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← ExitCenturies of Meditations

The Second Century

83

He therefore hath not ~~only~~ made us infinite treasures only in extent: and souls infinite to see and enjoy them, which is to measure and run parallel with them but in depth also they are everywhere infinite being infinite in excellency. And the soul is a miraculous abyss of infinite abysses, an undrainable ocean, an inexhausted fountain of endless oceans, when it will exert itself to fill and fathom them. For if it were otherwise man is a creature of such noble principles and severe expectations, that could he perceive the least defect to be in the Deity, it would infinitely displease him: The smallest distaste, spreading like a cloud from a hand over all the Heavens. Neither will any pretence serve the turn to cover our cowardice, which we call modesty, in not daring to say or expect this of the Deity. Unless we expect this with infinite ardency, we are a lazy kind of creatures good for nothing. Tis man’s holiness and glory to desire absolute perfection in God, with a jealousy and care infinitely cruel: for when we so desire it, that without this we should be infinitely displeased, and altogether lost and desperate forever: finding God to have exceeded all our desires: it becometh the foundation of infinite Love. In the fruition of the fruits of which we are to live in communion with Him for evermore.

Space perfects its stature Objects its lineaments Affections its colors Actions its graces.

84

Your soul being naturally very dark, and deformed and empty when extended through infinite but empty space, the world serves you in beautifying and filling it with amiable ideas; for the perfecting of its stature in the eye of God. For the thorough understanding of which you must know, that God is a being whose power from all Eternity was prevented with Act. And that He is one infinite Act of KNOWLEDGE and WISDOM, which is infinitely beautified with many consequences of Love &c. Being one Act of Eternal Knowledge, He knows all which He is able to know, all objects in all worlds being seen in His understanding, His greatness is the presence of His soul with all objects in infinite spaces: and His brightness the light of Eternal Wisdom. His essence also is the Sight of Things. For He is all eye and all ear. Being therefore perfect, and the mirror of all perfection, He hath commanded us to be perfect as He is perfect. And we are to grow up into Him till we are filled with the fulness of His Godhead. We are to be conformed to the Image of His glory: till we become the resemblance of His great exemplar. Which we then are, when our power is converted into Act, and covered with it, we being an Act of KNOWLEDGE and WISDOM as He is: When our Souls are present with all objects, and beautified with the ideas and figures of them all. For then shall we be MENTES as He is MENS. We being of the same mind with Him who is an infinite eternal mind. As both Plato and Cato with the Apostle, term Him.

Si Deus est Animus sit pura Mente Colendus. If God, as verses say, a Spirit be We must in Spirit like the Deity Become: we must the Image of His mind And union with it, in our Spirit find.

Heaven and Earth, Angels and Men, God and all things must be contained in our souls, that we may become glorious personages, and like unto Him in all our actions.

85

You know that Love receives a grandeur of value and esteem from the greatness of the person, from whom it doth proceed. The love of a King is naturally more delightful than the love of a beggar: the love of God more excellent than the love of a King. The love of a beautiful person is more pleasing than that of one deformed. The love of a wise man is far more precious than the love of a fool. When you are so great a creature as to fill ages and kingdoms with the beauty of your soul, and to reign over them like the Wisdom of the Father filling Eternity with Light and Glory, your love shall be acceptable and sweet and precious. The world therefore serveth you, not only in furnishing you with riches, and making you beautiful, and great and wise, when it is rightly used: but in doing that which doth infinitely concern you, in making your love precious. For above all things in all worlds you naturally desire most violently that your love should be prized: and the reason is, because that being the best thing you can do or give, all is worthless that you can do besides: and you have no more power left to be good, or to please, or to do anything, when once your love is despised.

86

Since therefore Love does all it is able, to make itself accepted, both in increasing its own vehemence, and in adorning the person of the Lover: as well as in offering up the most choice and perfect gifts, with what care ought [you] to express your love in beautifying yourself with this wisdom, and in making your person acceptable? Especially since your person is the greatest gift your love can offer up to God Almighty. Clothe yourself with Light as with a garment, when you come before Him: put on the greatness of Heaven and Earth, adorn yourself with the excellencies of God Himself. When you prepare yourself to speak to Him, be all the knowledge and light you are able, as great, as clear, and as perfect as is possible. So at length shall you appear before God in Sion: and as God converse with God for evermore.

87

God hath made it easy to convert our soul into a Thought containing Heaven and Earth, not that it should be contemptible because it is easy: but done because it is Divine. Which Thought is as easily abolished, that by a perpetual influx of life it may be maintained. If He would but suspend His power, no doubt but Heaven and Earth would straight be abolished, which He upholds in Himself as easily and as continually as we do the idea of them in our own mind. Since therefore all things depending so continually upon His care and love, the perpetual influx of His almighty power is infinitely precious and His Life exercised incessantly in the manifestation of Eternal Love, in that every moment throughout all generations He continueth without failing to uphold all things for us, we likewise ought to show our infinite love by upholding Heaven and Earth, Time and Eternity, God and all things in our Souls, without wavering or intermission: by the perpetual influx of our life. To which we are by the goodness of all things infinitely obliged. Once to cease is to draw upon ourselves infinite darkness, after we have begun to be so illuminated: for it shows a forgetfulness and defect in love, and it is an infinite wonder that we are afterward restored.

88

[This number is omitted in the original MS.]

89

Being that we are here upon Earth turmoiled with cares, and often shaken with winds and by disturbances distracted: it is the infinite Mercy of God that we are permitted to breathe and be diverted. For all the things in Heaven and Earth attend upon us while we ought to answer and observe them, by upholding their beauty within: But we are spared and God winketh at our defect, all the World attending us while we are about some little trifling business. But in the Estate of Glory the least intermission would be an eternal apostacy: But there by reason of our infinite union with God it is impossible.

90

We could easily show that the idea of Heaven and Earth in the Soul of Man, is more precious with God than the things themselves and more excellent in nature. Which because it will surprise you a little, I will. What would Heaven and Earth be worth, were there no spectator, no enjoyer? As much therefore as the end is better than the means, the thought of the World whereby it is enjoyed is better than the World. So is the idea of it in the Soul of Man, better than the World in the esteem of God: it being the end of the World, without which Heaven and Earth would be in vain. It is better to you, because by it you receive the World, and it is the tribute you pay. It more immediately beautifies and perfects your nature. How deformed would you be should all the World stand about you and you be idle: Were you able to create other worlds, God had rather you should think on this. For thereby you are united to Him. The sun in your eye is as much to you as the sun in the heavens. For by this the other is enjoyed. It would shine on all rivers, trees, and beasts in vain to you could you not think upon it. The sun in your understanding illuminates your soul, the sun in the heavens enlightens the hemisphere. The world within you is an offering returned, which is infinitely more acceptable to God Almighty, since it came from Him, that it might return unto Him. Wherein the mystery is great. For God hath made you able to create worlds in your own mind which are more precious unto Him than those which He created; and to give and offer up the world unto Him, which is very delightful in flowing from Him, but much more in returning to Him. Besides all which in its own nature also a Thought of the World, or the World in a Thought, is more excellent than the World, because it is spiritual and nearer unto God. The material world is dead and feeleth nothing, but this spiritual world, though it be invisible, hath all dimensions, and is a divine and living Being, the voluntary Act of an obedient Soul.

148.These four lines stand in the manuscript beside the number 84, in a smaller hand, a jotting rather than part of either meditation; Dobell printed them in a footnote, in two columns, as written “between 83 and 84”. They apply the language of portraiture to the soul, whose stature, lineaments (features), colouring and graces are completed by space, objects, affections and actions. II.84 opens on “the perfecting of its stature”.

149.A commonplace of theology from the Greeks on. Xenophanes said of God that “whole he sees, whole he thinks, whole he hears” (fragment 24), and Irenaeus that God is “wholly hearing, and wholly seeing, and wholly light” (Against Heresies II.13.3). Pliny says the same (Natural History II.14).

150.MENTES and MENS are Latin, minds and Mind. Plato reports the agreement of the wise that mind is king of heaven and earth (Philebus 28c); Cato is the supposed author of the Latin verse quoted next. The Apostle is probably St Paul, who speaks of “the mind of the Lord” (Romans 11:34; 1 Corinthians 2:16), though the thought of the verse is closest to John 4:24, “God is a Spirit”.

151.“If God is spirit, He is to be worshipped with a pure mind”, a shortening of the opening couplet of the Distichs of Cato (I.1), moral verses ascribed to one Dionysius Cato and long the first Latin reader of the grammar schools. Traherne’s English lines paraphrase the whole couplet, whose nobis ut carmina dicunt (as poems tell us) becomes “as verses say”.

152.Psalm 104:2, addressed to God, “Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment”; the soul is bidden to wear what the psalm gives to God. The closing appearance before God in Sion is Psalm 84:7, “every one of them in Zion appeareth before God”.

153.The manuscript passes straight from 87 to 89, on the same page and without a gap, so nothing is missing; Traherne skipped a number in counting. Dobell kept his numbering and printed this bracketed note in the empty place, and the numbering is kept here so that references agree with his.

154.Overlooks, passes over, as in Acts 17:30, “the times of this ignorance God winked at”. The phrase carries no suggestion of connivance.

155.A falling away from God (see Key Words, apostasy). Here it names even a moment’s lapse of the soul’s attention in the state of glory, which union with God makes impossible there.