john donne on human goodness

A few posts ago I wrote about the differences in the goodness/evil of which humans are capable and the goodness/evil of which animals (dogs, specifically) are capable. I argued that the difference is not only a matter of degree, but of kind. I think that this question provides a convenient introduction to part of the answer to the problem of evil. Why are the humans God has created to do good capable of such horrors? In Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, John Donne offers an answer:

"Enlarge this Meditation upon this great world, Man, so far as to consider the immensity of the creatures this world produces; our creatures are our thoughts, creatures that are born Giants; that reach from East to West, from Earth to Heaven, that do not only bestride all the Sea, and land, but span the Sun and Firmament at once; My thoughts reach all, comprehend all. Inexplicable mystery; I their Creator am in a close prison, in a sick bed, anywhere, and any one of my Creatures, my thoughts, is with the Sun, and beyond the Sun, overtakes the Sun, and overgoes the Sun in one pace, one step, everywhere. And then as the other world produces Serpents, and Vipers, malignant, and venomous creatures, and Worms, and Caterpillars, that endeavor to devour that world which produces them, and Monsters compiled and complicated of divers parents, and kinds, so this world, ourselves produces all these in us, in producing diseases, and sickness, of all those sorts; venomous, and infectious diseases, feeding and consuming diseases, and manifold and entangled diseases, made up of many several ones. And can the other world name so many venomous, so many consuming, so many monstrous creatures, as we can diseases, of all these kinds? O miserable abundance, O beggarly riches!"

You can find the entire Devotions here.