From One Marvell to Another: Puritan Logic in “To His Coy Mistress”

Summary

Gods apprentice is a jorneyman: he must allwayes learne the mystery of his profession, & walking forward aime hard to the marke for the price of his high calling. as the teacher in Gods schoole must give Line upon Line, precept upon precept: so to the scholler likewise nulla dies sine linea, no day must pass without a new lesson, as Cato said, so Gods child must grow old every day learning many things. And so in practise also. he must adde to his faith vertue, | & to plowing, sowing. Like Charles the fifth, plus ultra must be his motto: he must go from strength to strength untill he appeare be=fore the Lord in Sion. And that because, he is leaving his abode in this world but an im=perfect pilgrime. he is not what, he is not where he should be … [There are those who] ‘looke behind them, that turne their face in the day of battell, & quite give over Gods husbandry’, [those] ‘that forget their first love who though they forsake not the plough yet are they idle companions that do the worke of the Lord negligently … [For them] it had beene better never to have knowne the way of righ=teousness then that they should bee like a dog to his vomit & a sow to wallowing in the mire.