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7 2015  5 $ 24 #3)—Devotions upon Emergent Occasions  Devotion &/(5671.

That that soul which sped so ill in that body, last time it came to it, as that it contracted
original sin then, and was put to slavery to serve that body, and to serve it in the ways ofsin, not for an apprenticeship of seven, but seventy years after, that that soul after it hathonce got loose by death, and lived God knows how many thousands of years, free fromthat body, that abused it so before, and in the sight and fruition of that God, where it wasin no danger, should willingly, nay desirously, ambitiously seek this scattered body, thisEastern, and Western, and Northern, and Southern body, the most inconsiderable
consideration. (294)2.

We study health, and we deliberate upon our meats, and drink, and air, and exercises, andwe hew and we polish every stone that goes to that building; and so our health is a long
and a regular work; but in a minute a cannon batters all, overthrows all, demolishes all; asickness unprevented for all our diligence, unsuspected for all our curiosity; nay,undeserved, if we consider only disorder, summons us, seizes us, possesses us, destroys
us in an instant. (53)3.

Is this the honour which man hath by being a little world, that he hath these earthquakes
in himself, sudden shakings; these lightnings, sudden flashes; these thunders, suddennoises; these eclipses, sudden offuscations and darkening of his senses; these blazingstars, sudden fiery exhalations; these rivers of blood, sudden red waters? (54)4.

My God, my God, why is not my soul as sensible as my body?

Why hath not my soulthese apprehensions, these presages, these changes, these antidates, these jealousies,
these suspicions of a sin, as well as my body of a sickness? (55)5.

Thou hast imprinted a pulse in our soul, but we do not examine it; a voice in ourconscience, but we do not hearken unto it. (55)6.

Thy voice received in the beginning of a sickness, of a sin, is true health. (56)7.

I have cut out mine own anatomy, dissected myself, and they are gone to read upon me.
O how manifold and perplexed a thing, nay, how wanton and various a thing, is ruin and1

destruction! (102)8.

But where there is room for consultation things are not desperate. (103)9.

I offer not to counsel them who meet in consultation for my body now, but I open myinfirmities, I anatomize my body to them.

So I do my soul to thee, O my God, in an

humble confession, that there is no vein in me that is not full of the blood of thy Son,
whom I have crucified and crucified again, by multiplying many, and often repeating thesame, sins; that there is no artery in me that hath not the spirit of error, the spirit of lust,the spirit of giddiness in it; no bone in me that is not hardened with the custom of sin andnourished and suppled with the marrow of sin; no sinews, no ligaments, that do not tie
and chain sin and sin together. (105)
10. Look therefore upon me, O Lord, in this distress and that will recall me from the bordersof this bodily death; look upon me, and that will raise me again from that spiritual deathin which my parents buried me when they begot me in sin, and in which I have pierced
even to the jaws of hell by multiplying such heaps of actual sins upon that foundation,that root of original sin. (106-7)
11. How little of a man is the heart, and yet it is all by which he is; and this continuallysubject not only to foreign poisons conveyed by others, but to intestine poisons bred inourselves by pestilential sicknesses. (116)
12. This is a melting heart, and a troubled heart, and a wounded heart, and a broken heart,and a contrite heart; and by the powerful working of thy piercing Spirit such a heart I
have. (118)
13. … and those discomforts are, for all that, the earnest of thy Spirit in my heart: (118)
14. But I have my cordials in thy promise; when I shall know the plague of my heart, andpray unto thee in thy house, thou wilt preserve that heart from all mortal force of that
infection; (118)
15. … so though thou be always present and always working in every room of this thy house,
my body, yet I humbly beseech thee to manifest always a more effectual presence in myheart than in the other offices. (119)
16. Thou, O Lord … are able to make this present sickness, everlasting health, this weakness,everlasting strength, and this very dejection and faintness of heart, a powerful cordial.

2(119)
17. In this accident that befalls me, now that this sickness declares itself by spots to be amalignant and pestilential disease, if there be a comfort in the declaration, that thereby
the physicians see more clearly what to do, there may be as much discomfort in this, thatthe malignity may be so great as that all that they can do shall do nothing; (127-8)
18. When therefore thou seest them upon me, as his, and seest them by this way ofconfession, they shall not appear to me as the pinches of death, to decline my fear to hell(for thou hast not left thy holy one in hell, thy Son is not there); but these spots upon mybreast, and upon my soul, shall appear to me as the constellations of the firmament, todirect my contemplation to that place where thy Son is, thy right hand. (130)
19. These heats, O Lord, which thou hast brought upon this body, are but thy chafing of thewax, that thou mightst seal me to thee: these spots are but the letters in which thou hast
written thine own name and conveyed thyself to me; whether for present possession, by
taking me now, or for a future reversion, by glorifying thyself in my stay here … (130-1)
20. … and now these limbs melted off, as if that clay were but snow; and now the wholehouse is but a handful of sand, so much dust, and but a peck of rubbish, so much bone.
(159)
21. …in the womb of the earth we diminish, and when she is delivered of us, our grave
opened for another; and we are not transplanted, but transported, our dust blown awaywith profane dust, with every wind. (159)
22. This is my strength, that … yet thou wilt preserve that which is ready to die, my soul,from the worst death, that of sin. (161)
23. That therefore this soul, now newly departed to thy kingdom, may quickly return to a
joyful reunion to that body which it hath left, and that we with it may soon enjoy the fullconsummation of all in body and soul, I humbly beg at thy hand, O our most merciful
God, for thy Son Christ Jesus’ sake. (163)
24. That that blessed Son of thine may have the consummation of his dignity, by entering
into his last office, the office of a judge, and may have society of human bodies in heaven,as well as he hath had ever of souls; (163)325. … perverse way, irregular motion of man; even rising itself is the way to ruin!

Howmany men are raised, and then do not fill the place they are raised to? (181)
26. I am up, and I seem to stand, and I go round, and I am a new argument of the newphilosophy…(181)
27. I have a grave of sin; senselessness of sin is a grave: and where Lazarus had been fourdays, I have been fifty years in this putrefaction; why dost thou not call me, as thou didst
him, with a loud voice, since my soul is as dead as his body was? (182)
28. But O my God, my God, the God of all flesh, and of all spirit, to let me be content withthat in my fainting spirit, which thou declares in this decayed flesh, that as this body iscontent to sit still, that it may learn to stand, and to learn by standing to walk, and bywalking to travel, so my soul, by obeying this thy voice of rising, may by a farther andfarther growth of thy grace proceed so, and be so established, as may remove all
suspicions, all jealousies between thee and me, and speak and hear in such a voice, asthat still I may be acceptable to thee, and satisfied from thee. (184)
29. … eternal and most gracious God, … receive the sacrifice of my humble thanks, thatthou hast not only afforded me the ability to rise out of this bed of weariness anddiscomfort, but hast also made this bodily rising, by thy grace, an earnest of a second
resurrection from sin, and of a third, to everlasting glory. (185)
30. … but as I acknowledge that my bodily strength is subject to every puff of wind, so is myspiritual strength to every blast of vanity.

Keep me therefore still, O my gracious God,in such a protection of both strengths, as I may still have something to thank thee for,which I have received, and still something to pray for and ask at thy hand. (185)+*Donne, John. Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions. Charleston: BiblioBazzar, 2008.
_______. John Donne The Major Works. Ed. John Carey. Oxford World’s Classics. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

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