Devotions/Meditation 6

by John Donne

VI. Metuit.

The Physician is afraid.

VI. MEDITATION.

I OBSERVE the physician with the same diligence as he the disease; I see he fears, and I fear with him; I overtake him, I overrun him in his fear, and I go the faster, because he makes his pace slow; I fear the more because he disguises his fear, and I see it with the more sharpness because he would not have me see it. He knows that his fear shall not disorder the practice and exercise of his art, but he knows that my fear may disorder the effect and working of his practice. As the ill affections of the spleen complicate and mingle themselves with every infirmity of the body, so doth fear insinuate itself in every action or passion of the mind; and as wind in the body will counterfeit any disease, and seem the stone, and seem the gout, so fear will counterfeit any disease of the mind. It shall seem love, a love of having; and it is but a fear, a jealous and suspicious fear of losing. It shall scem valour in despising and undervaluing danger; and it is but fear in an overvaluing of opinion and estimation, and a fear of losing that. A man that is not afraid of a lion is afraid of a cat; not afraid of starving, and yet is afraid of some joint of meat at the table, presented to feed him; not afraid of the sound of drums, and trumpets, and shot, and those which they seek to drown, the last cries of men, and is afraid of some particular harmonious instrument; so much afraid as that with any of these the enemy might drive this man, otherwise valiant enough, out of the field. I know not what fear is, nor I know not what it is that I fear now; I fear not the hastening of my death, and yet I do fear the increase of the disease; I should belie nature if I should deny that I feared this; and if I should say that I feared death, I should belie God. My weakness is from nature, who hath but her measure; my strength is from God, who possesses and distributes infinitely. As then every cold air is not a damp, every shivering is not a stupefaction; so every fear is not a fearfulness, every declination is not a running away, every debating is not a resolving, every wish that it were not thus, is not a murmuring nor a dejection though it be thus; but as my physician's fear puts not him from his practice, neither doth mine put me from receiving from God, and man, and myself, spiritual and civil and moral assistances and consolations.

VI. EXPOSTULATION.

MY God, my God, I find in thy book that fear is a stifling spirit, a spirit of suffocation; that Lshbosheth could not speck, nor reply in his oun defence to Abner, because he was afraid^[1]. It was thy servant Job's case too, who, before he could say any thing to thee, says of thee, Let him take his rod away from me, and let not his fear terrify me, then would I spealk with him, and not fear him; but it's not so with me^[2]. Shall afear of thee takeaway my devotion to thee 7 Dost thou command me to speak to thee, and command me to fear thee; and do these destroy one another? There is no perplexity in thee, my God; no inextricableness in thee, my light and my clearness, my sun and my moon, that directest me as well in the night of adversity and fear, as in my day of prosperity and confidence. I must then speak to thce at all times, but when must I fear thee? At all times too. When didst thou rebuke any petitioner with the name of importunate? Thou hast proposed to us a parable of a judge^[3] that did justice at last, because the client was importunate, and troubled him; but thou hast told us plainly, that thy use in that parable was not that thou wast troubled with our importunities, but (as thou sayest there) that we should always pray. And to the same purpose thou proposest another^[4], that if I press my friend, when he is in bed at midnight, to lend me bread, though he will not rise because I am his friend, yet because of mine importunity he will. God will do this whensoever thou askest, and never call it importunity. Pray in thy bed at midnight, and God will not say, I will hear thee tomorrow upon thy knees, at thy bedside; pray upon thy knees there then, and God will not say, I will hear thee on Sunday at church; God is no dilatory God, no froward God; prayer is never unseasonable, God is never asleep nor absent. But, O my God, can I do this, and fear thee; come to thee, and speak to thee, in all places, at all hours, and fear thee? Dare I ask this question? There is more boldness in the question than in the coming; I may do it though I fear thee; I cannot do it except I fear thee. So well hast thou provided that we should always fear thee, as that thou hast provided that we should fear no person but thee, nothing but thee; no men? No. Whom? The Lord is my help and my salvation, whom shall I fear^[5]? Great enemies? Not great enemies, for no enemies are great to them that fear thee. Flear not the people of this land, for they are bread to you^[6]: they shall not only not eat us, not eat our bread, but they shall be our bread. Why should we fear them? But for all this metaphorical bread, victory over enemies that thought to devour us, may we not fear, that we may lack bread literally? And fear famine, though we fear not enemies? Young lions do lack, and suffer hunger, but they that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing^[7]. Never? Though it be well with them at onec time, may they not fear that it may be worse? Wherefore should I Sear in the days of evil^[8]? says thy servant David. Though his own sin had made them evil, he feared them not. No? not if this evil determine in death? Not though in a death; not though in a death inflicted by violence, by malice, by our own desert; fear not the sentence of death^[9], if thou fear God. Thou art, O my God, so far from admitting us, that fear thee, to fear others, as that thou makest others to fear us; as Herod feared John, because he was a holy and a Just man, and observed him^[10]. How fully then, O my abundant God, how gently, O my sweet, my easy God, dost thou unentangle me in any scruple arising out of the consideration of thls my fear! Is not this that which thou intendest, when thou sayest, The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him^[11]; the secret, the mystery of the right use of fear. Dost thou not mean this when thou sayest, we shall understand the Sear of the Lord^[12]? Have it, and have benefit by it; have it, and stand under it; be directed by it, and not be dejected with it. And dost thou not propose that church for our example, when thou sayest, the church of Judea walked in the fear of God^[13]; they had it, but did not sit down lazily, nor fall down weakly, nor sink under it. There is a fear which weakens men in the service of God. Adam was afraid, because he was naked^[14]. They who have put off thee are a prey to all. They may fear, for thow wilt laugh when their fear comes upon them, as thou hast told them more than once^[15]. And thou wilt make them fear where no cause of fear is, as thou hast told them more than once too^[16]. There is a fear that is a punishment of former wickednesses, and induces more. Though some said of thy Son, Christ Jesus, that he was a good man, yet no man spake openly, for fear of the Jews. Joseph was his disciple, but secretly, for fear of the Jews^[17]. The disciples kept some meetings, but with doors shut for fear of the Jews. O my God, thou givest us fear for ballast to carry us steadily in all weathers. But thou wouldst ballast us with such sand as should have gold in it, with that fear which is thy fear; for the fear of the Lord is his treasure^[18]. He that hath that, lacks nothing that man can have, nothing that God does give. Timorous men thou rebukest: Why are ye fearful, O ye of little failth^[19]? Such thou dismissest from thy service with scorn, though of them there went from Gideon's army twenty-two thousand, and remained but ten thousand^[20]. Such thou sendest farther than so; thither from whence they never return: The fearful, and the unbeliering, wto that burning lake which is a second death^[21]. There is a fear, and there is a hope, which are equal abominations to thee; for they were confounded, because they hoped^[22], says thy servant Job; because they had misplaced, miscentred their hopes; they hoped, and not in thee, and such shall fear, and not fear thee. Bat in thy fear, my God, and my fear, my God, and my hope, is hope, and love, and confidence, and peace, and every limb and ingredient of happiness enwrapped; for joy includes all, and fear and joy consist together, nay, constitute one another. 7he women departed from the sepulchre^[23], the women who were made supernumerary apostles, apostles to the apostles; mothers of the church, and of the fathers, grandfathers of the church, the apostles themselves; the women, angels of the resurrection, went from the sepulchre with fear and joy; they ran, says the text, and they ran upon those two legs, fear and joy; and both was the right leg: they joy in thee, O Lord, that fear thee, and fear thee only, who feel this joy in thee. Nay, thy fear and thy love are inseparable, still we are called upon, in infinite places, to fear God; yet the commandment, which is the root of all, is, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God; he doeth neither that doeth not both; he omits neither, that does one. Therefore when thy servant David had said that the fear of the Lord's the beginning of wisdom^[24], and his son had repeated it again^[25], he that collects both calls this fear the root of wisdom; and, that it may embrace all, he calls it wisdom itself^[26], A wise man, therefore, is never without it, never without the exercise of it: therefore thou sentest Moses to thy people, that they might learn to fear thee all the days of their lives^[27], not in heavy and calamitous, but in good and cheerful days too; for Noah, who had assurance of his deliverance, yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark, for the saving of his house^[28]. Awise man will fear in every thing^[29]. And therefore, though I pretend to no other degree of wisdom, I am abundantly rich in this, that I lie here possessed with that fear which is thy fear, both that this sickness is thy immediate correction, and not merely a natural accident, and therefore fearful, because it is a fearful thing to fall into thy hands; and that this fear preserves me from all inordinate fear, arising out of the infirmity of nature, because thy hand being upon me, thou wilt never let me fall out of thy hand.

VI. PRAYER.

O MOST mighty God and merciful God, the God of all true sorrow, and true joy too, of all fear, and of all hope too, as thou hast given me a repentance, not to be repented of, so give me, O Lord, a fear, of which I may not be afraid. Give me tender and supple and conformable affections, that as I joy with them that joy, and mourn with them that mourn, so I may fear with them that fear. And since thou hast vouchsafed to discover to me, in his fear whom thou hast admitted to be my assistance in this sickness, that there is danger therein, let me not, O Lord, go about to overcome the sense of that fear, so far, as to pretermit the fitting and preparing of myself for the worst that may be feared, the passage out of this life. Many of thy blessed martyrs have passed out of this life, without any show of fear; but thy most blessed Son himself did not so. ~ Thy martyrs were known to be but men, and therefore it pleased thee to fill them with thy Spirit and thy power, in that they did more than men; thy Son was declared by thee, and by himself, to be God; and it was requisite that he should declare himself to be man also, in the weaknesses of man. Let me not therefore, O my God, be ashamed of these fears, but let me feel them to determine, where his fear did, in a present submitting of all to thy will. And when thou shalt have inflamed and thawed my former coldnesses and indevotions with these heats, and quenched my former heats with these sweats and inundations, and rectified my former presumptions and negligences with these fears, be pleased, O Lord, as one made so by thee, to think me fit for thee; and whether it be thy pleasure to dispose of this body, this garment, so as to put it to a farther wearing in this world, or to lay it up in the common wardrobe, the grave, for the next, glorify thyself in thy choice now, and glorify it then, with that glory, which thy Son, our Saviour, Christ Jesus, hath purchased for them, whom thou makest partakers of his resurrection. Amen.

1. 2 Sam. iii. 11.
2. Job, ix. 34.
3. Luke, xviii. 1.
4. Luke, xi. 5.
5. Psalm xxvii. 1.
6. Num. xiv. 9.
7. Psalm xxxv. 70.
8. Psalm xlix. 5.
9. Ecclus. xli. 3.
10. Mark, vi. 20.
11. Psalm xxv. 14.
12. Prov. ii. 5.
13. Acts, ix. 31.
14. Gen. iii. 10.
15. Prov. i. 26; x. 24.
16. Psalm xiv. 5; liii. 5.
17. John, vii. 13; xix. 38; xxix. 19.
18. Isaiah, xxxiii. 6.
19. Matt. viii. 26.
20. Judges, vii. 3.
21. Rev. xxi. 8.
22. Job, vi. 20.
23. Matt. xxviii. 8.
24. Psalm cxi. 10.
25. Prov. i. 7.
26. Ecclus. i. 20, 27.
27. Deut. iv. 10.
28. Heb. xi. 7.
29. Ecclus. xviii. 27.