The necessity and effectuation of a substitutionary atonement was at the foundation of Donne's proclamation of the Gospel of our Savior: "He would not spare, nay he could not spare himself. There was nothing more free, more voluntary, more spontaneous than the death of Christ . . . And behold how that Lord that was God, yet could die, would die, must die for your salvation" [Death's Duel]. Sermon, 25th February 1631, no 192, Selected Prose, Penguin Classics, 1987].

Here is the conclusion of this splendidly dramatic depiction of the saving death of Christ: "Towards noon Pilate gave judgement, and they made such haste to execution, as that by noon he was upon the Cross. There now hangs that sacred body upon the Cross, rebaptised in his own tears and sweat, and embalmed in his own blood alive. There are those bowels of compassion, which are so conspicuous, so manifested, as you may see them through his wounds. There those glorious eyes grew faint in their light: so as the sun ashamed to survive them, departed with his light too. And then the Son of God, who was never from us, and yet had come a new way unto us in assuming our nature, delivers that soul [which was never out of his Father's hands] by a new way, a voluntary emission of it into his Father's hands; for though to this God, our Lord, belong'd these issues of death that considered in his own contract, he must necessarily die, yet at no breach or battery, which they had made upon his sacred body, issued his soul, but emisit (sent forth), he gave up the ghost, and as God breathed a soul into the first Adam, so this second Adam breathed his soul into God, into the hands of God. There we leave you in that blessed dependency, to hang upon him that hangs upon the cross, there bath in his tears, there suck at his wounds, and lie down in peace in his grave, till he vouchsafe you a resurrection, and an ascension into that kingdom, which he has purchased for you, with the inestimable price of his incorruptible blood. Amen" [Op Cit].

In this quotation from the then Dean of St Paul's we enter into a truly visceral intimation of the passion of Christ and receive the invitation to participate, by faith, in the death of the old Adam still lingering within us tilting us always to sin. We die and live through the sacrificial death of Christ in our undeserved stead.

The evidence shows that John Donne spoke freely and frequently on the topic of divine election in his marvelous sermons [0ver sixty times according to one count and always his tone is sensitively pastoral]. Experience teaches that no Arminian speaks spontaneously on the doctrine of election. It is normally in refutation and reaction to it that "free willers" make mention of sovereign grace and electing love, and as a counter move against the plain truth of Holy Scripture they submit what is actually an election of self through the virtue of their own foreseen good decision, with which God merely agrees, and which he simply certifies and rubber stamps in response beforehand, knowing all things future. Election is not a reality to Arminians but rather an embarrassment that is most unwelcome. "George Whitefield said, 'We are all born Arminians.' It is grace that turns us into Calvinists" [Charles Spurgeon].

Writing to a distinguished acquaintance Donne expresses his sincere spiritual desire for his correspondent thus: "Our blessed Savyour establish in you, and multiply to you, the seals of eternall election, and testify his gracious purposes towards you in the next world for ever, by a continuall succession of his outward blessings here, and sweeten your age, by a rectified conscience of having spent your former tyme well and sweeten your transmigration by a modest but yet infallible assurance of a presentation with him. Amen."

The following series of clippings will establish the orthodox and clear Calvinism of John Donne.

"Donne identified in his own way with the conformist Calvinist piety that prevailed in the leadership of the Jacobean Church of England [as it had done in the later Elizabethan church] and that this helps to account for some distinctive elements in what he preached and wrote."
Like all English Protestants (and Calvin) , he regards both Word and sacraments as essential features of the church, but unlike the Laudians and like other Calvinists, he has a 'Word-centered' rather than 'sacrament-centred' view of the church.
As late as Easter Day 1630, Donne tells his St. Paul's congregation that it is not possible for death to hold him, 'because God hath afforded me the marks of his election.' [Earlier in the same sermon Donne mentions Calvin four times.] As frequently in the sermons, Donne in speaking in the first person is modeling a stance that he invites his hearers to share.
Donne nowhere in the sermons rejects or even objects to the doctrine of predestination as such, which he knows is clearly affirmed in positive form in the seventeenth of the church's Thirty-nine Articles. Donne regards those articles as foundational to the church, not matters indifferent . . . far from eschewing the doctrine of election in his sermons, he often refers in positive terms to the elect or election and at one point. . . most likely preached at St. Paul's shortly after Donne was appointed dean there in 1621/22, he publicly rejoices in 'the glorious Doctrine of our Election by God's eternall Predestination [3.377]. I regard Donne as consistent and sincere, not hypocritical, in such affirmations."
Unlike Article 17, Donne specifically acknowledges reprobation by name, but he repeatedly takes a stand against a supralapsarian view of it --the idea that God even before the Fall and without regard to an individual's sin decides on a person's damnation. Donne's view is sub- or
Infralapsarian. Holding the decree of reprobation takes in to account the Fall and individual sin. Far from being an antipredestinarian or even an anti-Calvinist view this was a significant option in English Calvinism of Donne's time. Those who chose it also included the majority at the Synod of Dort, an international gathering of Calvinist church leaders held in the Netherlands in 1618.
Donne agrees with Calvin about the right and wrong ways to attain confidence in one's election. The right way is not to think about the decrees in in themselves, apart from Scripture or experience, but instead 'Look upon God's Decrees, in the execution of those Decrees, and try whether I be within that Decree of Election, or no, by examining my selfe, whether the marks of the Elect be upon me or no, and so I appropriate the wisdom of the Scripture to my selfe'. Identifying the 'marks' of. election is a pastoral response to the apostle Peter's advice to give 'diligence to make your calling and election sure, for if you do these things, ye shall never fall' [2Pet.1:10]. 'We are they, who have seen the marks of [God's] Election, in their first edition, in the Scriptures; And seen them again, in their second edition, as they are imprinted in our consciences, in our faith, in our manners; and so we cannot mistake them, nor be deceived in them [870].
In his final sermon, 'Death's Duell,' delivered at Whitehall before King Charles in 1631, Donne dares to speak of election, although one year earlier Bishop John Davenant had been brought before the Privy Council and rebuked by the Laudian bishops present for doing exactly the same thing -- touching on the forbidden topic of predestination in a sermon before the king! . . Donne may have guarded his language a little, referring to 'adoption' rather than 'election,' but the meaning is unmistakable, reflecting his own clearly predestinarian views, applied as they were intended to be in Article 17. Like Bishop Arthur Lake and Dort delegate Samuel Ward, Donne is a moderate predestinarian, a moderate Calvinist.
Very much unlike the Laudians, Donne views favorably England's participation in the Synod of Dort, a gathering of Calvinist churches.

All quotes Daniel W. Doerksen, Polemist or Pastor, John Donne and the Protestant Reformation, New Perspectives, edited by Mary Arshagouni Papazian, Wayne State University Press, Detroit, pp 12-34.

John Donne is neither Anglo-Catholic nor anyway near to Arminianism. Evangelicals ought to capitalize on the wealth of his Scriptural knowledge and Reformational persuasion. But the tendency, even of Anglican Evangelicals, is to back off from bold and brave theological convictions. [The cause must be the customary imbibition of weak tea.] Until we face up to our constitutional character as Calvinists we shall always be lacking in integrity and divine approval.

Literary scholar John Carey remarks, "Donne, like most of his countrymen, believed that God, before he made the world or any souls put in it, chose some souls for salvation and condemned others to eternal damnation. 'God did elect me, before he did actually create me,' as Donne explains. 'This was the first judgment, before all times'" [John Carey, John Donne, Life, Mind & Art, Faber and Faber, London, 1981, page 241]. This explanation deserves amplification and Carey disagrees with Donne, but the biographer crisply, cogently, and succinctly places the poet/priest in the correct category. John Donne was a Conforming Calvinist of The Church of England without doubt.

Professor Halewood, formerly of the University of Toronto opines, "When Donne is not thus fending off the Puritans, his difference with them on the matter of grace seems slight enough. Indeed, [in the sermon just quoted], while he disallows irresistibility, he allows "infallibility" and seems to mean nothing different by it: grace can deal definitely with the most resistant will. . . ; The theme belongs to Donne as much as to any occupant of a "popular pulpit," and presumably the ears of his audience itched for it as much as the Puritans. And certainly his treatment of it does not consistently give a larger role to human initiative or expand the claim for human merit.

'Without such Grace and such succession of Grace, our Will is so far unable to pre-dispose it self to any good as that we have no interest in our selves, no power to do anything of, or with ourselves, but to our destruction. Miserable man! . . man hath a dram of poison, original sin in an invisible corner, we know not where, and he cannot choose but poison himself and all his actions with that; we are so far from being able to begin without Grace, as when we have the first grace, we cannot proceed to the use of that without more' [ Donne Sermons 1:293].

The Canadian scholar continues, 'He is as precise as Taylor in his use of the nomenclature of Reformation theology. The grace which provokes the faith which leads to justification is preventing or prevenient': Donne remarks, 'no man can prepare that work, no man can begin it, no man can proceed in it of himself. The desire and the actual beginning is from the preventing grace of God'" [Sermons, 2:305] The Poetry of Grace, William H. Halewood, Yale University Press, London, 1972, pp 62-63.

How candid Donne is in stating his fundamental creed. Cannot such candor prevail among current Anglicans as to what our foundational soteriology happens to be? Why do we recoil from stressing it valiantly with unchanging, unimpeachable verity? Does God expect us to put a nervous ban on his revealed truth? Is our judgment better than his as to how he should address us and all mankind from his inspired book we know as the Bible? It is at this point in doctrine that Anglican knees collapse in pathetic unison? We belong to a "cult of compromise". That is why we are seriously hindered in our testimony. We are, in the majority, faithless and feeble. We trim the truth and half truths happen to be lies. Sinful man needs the truth and we owe it to him to commence the pursuit of salvation in an earnest way. Rabbi John Duncan confesses that he began seeking the Lord in earnestness when he was apprised of his total spiritual inability. That is how God works, by humbling human nature and magnifying his greatness. We fear man and flatter him as if the acceptance of salvation is our entitlement and a favor done to a hand-wringing Deity.

Let Donne speak, and may we speak in like pronouncement of Christ's sovereign grace:

" *he will be sure that his name is in the book of life.
*the whole lump of mankind is under the condemnation of Adam's sin, and yet the good purpose of God severs some men from that condemnation.
* We return to thee again, O GOD, with praise and prayer; as for all thy mercies from before minutes began, to this minute, from our Election to this present beam of Sanctification which thou hast shed upon us now.
*I should inquire upon what occasion God elected me, and writ my name in the book of Life, I should sooner be afraid that it were not so, than find a reason why it should be so. [The saint's humility.]
*God did not elect me as a helper, nor create me, nor redeem me, nor convert me, by way of helping me; for he alone did all, and he had no use at all of me. God infuses his first grace, the first way, merely as a Giver; entirely, all himself; but his subsequent graces, as a helper; therefore we call them Auxiliant graces. [Sermons, Selected Prose, Penguin Classics, 1987].

For there can be no escaping the fact that in the Old Testament divine love is absolutely free and unconditioned in its choices; it is directed to one man out of thousands and lays hold on him with jealous exclusiveness despite all his deficiencies. Walther Eichrodt, Old Testament Theology, Volume One, page 286, SCM Press.