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

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Herbert Discussing the Word 159<br />

It is the physical sacrament, the bread and wine, that is able to effect the unification of<br />

body and soul in humanity, and as we will see, it also repairs the relationship between God<br />

and humanity.<br />

For sure when Adam did not know<br />

To sinne; or sinne to smother;<br />

He might to heav’n from Paradise go,<br />

As from one room t’another.<br />

Thou hast restor’d us to this ease<br />

By this thy heav’nly bloud;<br />

Which I can go to, when I please,<br />

And leave th’ earth to their food. (33-40)<br />

It is in the incarnational meal that Herbert now explicitly brings the body back into proper<br />

alignment with the soul, and it also brings us back to the point of an Edenic state in which<br />

we can freely go from heaven to earth, we have our relationship with God restored and we<br />

can walk with him in the cool of the day. 56<br />

This then is what Herbert presents his readers with and how he frames his<br />

discussions with God: they are intimate, because God has intimated himself to Herbert;<br />

they feel human, because Herbert is human, and so was God; they are personal, because<br />

God approaches each believer personally; therefore, Herbert can write from his own<br />

experiences and know that they will apply to all his readers. The poems can be intensely<br />

personal, and yet can be approachable and relatable by those who have never met him, nor<br />

56 Genesis 3.8.

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