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

Introduction 10
Although Andrewes and Hooker do not emphasise the physical aspect of the Incarnation in
as explicit terms, they do still completely agree with the humanness of God incarnate in
Jesus; furthermore, Hooker mentions the humbling that was becoming human. However,
as will be seen in the chapters that follow, the British devotional poets did often emphasise
the physical in the Incarnation, it can be seen in the sermons of John Donne. In a sermon
preached during Lent for the audience of the King at White-Hall, Donne uses the biblical
text of 1 Timothy 3:16, and from this text he declares
Here is the compass, that the essential Word of God, the Son of God, Christ Jesus,
went: He was God, humbled in the flesh; he was Man, received into glory. Here is
the compasse that the written Word of God, went, the Bible; that begun in Moses,
in darknesse, in the Chaos; and it ends in Saint John, in clearnesse, in a Revelation.
Here is the compass of all time, as was distributed in the Creation, Vespere &
mane; darknesse, and then light: the Evening and the Morning made the Day;
Mystery and Manifestation make the Text. 13
The emphasis here of ‘humbled in the flesh’ is a reminder as to just how important flesh
and humility are to the doctrine, and it also indicates the up and down nature of the belief.
In this sermon Donne unites Jesus and the Word of God, and sees him from creation to the
apocalypse, but Donne is also explicitly stating the incarnational cycle. It is a
Christological movement, constantly up and down, in which God humbles himself and
from this humbled place is then able to raise up humanity with him in the resurrection.
Because God has become human, humanity is united with God, and so God’s movements
through the world as the Incarnation in the person of Jesus becomes humanity’s
13 George R. Potter and Evelyn M. Simpson (eds.), The Sermons of John Donne, vol. 3, (Berkeley, 1962), p.
206.