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personal questions of spirituality are addressed.
Furthermore, Herbert’s images and commentary play with both
Anglo-Catholic and Calvinist ideas. One instance of this is when Christ’s
blood is compared to the beads of the Rosary, “Drops blood (the only
beads) my words to measure” (22). The image is clearly a Catholic one
of the Rosary, but the emphasis on “only” makes the line read Calvinist,
affirming Christ as the only way to sanctification. Yet, in “Love II,”
Herbert seems to contradict Calvinist doctrine with the speaker saying,
“All knees shall bow to thee, all wits shall rise, / And praise him who did
make and mend our eyes” (13-4). Far from a select elect, the speaker
presents a vision of God mending all eyes, not destroying masses of people
in judgment. Seemingly to take on a more Arminian, Anglo-Catholic
view of salvation, the emphasis is on God working for salvation of many
souls. There is no latent fear of the Christian being left out of election. As
with Donne, Herbert blends the discourses of the two factions defining
his own place within the Church of England.
Herbert has a vision of Christian faith where the Christian works in
community to turn towards God. In “Love II,” the speaker acknowledges
a community of believers using the plural possessive making the poem
sound like a liturgical reading. The primary image is of God as fire
or “Immortal Heat (1).” Although more abstract than those of “The
Sacrifice,” this image can act as a verbal icon for corporate meditation
because of the sensory nature of heat/fire/light. This is a potential moment
where, in light of Calvinism, Herbert distances himself from the concrete
in favor of concentrating on an interior, emotional mediation, which
will produce the same result as meditating on a more concrete image.
As in a liturgical service, the people reciting this hymn join corporately
together in a state of meditation to consider God as fire. Far from a fire
of judgment, this Heat is to attract the believer: “O let thy greater flame
/ Attract the lesser to it” (1-2). These believers are not completely devoid
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of light, but only “lesser” lights needing God’s fire to “consume [their]
lusts” (5). While God is shown as necessary for sanctification here, there
is no underlying fear of judgment. It is almost assumed that when faced
with God’s fire sins will be erased. The language of sanctification is not
one of judgment but recovery: “Thou shalt recover all thy goods in kind”
(11). The speaker’s metaphor is the believer “disseized by usurping lust”
(12). Instead of a condemning judge, God here repossesses what was
originally His in order to repair the believer. The poem presents an image
of a gracious, forgiving God.
In “Love II,” the crux of the issue is the believer seeking God: “Then
shall our hearts pant thee” (6). Instead of craving the eyes of God to
be on the believer, the thrust is for the believer’s eyes to be on God (9).
Collectively the believers join in singing hymns in order to praise God
and turn their eyes toward Him (8). This collective form of meditation
will lead to sanctification and, ultimately, all turning to God. Unlike
Donne’s speaker who individually finds God in the darkened church,
Herbert’s speaker finds God in a communal illuminated one. It is the
role of the gathered believers to seek out and praise the God “who did
make and mend our eyes” (14). Here the believers turn their eyes to God,
contrary to Donne’s speaker, who calls for God’s eyes to be turned to
him. In this way, Herbert’s view of Christianity is one that envisions the
believer acting out faith in a community, jointly focusing on God.
This view of Christianity being acted out in community in the
corporate act of meditation is alluded to in some of Herbert’s other
poems as well. In “The Flower,” the speaker switches between singular
and plural pronouns. Within this switch, the individual Christian speaker
is repeatedly connected with other Christians. To the image of a flower
going into the ground in winter and reemerging in spring, the speaker
compares his “shriveled heart” undergoing the process of redemption (8).
In the stage of the flower being “Dead to the world, keep[ing] house
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