Jesse Sharpe PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText ...

Herbert Discussing the Word 143
For by thy death I die for thee. (5-8)
He wants to be free. He wants the gift of innocence, but he simply cannot accept it yet, so
his anger is stirred, and he turns on God in the third stanza:
Ah! Was it not enough that thou
By thy eternall glorie didst outgo me?
Couldst thou not griefs sad conquests me allow,
But in all vict’ries overthrow me? (9-12)
He is indeed overwhelmed. After allowing Jesus the opportunity to express how difficult
it was to die for humanity, Herbert cannot move past, nor surpass, this moment of divine
love and grace, and he is haunted by it, and his book becomes haunted by it, and this
becomes the dialogue upon which the rest of The Church turns, and as ‘The Reprisal’ ends,
we also see how The Church as a whole will end. Herbert will rage and complain and cry
out and object, but in the end, he always recognises the futility of all these actions. He
accepts that the only response to the overwhelming weight of ‘The Sacrifice’ is
submission, and through this submission, he is brought into Christ, into the Incarnation,
and he can then be with God and know peace, know rest. And so it is in the last stanza that
we read
Yet by confession will I come
Into the conquest. Though I can do nought
Against thee, in thee I will overcome
The man, who once against thee fought. (13-16)