ABSTRACT
John Donne was acutely aware of the mind-boggling contradictions that make up orthodox Christianity. Admittedly, Christianity has ignored the personal aspect of faith and the importance of works throughout much of its history. While Donne saw the active co-operation of believers in the business of salvation as essential, it was his unshakeable conviction that the Church played a leading role in it as well. A corollary of the ubiquity of the institutional Church in Donne's Christianity is his keen apprehension of the risks inherent in an unregulated appropriation of God. The radical Protestantism of groups such as the Anabaptists, who encouraged believers to trust to their own instincts when reading the Bible for themselves, was deeply distasteful to him. As a priest, in addition to denouncing the more rigid manifestations of Calvinist teaching, he carried on a critique of the doctrine and practice of the Reformed Churches abroad that was no less forceful for being reasoned and courteous.
