When he mounted the pulpit, the fondness remained: coinage gave him a way to talk about salvation which had the tactile, textured reality of daily life. In particular, he conjured up the imagery of salvation as purchase, over and over. Donne knew that there were merchants in his congregation, and he used their language: ‘there is a trade driven, a staple established between heaven and earth … Thither have we sent our flesh, and hither hath [God] sent his spirit.’ Christ had to be ‘the nature and flesh of man; for man had sinned, and man must pay’. Money was his best way to point to value that
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