From The Light of Glory
Readings from John Donne Edited by Christopher L. Webber
The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, That Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners––of whom I am the foremost.
I Timothy 1: 15
Those who fall but yet believe, who fall and have a sense of their fall, are reserved by God's purpose to come by repentance to salvation. For those who fall thus, do not fall so desperately as to feel nothing between hell and themselves, nothing to stop at, nothing to check them on the way. They fall upon something. They do not fall upon flowers to wallow and tumble in their sin, nor on feathers to rest and sleep in their sin, nor into a cooling river to play and refresh and strengthen themselves in their sin, but they fall upon a stone where they may receive a bruise, a pain upon their fall, a remorse for that sin that they have fallen into.
They fall as a piece of money falls into a river. We hear it fall and we see it sink, and by and by we see it deeper, and at last we see it not at all. So no one falls at first into any sin without hearing their own fall. There is a tenderness in every conscience at the beginning, at the entrance into a sin and they see for awhile the degrees of sinking also. But at last they are out of their own sight, until they meet this stone. This stone is Christ. That is, at last they meet some hard rebuke, some hard passage of a sermon, some hard judgment in a prophet, some cross in the world, something from the mouth or from the hand of God that breaks them. They fall on the stone and are broken.
To be broken upon this stone is to come to this sense, that though our integrity is lost, though we are no longer whole and complete vessels, yet there are means of piecing us together again. Though we are not vessels of innocence (for who is that?), yet we may be vessels of repentance acceptable to God and useful in God's service.
Those who feel their own fall upon this stone shall never feel this stone fall upon them. Those who come to a remorse early and earnestly after a sin and seek their reconciliation to God in the church are in the best position that anyone can be in now. For though we cannot say that repentance is as happy a position as innocence, yet certainly every particular human being feels more comfort and spiritual joy after a true repentance for a sin than they had in that innocence which they had before they committed that sin. Therefore in this case we may safely repeat those words of Saint Augustine, "I am bold to say that many a person has been the better for some sin.”