John Donne's strategies for discreet preaching

Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Wntr, 2004 by Marla Hoffman Lunderberg

Donne thus stakes a claim for a powerful position for the court preacher: he experiences court pressures, but is not overwhelmed by them. Such a claim could appear threatening to Donne's royal auditory: the Thirty Years' War which broke out in 1618 introduced too much controversy into pulpit oratory for James's taste, and he began issuing limitations on preaching as early as March 1620, the date of this sermon. (32) Nor was it terribly politic to suggest, as Donne does here, that those preachers who obey their king's command and avoid matters of state are avoiding their responsibilities as prophets of God.

So Donne follows this dangerous material with an immediate change of tone: a compliment to James. He states that "we finde no Amasiah" in James's court and then explains why: "wee are farre from that, because we are far from having a Ieroboam to our king as he had, easie to give eare, easie to give credit to false informations" (Sermons, 2:348). James, in this formulation, is different from the unwise king who discourages clerical honesty. Donne both flatters his sovereign and returns to Solomon's simple distinctions between the wise and the scornful audience. In doing so, he retreats from the complications of these characterizations that had lent strength--perhaps a threatening strength--to his image of the court preacher.

Flattery like this may trouble critics who wish Donne to don the cloak of Amos. In proclaiming the English court free from Amasiah-like preachers, Donne positions himself with Amos behind a logic that seems uncomfortably facile. Yet this kind of forward thrust followed by a quick retreat operates in many of Donne's most political sermon statements. The integrity that he demonstrates in one breath he seems quite willing to modify in the next. He was not alone in using this strategy: Patrick Collinson has described a rhetorical style where court preachers follow a politically critical comment with an immediate "tactical and tactful withdrawal." (33) In this way, preachers were able to voice criticism while reducing the chance that they would be prevented from preaching altogether. Donne does not condone Amasiah's fearfulness, but neither does he advocate the brutal honesty of an unselfconscious Amos. His model for preaching is the discreetly critical preacher--the Amos who overcomes but does not ignore the misgivings of Amasiah.

This passage on Amos and Amasiah illustrates what Donne says about the role of the court preacher while it also shows him at work in the role of preacher. He says that every preacher cannot help but be cognizant of the particular challenges of speaking before the king, but also that he should not be intimidated or silenced by those challenges. He demonstrates one method of preaching honestly but carefully in court: complimenting his monarch at critical moments in his sermon in order to assure him that the preacher's controversial advice is not hostile.

IV

Donne was remarkably successful at this kind of rhetorical strategy--so successful that we fail to notice how often he exercises it. Yet his discretion may be clearest in a sermon where he criticizes--without any known repercussion--several aspects of the lifestyles of King James and Queen Anne, his monarchs in 1617. The sermon is most striking in comparison to the later one (1627) for which Donne was censured by Laud and Charles, an event widely noted by critics. (34) If Donne appeared surprised and anxious at his 1627 censure, it is perhaps helpful to examine one reason for his surprise: the success in 1617 of criticisms very similar to the ones he uttered in 1627.