shelbybark

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John Donne:
Poet and Preacher
of Prevenient Grace

This was in Sunday’s bulletin at St. Matthews.

John Donne is one of the standard thinkers of Anglicanism and a former of its ethos. Everywhere Anglicanism exists the name of Donne is respected and admired. His reputation as a poet is enormous and his verse oft quoted, especially at funerals. He is regarded as a great preacher though few would be willing to struggle with his 17th style of oratory. In his own day he had no equal and many critics estimate that he was the finest preacher ever produced by the Anglican Communion. His first biographer, Isaac Walton, called Donne the St. Augustine of Anglicanism, and there are many respects in which this comparison is absolutely valid and true, but it is particularly in his doctrine of divine grace that the former Dean of St. Pauls, London, resembles the former Bishop of Hippo. Evangelicals seem a little suspicious of John Donne and leave it to those of an Anglo-Catholic persuasion to claim him as a forerunner of their movement, but this is entirely without justice. Donne may have been critical of the Puritans over matters of church organization and modes of worship but he was assuredly at one with them in them in his understanding of salvation and man?s utter dependence upon grace. A rediscovery of Donne?s convictions might well help in bringing Anglicanism back to a bold statement of the classical Augustinianism with which it began in the 16th century. It is a sad irony that Anglicanism is associated with weak doctrinal convictions when its history commenced with a strong commitment to the Bible and a clear testimony to the message of salvation by grace alone.