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← ExitCenturies of Meditations

The Fourth Century

17

If Though God be yours, and all the joys and inhabitants in Heaven, if you be resolved to prize nothing great and excellent, nothing, sublime and eternal, you lay waste your possessions, and make vain your enjoyment of all permanent and glorious things. So that you must be sure to inure yourself frequently to these principles and to impress them deeply; I will prize all I have, and nothing shall with me be less esteemed, because it is excellent. A daily joy shall be more my joy, because it is continual. A common joy is more my delight because it is common. For all mankind are my friends, and everything is enriched in serving them. A little grit in the eye destroyeth the sight of the very heavens, and a little malice or envy a world of joys. One wry principle in the mind is of infinite consequence. I will ever prize what I have, and so much the more because I have it. To prize a thing when it is gone breedeth torment and repining; to prize it while we have it joy and thanksgiving.

18

All these relate to enjoyment, but those principles that relate to communication are more excellent. These are principles of retirement and solitude; but the principles that aid us in conversation are far better and help us, though not so immediately to enjoyment, in a far more blessed and diviner manner. For it is more blessed to give than to receive; and we are more happy in communication than enjoyment, but only that communication is enjoyment; as indeed what we give we best receive. For the joy of communicating and the joy of receiving maketh perfect happiness. And therefore are the sons of men our greatest treasures, because they can give and receive: treasures perhaps infinite as well as affections. But this I am sure they are our treasures, and therefore is conversation so delightful, because they are the greatest.

19

The world is best enjoyed and most immediately while we converse wisely and blessedly with men. I am sure it were desirable that they could give and receive infinite treasures: and perhaps they can. For whomsoever I love as myself, to him I give myself, and all my happiness; which I think is infinite: and I receive him and all his happiness, Yea, in him I receive God, for God delighteth me for being his blessedness: so that a man obligeth me infinitely that maketh himself happy; and by making himself happy, giveth me himself and all his happiness. Besides this he loveth me infinitely, as God doth; and he dare do no less for God’s sake. Nay he loveth God for loving me, and delighteth in Him for being good unto me. So that I am magnified in his affections, represented in his understanding, tenderly beloved, caressed and honoured: and this maketh society delightful. But here upon earth it is subject to changes. And therefore this principle is always to be firm, as the foundation of Bliss; God only is my sovereign happiness and friend in the World. Conversation is full of dangers, and friendships are mortal among the sons of men. But communion with God is infinitely secure, and He my Happiness.

20

He from whom I received these things, always thought, that to be happy in the midst of a generation of vipers was become his duty: for men and he are fallen into sin. Were all men wise and innocent, it were easy to be happy, for no man would injure and molest another. But he that would be happy now, must be happy among ingrateful and injurious persons. That knowledge which would make a man happy among just and holy persons, is unuseful now: and those principles only profitable that will make a man happy, not only in peace, but blood, On every side we are environed with enemies, surrounded with reproaches, encompassed with wrongs, besieged with offences, receiving evil for good, being disturbed by fools, and invaded with malice. This is the true estate of this world, which lying in wickedness, as our Saviour witnesseth, yieldeth no better fruits, than the bitter clusters of folly and perverseness, the grapes of Sodom, and the seeds of Gomorrah. Blind wretches that wound themselves offend me. I need therefore the oil of pity and the balm of love to remedy and heal them. Did they see the beauty of Holiness or the face of Happiness, they would not do so. To think the world therefore a general Bedlam, or place of madmen, and oneself a physician, is the most necessary point of present wisdom: an important imagination, and the way to Happiness.

21

He thought within himself that this world was far better than Paradise had men eyes to see its glory, and their advantages. For the very miseries and sins and offences that are in it are the materials of his joy and triumph and glory. So that he is to learn a diviner art that will now be happy, and that is like a royal chemist to reign among poisons, to turn scorpions into fishes, weeds into flowers, bruises into ornaments, poisons into cordials. And he that cannot [learn] this art, of extracting good out of evil, is to be accounted nothing. Heretofore, to enjoy beauties, and be grateful for benefits was all the art that was required to felicity, but now a man must, like a God, bring Light out of Darkness, and order out of confusion. Which we are taught to do by His wisdom, that ruleth in the midst of storms and tempests.

22

He generally held, that whosoever would enjoy the happiness of Paradise must put on the charity of Paradise, And that nothing was his Felicity but his Duty. He called his house the house of Paradise: not only because it was the place wherein he enjoyed the whole world, but because it was every one’s house in the whole world. For observing the methods and studying the nature of charity in Paradise, he found that all men would be brothers and sisters throughout the whole world, and evermore love one another as their own selves, though they had never seen each other before. From whence it would proceed that every man approaching him, would be as welcome as an Angel, and the coming of a stranger as delightful as the Sun; all things in his house being as much the foreigner’s as they were his own: Especially if he could infuse any knowledge or grace into him.

23

To establish himself thoroughly in this principle, he made much of another. For he saw that in Paradise a great help to this kind of life, was the cheapness of commodities, and the natural fertility of the then innocent and blessed ground. By which means it came to pass that every man had enough for himself, and all. But that now the earth being cursed and barren, there was danger of want, a necessity of toil and labour and care, and maintenance of servants. Therefore he concluded, that the charity of men ought to supply the earth’s sterility, who could never want, were they all of a mind, and liberal to each other. But since this also faileth, and men’s hearts are cursed and barren as the ground, what is wanting in them God will supply. And that to live upon God’s provisions is the most glorious dependence in the whole world. And so he made the love of God his true foundation, and builded not his hopes on the charity of men, but fled unto God as his last refuge, which he thought it very safe and blessed to do, because the trial of his faith was more glorious, and the love of God supplied the defect of charity in men: and he that had commanded had faithfully promised and was able to perform.

24

He thought the stars as fair now, as they were in Eden, the sun as bright, the sea as pure; and nothing pestered the world with miseries, and destroyed its order, peace, and beauty but sins and vices Rapine, covetousness, envy, oppression, luxury, ambition, pride &c., filled the world with briars and thorns, desolations, wars, complaints, and contentions, and that this made enormities to be vices. But universal charity; did it breathe among men, would blow all these away, as the wind doth chaff and stubble; and that then the heavens would be as serene and fair, and the lands as rich as ever they were. And that as all things were improved by the work of redemption, trades and occupations that were left behind, would be pleasant ornaments and innocent recreations; for whence have we all our cities, palaces, and temples, whence all our thrones and magnificent splendours, but from trades and occupations?

25

But order and charity in the midst of these, is like a bright star in an obscure night, like a summer’s day in the depth of winter, like a sun shining among the clouds, like a giant among his enemies, that receiveth strength from their numbers, like a king sitting in the midst of an army. By how much the more scarce it is, by so much the more glorious, by how much the more assaulted, by so much the more invincible; by how much the more lonely, by so much the more pitied of God and Heaven. And surely He, who being perfect Love, designed the felicity of the world with so much care in the beginning, will now be more tender of a soul that is like Him in its Deordination.

26

He thought that men were more to be beloved now than before. And, which is a strange paradox, the worse they are the more they were to be beloved. The worse they are the more they were to be pitied, and tendered and desired, because they had more need, and were more miserable, though the better they are, they are more to be delighted in. But his true meaning in that saying was this: Comparing them with what they were before they were fallen, they are more to be beloved. They are now worse, yet more to be beloved. For Jesus Christ hath been crucified for them. God loved them more, and He gave His Son to die for them and for me also, which are strong obligations leading us to greater charity. So that men’s unworthiness and our virtue are alike increased.

275.Acts 20:35 (see the note at II.57); Traherne returns to the saying at IV.45. Communication, in this meditation, is the giving and sharing of oneself and one’s goods (see Key Words, communicate).

276.A new frame. The speaker now presents himself as a disciple who received these principles from “your friend” and reports them to the reader.

277.The words are those of 1 John 5:19, “the whole world lieth in wickedness”, not of Christ. The nearest saying of Christ is John 7:7, “I testify of it, that the works thereof are evil.”

278.Deuteronomy 32:32, where the vine of God’s enemies “is of the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of Gomorrah”, and their clusters are bitter. Traherne keeps the bitter clusters and turns the fields of Gomorrah into its seeds.

279.The hospital of St Mary of Bethlehem in London, the city’s madhouse, whose name had become the common word for one. The wise man as physician of a mad world recalls Christ, who came as a physician to the sick (Matthew 9:12), and the ancient view of philosophy as the medicine of the soul (Cicero, Tusculan Disputations III.6).

280.The felix culpa, the happy fault or fortunate fall (see the note at I.31). The fallen world is richer than Eden for the goods that redemption draws out of its evils.

281.The alchemist of IV.11 redeemed. Paracelsian physicians made remedies of poisons, and the spiritual alchemists spoke of transmuting the soul as the chemist transmutes metals. Cordials are medicines that restore the heart. To turn scorpions into fishes reverses Luke 11:11-12, where no father gives his son a serpent for a fish or a scorpion for an egg.

282.Genesis 3:17-19, “cursed is the ground for thy sake”, with its thorns and thistles and bread eaten in the sweat of the face; the briars and thorns of IV.24 grow from the same curse. The last words of IV.23 recall Romans 4:21, where Abraham is fully persuaded that what God had promised he was able also to perform.

283.A rare word from the schoolmen’s deordinatio, a departure from right order, disorder. The sense seems to be that a soul which keeps order and charity amid the world’s disorder is like God, who rules in the midst of storms (IV.21).