Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may be able to prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. Romans 12-2. This is the end of the day of the year. At the death of Queen Mary Tudor, her half-sister Elizabeth succeeded to the throne of England, the daughter of Henry VIII and Molen, she would reign for nearly half a century, until 1603. So she was a professing Protestant, she took a moderate stand on all the issues that had so sundered England during her sister's bloody tenure in Westminster. This middle way, or via media, as she called it, may have exasperated the most ardent partisans on all sides, but it brought stability and solidity, peace and prosperity to England. At Elizabeth Mahest in 1559, Parliament passed a new act of supremacy, making the authority of the Pope and all payments and appeals to him forbidden. Later that same year, Parliament also passed an act of uniformity, restoring the place of the Book of Common Prayer, ordering its use in all of England's cathedrals, minsters and parish churches for worship at mountains, even song, and the administration of the sacraments. Finally, in 1571, they approved revisions to the 42 articles which now are amended as the 39 articles, making subscription to them by pastors and ministers compulsory. The barbaric persecutions of Protestants that had sundered the land under her sister, Bloody Mary, ended. They unpopular alliance with Spain ended. All attempts to reinstate the monastic institutions ended. The re-catholicizing of England ended. And with each of these endings came fresh impetus for new beginnings. And the beginnings turned out to be more than a little extraordinary. The Elizabethan age produced a number of the greatest stylists of the English language, including William Shakespeare, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Francis Drake, and of course, John Dunn. When the venerable poet was born in London in 1573, the Elizabeth was in the middle of her long and glorious reign, and Dunn was able to partake of all of the benefits the age afforded. Indeed, as a young man, John Dunn was quite attracted to the extravagance of the English Renaissance's life. During England's war with Spain in the 1590s, Dunn sailed as a gentleman adventurer. He took a government position as a secretary to the keeper of the great seal. A position he ultimately lost when he secretly married his employer's daughter. In 1609, he applied for the secretorship of the new colony of Virginia, but he failed to get the job. But despite these setbacks, it was Dunn's marriage that brought about in him a dramatic spiritual transformation. The deepening love of his faithful wife provoked him to grow in the love of God. Eventually, his piety entirely replaced his earlier flamboyance, and it was evident to everyone who knew him. King James, Elizabeth's successor on the throne, encouraged Dunn to enter the ministry, and though he felt very unworthy, Dunn consented. With a great sense of his own sinfulness and even greater sense of God's forgiveness, Dunn was eager to preach the message of sovereign grace to others. In 1621, he was appointed Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral in London. And in short order, he became one of the most prominent and eloquent preachers of his day. Dunn was a man of immense scholarship and learning, yet he preached that all knowledge that begins not with God's glory is but a giddy but a vertichness circle, but an elaborate and exquisite ignorance. The death of his wife in 1617 brought about another profound change in Dunn. She was 33 and died of exhaustion one week after giving birth to her 12th child. Her death brought home to Dunn the fleeting nature of earthly happiness, and he saw his whole life as God's wooing of him. He gained a strong conviction about providence and at the goodness of God and the coming resurrection in the face of certain death. In his poems and sermons, Dunn often challenged his readers and his congregation to ready themselves for death, Momento Moray. All our life is but a going out to the place of execution to the place of death, he said. He rapsidized on the subject in the fullness of gospel hope, death be not proud, he wrote, though some have called the mighty and dreadful, thou art not so for those whom thou thinkest thou dost overthrow, dime not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me. Thou st slay to fade to chance, kings and desperate men, thou dust with poison, war and sickness dwell, why swellest thou then? One short, sleep past and we wake eternally and death shall be no more, death thou shallt die. Indeed, Dunn's that famous salelic weon death has almost become a commonplace in the English language, no man is an island. Every man is a piece of the continent of part of the main of a clod be washed away by the sea. Europe is the less, as well as if a promenetory were, as well if a manor of thy friends or of thy own were any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind and therefore never sends to know for whom the bell tolls for thee. When the death bell told for Dunn in 1631, his trust in God enabled him to tell a friend, I am full of inexpressible joy and I shall die in peace. He was among the greatest of the exemplars of righteous, simple referment of resistance and reformation. I am George Grant on the Fight, Laugh, Feast network. For more information and for resources, go to GeorgeGrant.net.