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DEVOTIONS UPON EMERGENT OCCASIONS by John Donne IV. MEDICUSQUE VOCATUR. The physician is sent for.
Meditation.
IT is too little to call man a little world; except God, man is a diminutive to
nothing. Man consists of more pieces, more parts, than the world; than the
world doth, nay, than the world is. And if those pieces were extended, and
stretched out in man as they are in the world, man would be the giant, and the
world the dwarf; the world but the map, and the man the world. If all the veins
in our bodies were extended to rivers, and all the sinews to veins of mines,
and all the muscles that lie upon one another, to hills, and all the bones to
quarries of stones, and all the other pieces to the proportion of those which
correspond to them in the world, the air would be too little for this orb of
man to move in, the firmament would be but enough for this star; for, as the
whole world hath nothing, to which something in man doth not answer, so hath
man many pieces of which the whole world hath no representation. Enlarge this
meditation upon this great world, man, so far as to consider the immensity of
the creatures this world produces; our creatures are our thoughts, creatures
that are born giants; that reach from east to west, from earth to heaven; that
do not only bestride all the sea and land, but span the sun and firmament at
once; my thoughts reach all, comprehend all. Inexplicable mystery; I their
creator am in a close prison, in a sick bed, any where, and any one of my
creatures, my thoughts, is with the sun, and beyond the sun, overtakes the sun,
and overgoes the sun in one pace, one step, everywhere. And then, as the other
world produces serpents and vipers, malignant and venomous creatures, and worms
and caterpillars, that endeavour to devour that world which produces them, and
monsters compiled and complicated of divers parents and kinds; so this world,
ourselves, produces all these in us, in producing diseases, and sicknesses of
all those sorts: venomous and infectious diseases, feeding and consuming
diseases, and manifold and entangled diseases made up of many several ones. And
can the other world name so many venomous, so many consuming, so many monstrous
creatures, as we can diseases of all these kinds? O miserable abundance, O
beggarly riches! how much do we lack of having remedies for every disease, when
as yet we have not names for them? But we have a Hercules against these giants,
these monsters; that is, the physician; he musters up all the forces of the
other world to succour this, all nature to relieve man. We have the physician,
but we are not the physician. Here we shrink in our proportion, sink in our
dignity, in respect of very mean creatures, who are physicians to themselves.
The hart that is pursued and wounded, they say, knows an herb, which being
eaten throws off the arrow: a strange kind of vomit. The dog that pursues it,
though he be subject to sickness, even proverbially, knows his grass that
recovers him. And it may be true, that the drugger is as near to man as to
other creatures; it may be that obvious and present simples, easy to be had,
would cure him; but the apothecary is not so near him, nor the physician so
near him, as they two are to other creatures; man hath not that innate
instinct, to apply those natural medicines to his present danger, as those
inferior creatures have; he is not his own apothecary, his own physician, as
they are. Call back therefore thy meditation again, and bring it down: what's
become of man's great extent and proportion, when himself shrinks himself and
consumes himself to a handful of dust; what's become of his soaring thoughts,
his compassing thoughts, when himself brings himself to the ignorance, to the
thoughtlessness, of the grave? His diseases are his own, but the physician is
not; he hath them at home, but he must send for the physician.
Expostulation.
I HAVE not the righteousness of Job, but I have the desire of Job: I would
speak to the Almighty, and I would reason with God.28
My God, my God, how soon wouldst thou have me go to the physician, and how far
wouldst thou have me go with the physician? I know thou hast made the matter,
and the man, and the art; and I go not from thee when I go to the physician.
Thou didst not make clothes before there was a shame of the nakedness of the
body, but thou didst make physic before there was any grudging of any sickness;
for thou didst imprint a medicinal virtue in many simples, even from the
beginning; didst thou mean that we should be sick when thou didst so? when thou
madest them? No more than thou didst mean, that we should sin, when thou madest
us: thou foresawest both, but causedst neither. Thou, Lord, promisest here
trees, whose fruit shall be for meat, and their leaves for medicine.29 It is the voice of thy Son, Wilt thou be made whole?30 that draws from the patient a confession that he was
ill, and could not make himself well. And it is thine own voice, Is there no
physician?31 that inclines us, disposes us, to accept
thine ordinance. And it is the voice of the wise man, both for the matter,
physic itself, The Lord hath created medicines out of the earth, and he that
is wise shall not abhor them,32 and for the art, and
the person, the physician cutteth off a long disease. In all these voices thou
sendest us to those helps which thou hast afforded us in that. But wilt not
thou avow that voice too, He that hath sinned against his Maker, let him
fall into the hands of the physician;33 and wilt not
thou afford me an understanding of those words? Thou, who sendest us for a
blessing to the physician, dost not make it a curse to us to go when thou
sendest. Is not the curse rather in this, that only he falls into the hands of
the physician, that casts himself wholly, entirely upon the physician, confides
in him, relies upon him, attends all from him, and neglects that spiritual
physic which thou also hast instituted in thy church. So to fall into the hands
of the physician is a sin, and a punishment of former sins; so, as Asa fell,
who in his disease sought not to the Lord, but to the physician.34 Reveal therefore to me thy method, O Lord, and see
whether I have followed it; that thou mayest have glory, if I have, and I
pardon, if I have not, and help that I may. Thy method is, In time of thy
sickness, be not negligent: wherein wilt thou have my diligence expressed?
Pray unto the Lord, and he will make thee whole.35
O Lord, I do; I pray, and pray thy servant David's prayer, Have mercy upon
me, O Lord, for I am weak; heal me, O Lord, for my bones are vexed:36 I know that even my weakness is a reason, a motive,
to induce thy mercy, and my sickness an occasion of thy sending health. When
art thou so ready, when is it so seasonable to thee, to commiserate, as in
misery? But is prayer for health in season, as soon as I am sick? Thy method
goes further: Leave off from sin, and order thy hands aright, and cleanse
thy heart from all wickedness.37 Have I, O Lord, done
so? O Lord, I have; by thy grace, I am come to a holy detestation of my former
sin. Is there any more? In thy method there is more: Give a sweet savour,
and a memorial of fine flour, and make a fat offering, as not being.38 And, Lord, by thy grace, I have done that, sacrificed
a little of that little which thou lentest me, to them for whom thou lentest
it: and now in thy method, and by thy steps, I am come to that, Then give
place to the physician, for the Lord hath created him; let him not go from
thee, for thou hast need of him.39 I send for the
physician, but I will hear him enter with those words of Peter, Jesus Christ
maketh thee whole;40 I long for his presence, but I
look that the power of the Lord should be present to heal me.41
Prayer.
O MOST mighty and most merciful God, who art so the God of health and strength,
as that without thee all health is but the fuel, and all strength but the
bellows of sin; behold me under the vehemence of two diseases, and under the
necessity of two physicians, authorized by thee, the bodily, and the spiritual
physician. I come to both as to thine ordinance, and bless and glorify thy name
that, in both cases, thou hast afforded help to man by the ministry of man.
Even in the new Jerusalem, in heaven itself, it hath pleased thee to discover a
tree, which is a tree of life there, but the leaves thereof are for the
healing of the nations.42 Life itself is with thee
there, for thou art life; and all kinds of health, wrought upon us here by
thine instruments, descend from thence. Thou wouldst have healed Babylon,
but she is not healed.43 Take from me, O Lord, her
perverseness, her wilfulness, her refractoriness, and hear thy Spirit saying in
my soul: Heal me, O Lord, for I would be healed. Ephraim saw his sickness,
and Judah his wound; then went Ephraim to the Assyrian, and sent to King Jareb,
yet could not he heal you, nor cure you of your wound.44 Keep me back, O Lord, from them who misprofess arts of
healing the soul, or of the body, by means not imprinted by thee in the church
for the soul, or not in nature for the body. There is no spiritual health to be
had by superstition, nor bodily by witchcraft; thou, Lord, and only thou, art
Lord of both. Thou in thyself art Lord of both, and thou in thy Son art the
physician, the applier of both. With his stripes we are healed,45 says the prophet there; there, before he was scourged, we
were healed with his stripes; how much more shall I be healed now, now when
that which he hath already suffered actually is actually and effectually
applied to me? Is there any thing incurable, upon which that balm drops? Any
vein so empty as that that blood cannot fill it? Thou promisest to heal the
earth,46 but it is when the inhabitants of the earth
pray that thou wouldst heal it. Thou promisest to heal their waters, but
their miry places and standing waters, thou sayest there, thou wilt
not heal.47 My returning to any sin, if I should
return to the ability of sinning over all my sins again, thou wouldst not
pardon. Heal this earth, O my God, by repentant tears, and heal these waters,
these tears, from all bitterness, from all diffidence, from all dejection, by
establishing my irremovable assurance in thee. Thy Son went about healing
all manner of sickness.48 (No disease incurable, none
difficult; he healed them in passing). Virtue went out of him, and he healed
all,49 all the multitude (no person incurable), he
healed them every whit50 (as himself speaks), he
left no relics of the disease; and will this universal physician pass by this
hospital, and not visit me? not heal me? not heal me wholly? Lord, I look not
that thou shouldst say by thy messenger to me, as to Hezekiah, Behold, I
will heal thee, and on the third day thou shalt go up to the house of the
Lord.51 I look not that thou shouldst say to me, as
to Moses in Miriam's behalf, when Moses would have had her healed presently,
If her father had but spit in her face, should she not have been ashamed
seven days? Let her be shut up seven days, and then return;52 but if thou be pleased to multiply seven days (and
seven is infinite) by the number of my sins (and that is more infinite), if
this day must remove me till days shall be no more, seal to me my spiritual
health, in affording me the seals of thy church; and for my temporal health,
prosper thine ordinance, in their hands who shall assist in this sickness, in
that manner, and in that measure, as may most glorify thee, and most edify
those who observe the issues of thy servants, to their own spiritual benefit.
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