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Jandy Stone
ENG5330: Metaphysical Poetry and Prose
Dr. Robert Ray
8 December 2006
GEORGE HERBERT’S VIA MEDIA
The personal, devotional nature of much of George Herbert’s poetry belies the
volatile religious climate in which he lived. The seventeenth century was a time of more
religious conflict than almost any other time in history, as the divisions initiated by the
Reformation in 1517 were multiplied many times over, leading eventually to the Thirty
Years War on the European continent and the English Civil War. Yet, despite the fact
that Herbert was prominent in higher education, politics, and the church (through his
offices as orator at Cambridge University, a member of Parliament, and finally a priest in
the Church of England), the poems which make up “The Church,” the largest section of
Herbert’s masterwork “The Temple,” are remarkably devoid of explicit references to the
politically-charged religious controversies (Bell 64). That does not mean, however, that
he was uninfluenced by the atmosphere around him; rather, his poetry confirms him as a
devout Calvinist, faithful Anglican, and a liturgical worshiper. These three things may
seem antithetical from a vantage point three hundred years removed from Herbert’s time,
but in fact, they are not, as a closer examination of the historical and religious time period
will show.
The Lutheran Reformation began in 1517, when Martin Luther’s call for a debate
regarding the practice of selling indulgences, or pardons for one’s loved ones languishing
in purgatory. Luther did not intend to start a new church, but thanks to the newly-
invented printing press, his Ninety-Five Theses against indulgences spread quickly
throughout central Europe, caused his excommunication, and led to the foundation of
Protestantism. Luther’s church, centered in Germany, remained very similar in structure
and liturgy to the Roman Catholic church, but centered its theology on a trio of mottos:
sola fide (faith alone), sola gratia (grace alone), and sola scriptura (scripture alone).
According to Luther, salvation from sin came only through faith, not through works; it
came only by the grace of God, not from any human effort or merit; and it was revealed
only through the Word of God, not through the traditions of the church.
In the early 1520s, Ulrich Zwingli led a further reformation in Zurich,
Switzerland, accepting Luther’s reforms but going beyond them in his rejection of “all
forms of false, external worship” (Benedict 24). Zwingli was against the ceremonialism,
decoration, and iconography of the Roman church; under his leadership, Zurich stripped
its churches of all images, statues, altars, and murals. The most heated debate between
Zwingli and Luther was over theology of the Eucharist: Zwingli held a view of the
Eucharist as purely symbolic, as opposed to Lutheran sacramental union, in which the
physical presence of Christ is added to the essence of the bread and wine—a doctrine
similar though distinct from Roman transubstantiation, in which the bread and wine
actually become the body and blood of Christ. Although both Luther and Zwingli were
reformers, Zwingli’s followers are generally grouped under the title “Reformed,” while
Luther’s remain “Lutheran.”
However, the man most associated with the term “Reformed” is French reformer
John Calvin, who based his ministry in Geneva, Switzerland. Calvin’s two major
contributions to the Reformation were his monumental book of systematic theology The
Institutes of the Christian Faith, and the Reformed community of Geneva. He is most
associated with the doctrine of predestination, which states that God elected specific
individuals to be saved and, therefore, elected others not to be saved. The doctrine was
and is controversial, attacked both for being too harsh (would a loving God offhandedly
condemn people to hell?) and too lax (if human actions mean nothing, what incentive is
there to avoid sin?)—interestingly, it was more common at the time to consider
predestination too permissive rather than too strict (Veith 28). For Calvin, however, it
merely grew out of established tenets of Reformation theology: The idea that God is
sovereign, that he initiates and completes the entire process of salvation, and that man is
unable to contribute to his own salvation. Luther and Zwingli would have held these
positions in common with Calvin (Veith 19), though Luther did disagree with Calvin’s
wording of the predestination doctrine, preferring to concentrate on the saved rather than
the damned. In practice, “Calvin taught predestination as a pastoral-oriented doctrine that
was designed to comfort believers because it assured them that their salvation was not
dependent on their own efforts” (Heinze 175), and thus it was a corollary to the central
doctrine of God’s grace, not a central point in and of itself (Doerksen 14). Regarding the
Eucharist, Calvin took a middle road between Luther and Zwingli. In opposition to
Zwingli, he affirmed that Christ is truly present at the Lord’s Supper, making the meal
much more than just a symbol, but that Christ’s presence is spiritual, not physical, as in
Luther’s understanding (Heinze 176). But concerning church government and the use of
images, Calvin was much closer to Zwingli’s non-hierarchical, iconoclastic views.
This is a very basic outline of the situation in Europe in the sixteenth century.
England had a few twists of its own to add, largely the fact that its reformation was
politically motivated. Henry VIII declared himself head of the English church in 1534
because he wanted to divorce Catherine of Aragon, something the Roman pope would not
grant. However, Henry remained devoted to Catholic theology and liturgy. His son
Edward VI attempted a more theologically-based reformation, but was thwarted by his
short life and his sister Mary’s ardent Catholicism. Many of the leading Protestants in
England who fled the country to escape Mary’s persecutions went to Geneva, bringing
Calvinism back with them when Elizabeth took the throne. Thus, when the English
Reformation truly took hold under Elizabeth, it was thoroughly Calvinist in theology
(Veith 26). However, Elizabeth was more concerned with securing unity within her
kingdom than with theological concerns in and of themselves, and she tended to resist
many of the demands for changes in the church’s structure and liturgy (Graves 247).
Thus Elizabeth’s conscious via media largely consisted of moderate Calvinist theology
combined with Lutheran/Episcopal church government and liturgy. When James I took
the throne in 1603, he similarly disliked extremism on both Catholic and Separatist sides,
seeing them as threats to his own authority, though he allowed for more autonomy in
matters of ceremony.
By the time of George Herbert, the English religious landscape was spread along
several different axes of opposition: theology, church government, and liturgy. It is far
too simplistic to make dichotomous categories of seventeenth-century English religious
thought, such as “Anglican vs Puritan” or “Anglican vs Calvinist.” The only definite
opposition that can be made is “Protestant vs. Roman Catholic.” Any other distinctions
must be careful to note which axis of opposition is under consideration. The question of
church government sets episcopalianism (rule by appointed bishops) against
presbyterianism (rule by elected presbyters) or congregationalism (rule by democratic
vote). The issue of liturgy is between the High Church, which retains much of the liturgy
and ceremonial trappings of Catholicism, and the Low Church, modeled more on
Zwingli’s simple approach to worship and church decorations. Theologically, the Church
of England was during Herbert’s life almost completely Calvinist. This did change
almost at the same time as Herbert’s death due to the influx of Arminianism. Jacobus
Arminius was a Dutch theologian of the late sixteenth century who argued against
Calvin’s doctrine of predestination, claiming that it eliminated free will and personal
responsibility. The Reformed community, including a delegation of Englishmen sent by
James I, officially rejected Arminianism at the Synod of Dort in 1619, but in 1633
William Laud became Archbishop of Canterbury, and brought the Arminianism firmly
into the Anglican church. Laudianism is directly connected with both Arminianism and
High Church liturgy, thus it is all too easy to equate Anglicanism with liturgical worship
and Puritan anti-liturgical worship with Calvinism. Indeed, this is very nearly a true
picture of the religious standpoints at the time of the English Civil War, but for Herbert’s
only slightly earlier time period, there was no problem at all with being a High-Church
Calvinist, and it seems evident from his poetry that this is exactly what he was.
Herbert is especially concerned, as was Calvin, with man’s utter dependence upon
God for salvation, and the humility that must accompany the knowledge of one’s own sin
and the God’s grace. In “Nature,” he affirms first the essential depravity of mankind:
“Full of rebellion, I would die, / Or fight, or travel, or deny / That thou hast ought to do
with me” (1-3). Continuing on, he says that “If thou shalt let this venom lurk” (7),
suggesting that God must proactively removes the venomous sin from him and “engrave
thy rev’rend law and fear” (14) upon his heart—the speaker cannot do it himself. More
specifically, in “Grace,” he denies that his works do him any good: “My stock lies dead,
and no increase / Doth my dull husbandry improve: / O let thy graces without cease /
Drop from above!” (1-4). The poem continues with “Drop from above” as a refrain
reinforcing the speaker’s constant prayerful need for God’s grace. He shows in
“Giddiness” his inability to come to God without God’s intervention: “Lord, mend or
rather make us: one creation / Will not suffice our turn: / Except thou make us daily, we
shall spurn / Our own salvation” (25-29). This passage suggests that it is not enough
merely for God to fix us, as if our raw material was good but minorly flawed; no, we
must be entirely remade, and daily—because we continue to sin daily.
Yet despite Herbert’s deep understanding of his own sin, he, like Calvin, was
quite assured of his salvation. Though he does rebel at times, accusing God of not
listening in “Denial” and striking out against his calling in “The Collar,” he consistently
returns to the security he has in Christ. “Denial” itself ends with the answer to the prayer
it contains, as the last two lines finally rhyme, indicating the final unity between the
speaker and God. In addition to a very real, honest portrayal of the rebellion even a true
Christian sometimes feels against God, “The Collar” clearly shows Calvin’s doctrine of
irresistible grace. Though the speaker is currently unhappy and lashing out at God, when
God calls to him, he cannot help but answer: “But as I raved and grew more fierce and
wild / At every word, / Me thoughts I heard one calling, Child: / And I replied, My Lord”
(35-36). Ultimately, Herbert knows that even in his most disobedient moments, he is still
God’s child, a fact in which he takes comfort. Many other poems show assurance that
God will forgive his sin and bring him to salvation, from “Repentence,” which begins
with the speaker’s confession of his great sin and ends by asserting that “thou wilt sin and
grief destroy” (31), to “Judgement,” which contrasts works-righteousness (“That some
will turn thee to some leaves therein / so void of sin, / That they in merit shall excel” [8-
10]) with the speaker’s reliance upon the substitutionary death of Christ: “And thrust a
Testament into thy hand: / Let that be scanned. / There thou shalt find my faults are
thine” (13-15). Finally, the last poem in The Church leaves no doubt as to Herbert’s
assuredness of salvation. “Love (3)” describes the feast of heaven, which the speaker is
not at first sure he should attend: “yet my soul drew back, / Guilty of dust and sin” (1-2).
But Love (i.e. Christ) draws him in, reassures him that he, Christ, “bore the blame” (15)
and invites him to sit and eat, which he does. In this one poem, Herbert gives us the
sinfulness of man, the proactive and substitutionary death of Christ, and the free gift of
eternal communion with God.
As we see throughout Herbert’s poetry, the Calvinist awareness of sin leads to a
greater appreciation of God’s grace, and the doctrine of predestination and its corollary
perseverance of the saints lead to an assurance of salvation. Gene Edward Veith suggests
that Herbert’s reliance on Calvinist doctrine is that major thing that distinguishes him
from his contemporary and friend John Donne (Veith 34). Donne is fearful of his own
damnation throughout his religious poetry, and he never seems to find lasting assurance
that God will save him—Veith believes this was due to his Armenianism, which kept him
constantly unsure of whether he had done enough to merit salvation. Herbert’s poetry, by
contrast, shows a man deeply aware of his own shortcomings, but fully convinced of his
own salvation through God’s grace. This is essentially the central theme of Calvinism.
Yet though Herbert holds to Calvin’s Reformed theology, he does not follow the
Reformed views on church government and liturgy. The followers of Zwinglian and
Calvinist in terms of church government preferred congregationally-elected leaders,
rather than appointed ones, as in the episcopal system. The Anglican church is episcopal,
meaning it is overseen by appointed bishops. Herbert himself was a churchman near the
end of his life, duly appointed to the position of Rector of Bemerton, and he did not share
the Swiss Reformers’ low view of ceremony and liturgy. Paul Dyck, in an illuminating
consideration of the construction of the poetic The Temple in relation to Herbert’s
rebuilding of the church at Leighton-Bromswald, points out that Herbert specifically
made the reading pew the same height as the pulpit, though generally in Anglican
churches it was lower. The liturgy was performed from the reading pew, the sermon
from the pulpit. The difference in height was meant to emphasize the importance of
preaching, a preference almost universal in Protestant circles both as an affirmation of the
centrality of Biblical exposition as well as a denial of Roman Catholic ceremonialism.
Herbert deliberately equalized the two, choosing in liturgical matters a middle road
between Rome and Geneva.
His respect for the physical church building can be seen in the series of poems
beginning with “Church-Monuments,” which show how the building itself and a person’s
movement through it can be beneficial for the devotional process. “Church-Monuments”
shows the proper use of burial monuments, not to increase the status or secure the
memory of the deceased, but as a reminder of man’s mortality. “Church-Music,” far
from eschewing the use of music in worship, as some of the more radical branches of the
Reformation did, celebrates the ability of sacred music to bring the worshipper directly
into the presence of God: “But if I travel in your company, / You know the way to
heaven’s door” (11-12). And “The Church-Floor” sees the very tenets of Reformed
spirituality (patience, humility, confidence, and charity) symbolically displayed in the
physical properties of the floor of the church. The “Church-” series of poems shows that
there can be something instructive about church decoration, and that the sort of complete
iconoclasm that Zwingli performed in Zurich may have, in fact, destroyed something of
value to the Christian life. In “The Priesthood,” Herbert implicitly accepts the
appropriateness of the Episcopal form of government while also recognizing that no man
is worthy to be a priest of God, except by God’s grace. And in “The Holy Communion,”
he points out that it is not “in rich furniture, or fine array, / Nor in a wedge of gold” (1-2)
that Christ comes to us, but in a meal, and even that meal comes only by grace (19).
Throughout his poems, Herbert balances a respect for the contributions to liturgy and
beauty inherited from the Roman Catholics with an understanding that the ceremonial
elements are only valuable so far as they draw the worshipper closer to God. All of these
poems, though dealing with public acts of worship in public places, are very focused on
the individual’s experience of grace. They are truly Reformed theologically, but do not
throw the Catholic baby out with the bathwater, so to speak, as some of the more
reactionary branches of the Reformation did.
One of Herbert’s most seemingly anti-ceremony poems, “Sion,” suggests in its
opening stanzas a dichotomy between ceremonial and plain worship styles: “Yet all this
glory, all this pomp and state / Did not affect thee much, was not thy aim” (7-8).
However, when we reach the bottom of the poem, it is not really a simpler worship style
being contrasted with the ornate carvings and gold inlays of Solomon’s temple, but the
groans and heartfelt pleas of the people. The differentiation Herbert is making is between
an “inner devotion against an outward devotion that is an end in itself. For the person
committed to keeping external forms, the danger always exists of relying upon those
forms rather than upon their end” (Dyck 240). The outward beauty of Solomon’s temple
was not a bad thing in and of itself, but it must not be the aim. Finally, “The British
Church” sums up Herbert’s liturgical position, preferring the middle way of Anglicanism
to either the completely externalized “wanton” worship of Rome or the too-plain worship
style of Geneva/Zurich. The important thing to note about “The British Church” is that it
is concerned not with theology per se, but with adornment of churches and forms of
worship (Veith 30).
Herbert’s combination of Calvinist theology, centered on the grace of God, and an
appreciation for a ceremonial liturgy is a healthy, tolerant one. He clearly sets himself
against Rome both liturgically (“The British Church”) and doctrinally (“To All Angels
and Saints”), but he is not reactionary even toward Rome. In “Anagram,” he reveres
Mary for her role in the birth of Christ, but he refuses to pray to her in “To All Angels
and Saints.” Though the Church of England may have been “but halfly reformed”
according to the sixteenth-century reformers who desired to implement Calvin and
Zwingli’s liturgical reforms as well as their theology, the poetry of George Herbert shows
it is actually possible to hold a Reformed view of the personal relationship between man
and God and still value the beauty and tradition of liturgical forms of worship.
WORKS CITED
Bell, Ilona. “George Herbert and the English Reformation.” Essential Articles for the
Study of George Herbert. Hamden, Conn: Archon Books, 1979. 63-83.
Benedict, Philip. Christ's Churches Purely Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism.
New Haven [Conn.]: Yale University Press, 2002.
Doelman, James. King James I and the Religious Culture of England. Cambridge: D.S.
Brewer, 2000.
Doerksen, Daniel W. and Christopher Hodgkins. “Introduction.” Centered on the Word:
Literature, Scripture, and the Tudor-Stuart Middle Way. Newark: University of
Delaware Press, 2004. 13-27.
Dyck, Paul. “Locating the Word: The Textual Church and George Herbert's Temple.”
Centered on the Word: Literature, Scripture, and the Tudor-Stuart Middle Way.
Ed. Daniel W. Doerksen and Christopher Hodgkins. Newark: University of
Delaware Press, 2004. 224-244.
Graves, Michael A. R. Revolution, Reaction, and the Triumph of Conservatism: English
History, 1558-1700. Auckland, N.Z: Longman Paul, 1984.
Heinze, Rudolph W. Reform and Conflict: From the Medieval World to the Warsof
Religion, A.D. 1350-1648. Grand Rapids, Mich: Baker Books, 2005.
Janz, Denis R., ed. A Reformation Reader: Primary Texts with Introductions.
Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1999.
Spurr, John. The Post-Reformation: Religion, Politics and Society in Britain, 1603-1714.
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Veith, Gene Edward. Reformation Spirituality: The Religion of George Herbert. London:
Associated University Presses, 1985.