Digital Donne: the Online Variorum
The 1654 Prose Letters Letter 11, cont. (p.29) |
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friends, who are of other impressions then you or I in some great circumstances of Re- ligion. You know I never fettered nor im- prisoned the word Religion; not straight- ning it Frierly, ad Religiones factitias, (as the Romans call well their orders of Religi- on) nor immuring it in a Rome, or a Wittemberg, or a Geneva; they are all virtuall beams of one Sun, and wheresoever they finde clay hearts, they harden them, and moulder them into dust; and they entender and mollifie waxen. They are not so con- trary as the North and South Poles; and that they are connaturall pieces of one cir- cle. Religion is Christianity, which being too spirituall to be seen by us, doth there- fore take an apparent body of good life and works, so salvation requires an honest Christian. These are the two Elements, and he which elemented from these, hath the complexion of a good man, and a fit friend. The diseases are, too much intenti- on into indiscreet zeal, and too much remis- nesse and negligence by giving scandall: for [CW: our] |
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