How does John Donne talk and think about the enlightenment in his poems?

John Donne, the great English poet, lived in the late
sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. He thus lived well before the so-called
“Enlightenment,” which is usually associated with the late seventeenth century and
especially with the eighteenth century.

Nevertheless,
Donne, like many figures of the Enlightenment, had a great respect for reason. Reason,
in Donne’s day, was considered one of the greatest gifts given by God to human beings. 
Reason, in fact, was one of the traits that made human beings resemble God and that
helped lift human beings above the level of animals.

In
Holy Sonnet IX, for instance (beginning “If poisonous mineralls”), the speaker
nonsensically asks why he should be held accountable for sins simply because he
possesses reason. Animals, after all, are not considered sinners (he says), and the only
explanation for this exemption is that they lack reason. This question, of course, is a
splendid (and ironic) example of poor reasoning on the speaker’s
part.

In Holy Sonnet XIV, the speaker, addressing God,
says,

Reason
your viceroy in mee, mee should defend,

But is captiv'd ,
and proves weake or untrue.
(7-8)

The idea that reason
was God’s deputy, implanted in humanity in order to help defend humanity from sin, was
standard Christian doctrine at the time. The speaker here claims that Reason has been
captured by Satan and is weak and unreliable.  Yet it is the speaker, by failing to
adhere to Reason, who has in fact proved weak and unreliable. Nevertheless, the speaker
can (and does) appeal to God for assistance: Reason, for Donne and his contemporaries,
was not mankind’s only source of assistance in the battle with
sin.

This latter idea is emphasized in Holy Sonnet IV
(beginning “Oh my blacke Soule!”), which makes clear that human beings are ultimately
and utterly dependent on God, entirely, for their salvation. Reason can help, and we
have an obligation to use our reason wisely and well, but we are imperfect, sinful
creatures and can never rely on reason alone.

The
Enlightenment was a period in which an emphasis on reason alone was greater than in
Donne’s time, as Donne’s poetry shows.