This sermon was first printed as a pirated copy entitled 'Mans Timely Remembring of His Creator' in William Milbourne, Sapientia Clamitans (London, 1638), pp. 251-319. Other print witnesses are John Donne, 'A Sermon of Valediction at my going into Germany, at Lincolns-Inne, April. 18. 1619', in John Donne, XXVI Sermons (London, 1661), pp. 269-281; Evelyn Mary Simpson, ed., Donne's Sermon of Valediction (London: The Nonesuch Press, 1932); George R. Potter and Evelyn M. Simpson, The Sermons of John Donne, 10 vols (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1953-1962), Vol. II, pp. 235-249 and Appendix B; Emma Rhatigan, ed., The Oxford Edition of the Sermons of John Donne, Volume IV: Sermons Preached at the Inns of Court (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming). Manuscript witnesses appear in: Bodleian Library, MS. Ashmole 781 (Ashmole MS); Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. th. c. 71 (Merton MS); Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. th. e. 102 (Dowden MS); Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Eng D66.4 (Dobell MS); and National Library of Scotland, MS 5767 (Lothian MS).
For more details about this sermon, see Potter and Simpson, Vol. II, pp. 31-36 and the forthcoming edition by Emma Rhatigan.
George R. Potter and Evelyn M. Simpson, The Sermons of John Donne, 10 vols (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1953-1962); Jeanne Shami, 'New Manuscript Texts of Sermons by John Donne', in Peter Beal, ed. English Manuscript Studies 1100-1700, Volume 13: New Texts and Discoveries in Early Modern English Manuscripts (London: The British Library, 2007), pp. 77-119; Hannah Yip.
Written in a small, secretary hand with italic forms, and corrected in a second hand. The two sermons by Donne in British Library, Harley MS 6356 were previously owned by Anne Sadleir. See Arnold Hunt, 'The Books, Manuscripts and Literary Patronage of Mrs Anne Sadleir (1585-1670)', in Early Modern Women's Manuscript Writing, ed. by Victoria E. Burke and Jonathan Gibson (Aldershot and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 205-36 (pp. 211 and 233).