John Donne on Jesus’s Wife

Not really! April September Fool! It’s a quotation from John Donne on death, which was quoted by Christoph Schwöbel at the second Colin Gunton Lecture Day:

All mankinde is of one Author, and is one volume; when one Man dies, one Chapter is not torne out of the booke, but translated into a better language; and every Chapter must be so translated; God emploies several translators; some peeces are translated by Age; some by sicknesse, some by warre, some by justice; but Gods hand is in every translation; and his hand shall binde up all our scattered leaves againe, for that Librarie where every book shall lie open to one another: …

John Donne, Devotions, ed. with commentary by Anthony Raspa (Montreal/London: 1975), p. 86; copied from Christoph Schwöbel’s handout