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← ExitCenturies of Meditations

The Second Century

76

These things shall never be seen with your bodily eyes, but in a more perfect manner: You shall be present with them in your understanding. You shall be in them to the very centre and they in you. As light is in a piece of crystal, so shall you be with every part and excellency of them. An Act of the understanding is the presence of the Soul, which being no body but a living Act, is a pure spirit and mysteriously fathomless in its true dimensions. By an act of the understanding therefore be present now with all the creatures among which you live; and hear them in their beings and operations praising God in an heavenly manner. Some of them vocally, others in their ministry all of them naturally and continually. We infinitely wrong ourselves by laziness and confinement. All creatures in all nations, and tongues, and people praise God infinitely; and the more, for being your sole and perfect treasures. You are never what you ought till you go out of yourself and walk among them.

77

Were all your riches here in some little place: all other places would be empty. It is necessary therefore for your contentment and true satisfaction, that your riches be dispersed everywhere. Whether is more delightful; to have some few private riches in one, and all other places void; or to have all places everywhere filled with our proper treasures? Certainly to have treasures in all places. For by that means we are entertained everywhere with pleasures, are everywhere at home honored and delighted, everywhere enlarged and in our own possessions. But to have a few riches in some narrow bounds, though we should suppose a kingdom full, would be to have our delights limited, and infinite spaces dark and empty, wherein we might wander without satisfaction. So that God must of necessity to satisfy His love give us infinite treasures. And we of necessity seek for our riches in all places.

78

The Heavens and the Earth serve you, not only in shewing unto you your Father’s Glory, as all things without you are your riches and enjoyments, but as within you also, they magnify, beautify and illuminate your soul. For as the Sun-beams illuminate the air and all objects, yet are themselves also illuminated by them, so fareth it with the powers of your soul. The rays of the sun carry light in them as they pass through the air, but go on in vain till they meet an object: and there they are expressed. They illuminate a mirror, and are illuminated by it. For a looking-glass without them would be in the dark, and they without the glass unperceived. There they revive and overtake themselves, and represent the effigies from whence they came; both of the sun and heavens; and trees and mountains, if the glass be seated conveniently to receive them. Which were it not that the glass were present there, one would have thought even the ideas of them absent from the place. Even so your soul in its rays and powers is unknown: and no man would believe it present everywhere, were there no objects there to be discerned. Your thoughts and inclinations pass on and are unperceived, but by their objects are discerned to be present: being illuminated by them. For they are present with them and active about them. They recover and feel themselves, and by those objects live in employment, being turned into the figure and idea of them. For as light varieth upon all objects whither it cometh, and returneth with the form and figure of them: so is the soul transformed into the Being of its object. Like light from the Sun, its first effigies is simple life, the pure resemblance of its primitive fountain, but on the object which it meeteth it is quickly changed, and by understanding becometh all Things.

79

Objective treasures are always delightful: and though we travail endlessly, to see them all our own is infinitely pleasant and the further we go the more delightful. If they are all ours wholly and solely, and yet nevertheless every one’s too, it is the most delightful accident that is imaginable, for thereby two contrary humours are at once delighted, and two inclinations, that are both in our natures, yet seem contradictory, are at once satisfied. The one is the avaricious humour and love of propriety, whereby we refer all unto ourselves and naturally desire to have all alone in our private possession, and to be the alone and single end of all things. This we perceive ourselves because all universally and everywhere is ours. The other is the communicative humour that is in us, whereby we desire to have companions in our enjoyments to tell our joys, and to spread abroad our delights, and to be ourselves the joy and delight of other persons. For thousands enjoy all as well as we, and are the end of all: and God communicateth all to them as well as us. And yet to us alone, because He communicateth them to us, and maketh them our rich and glorious companions: to whom we may tell our joys, and be blessed again. How much ought we to praise God, for satisfying two such insatiable humours that are contrary to each other! One would think it impossible that both should be pleased, and yet His Divine Wisdom hath made them helpful and perfective to each other.

80

Infinite Love cannot be expressed in finite room: but must have infinite places wherein to utter and shew itself. It must therefore fill all Eternity and the Omnipresence of God with joys and treasures for my fruition. And yet it must be expressed in a finite room by making me able in a centre to enjoy them. It must be infinitely exprest in the smallest moment by making me able in every moment to see them all. It is both ways infinite, for my Soul is an infinite sphere in a centre. By this may you know that you are infinitely beloved: God hath made your spirit a centre in eternity comprehending all, and filled all about you in an endless manner with infinite riches: which shine before you and surround you with Divine and Heavenly enjoyments.

81

Few will believe the soul to be infinite: yet infinite is the first thing which is naturally known. Bounds and limits are discerned only in a secondary manner. Suppose a man were born deaf and blind. By the very feeling of his soul, he apprehends infinite about him, infinite space, infinite darkness. He thinks not of wall and limits till he feels them and is stopped by them. That things are finite therefore we learn by our senses. But infinity we know and feel by our souls: and feel it so naturally, as if it were the very essence and being of the soul. The truth of it is, it is individually in the soul: for God is there, and more near to us than we are to ourselves. So that we cannot feel our souls, but we must feel Him, in that first of properties, infinite space. And this we know so naturally, that it is the only primo et necessario cognitum in rerum naturâ: of all things the only first and most necessarily known. For we can unsuppose Heaven, and Earth and annihilate the world in our imagination, but the place where they stood will remain behind, and we cannot unsuppose or annihilate that, do what we can. Which without us is the chamber of our infinite treasures, and within us the repository and recipient of them.

82

What shall we render unto God for this infinite space in our understandings? Since in giving us this He hath laid the foundation of infinite blessedness, manifested infinite love, and made us in capacity infinite creatures, In this He hath glorified and gratified infinite goodness exerted infinite power and made Himself thereby infinitely delightful, and infinitely great, in being Lord and Upholder of such infinite creatures. For being wholly everywhere, His omnipresence was wholly in every centre: and He could do no more than that would bear: Communicate Himself wholly in every centre. His nature and essence being the foundation of His power, and of our happiness: of His glory and our greatness: of His goodness, and our satisfaction. For we could never believe that He loved us infinitely unless He exerted all His power. For κατὰ Δύναμιν is one of the principal properties of Love: as well as ἐκείνου ἕνεκα. To the utmost of its power, as well as for His sake.

141.Aristotle, De Anima III.8 (431b21), “the soul is in a way all things”, because in knowing it receives the forms of things without their matter, as wax takes the seal’s impression without the gold (II.12, 424a). Aquinas repeats the saying (Summa Theologiae I q.80 a.1). Traherne gives it a new image, light taking the shape of whatever it falls on.

142.A humour is a disposition or bent of mind, named from the four bodily humours thought to govern temperament. On propriety, exclusive ownership, see the note at I.33; the communicative humour set against it is the wish to share (see Key Words, communicate).

143.A turn on the old definition of God as “an infinite sphere whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere”, the second proposition of the medieval Book of the Twenty-Four Philosophers, then ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus. Traherne gives the infinite sphere to the soul and sets it at a centre.

144.Dobell doubted the word and queried infinity in a footnote. The manuscript reads plainly Infinit, Traherne’s spelling, and he uses the adjective as a noun, as he does a few lines on (“he apprehends infinite about him”), so the text stands as written.

145.Latin, “known first and of necessity in the nature of things”, which Traherne translates. The schoolmen gave this place to being. Aquinas, after Avicenna, says that what the intellect first conceives, as most known, is being (De Veritate q.1 a.1). Traherne gives it to infinite space, close to Descartes, for whom the perception of the infinite is in some way prior in the mind to that of the finite (Meditations III). Compare II.24.

146.To unsuppose is to suppose away, to imagine not to be, a rare word. Henry More argued in the same way that if matter were removed from the world “there will be still Space and distance”, so that space must be something real and not bodily (The Immortality of the Soul, second edition, 1662). Traherne knew More’s work.

147.Greek, “according to power” and “for his sake” (literally, for the sake of that one), both of which Traherne translates in the next sentence. The phrases come from Aristotle’s definition of loving in the Rhetoric (II.4, 1380b35-1381a1), to wish for someone what one thinks good, for his sake and not one’s own, and to be ready to bring it about as far as one can. Traherne does not name Aristotle. The first phrase is κατὰ δύναμιν in its standard spelling.