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← ExitCenturies of Meditations

The Fourth Century

27

He conceived it his duty and much delighted in the obligation, that he was to treat every man in the whole world as the representative of mankind and that he was to meet in him, and to pay unto him all the love of God, Angels and Men.

28

He thought that he was to treat every man in the person of Christ. That is both as if himself were Christ in the greatness of his love, and also as if the man were Christ, he was so to use him having respect to all others. For the love of Christ is to dwell within, him, and every man is the object of it. God and he are to become one Spirit, that is one in will, and one in desire. Christ must live within him. He must be filled with the Holy Ghost, which is the God of Love, he must be of the same mind with Christ Jesus, and led by His Spirit. For on the other side he was well acquainted with this mystery–That every man being the object of our Saviour’s Love, was to be treated as our Saviour, Who hath said, Inasmuch as ye have done it to the least of these my brethren; ye have done it unto me. And thus he is to live upon Earth among sinners.

29

He had another saying—He lives most like an Angel that lives upon least himself, and doth most good to others. For the Angels neither eat nor drink, and yet do good to the whole world. Now a man is an incarnate Angel. And he that lives in the midst of riches as a poor man himself, enjoying God and Paradise, or Christendom which is better, conversing with the poor, and seeing the value of their souls through their bodies, and prizing all things clearly with a due esteem, is arrived here to the estate of immortality. He cares little for the delicacies either of food or raiment himself, and delighteth in others. God, Angels, and Men are his treasures. He seeth through all the mists and veils of invention, and possesseth here beneath the true riches. And he that doth this always is a rare Phoenix. But he confessed that he had often cause to bewail his infirmities.

30

I speak not his practises but his principles. I should too much praise your friend did I speak his practises, but it is no shame for any man to declare his principles, though they are the most glorious in the world. Rather they are to be shamed that have no glorious principles, or that are ashamed of them. This he desired me to tell you because of modesty. But with all that indeed his practises are so short of these glorious principles, that to relate them would be to his shame; and that therefore you would never look upon him but as clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Nevertheless I have heard him often say, That he never allowed himself in swerving from any of these, and that he repented deeply of every miscarriage and moreover firmly resolved as much as was possible never to err or wander from them again.

31

I heard him often say that holiness and happiness were the same, and he quoted a mighty place of scripture—All her ways are pleasantness and her paths are peace. But he delighted in giving the reason of scripture, and therefore said, That holiness and wisdom in effect were one: for no man could be wise that knew excellent things without doing them. Now to do them is holiness and to do them wisdom. No man therefore can be further miserable than he swerveth from the ways of holiness and wisdom.

32

If he might have had but one request of God Almighty, it should have been above all other, that he might be a blessing to mankind. That was his daily prayer above all his petitions. He wisely knew that it included all petitions; for he that is a blessing to mankind must be blessed, that he may be so, and must inherit all their affections, and in that their treasures. He could not help it. But he so desired to love them, and to be a joy unto them, that he protested often, that he could never enjoy himself, but as he was enjoyed of others, and that above all delights in all worlds, he desired to be a joy and blessing to others. Though for this he was not to be commended, for he did but right to God and Nature, who had implanted in all that inclination.

33

The desire of riches was removed from himself pretty early. He often protested, if he had a palace of gold and a paradise of delights, besides that he enjoyed; he could not understand a farthing worth of benefit that he should receive thereby unless in giving it away. But for others he sometimes could desire riches; till at last perceiving the root of covetousness in him, and that it would grow as long as it was shrouded under that mould, he rooted it quite up with this principle–Sometimes it may so happen, that to contemn the world in the whole lump was as acceptable to God as first to get it with solicitude and care, and then to retail it out in particular charities.

34

After this he could say with Luther, that covetousness could never fasten the least hold upon him. And concerning his friends even to the very desire of seeing them rich, he could say, as Phocion the poor Athenian did of his children: Either they will be like me or not; if they are like me they will not need riches; if they are not they will be but needless and hurtful superfluities.

35

He desired no other riches for his friends but those which cannot be abused; to wit the true treasures, God and Heaven and Earth and Angels and Men, &c. with the riches of wisdom and grace to enjoy them. And it was his principle—That all the treasures in the whole world would not make a miser happy. A miser is not only a covetous man but a fool. Any needy man, that wanteth the world, is miserable. He wanteth God and all things.

36

He thought also that no poverty could befall him that enjoyed Paradise. For when all the things are gone which men can give, a man is still as rich as Adam was in Eden, who was naked there. A naked man is the richest creature in all worlds, and can never be happy till he sees the riches of his ~~very~~ nakedness. He is very poor in knowledge that thinks Adam poor in Eden. See here how one principle helps another. All our disadvantages contracted by the fall are made up and recompensed by the Love of God.

37

Tis not change of place, but glorious principles well practised that establish Heaven in the life and soul. An angel will be happy anywhere, and a devil miserable, because the principles of the one are always good, of the other, bad. From the centre to the utmost bounds of the everlasting hills all is Heaven before God, and full of treasure; and he that walks like God in the midst of them, blessed.

38

Love God, Angels and Men, triumph in God’s works, delight in God’s laws, take pleasure in God’s ways in all ages, correct sins, bring good out of evil, subdue your lusts, order your senses, conquer the customs and opinions of men and render good for evil, you are in Heaven everywhere. Above the stars earthly things will be celestial joys, and here beneath will things delight you that are above the heavens, All things being infinitely beautiful in their places, and wholly yours in all their places. Your riches will be as infinite in value and excellency, as they are in beauty and glory, and that is, as they are in extent.

284.A double rule, to be Christ to one’s neighbour and to see Christ in him. Luther put the first half memorably in The Freedom of a Christian (1520), that he would give himself as a Christ to his neighbour. The second rests on Matthew 25:40, quoted at the end of the meditation without the Authorised Version’s one of. To become one spirit with God is 1 Corinthians 6:17, “he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit”, a verse that returns in Pico at IV.77.

285.Tobit 12:19 in the Apocrypha, where the angel Raphael, who has travelled with Tobias as a man, reveals himself and says “I did neither eat nor drink, but ye did see a vision.”

286.The frame of IV.20 explained. The narrator speaks of the friend’s principles, not his practice, and does so at the friend’s own wish, so that no one boasts of himself. Paul uses a like reserve when he tells of “a man in Christ” caught up to the third heaven and adds “yet of myself I will not glory” (2 Corinthians 12:2-5).

287.Proverbs 3:17, loosely remembered. The Authorised Version reads “Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace”, and “her” is Wisdom. Traherne’s own reason for the text, that no one can be wise who knows excellent things without doing them, recalls James 4:17.

288.The figure is from trade. To contemn the world wholesale, in the lump, is set against first getting it with care and then selling it off retail in small charities. Contrast I.7, where to contemn the world is the opposite of enjoying it; here contempt means refusing to possess, not refusing to enjoy. A lump is the whole mass, as in 1 Corinthians 5:6.

289.Phocion (c. 402-318 BC), Athenian general and statesman, famous for honest poverty. Plutarch tells how he refused Macedonian money even for his son Phocus, saying that if the boy turned to a sober life his inheritance would be enough, and if not, nothing would (Phocion 30). Traherne gives the saying a sharper double form. Luther’s remark on covetousness has not been traced to a source.

290.Horace’s line, caelum, non animum, mutant, qui trans mare currunt (they change their sky, not their mind, who run across the sea, Epistles I.11.27), makes the same point; compare Milton’s Satan, quoted in the note at I.36.

291.Genesis 49:26, Jacob’s blessing “unto the utmost bound of the everlasting hills”. Traherne makes the phrase stand for the whole extent of the created world, from the centre of the earth to its farthest bound, and uses it twice more, at V.6 and V.9.