Page 322. Holy Sonnets.
The MSS. of these sonnets evidently fall into two groups: (1) B, O'F, S96, W: of which W is by far the fullest and most correct representative. (2) A18, D, H49, N, TCC, TCD. I have kept the order in which they are given in the editions 1635 to 1669, but indicated the order of the other groups, and added at the close the three sonnets contained only in W. I cannot find a definite significance in any order, otherwise I should have followed that of W as the fullest and presumably the most authoritative. Each sonnet is a separate meditation or ejaculation.
Page 323, III. 7. That sufferance was my sinne; now I repent: I have followed the punctuation and order of B, W, because it shows a little more clearly what is (I think) the correct construction. As printed in 1635-69,
That sufferance was my sinne I now repent,
the clause 'That sufferance was' &c. is a noun clause subject to 'repent'. But the two clauses are co-ordinates and 'That' is a demonstrative pronoun. 'That suffering' (of which he has spoken in the six preceding lines) 'was my sin. Now I repent. Because I did suffer the pains of love, I must now suffer those of remorse.'
Page 324, V. 11. have burnt it heretofore. Donne uses 'heretofore' not infrequently in the sense of 'hitherto', and this seems to be implied in 'Let their flames retire'. I have therefore preferred the perfect tense of the MSS. to the preterite of the editions. The 'hath' of O'F is a change made in the supposed interests of grammar, if not used as a plural form, for 'their flames' implies that the fires of lust and of envy are distinguished. In speaking of the first Donne thinks mainly of his youth, of the latter he has in memory his years of suitorship at Court.
VI. 7, note. Or presently, I know not, see that Face. This line, which occurs in several independent MSS., is doubtless Donne's, but the reading of the text is probably his own emendation. The first form of the line suggested too distinctly a not approved, or even heretical, doctrine to which Donne refers more than once in his sermons: 'So Audivimus, et ab Antiquis, We have heard, and heard by them of old, That in how good state soever they dye yet the souls of the departed do not see the face of God, nor enjoy his presence, till the day of Judgement; This we have heard, and from so many of them of old, as that the voyce of that part is louder, then of the other. And amongst those reverend and blessed Fathers, which straied into these errors, some were hearers and Disciples of the Apostles themselves, as Papias was a disciple of S. John and yet Papias was a Millenarian, and expected his thousand yeares prosperity upon the earth after the Resurrection: some of them were Disciples of the Apostles, and some of them were better men then the Apostles, for they were Bishops of Rome; Clement was so: and yet Clement was one of them, who denied the fruition of the sight of God, by the Saints, till the Judgement.' Sermons 80. 73. 739-40.
There are two not strictly orthodox opinions to which Donne seems to have leant: (1) this, perhaps a remnant of his belief in Purgatory, the theory of a state of preparation, in this doctrine applied even to the saints; (2) a form of the doctrine now called 'Conditional Immortality'. See note on Letter To the Countesse of Bedford, p. [196], l. 58.
Page 325, VII. 6. dearth. This reading of the Westmoreland MS. is surely right notwithstanding the consensus of the editions and other MSS. in reading 'death'. The poet is enumerating various modes in which death comes; death itself cannot be one of these. The 'death' in l. 8 perhaps explains the error; it certainly makes the error more obvious.
VIII. 7. in us, not immediately. I have interjected a comma after 'us' in order to bring out distinctly the Scholastic doctrine of Angelic knowledge on which this sonnet turns. See note on The Dreame with the quotation from Aquinas. What Donne says here is: 'If our minds or thoughts are known to the saints in heaven as to angels, not immediately, but by circumstances and signs (such as blushing or a quickened pulsation) which are apparent in us, how shall the sincerity of my grief be known to them, since these signs are found in lovers, conjurers and pharisees?' 'Deo tantum sunt naturaliter cognitae cogitationes cordium.' 'God alone who put grief in my heart knows its sincerity.'