Donne’s Long Sentence
17 June 2025
A close reading of a single sentence from Donne’s 1622 sermon, and what it reveals about structure, pressure, and rhetorical control.
Donne’s 1622 sermon for the Virginia Company opens with Acts 1:8: “You shall receive power... and you shall be witnesses unto me.” He draws a line from that command to the Virginia Company’s mission, framing it as a form of apostolic labor. The sermon builds a case and gives structure to the company's duty.
One sentence near the start of the sermon sets the tone and pattern:
“You shall receive a new power, besides the power you have in your state; a power that shall enable you to be witnesses of Christ, to make his doctrine credible by your testimony, to conform yourselves to him, to do as he did.”
The steps are tightly linked. Power is given. That power enables witness. Witness becomes testimony. Testimony requires imitation. Donne does not attempt to embellish these moves. He stacks them in sequence, building moral pressure through form. By the time he reaches “to do as he did,” the sentence leaves the listener with a clear expectation: to act as Christ acted.
“Make his doctrine credible” is the hinge. It implies that belief is not enough. The doctrine becomes credible when it is embodied—when others can see its effects. Donne names that visibility as a kind of proof. If the listener does nothing, the teaching has no visible effect and cannot persuade others.
The Virginia Company is not mentioned in this sentence. It doesn’t need to be. The logic is already in place. Donne defines what it means to act as a witness and then turns to the question of where and how that witness should unfold. By the time he arrives at colonization, the spiritual groundwork has already been laid.
This is the force of the sermon. Donne understood that language, shaped carefully, could direct belief and action. The sentence compels the listener through emotion and narrative but also, importantly, through its structure. The structure does the work of argument as each clause narrows down the listener’s field of response. Each phrase points forward, carrying the listener one step closer to a required conclusion. That is the power of rhetorical form, and that is why sermons—and the sentences they rely on—deserve close reading.