Cross-Shaped Cosmos

John Donne's early poem "The Cross" was an intervention in a contemporary debate. Puritans wanted to eliminate crosses from English churches, but Donne, a moderate Calvinist, offered a poetic argument for retaining them. Can anyone who has been saved by the cross despise its image? The cross “bore all other sins, but is it fit / That it should bear the sin of scorning it? Indeed, the loss / Of this cross were to me another cross since no cross is so extreme, as to have none. Blotting out the cross is impossible in any case, since it was indelibly “dew’d on me in the Sacrament."