, first of all, the sacrament of baptism,because “as in our baptisme, we take no other name necessarily, but the name of

Christ: So in our Christian life, we accept no other distinctions of Iesuits,

or Franciscans; but onely Christians: for we are baptized into his name, and

103Milton, Catholic and Reformed, p 68, defines “negative popery” as “a useful shorthand to describe

the phenomenon whereby Laudians deliberately refrained from attacking Roman errors when discussing matters of doctrine or ceremony.”

104See Lake, “Anti-popery” and Milton, Catholic and Reformed, on the construction of the anti-papist

prejudice.

the whole life of a regenerate man is a Baptisme” (V, 164).105 The name of

“Christian” is supported by the foundation of Christian doctrine, fortified by

scriptural authority: “the foundation it selfe is Christ himselfe in his Word; his

Scriptures” (VI, 253) Every Church is supreme and apostolical, Donne says, “as

long as they agree in the unity of that doctrine which the Apostles taught, andadhere to the supreme head of the whole Church, Christ Jesus” (III, 138) AsDonne’s sermons attest, however, the interpretation of these concepts was prob-lematical The Roman Church, too, adheres to word and sacrament, for example,but, as Donne notes wryly, “they lack a great part of the Word, and halfe theSacrament” (V, 294) In fact, in the Roman Church, “the Additionall things exceedthe Fundamentall; the Occasionall, the Originall; the Collaterall, the Direct; Andthe Traditions of men, the Commandements of God” (V, 294)

In this discussion of fundamentals, Donne stresses that there can be but onebaptism, and that “to depart from that Church, in which I have received my bap-tism, and in which I have made my Contracts and my stipulations with God, andpledged and engaged my sureties there, deserves a mature consideration; for I maymistake the reasons upon which I goe, and I may finde after, that there are moretrue errours in the Church I goe to, then there were in that I left” (X, 161).106Although the words resonate with the impact of Donne’s own well-known shift of

institutional allegiance, his explanation suggests that he questions the motive for rather than the fact of conversion “Truly I have been sorry to see some persons

converted from the Roman Church, to ours,” he says, “because I have known, that

onely temporall respects have moved them, and they have lived after rather in a

nul-lity, or indifferency to either religion, then in a true, and established zeale” (X, 161).

Consequently, Donne distinguishes clearly in his sermons between the true religion into which he was born and contemporary Catholicism characterizedofficially by the Council of Trent, the Jesuitical campaign to re-establishCatholicism in England, and the political interventions of that “imaginary uni-versall father” (VI, 90), the pope In particular, Donne rejects the doctrinal inno-vations of the Council of Trent, most notoriously its doubling of the articles offaith necessary to salvation Donne objects not to the articles themselves, which heseldom debates on substantive grounds, but to the whole process, the “monstrousbirth” (III, 369), by which new articles, like new stars, have been added to the firmament In fact, Donne calls the new creed of the Council of Trent a heresy,

saying that “if all the particular doctrines be not Hereticall, yet, the doctrine of inducing new Articles of Faith is Hereticall” (III, 132) The results of these inno-

vations have been disastrous, according to Donne, who points out that since theCouncil, many “sad and sober” men (VII, 125) have repented their forwardness indeclaring new articles and “wished they had not determined so many particulars

to be matter of faith” (VI, 301) This has been the bondage induced by the Council

of Trent, Donne argues, “to make Problematical things, Dogmatical; and matter ofDisputation, matter of Faith” (IV, 144)

John Donne and the late Jacobean Public Sphere

In one crucial matter, however, Trent did not fulfill the responsibility of the ible Church in that it refused to declare how far the laws of secular magistratesbind the conscience (VIII, 115) Donne asks “how does the Roman Church giveany man infallible satisfaction, whether these or these things, grounded upon thetemporall Laws of secular Princes, be sins or no, when as that Church hath not,nor will not come to a determination in that point?” “They pretend to give satis-faction and peace in all cases, and pretend to be the onely true Church for that,and yet leave the conscience in ignorance, and in distemper, and distresse, and dis-traction in many particulars” (VIII, 116) Donne undermines such reticence aboutproviding pastoral certainty to troubled consciences, usually by explaining theprocesses by which conflicting laws may be adjudicated He says, for example, in

vis-a 1628 sermon, thvis-at “though svis-alvvis-ation consist not in Ceremonies, Obediencedoth, and salvation consists much in Obedience” (VIII, 331) So in the matter ofceremonies, “we always informe our selves, of the right use of those things in theirfirst institution, of their abuse with which they have been depraved in the RomanChurch, and of the good use which is made of them in ours” (VIII, 331)

Donne holds that the fundamental obstacles to communion with the RomanChurch are the Jesuits and the Council of Trent This is not new territory for

Donne – both Pseudo-Martyr and Conclave Ignati made these points much earlier

in Donne’s career – but on these he is explicit: “we had received the Reformation

before the Council of Trent, and before the growth of the Jesuits: And if we should

turn to them now, we should be worse then we were before we receiv’d the

Reformation; and the Council of Trent and the Jesuits have made that Religion

worse then it was” (IV, 139) The “growth” of the Jesuits, for Donne, like the geoning of articles of faith at Trent, is marked by the proliferation of controversy,and the undermining of certainty in scriptural interpretation.107More insidious istheir seduction of families, pastors, and magistrates, who remain insensible thatthese “Catterpillars of the Roman Church, doe eat up our tender fruit [and]seduce our forwardest and best spirits” (III, 167).108

bur-The Catholic Church’s claim for apostolical succession culminating in specialstatus for the Bishop of Rome is another subject Donne filters through the dis-course of Catholic innovation and singularity Donne is unequivocal on thispoint “And therefore it is an usurpation, an imposture, an illusion, it is a forgery,when the Bishop of Rome will proceed by Apostolicall authority, and withApostolicall dignity, and Apostolicall jurisdiction” (II, 302–3) He refers on thisand on several other occasions to the historical agreement among commentators

of all religions that St Peter was Bishop of Rome, but denies that there is

107 For a fascinating contemporary parody of Jesuit interpretation, see “A Jesuite Exposition upon

y e 1 & 2 Psalme.,” BL Add MS 72415, fo 125 r The entire Psalm and the accompanying examination

of a puritan in the Ten Commandments provide a satirical version of the papist–puritan rhetoric officially sanctioned by James The examination occurs in BL Add MS 72415, fo 134 r –138 r

108 Marotti claims that for Donne and most nationalistic English the Jesuits were an object of noid fantasizing (“Alienating Catholics”) Milton argues that the practice of depicting the Roman communion as “a unified, centralized and autocratically governed community, in which all papists were simply mindless cogs in a great machine” was “not just paranoid overestimation of the unity and coherence of papal forces ranged against Protestant England, as some historians have tended

para-to suggest It was also a view which served a number of important polemical purposes” (Catholic

and Reformed, p 229) Marotti distinguishes between polemical and theological anti-Catholicism

in Donne, and positions Donne’s Caroline sermons between extreme Calvinism and Arminianism

in “Donne’s Conflicted Anti-Catholicism.”

Scriptural proof that the present Bishop of Rome is Peter’s successor in the tleship.109As he concludes, “The Apostolicall faith remaines spread over all theworld, but Apostolicall jurisdiction is expired with their persons” (II, 304) In alater sermon, he agrees that it is “moderate” to agree that St Peter was at Rome,but not to “build their universall supremacy over all the Church, and so to erectmatter of faith upon matter of fact” (III, 316) As Donne says of both the Romanand Reformed Churches “we all pretend to be successors of the Apostles; thoughnot we, as they, in the Apostolicall, yet they as well as we in the Evangelicall, andMinisteriall function” (VII, 400).

apos-Donne endorsed the Jacobean claim that papists were persecuted for theirinterventions in state politics rather than for their doctrine: “theirs is a religionmixt as well of Treason, as of Idolatry” (III, 257) It is, he says, an “Arbitrarie,

and an Occasionall Religion” (VI, 250) that troubles states with “politicall

Divinity” (VII, 131), a religion that “expunges and interlines articles of faith, upon

Reason of State, and emergent occasions” (III, 129) For Donne, theirs is a religion

of sliding signifiers, not grounded in the known contract of the word revealed in

the Scriptures Their divinity is “occasionall,” “doctrines to serve present

occa-sions” (VIII, 104) He concludes that if “all the confused practices of that Babylon,

all the emergent and occasionall articles of that Church, and that State-religion, shall become Sacraments, we shall have a Sacrament of Equivocation, a Sacrament

of Invasion, a Sacrament of Powder, a Sacrament of dissolving allegiance, ments in the Element of Baptism, in the water, in navies, and Sacraments in the Elements of the Eucharist, in Blood, in the sacred blood of Kings” (VIII, 104) On

sacra-particular abuses and errors in the Roman Church – invocation to Saints,110prayers for the dead, purgatory,111indulgences, adoration of images or the bread

of the sacrament112 – Donne comments specifically However, fundamental toDonne’s attacks on the Roman Church are her innovations in doctrine, herreliance on the traditions of men (the Fathers, the pope), her subversions of theauthority of Scriptures, and her political interventions in matters purely civil.113Rome’s absolutism in doctrinal and political matters is repugnant to Donnebecause he insists that the religious controversies raging in pulpit and press arefueled by topics that are problematical, disputable, but not fundamental Much ofthe disciplinary controversy, associated primarily with nonconforming puritans,also falls into this category In an undated sermon discussing ceremonial vesturesand postures, for example, Donne says that while they are not of God, they are akind of “light earth” underneath which are “good and usefull significations” thatadvance devotion” (X, 150–1) Donne’s prayer is that “in such things as are prob-lematicall, be not too inquisitive to know, nor too vehement, when thouthinkest thou doest know it” (II, 207) So, on the question of degrees of glory,Donne says “In the manner, we would not differ so, as to induce a Schisme, if they[Roman Catholics] would handle such points Problematically, and no farther Butwhen upon matter of fact they will induce matter of faith, when they will extend

John Donne and the late Jacobean Public Sphere

109 See especially III, 316; VII, 132.

110 See, for example, III, 48; III, 263; IV, 347; VI, 183; VIII, 143; VIII, 328; VIII, 359; X, 41.

111 On the connection between prayers for dead and the doctrine of Purgatory, see especially VII, 164–89.

112 See III, 132; VII, 432–3.

113 Marotti, “Donne’s Conflicted Catholicism,” offers a full taxonomy of doctrinal and political opposition to Catholicism in Donne’s sermons.