Devotions vpon emergent occasions and seuerall steps in my sicknes digested into I. Meditations vpon our humane condition, 2. Expostulations, and debatements with God, 3. Prayers, vpon the seuerall occasions, to Him / by Iohn Donne ...

16. MEDITATION.

* 1.1WE haue a Conue∣nient Author, who writ a Discourse of Bells when hee was Prisoner

in Turky. How would hee haue enlarged him∣selfe, if he had beene my fellow Prisoner in this sicke bed, so neere to that steeple, which neuer cea∣ses, no more than the harmony of the spheres, but is more heard. When the Turkes tooke Con∣stantinople, they melted the Bells into Ordnance; I haue heard both Bells and Ordnance, but ne∣uer been so much affe∣cted with those, as with these Bells. I haue lien neere a steeple,* 1.2 in which

there are said to be more than thirty Bels; And neere another, where there is one so bigge,* 1.3 as that the Clapper is said to weigh more than six hundred pound•• yet neuer so affected as here. Here the Bells can scarse so∣lemnise the funerall of any person, but that I knew him, or knew that hee was my Neigh∣bour: we dwelt in hou∣ses neere to one another before, but now hee is gone into that house, into which I must fol∣low

him. There is a way of correcting the Children of great per∣sons, that other Children are corrected in their be∣halfe, and in their names, and this workes vpon them, who indeed had more des••rued it. And when these Bells tell me, that now one, and now another is buried, must not I acknowledge, that they haue the correction due to me, and paid the debt that I owe? There is a story of a Bell in a Monastery,* 1.4 which, when

any of the house was sicke to death, rung al∣waies voluntarily, and they knew the ineuita∣blenesse of the danger by that. It rung once, when no man was sick; but the next day one of the house, fell from the steeple, and died, and the Bell held the reputation of a Prophet still. If these Bells that warne to a Fu∣nerall now, were appro∣priated to none, may not I, by the houre of the fu∣nerall, supply? How ma∣ny men that stand at an

execution, if they would aske, for what dies that Man, should heare their owne faults condem∣ned, and see themselues executed, by Atturney? We scarce heare of any man preferred, but wee thinke of our selues, that wee might very well haue beene that Man; Why might not I haue beene that Man, that is carried to his graue now? Could I ••it my selfe, to stand, or sit in a∣ny Mans place, & not to lie in any mans graue?

I may lacke much of the good parts of the meanest, but I l••cke no∣thing of the mortality of the weakest; Th••y may haue acquired better a∣bilities than I, but I was borne to as many infir∣mities as they. To be an incumbent by lying down in a graue, to be a Doctor by teaching Morti••icati∣on by Example, by dying, though I may haue seni∣ors, others may be elder than I, yet I haue pro∣ceeded apace in a good Vniuersity, and gone a

great way in a little time by the furtherance of a vehement feuer; and whomsoeuer these Bells bring to the ground to day, if hee and I had beene compared yester∣day, perchance I should haue been thought like∣lier to come to this pre∣ferment, then, than he. God hath kept the pow∣er of death in his owne hands, lest any Man should bribe death. If man knew the gaine of death, the ease of death, he would solicite, he would

prouoke death to assist him, by any ••and, which he might vse. But as when men see many of their owne professions preferd, it ministers a hope that that may light vpon them; so when these hourely Bells tell me of so many funerals of men like me, it pre∣sents, if not a desire that it may, yet a comfort whensoeuer mine shall come.

Notes

• * 1.1

  Magius.
• * 1.2

  Antwerp
• * 1.3

  Roan.
• * 1.4

  Roccha.