¹ The Poems of John Donne (Oxford, 1912), II, xvi, commenting on Satyre III.Google Scholar

² Gosse, Edmund, Life and Letters of John Donne (London., 1899), I, 27.Google Scholar

³ Ibid., I, 226.

⁴ Ibid., I, 196.

⁵ Jordan, W. K., The Development of Religious Toleration in England (Harvard University Press, 1932–1938), II, 39.Google Scholar

⁶ Alford, Henry, The Works of John Donne (London, 1839), III, 43.Google Scholar

⁷ Ibid., II, 368.

⁸ Simpson, E. M., A Study of the Prose Works of John Donne (Oxford, 1924), 67.Google Scholar

⁹ Jessopp, Augustus, ed., Essays in Divinity (London, 1855), 104.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Ibid., 126–27.

¹¹ Ibid., 131.

¹² Gosse, , John Donne, II, 78Google Scholar. This letter “seems to belong to April, 1615.”

¹³ Satyre III.

¹⁴ Satyre I.

¹⁵ Jessopp, , Essays, 37.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Alford, , The Works, II, 13.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Ibid., IV, 504. In our day, Tixeront has called Gregory of Nazianzus “The most eloquent of all theologians.” See his History of Dogmas (St. Louis, Mo., 1923–1930), II, 7.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Alford, , The Works, II, 362.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Ibid., II, 363.

²⁰ Ibid., III, 11.

²¹ Ibid., III, 145; see also V, 115; I, 546.

²² Jessopp, , Essays, 36–37Google Scholar. The quotation is from the Confessions, XI, iii, 5.Google Scholar

²³ Ignatius His Conclave, Facsimile Text Society (New York, 1941), 13.Google Scholar

²⁴ Alford, , The Wortes, I, 321.Google Scholar

²⁵ Ibid., IV, 562.

²⁶ Ibid., I, 288–89.

²⁷ Jessopp, , Essays, 218.Google Scholar

²⁸ Alford, , The Works, III, 151–52.Google Scholar

²⁹ Ibid., II, 307.

³⁰ Ibid., I, 554. Donne bolsters his point by adding immediately this sentence from St. Augustine: “Let us not desire to know that which God hath no will to reveal.” An editor might add, by way of further footnote, that the phrase “learned ignorance” (docta ignorantia) is a coinage of Augustine's in Epistola, CXXX, 15.Google Scholar

³¹ For a tracing of this theme, see Steiner, Arpad, “The Faust Legend in the Christian Tradition,” P. M. L. A, LIV (1939), 391–404Google Scholar. Note that the disparagement-of-the-intellect theme tends to disappear in the writings of the Scholastics but revives with the humanist Petrarch, when he describes true learning as nothing but piety. In arguing the vanity of worldly learning, Petrarch quotes from the Bible, Augustine, Ghrysostom, Gregory the Great, and Bernard.

The term “anti-intellectual” as applied to the tradition here under consideration may easily be misunderstood. Pietism is anti-intellectual in so far as it ranks mysticism above science, illumination above reason, and love before knowledge. That such a view is not incompatible with a highly developed philosophic interest is evident from the example of the Cambridge Platonists—whose attitude Donne in many ways anticipates. The pietist, even if learned in philosophy, generally belittles philosophical opinions as compared with mystic vision or dogma, and sometimes attacks scientia in his zeal for sapientia. Augustine's “credo ut intellegam,” properly understood, is ante-intellectual rather than anti-intellectual; but Augustine was often interpreted in the latter sense by Renaissance attackers of Scholasticism. His theology is not the “intellectualism” of Aquinas; and a selective reading can magnify this difference into contrast and even apparent opposition. See hereafter, footnote 134.

³² He does, however, in the Essays in Divinity, ed. Jessopp, 17Google Scholar, discuss approvingly Cusa's Cribratio Alcorani.

³³ To suggest that the “metaphysical poet” Donne is anti-intellectual may seem absurd. But see footnote 31.

³⁴ Alford, , The Works, I, 32–33Google Scholar. Note also Donne's remark in The Progress of the Soul, stanza XII: “Arguing is heretics game …; not liberties / Of speech but silence … end heresies.” Cf. Basil, , On the Spirit, XXVIIGoogle Scholar: “The awful dignity of the mysteries is best preserved by silence” (PNF 2, VIII, 42Google Scholar). This view was popularized in Renaissance times, particularly, by Erasmus, who wrote: “God has deliberately hidden some things that we might adore Him in mystic silence.” See Bainton, R. H., Castellio Concerning Heretics (New York, 1935), 32.Google Scholar

³⁵ Alford, , The Works, III, 220.Google Scholar

³⁶ Ibid., III, 84.

³⁷ See Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, I, iiGoogle Scholar; and V, lxvii, especially Hooker's conclusion: “Let it therefore be sufficient for me presenting myself at the Lord's table to know what there I receive from him, without searching or inquiring of the manner how Christ performeth his promise; let disputes and questions, enemies to piety … take their rest.” (V, lxvii, 12.)

³⁸ Alford, , The Works, I, 75.Google Scholar

³⁹ Ibid., I, 157. Donne on two other occasions calls up this doctrine of Luther's (IV, 158; V, 327). In the second instance the quotation given is: Odiosa et exitialis vocula, quare, It is an execrable and damnable monosyllable, why: it exasperates God, ruins us.” These three citations furnish practically the only point of doctrine on which Donne uses Luther as a support.

⁴⁰ Jessopp, , Essays, 54.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Ibid. Referring us to Pico's Heptaplus, Donne goes on to say that there are only two names proper for expressing God's essence: one imposed by us, God; the other taken by God, I AM. The name God signifies as much of God's essence as we can express.

⁴² Alford, , The Works, IV, 220.Google Scholar

⁴³ Ibid., VI, 259.

⁴⁴ Ibid., I, 94.

⁴⁵ Ibid., I, 213.

⁴⁶ Ibid., II, 508.

⁴⁷ Ibid., I, 129.

⁴⁸ Ibid., I, 130.

⁴⁹ Facsimile Text Society Edition (New York, 1930), 21.

⁵⁰ Alford, , The Works, II, 75.Google Scholar

⁵¹ A Valediction: of the Book, lines 28–29.

⁵² Alford, , The Worts, I, 346.Google Scholar

⁵³ Jessopp, , Essays, 49.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Alford, , The Works, I, 207ff.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Ibid., I, 330.

⁵⁶ Ibid., II, 544–45 and 593 (Meditations XI and XX in Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions).

⁵⁷ Ibid., V, 365.

⁵⁸ Ibid., II, 205

⁵⁹ Ibid., I, 95.

⁶⁰ Ibid., VI, 98.

⁶¹ Ibid., II, 248; III, 11; III, 316.

⁶² Ibid., III, 273.

⁶³ Ibid., I, 124.

⁶⁴ Ibid., I, 85.

⁶⁵ Ibid., IV, 585.

⁶⁶ Ibid., I, 134.

⁶⁷ Ibid., I, 507; III, 318; VI, 98.

⁶⁸ Ibid., III, 143–144.

⁶⁹ Ibid., III, 307 and 318–19

⁷⁰ Ibid., I, 544.

⁷¹ Ibid., III, 449.

⁷² Ibid., I, 566ff.

⁷³ Ibid., II, 235.

⁷⁴ Ibid., I, 566.

⁷⁵ Ibid., II, 128; II, 235; IV, 496.

⁷⁶ Ibid., I, 566; II, 135.

⁷⁷ Ibid., II, 266. See also I, 541, where Donne notes that Porphyry is thought by St. Cyril to have established a trinity.

⁷⁸ Ibid., I, 488–89.

⁷⁹ Ibid., IV, 494–95.

⁸⁰ He remarks (Ibid., IV, 309) that we all have dispositions in our spiritual life, and that his appetite carries him upon the Psalms, for a first course, and the Epistles of St. Paul for a second. “For my diet,” he adds, “I have St. Augustine's protestation, that he loved the Book of Psalms, and St. Chrysostom's that he loved St. Paul's Epistles, with a particular devotion. I may have another more particular reason, because they are Scriptures, written in such forms, as I have been most accustomed to; St. Paul's being letters, and David's being poems.”

⁸¹ Ibid., III, 156.

⁸² Ibid., I, 173; III, 135; III, 462: VI, 144. See also II, 480. Donne's source here is a passage prefixed to Psalm 1 in St. Basil's Commentary on the Psalms. (See Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, VIII, xlv–xlviGoogle Scholar). St. Basil stretches orthodoxy a good deal when he says that the book of Psalms “provides for every individual need” and offers a “complete theology.”

⁸³ Ibid., V, 583.

⁸⁴ Ibid., VI, 215.

⁸⁵ Ibid., II, 135. Note also Donne's statement in his Eclogue of 1613: “The heart of man, / Is an epitome of God's great book / Of creatures, and man need no farther look.”

⁸⁶ Jessopp, , Essays, 13–15.Google Scholar

⁸⁷ Ibid., 27.

⁸⁸ Facsimile Text Seciety edition, 57. Italics mine.

⁸⁹ Alford, , The Works, IV, 335.Google Scholar

⁹⁰ Ibid., II, 349.

⁹¹ Ibid., I, 566; IV, 4. Further, Donne holds that the fact of immortality is man's “merely as a natural man, without any consideration of grace” (IV, 527). Donne's claims here exceed those of Aquinas.

⁹² Ibid., II, 354–55.

⁹³ Ibid., I, 416.

⁹⁴ Ibid., II, 336.

⁹⁵ See my Marlowe's “Tamburlaine” (Vanderbilt University Press, 1941), 86–88, 159–161.Google Scholar

⁹⁶ Alford, , The Works, I, 417ffGoogle Scholar. See also II, 135, where Donne says that God sends us first to Nature, which is a “school” then to Scripture, which is a “university.” In The Progress of the Soul, stanza 3, he terms the church a “swimming College;” while in The Second Anniversary, lines 299–301, he speaks of Heaven as the only “school” in which we can directly know all mysteries.

⁹⁷ Those who claim that in this life they are in possession of the beatific vision of God and see Him essentially as He is Donne terms Rome-Pharisees. See Alford, , The Works, II, 372.Google Scholar

⁹⁸ Ibid., I, 411.

⁹⁹ Ibid., I, 421.

¹⁰⁰ Ibid., I, 427.

¹⁰¹ Facsimile Text Society edition, 49.

¹⁰² Alford, , The Works, IV, 534.Google Scholar

¹⁰³ Ibid., IV, 531.

¹⁰⁴ See Ibid., II, 72.

¹⁰⁵ Ibid., IV, 520.

¹⁰⁶ Ibid., I, 419 (Easter Day, 1628); V, 419.

¹⁰⁷ Ibid., I, 123; I, 419.

¹⁰⁸ Ibid., V, 419.

¹⁰⁹ Ibid., III, 375.

¹¹⁰ Ibid., IV, 475.

¹¹¹ Ibid., I, 195.

¹¹² Ibid., III, 119.

¹¹³ Ibid., III, 219.

¹¹⁴ Ibid., III, 374.

¹¹⁵ Ibid., IV, 477.

¹¹⁶ Ibid., III, 119. See also I, 29; I, 157.

¹¹⁷ See Simpson, , A Study of the Prose Works, 81Google Scholar; and Husain, Itrat, The Dogmatic ana Mystical Theology of John Donne (S. P. C. K., 1938), 32.Google Scholar

¹¹⁸ Alford, , The Works, VI, 44.Google Scholar

¹¹⁹ See Husain, , The Dogmatic … Theology, 33.Google Scholar

¹²⁰ Alford, , The Works, VI, 254Google Scholar. Note also Donne's mystical interpretation of miracles: they are “transitory and occasional sacraments, as they are visible signs of invisible grace …; Christ's purpose in every miracle was, that by that work, they should see grace to be offered unto them.” Ibid., III, 119.

¹²¹ Ibid., I, 157; V, 6.

¹²² Ibid., V, 134; IV, 375.

¹²³ Ibid., V, 419.

¹²⁴ Ibid., II, 210; and see Simpson, , A Study of the Prose Works, 79Google Scholar. Note also the touch of mystical interpretation in a quotation drawn from St. Bernard: “I am bishop over no man but myself, I have no larger diocese than my own person” (Alford, , The Works, I, 186).Google Scholar

¹²⁵ Jessopp, , Essays, 125.Google Scholar

¹²⁶ Ibid., 130.

¹²⁷ As Steiner remarks (P. M. L. A., LIV, 397Google Scholar), the “fervent fundamentalism” of Bernard represents a reaction against the Schools.

¹²⁸ Alford, , The Works, I, 185; V, 358.Google Scholar

¹²⁹ Ibid., II, 15.

¹³⁰ Ibid., I, 287; II, 105.

¹³¹ Ibid., V, 25.

¹³² Les Doctrines Médiévales chez Donne (Paris, 1917). See esp. 128.Google Scholar

¹³³ Miss Ramsay ought to have noted carefully what her teacher, M. F. Picavet, says regarding the importance of the Cappadocian Fathers as mediators of Neoplatonism. In Picavet, 's L'Histoire des Rapports de la Theologie et de la Philosophie (Paris, 1889), 10–11Google Scholar, we read: “Saint Basile reproduit dans son ouvrage contre Eunomius, sous le titre de Oratio de Spiritu sancto, plusieurs pages de Plotin ou il se borne à remplacer l' Ame du monde par l'Esprit saint: on a pu recueillir et mettre en parallèle un nombre assez considérable de passages identiques chez Plotin et saint Basile, en leur donnant pour titre Basilius magnus Plotinizans. Saint Grégoire de Nysse se rattache également au néo-platonisme …”

¹³⁴ Thus Donne may be said to have used largely the same sources as were drawn upon by John Scotus Erigena, whom De Wulf has called “the Father of the anti-Scholastics.” Henry Bett, in his study of Erigena (Cambridge University Press, 1925), 160ffGoogle Scholar., lists as the Scot's chief authorities Augustine and Gregory of Nyssa—along with some considerable use, on theological points, of Dionysius the Areopagite, Origen, and Gregory of Nazianzen; and on exegetical points, of Basil, Chrysostom, Ambrose, and Jerome.

Regarding Donne's debt to Augustine's “anti-intellectualism,” see, besides footnotes 31 and 32 above, also Bredvold, Louis I., “The Religious Thought of Donne,” in Studies in Shakespeare, Milton ana Donne (New York, 1925), 219–226Google Scholar, especially the remarks on 224: “He [Donne] belonged to the anti-intellectual tradition of St. Augustine.”

¹³⁵ “Donne in Our Time,” in A Garland for John Donne (Harvard University Press, 1931), 9.Google Scholar

¹³⁶ Alford, , The Works, IV, 3.Google Scholar

¹³⁷ Coffin, Charles Monroe, John Donne ana the New Philosophy (New York, 1937), 247.Google Scholar

¹³⁸ Alford, , The Works, I, 420.Google Scholar

¹³⁹ Ibid., VI, 48.

¹⁴⁰ Ibid., I, 145. When Donne adds that “The Christian religion is of itself a sweet and an easy yoke … all abridged into two words, love God, love thy neighbor,” we realize that his view is pretty much that of Erasmus and the devolio moderna.

¹⁴¹ Ibid., I, 470. Gregory, says Donne, argues as follows: Christ never called Jerusalem the way to heaven; and if Christ never commanded pilgrimage to Jerusalem, I know not what can justify that man that makes himself the rule of religion; furthermore, “there is not only no certain profit, but evident danger to a chaste soul, in the unchaste conversation of those pilgrims.” Actually, Donne is here paraphrasing from a letter “On Pilgrimages,” the authorship of which was disputed in the sixteenth century between Reformers who championed it as offering patristic support for their views and certain Romanist editors who omitted it from their edition of Nyssa's works. The letter has been included by Migne as among Nyssa's writings, and is so translated by the editors of the Post-Nicene Fathers.

¹⁴² See the excellent historical sketch of light-metaphysics by Baeumker, Clemens, Witelo (Mὕnster, 1908), 357–428Google Scholar, in Beiträge z. G. d. P. d. M., III, 2Google Scholar. There is scarcely any trace of light-metaphysics in the early Scholastics, and none in Albertus Magnus and Aquinas; but the tradition flourishes in Augustine, the Areopagite, Erigena, and Bonaventura.

¹⁴³ Alford, , The Works, IV, 534Google Scholar. For further example of light-imagery, see Biathanatos, 153Google Scholar. Here Donne says that the light of the moon represents the “light of Nature,” while the sun is an emblem of the light of the “Word of God.” Men who think they see two or three suns see meteors. The arguments, deductions, and conclusions of men are to be likened to tapers—artificial lights.

³⁴⁴ Alford, , The Works, IV, 395.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁵ Ibid., V, 12.

¹⁴⁶ Ibid., V, 52.

¹⁴⁷ A Funeral Elegy, lines 59–61.

¹⁴⁸ Good Friday, 1613Google Scholar, lines 27–28.

¹⁴⁹ The macrocosm-microcosm comparison appears prominently, e. g., in The First Anniversary, Elegy on the Lady Markham, and Holy Sonnet F. See also Alford, , The Works, I, 572Google Scholar; IV, 528; VI, 159. In this last reference Donne gathers from Gregory Nazianzen a neat reversal of the doctrine: man is properly a mundum magnum, and the world is an abridgement of man!

¹⁵⁰ Jessopp, , Essays, 74Google Scholar. Donne repeats the idea in the poem The Exstasy, when he speaks of “That subtle knot, which makes us man.”

¹⁵¹ Alford, , The Works, I, 260.Google Scholar

¹⁵² Ibid., IV, 527; III, 539 (Devotions, Meditation X). Note the Christian heterodoxy of this Platonic view.

¹⁵³ Ibid., 338; V, 293.

¹⁵⁴ Ibid., II, 414.

¹⁵⁵ Ibid., I, 372.

¹⁵⁶ Ibid., I, 376.

¹⁵⁷ Ibid., I, 338. To this view is probably to be attributed Donne's insistence on “the impurity of my best actions.” There is, he says, “no work, that hath not so much ill mingled with it, as that we need not cry God merey for that work.” Ibid., III, 477.

¹⁵⁸ Ibid., I, 127.

¹⁵⁹ Ibid., IV, 526.

¹⁶⁰ Ibid., IV, 524.

¹⁶¹ Ibid., III, 483.

¹⁶² Ibid., IV, 524; cf. I, 377.

¹⁶³ Ibid., I, 6. Italics mine.

¹⁶⁴ Ibid., I, 502. Cf. Obsequies to the Lora Harrington, lines 105 ff.; also Alford, , The Works, IV, 4Google Scholar: “The body of man was the first point that the foot of God's compass was upon.” The notion of God as the center of a circle, and as furnishing the beginning and end of all circles, is a Neoplatonic doctrine prominent in the writings of Nicholas of Cusa and Marsilius Ficinus. On this point see Lefranc, Abel, “Marguerite de Navarre et le Platonisme de la Renaissance,” in Grands Écrivains Français de la Renaissance (Paris, 1914), 174–181Google Scholar; also Bartlett, Phyllis B., The Poems of George Chapman (Modern Language Association, 1941), 425Google Scholar. Chapman, a contemporary of Donne, frequently describes the perfect or complete life as circular.

¹⁶⁵ Alford, , The Works, IV, 7Google Scholar. For the “sustentation and reparation” of the world, says Donne, God has given marriage. The Romanists are semi-Tatians and semi-Encratites.

¹⁶⁶ At Paul's Cross, Mar. 24, 1616, Alford, , The Works, VI, 126Google Scholar; cf. VI, 225. See also my Marlowe's “Tamburlaine,” 124–26.Google Scholar

¹⁶⁷ Alford, , The Works, I, 140.Google Scholar