"To be thy praise, / and be my salvation": the double function of praise in The Temple.

In her comprehensive study of Protestant poetics, Barbara Lewalski notes the forms and variety of George Herbert's poems of praise:

 
    Hymns were by definition joyful praises of God or thanksgivings to 
    him: in Herbert this category covers the broad range from the 
    elegant simplicity of the hymn portion of "Easter" to the lofty 
    eloquence of "Providence." (300) 

Herbert's overall corpus of poetry reflects his obsession with praise: approximately forty-eight poems in the Bodleian MS. of The Temple, two additional from the Williams MS., and his two early sonnets to his mother either directly praise God or talk about the act or writing of praise. When Herbert engages in this type of poetic expression, however, these acts have a double function. Of course, Herbert makes use of praise as a way of honoring or thanking God. But he also intends it to be a means of creating a participatory role in his own salvation: his poems are responses from an individual sparked by the gift of grace. For Herbert, the recognition of one's own salvation establishes a duty to glorify God in return in whatever form, literary or otherwise, the Christian is able. Louis Martz comments that Herbert uses his art as "a means of partaking in the salvation offered by a transcendent power" ("Voices," 103). But Herbert is not only convinced that he must praise, he is obsessed with the proper method of doing so, taking up the subject time and time again in his poetry: Joseph Summers has noted that "One of the chief sources of the Christian's and the poet's 'miserie' was that he could not properly praise God" (106). Thus, it is also important to examine Herbert's concerns about the methods of praising that he attempts and the impediments he overcomes in order to worship the Lord in ways that he considers correct. The physical illness and pain that plagued Herbert throughout his life distract him from his task, but these problems are exacerbated by emotional issues such as a lack of confidence and motivation, and, on the opposite end of the spectrum, a concern over exhibiting too much pride in his poetic ability. These complications are what make Herbert's poetry more than just flaccid applause or naive Sunday School rhymes: Herbert is fully and equally aware of the pitfalls of Christianity and the need to write good poetry. On this last point I depart from Summers, who claims that "the beauty of language, like the soul's, can live only if it is 'lost' to the proper object" (119). In The Temple, Herbert is very careful not to lose his mastery over beautiful language; rather, he knows that a confident use of one's abilities can assist the soul in finding its final place with God.

Of course, a major sticking point for a post-Calvinist Protestant in contemplating salvation was the complex and evolving doctrine of predestination. Jean Calvin's notions of unconditional predestination had been interpreted narrowly by later Continental and English thinkers. Calvin's disciple Theodore Beza maintained that God "hathe determined from before all beginning with hym selfe, to create all thyngs in their tyme, for his glory, and namely men: whom he hath made after two sorts, cleane contrarie one to the other" (2.A.iii). English theologian William Perkins declared in 1590 that God "hath ordained all men to a certain and everlasting estate, that is either to salvation or condemnation, for his own glory" (186). But countering these views were theologians such as Jacobus Arminius: his growing rejection of hardline doctrine in the Netherlands had been crystallized by 1610 into a set of articles which, while not retreating to the Pelagian and semi-Pelagian position that the human will rather than divine grace initiated the steps toward eternal salvation, stood firmly for the propositions that predestination was conditioned by God's foreknowledge of the individual's response to the offer of grace, and that a believer could both resist and fall from grace. Many of the theological and ecclesiastical debates that ricocheted through the English Church of the early and mid-seventeenth century focused on Calvin's ideas and their aftermath. (1) These issues could range from high-level theological and political controversies to the reaction of the common churchgoer: from the divisions in the Church caused by the strongly Calvinistic Lambeth Articles, which were embraced by some of the highest individual members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy but not by the Church as an institution, to the "sullen rejection of [the doctrine by] ordinary people, instinctive Pelagians who found predestination an unacceptable proposition" (Collinson, 202) and the "stubborn tendency of human nature to think that a 'good life' must in some way be rewarded" (Martz, "Generous Ambiguity," 34). (2) The potential for uncertainty and consternation among believers is evident in Beza's admonition to preachers about their methods of conveying the doctrine to their congregations: he fears that:

 
   Whereas many finde this matter so sharpe and straunge, that they flee 
   from it as from a daungerous rocke, [...] they are compelled to 
   invent a great sort of foolishe & darke distinctions, wherein the 
   further they occupie them selves and searche, the wyder they stray 
   from the purpose, and so entangle their miserable braynes, that they 
   can finde no way out. (7.C.iii) 

Even the careful wording of the official English Articles of Religion, which spoke evenhandedly of the "unspeakable comfort" of predestination to "godly persons" along with the "sentence of Predestination" for the "curious and carnal" (BCP 871), could in fact create a level of discomfort about the possibility of salvation that would vex any earnest Christian.

In addition to the ambiguous and diversely interpreted Protestant views, Herbert's conception of the role of human volition in salvation was influenced by The Hundred and Ten Considerations by Catholic reformer Juan de Valdes, whose doctrines often resembled Calvin's in their attitude toward predestination. Herbert's own commentaries on Valdes are often used to argue that Herbert was of one mind with Valdes's theology. However, Herbert's reading of Valdes is not a settled question. In a discussion of Stanley Fish's and Barbara Leah Harman's claims for the "extinction" of the poet, Elizabeth Clarke claims that "there is no room for artifice or invention, because human words [...] tend to obscure the expression of the divine will" (228), and that Herbert attempts to show this by demonstrating a divine "correcting motion" or "mortification" of his poetry by the Word of God (234). However, she admits that "there remains a role in Valdes' thinking for inspired human words" (228). Clarke also concedes that the obvious poetic control seen in Herbert's detailed rewriting of the poems and reconfiguring of the structure of The Temple refutes "the idea of a surrender of the poetic activity to God, and militates against a theory such as Valdes' which allows no active interference with the original motions [of God]" (242). (3) Herbert is not precisely in line with either Valdes's or Calvin's thinking, and in fact demonstrates an independent path forged from the possibilities of a doctrine in flux: Herbert wants to submit to the divine ...