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← ExitCenturies of Meditations

The Fourth Century

76

“O Adam, we have given thee neither a certain seat, nor a private face, nor a peculiar office, that whatsoever seat or face or office thou dost desire thou mayest enjoy. All other things have a nature bounded within certain laws; thou only art loose from all, and according to thy own counsel in the hand of which I have put thee, may’st choose and prescribe what nature thou wilt to thyself. I have placed thee in the middle of the world, that from thence thou mayest behold on every side more commodiously everything in the whole world. We have made thee neither heavenly nor earthly, neither mortal nor immortal, that being the honoured former and framer of thyself, thou mayest shape thyself into what nature thyself pleaseth!”

77

“O infinite liberality of God the Father! O admirable and supreme Felicity of Man! to whom it is given to have what he desires, and to be what he wishes. The brutes when they are brought forth bring into the world with them what they are to possess continually. The spirits that are above were, either from the beginning or a little after, that which they are about to be to all Eternities. Nascenti Homini omnigena vitae germina indidit Pater; God infused the seeds of every kind of life into man: whatever seeds every one chooseth those spring up with him, and the fruits of those shall he bear and enjoy. If sensual things are chosen by him, he shall become a beast; if reasonable a celestial creature; if intellectual an Angel and a Son of God; and if being content with the lot of no creatures, he withdraws himself into the centre of his own unity, he shall be one Spirit with God, and dwell above all in the solitary darkness of His Eternal Father.”

78

This Picus Mirandula spake in an oration made before a most learned assembly in a famous university. Any man may perceive that he permitteth his fancy to wander a little wantonly after the manner of a poet but most deep and serious things are secretly hidden under his free and luxuriant language. The changeable power he ascribeth to man is not to be referred to his body, for as he wisely saith, neither doth the bark make a plant, but its stupid and nothing-perceiving nature neither doth the skin make a beast, but his brutish and sensual nature, neither doth separation from a body, make an Angel but his Spiritual intelligence. So neither doth his rind or coat or skin or body make a man to be this or that, but the interior stupidness, or sensuality, or angelical intelligence of his soul, make him accordingly a plant, a beast, or an Angel. The deformity or excellency is within.

79

Neither is it to be believed, that God filled all the world with creatures before he thought of man: but by that little fable he teacheth us the excellency of man. Man is the end, and therefore the perfection of all the creatures; but as Eusebius Pamphilus saith (in the Nicene Council), he was first in the intention, though last in the execution. All Angels were spectators as well as he, all Angels were free agents as well as he: as we see by their trial, and the fall of some; all angels were seated in as convenient a place as he. But this is true, that he was the end of all and the last of all: and the comprehensive head and the bond of all, and in that more excellent than all the Angels. As for whom the visible and invisible worlds were made, and to whom all creatures ministered: as one also, that contained more species in his nature than the Angels, which is not as some have thought derogatory, but perfective to his being: It is true also that God hath prevented him; and satisfied all wishes, in giving him such a being as he now enjoyeth. And that for infinite reasons it was best that he should be in a changeable estate, and have power to choose what himself listed: For he may so choose as to become one Spirit with God Almighty.

80

By choosing a man may be turned and converted into Love, which, as it is an universal sun filling and shining in the Eternity of God, so is it infinitely more glorious than the Sun is, not only shedding abroad more amiable and delightful beams, illuminating and comforting all objects: yea glorifying them in the supreme and sovereign manner, but is of all sensibles the most quick and tender, being able to feel like the long-legged spider; at the utmost end of its divaricated feet; and to be wholly present in every place where any beam of itself extends. The sweetness of its healing influences is inexpressible. And of all beings such a being would I choose to be for ever: One that might inherit all in the most exquisite manner; and be the joy of all in the most perfect measure.

81

Nazianzen professed himself to be a lover of right reason, and by it did undertake even to speak oracles. Even so may we by the Reason discover all the mysteries of heaven. And what our author here observeth, is very considerable, That man by retiring from all externals and withdrawing into himself in the centre of his own unity becometh most Like unto God. What Mercurius said in the dialogue is most true, Man is of all other the greatest miracle, yea verily, should all the miracles that ever were done be drawn together, Man is a miracle greater than they. And as much may be written of him alone as of the whole world. The dividing of the sea, the commanding of the sun, the making of the world is nothing to the single creation of one soul: There is so much wisdom and power expressed in its faculties and inclinations. Yet is this greatest of all miracles unknown because men are addicted only to sensible and visible things. So great a world in explication of its parts is easy: but here the dimensions of innumerable worlds are shut, up in a centre. Where it should lodge such innumerable objects, as it doth by knowing, whence it should derive such infinite streams as flow from it by Loving, how it should be a mirror of all Eternity, being made of nothing, how it should be a fountain or a sun of Eternity out of which such abundant rivers of affection flow, it is impossible to declare. But above all how, having no material or bodily existence, its substance, though invisible, should be so rich and precious. The consideration of one Soul is sufficient to convince all the Atheists in the whole world.

82

The abundance of its beams, the reality of its beams, the freedom of its beams, the excellency and value of its beams are all transcendent. They shine upon all the things in Heaven and Earth and cover them all with celestial waters: waters of refreshment, beams of comfort. They flow freely from a mind desiring to be obedient, pleasing and good. The soul communicates itself wholly by them: and is richer in its communications than all odors and spices whatsoever. It containeth in its nature the influences of the stars by way of eminence, the splendour of the sun, the verdure of trees, the value of gold, the lustre of precious stones, the sense of beasts and the life of Angels: the fatness of feasts, the magnificence of palaces, the melody of music, the sweetness of wine, the beauty of the excellent, the excellency of virtue, and the glory of cherubims. The harmony and the joys of Heaven appear in Love, for all these were made for her, and all these are to be enjoyed in her.

83

Whether it be the Soul itself, or God in the Soul, that shines by Love, or both, it is difficult to tell: but certainly the love of the Soul is the sweetest thing in the world. I have often admired what should make it so excellent. If it be God that loves, it is the shining of His essence; if it be the Soul, it is His Image: if it be both, it is a double benefit.

322.Pico’s plastes et fictor, moulder and maker. The speech follows the Latin closely (Nec certam sedem, nec propriam faciem, nec munus ullum peculiare), and “in the hand of which I have put thee” is Pico’s in cuius manu te posui, from Ecclesiasticus 15:14 (see IV.42). Traherne stops here and leaves out Pico’s next sentence, that man may sink into the brutes below him or be reborn into the divine above; the manuscript has no trace of it.

323.Pico’s O summam Dei patris liberalitatem, summam et admirandam hominis foelicitatem! His felicitas is Traherne’s Felicity, the word this book has made its own (see Key Words, felicity). Traherne drops Pico’s tag from the poet Lucilius, that the brutes bring what they will possess with them from the mother’s bag.

324.Pico wrote omnifaria semina et omnigenae vitae germina, seeds of every sort and shoots of every kind of life; Traherne’s Latin shortens the phrase, and omnigena should read omnigenae. He also drops the first rung of Pico’s ladder, si vegetalia, planta fiet, if a man cultivates the vegetative powers he will become a plant, and begins with the beasts.

325.Pico’s in solitaria Patris caligine; Traherne adds Eternal. The divine darkness is that of Exodus 20:21, where Moses “drew near unto the thick darkness where God was”, as read by Dionysius the Areopagite in Mystical Theology I. Withdrawal into the centre of one’s own unity is the Platonists’ return of the soul to the One (Plotinus, Enneads VI.9), and to be one Spirit with God is 1 Corinthians 6:17 (see IV.28).

326.Traherne is mistaken. Pico wrote the Oration in 1486 to open a public disputation of his nine hundred theses, planned for Rome early in 1487; Pope Innocent VIII suspended the disputation, and the speech was never delivered, at a university or anywhere else.

327.Pico’s Neque enim plantam cortex, sed stupida et nihil sentiens natura, translated closely. Pico’s sentence has four limbs; Traherne leaves out the third, that a round body does not make a heavenly being but right reason (recta ratio), and adds the moral himself, that the deformity or excellency is within.

328.Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 260-339), called Pamphilus after his teacher, the historian of the early Church, who took part in the Council of Nicaea (325). The saying has not been found in his writings. The maxim itself is the schoolmen’s, that the end is first in the order of intention and last in execution (Aquinas, Summa theologiae I-II q.1 a.1).

329.The soul’s power to feel at every point of the body was likened to a spider that feels at the centre of its web the least touch on any thread, an image found in a fragment of Heraclitus (B67a) and in Sir John Davies’s poem Nosce Teipsum (1599), “If ought doe touch the utmost thred of it”. Divaricated is spread wide apart; sensibles here are things that feel.

330.Gregory of Nazianzus, whose Oration 38 Traherne quoted at III.65 (see the note there). The profession is not in Pico, and its place in Gregory’s works has not been traced. Right reason (Greek orthos logos, Latin recta ratio) is the Stoics’ phrase for reason in agreement with nature and God, much used by English divines of the day; Pico has it in the clause Traherne left out at IV.78.

331.The Asclepius (see IV.74). Hermes says only that man is a great miracle; the rest of the sentence, that man is a greater miracle than all the miracles ever done, is Traherne’s own enlargement. The dividing of the sea and the commanding of the sun are Exodus 14:21 and Joshua 10:12-13.

332.An old question of the schools. Peter Lombard taught that the charity by which the soul loves God and neighbour is the Holy Spirit himself (Sentences I dist. 17); Aquinas replied that it is a created habit in the soul (Summa theologiae II-II q.23 a.2). Traherne leaves the question open and takes both answers as gifts.