As noted, the argument in favor of Herbert being a Calvinist is predicated upon the doctrinal position held by the Church of England in Herbert’s day. Since the late sixteenth century the Church of England was governed by the Thirty-Nine Articles. These articles define the Anglican faith in relation to Roman Catholicism, specifying for example that only certain sacraments are necessary.[1] Many of England’s more extreme Protestant sects, such as the Calvinists, rejected the Articles for not going far enough to separate Anglicanism from Catholicism. For example Article XXV, that which is alluded to above, “did not deny the existence of seven sacraments, but only affirmed that Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, being ordained by the Gospels, were sacraments in a different sense from the traditional other five.”[2] In response to this religious conservatism Calvinist-leaning churchmen proposed and eventually adopted the Lambeth Articles which codify Calvinist ideas of predestination. These Articles specify that only certain people are marked for salvation and that those that are so marked are determined by God. Moreover, “these are the tenets that the framers believed would underlie a truly Calvinist Church of England; and these are the tenets that would underlie a truly Calvinist ‘Church’ of George Herbert . . .”[3]
“I: God from eternity has predestined some men to life, and reprobated some to death.”[4] The justification of the Lambeth Articles comes from the Bible. Humanity is tainted by original sin the reasoning goes and therefore is damned or “reprobated.” Only God can grant a remission of sin and God has chosen only an elect group of people to favor with such remission. Therefore only certain people favored by God will be saved.
“II: The moving or efficient cause of predestination to life is not the foreseeing of faith, or of perseverance, or of good works, or of anything innate in the person of the predestined, but only the will of the good pleasure of God.” Instead of basing its authority on dogmatic law as Catholicism does, in which whatever is decreed by God’s representative on Earth is acknowledged by God, this doctrine denies the authority of mediating influences by emphasizing the power of God as an autonomous and supreme being. This doctrine also denies a humanist philosophy that claims that individuals can fashion their own destinies. No one can grant salvation to others nor earn it for him or herself.
“III: There is a determined and certain number of predestined, which cannot be increased or diminished.” God is omniscient, knowing who will—and more importantly who will not—receive salvation. God is also infallible and therefore incapable of being proven wrong or indecisive. No one can change God’s mind or prove him or herself to be more worthy of salvation. Either you are saved or you are not.
“IV: Those not predestined to salvation are inevitably condemned on account of their sins.” Again, humanity is innately sinful and those who are not saved must ipso facto be condemned for their innate sinfulness.
“V: A true, lively and justifying faith, and the sanctifying Spirit of God, is not lost nor does it pass away either totally or finally in the elect . . .” Although crises of faith do occur, once someone is blessed by God the blessing cannot be lost or rescinded. Someone who experiences a true loss of faith never was truly faithful in the beginning.
There are nine Lambeth Articles altogether, all dealing with the same ideas of predestination, that people will either be saved or damned, that God makes that distinction and that people cannot influence God’s decision. Much of Herbert’s poetry reveals an understanding if not an acceptance of this Calvinist doctrine of predestination. These ideas however have some problematic implications which also find their way into Herbert’s poetry. For one thing, if the fate of one’s soul is predetermined why need one engage in virtuous behavior since increased piety will not help him or her achieve salvation? Furthermore, what would be the point of preaching since the preacher would not be able to win souls for salvation?
Consider the Italian sonnet “Redemption,” unarguably one of Herbert’s most recognized poems. This poem appears to contain not only a statement of predestined salvation but also the idea that an active faith is not a prerequisite to salvation.
Having been tenant long to a rich Lord,
Not thriving, I resolved to be bold,
And make a suit unto him, to afford
A new small-rented lease, and cancel th’old. (1-4).[5]
The poem’s conceit of Jesus as landlord has been widely discussed by critics as has the idea that the “old lease” refers to the Mosaic law of the Old Testament. What has been less discussed is the problem of the seeming antipathy of the poem’s speaker and his unwillingness to keep to the dictates of the old lease. Are the requirements of the old lease too strict? If we read the old lease as representing the Mosaic law then this question is answered easily in the affirmative. The Old Testament law is regarded frequently as harsh and vengeful; even Jesus is reputed to have said that the “old law” is death. However if we examine the poem in its historical post-Reformation context it seems clear that the old lease is the Catholic faith which prevents the speaker’s thriving because it places the Church as a barrier between him and God. By viewing the poem in this way we can argue that the speaker finds the old lease too expensive because it requires him to observe practices that are unnecessary like the extraneous sacraments. If as the Lambeth Articles contend a person’s salvation is predestined then there is no point in spending more than is necessary.
The succeeding stanzas of the poem further suggests reading the old lease as Catholic doctrine:
In heaven at his manor I him sought:The significance of this passage lies not in what it says but in what it does not say and who is not included. The speaker seeks out God directly and on his own. This is not the pilgrim Dante traveling through the universe guided by Virgil or Beatrice. He does not need an intercessory; there is a direct communion between him and God.
They told me there, that he was lately gone
About some land, which he had dearly bought
Long since on earth, to take possession.
I straight returned, and knowing his great birth,
Sought him accordingly in great resorts,
In cities, theatres, gardens, parks, and courts . . . (5-11).
The final stanza presents the ultimate statement of Calvinist predestination. When the speaker finally finds Jesus on the cross we are told that Jesus “straight, Your suit is granted, said, and died” (14). The poem’s speaker ironically does not have to say a word. His salvation is determined before he asks for it and the terseness of the poem’s final line suggests the effort expended by the speaker in the preceding lines was unnecessary.
Based on this poem and others like it it seems justified for critics to call Herbert a Calvinist. However other poems would appear to contradict the sentiment conveyed here. Consider “The Pulley.” In this poem Herbert seems to articulate the idea that salvation can be achieved through hard work. In fact this poem seems to express what we would call the “Puritan work ethic.”
When God at first made man,Here, God creates man—and here we should probably read “man” to mean Adam—as master of the world, paragon of creatures, possessor of the world’s riches. We can visualize man easily in this poem as Milton’s Adam whose existence in his pre-fall state of grace is bliss. Herbert then goes on to specify the blessings that God has bestowed on His favored creation:
Having a glass of blessings standing by;
Let us (said he) pour on him all we can:
Let the world’s riches, which dispersed lie,
Contract into a span. (1-5).
So strength first made a way;
Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honour, pleasure:
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that alone of all his treasure
Rest in the bottom lay. (6-10).
According to Herbert’s doctrine man is not given everything that God has to offer. God, Pandora-like, has thrown open a treasure chest but closes it before everything is allowed to pour out. The “rest” of the treasure is the greatest part of it: “rest” or relaxation. God decrees that man may never rest but must toil ceaselessly instead. We can again compare this restlessness to Milton’s Adam who as the gardener of Eden must work in Paradise. Why must man work and for what is he working?
For if I should (said he)
Bestow this jewel also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts instead of me,
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature:
So both should losers be. (11-15).
God denies man rest because He wants to prevent man from becoming too content. Contentment leads to satisfaction and a sense of sufficiency. If man was content he would feel that he has everything and feel no need to seek for more. He would lose sight of God and work for himself rather than for God. Herbert ends this stanza by stating that both God and man would lose by such an arrangement. It is clear to see that God would lose man but what would man be losing?
Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlessness:
Let him be rich and weary, that at least,
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
May toss him to my breast. (16-20).
The implication that is left hanging by the previous stanza is that a contented man would lose God. This stanza furthers that thought for the meaning of this passage is that the weariness experienced by restless man will draw man to God in search of respite. Weariness is the pulley that brings man closer to God. It is in the making of this ultimate point that Herbert makes an apparent departure from Calvinist predestination. Herbert appears to say that man can work to save himself and elect to come to God which denies the doctrine of the Lambeth Articles.
How can we reconcile these seemingly antithetical ideas of salvation that, for lack of better terminology, I shall call the Predestination Model and the Labor Model?. One explanation is provided by Louis Martz:
. . . [W]e have two versions of The Temple, the final version of 1633, and the earlyThe fact that there exists two versions of the manuscript would be a plausible way of explaining the shift in doctrine. Herbert may have began his religious life as a Calvinist and then rejected that perspective as he grew older and more experienced. Martz relates this “conversion” of Herbert’s to that expressed in Donne’s work.
version in the manuscript now in Dr. William’s Library, London, which contains only 69 of the 164 poems in the final version, plus six more that were discarded. This early version seems more strongly imbued with Calvinism than the ultimate version,
partly because it lacks most of the strongly eucharistic poems that appear in 1633, and partly because some of its phrasing, later revised, and some of its poems, later removed, have a Calvinist ring, or deal with Calvinist issues.[6]
Donne is dealing here [in his sermons] with the tension between the ‘Lord of Power’ and the ‘Lord of Love’ that represents the central problem of Calvinism, the central problem in the controversies that beset the Church of England in the days of Donne and Herbert, a problem that runs throughout George Herbert’s Temple, and a problem which he, like Donne, resolves in favor of Love, as in ‘The Flower.’[7]
There are however two problems with this explanation. For one thing we have no way of knowing when Herbert’s poems were composed or even if the version of the text that was printed in 1633 is actually a revision of the other one. The so-called “early version” may be an alternate or incomplete manuscript. The other problem lies in the fact that The Temple as we have it contains “Redemption” and other apparently Calvinist poems. If Herbert grew to reject Calvinism it seems likely that those poems would have been expunged from the final collection.
Another possibility is expressed by Christopher Hodgkins. Hodgkins points out that Calvinism as we know it is not actually what Calvin had in mind when he wrote his Institutes of the Christian Religion.
It is nearly axiomatic that the zealous disciple is the dead master’s bane . . . Calvin was similarly unfortunate in his designated successor, Theodore de Bèze (Beza), and in many of Beza’s English followers, who created a neo-scholastic, hyper-dogmatized ‘Calvinism.’ Ironically, as Calvin’s name became more and more identified with English Protestantism, Beza departed increasingly from Calvin’s original emphases and even his substance.[8]
Many of the ideas that we have come to associate with Calvinism such as the points set forth in the Lambeth Articles and their problematic implications did not originate with Calvin. While Calvin did argue the Predestination Model of salvation he did not claim that faith in that model should lead to the exclusivity or self-righteousness that came to mark at least in the popular imagination the practitioners of Calvinism. “Calvin presents election and damnation as God’s secret business from first to last; the believer’s business is to love all people as God’s image-bearers (ICR 3.7.6-7) and invite all to be his spiritual children. Thus Calvin attacks the parsimonious exclusivity so often attributed to him and to his doctrine.”[9] With this understanding in mind we can begin to reconcile Herbert’s clashing models of salvation. These two models are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Just because one strives for salvation does not mean that one is not predestined for it. According to Hodgkins that proposition is at the heart of true Calvinism and thus “. . . Herbert, in following the Elizabethan middle way, is closer to the heart of Calvin’s ‘Calvinism’ than were many of the reformer’s most ardent English and Continental devotees.”[10]
Another explanation that is more plausible however is that Herbert was not a Calvinist at all. He was more likely a believer of a more specifically English doctrine that easily could be confused with Calvinism, a doctrine that was essentially a proto-Calvinism. This doctrine was that of the Wyclifite or Lollard.
The Lollards were early English Protestant reformers. They were often called “Wyclifites” after John Wyclif who argued for the translation of the Bible into vernacular English. The Lollard doctrine like that of Calvinism was one predicated upon equality. Every human had the same capacity and predilection for sin but they also had the same chances of salvation. Moreover they each had a responsibility to work for salvation and to help their community achieve it. This work was done through a personal knowledge of the Bible and the ability to preach it, the knowledge and ability possessed by Herbert.
The supreme example of the Lollard preacher is the Parson of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Again, the central tenet of Lollardy was that every individual had the right to an education in the Bible and lay preachers had the ability to provide that education. In “The Epilogue of the Man of Law’s Tale,” Chaucer’s Host explicitly accuses the Parson of being such a preacher. The Parson teaches directly from the Bible and by living his own life according to the lessons of the Bible he becomes a living version of the Gospels himself. This is the model of the country parson to which Herbert adheres in his works.
Herbert’s Lollard sensibilities are seen in the preaching style in which he writes his poetry. In poems like “The Sacrifice,” “The Bunch of Grapes” and “Joseph’s Coat” Herbert employs Biblical allusions and conceits in order to convey moralistic messages. His poems act as sermons and it is clear that he is relying on his audience to understand the Biblical references in order to get the meanings of the poems. Herbert uses poetry to sermonize in a way that is delightful and palatable thus spreading the Gospel in a gentler and more reasonable manner than most Calvinist preachers. The confusion of doctrinal ideas that are present in the poetry and the fact that Herbert allowed them to remain also reflect a Lollard perspective. Far from being strictly dogmatic like their Catholic—and later Calvinist—counterparts Lollards encouraged a spirit of free inquiry into religious matters. “The religious questioning that was so crucial to his [the Lollard’s] way of faith, was, in the orthodox mind, reserved for the learned . . . Such a call for obedient silence ran counter to the Lollard’s thirst for intellectual awakening.”[11] Thus the confusion of doctrines is actually a pluralism of doctrines that allows Herbert’s audience to come to God in whatever fashion they find most compelling.
In the end George Herbert is Chaucer’s Parson. The ultimate purpose of Herbert’s poetry like the rest of his life’s work is to bring people closer to God. Like his Chaucerian model Herbert was a country parson that practiced what he preached. What he preached was tolerance, compassion and “Love”: “You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat: / So I did sit and eat” (17-18).
[1] Louis L. Martz, “The Generous Ambiguity of Herbert’s Temple,” in A Fine Tuning: Studies of the Religious Poetry of Herbert and Milton, ed. Mary A. Maleski, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, no. 64 (Binghamton, New York: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, State University of New York, 1989), 31.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid., 33.
[4] Each of the Articles enumerated here are taken from Martz, 33.
[5] All quotations from Herbert come from Mario A. Di Cesare, ed., George Herbert and the Seventeenth-Century Religious Poets (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1978).
[6] Martz, 36.
[7] Martz, 35-36.
[8] Christopher Hodgkins, Authority, Church, and Society in George Herbert: Return to the Middle Way (Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 1993), 12-13
[9] Ibid., 14.
[10] Ibid., 13.
[11] Ritchie D. Kendall, The Drama of Dissent: The Radical Poetics of Nonconformity, 1380-1590 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 26.
