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305 John Donne Sermon preached atWhitehall,the first Friday in Lent 1623,published 1640 Jesus wept. John 11:35 I am now but upon the compassion of Christ. There is much difference between his compassion and his Passion, as much as between the men that are to handle them here.1 But lacryma passionis Christi est vicaria:2 a great personage may speak of his Passion, of his blood; my vicarage is to speak of his compassion and his tears. Let me chafe the wax, and melt your souls in a bath of his tears now; let him set to the great seal of his effectual Passion, in his blood, then. It is a common place, I know, to speak of tears; I would you knew as well, it were a common practice to shed them. Though it be not so, yet bring St. Bernard’s patience, Libenter audiam, qui non sibi plausum, sed mihi planctum moveat; be willing to hear him, that seeks not your acclamation to himself, but your humiliation to his and your God; not to make you praise with them that praise, but to make you weep with them that weep, And Jesus wept. The Masorites (the Masorites are the critics upon the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament ) cannot tell us who divided the chapters of the Old Testament into verses; neither can any other tell us who did it in the New Testament. Whoever did it seems to have stopped in an amazement in this text, and by making an entire verse of these two words, Jesus wept, and no more, to intimate that there needs no more for the exalting of our devotion to a competent height than to consider how, and where, and when, and why Jesus wept. There is not a shorter verse in the Bible, nor a larger text. There is another as short: semper gaudete, rejoice evermore, and of that holy joy I may have leave to speak here hereafter more seasonably, in a more festival time, by my ordinary service. This is the season of general compunction, of general mortification, and no man privileged, for Jesus wept. 1 {John Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, preached on Good Friday, 1623; as Lord Keeper, Williams would have borne the Great Seal.} 2 {“A tear serves in place of (vicariously for) Christ’s passion”; from St. Augustine’s Sermo ad fratres xi, PL 40:1254.} Religion in Early Stuart England, 1603–1638 306 In that letter which Lentulus is said to have written to the Senate of Rome, in which he gives some characters of Christ, he says that Christ was never seen to laugh, but to weep often.3 Now in what number he limits his often, or upon what testimony he grounds his number, we know not. We take knowledge that he wept thrice. He wept here, when he mourned with them that mourned for Lazarus; he wept again, when he drew near to Jerusalem and looked upon that city; and he wept a third time in his Passion. There is but one evangelist, but this, St. John, that tells us of these first tears; the rest say nothing of them. There is but one evangelist, St. Luke, that tells us of his second tears; the rest speak not of those. There is no evangelist, but there is an apostle that tells us of his third tears; St. Paul says, that in the days of his flesh, he offered up prayers with strong cries and tears {Hebr. 5:7}; and those tears, expositors of all sides refer to his Passion, though some to his Agony in the Garden, some to his Passion on the Cross; and these, in my opinion, most fitly: because those words of St. Paul belong to the declaration of the priesthood and of the sacrifice of Christ; and for that function of his, the Cross was the altar; and therefore to the Cross we fix those third tears.4 The first were human5 tears, the second were prophetical , the third were pontifical, appertaining to the sacrifice. The first were shed in a condolency of a human and natural calamity fallen upon one family: Lazarus was dead; the second were shed in contemplation of future calamities upon a nation: Jerusalem was to be destroyed; the third, in contemplation of sin, and the everlasting punishments due to sin, and to such sinners as would make no benefit of that sacrifice which he offered in offering himself. His friend was...

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