Death's Duel

Name: Death's Duel
Author: John Donne

John Donne (1572–1631) was an English poet and cleric, dean of St Paul's Cathedral from 1621. After a youth of love poetry, travel, and frustrated ambition, he took orders at James I's urging and became the most admired preacher of his age. Our library holds his Devotions upon Emergent Occasions — including the meditation that 'no man is an island' — his final sermon Death's Duel, and other sermons.

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First published: 1631
Category: Sermons & Preaching
Length: 8k words · about 1 hour
Chapters: 1

About this book

John Donne's final sermon, preached at Whitehall shortly before his death in 1631, takes human mortality itself as its searching theme. From Psalm 68:20, Donne considers life as a continual dying and finds consolation not in denying death but in God's deliverance through it. Part sermon, part deathbed testimony, it is among the most solemn works in English preaching.