"Partakers of the solemnity of this day": Donne on All Saints' Day

From Donne's Sermon XLV, preached upon All Saints' Day. Donne here exemplifies the quiet joy with which Anglicanism celebrates the parish church participating in the Communion of Saints.

So that it is truly a festival, grounded upon that Article of the Creed, The Communion of Saints, and unites in our devout contemplation, The Head of the Church, God himself, and those two noble constitutive parts thereof, The Triumphant, and the Militant. And, accordingly, hath the Church applied this part of Scripture, to be read for the Epistle of this day, to shew, that All-Saints day hath relation to all Saints, both living and dead; for those servants of God, which are here in this text, sealed in their foreheads, are such (without all question) as receive that Seal here, here in the militant Church. And therefore, as these words, so this festival, in their intendiment, that applied these words to this festival, is also of Saints upon Earth ...

The servants of God being sealed in their foreheads in the Sacrament of Baptism, when they are received into the care of the Church, all those means which God hath provided for his servants, in his Church, to resist afflictions and temptations, are intended to be conferred upon them in that seal; This sealing of them is a communicating to them all those assistances of the Christian Church: Then they have a way of prevention of sin, by hearing; a way to Absolution, by Confession; a way to Reconciliation, by a worthy receiving the body and blood of Christ Jesus ...

God seals us in the heart, that we might love him, and in the fore-head, that we might profess it, and in the hand, that we might declare and practise it; and then the whole purpose of this blessed Angel in our Text, is perfected in us, and we our selves are made partakers of the solemnity of this day, which we celebrate, for we ourselves enter in the Communion of Saints, by these three seals, Of Belief, Of Profession, Of Works and Practise.

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