Centuries of Meditations

Name: Centuries of Meditations
Author: Thomas Traherne

Annotated Edition · With an Introduction, Notes and an Outline.

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Centuries of MeditationsThe Fourth Century · Meditation IV.20

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English Edition · Branch 334 of 454

The Fourth Century · Meditation IV.20

Book Mode

Centuries of Meditations

p. 334

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.

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).

About This Reading Edition

Thomas Traherne’s Centuries explore felicity, childhood vision, love, and the soul’s capacity to enjoy the world. This annotated English edition presents all 410 meditations across five Centuries, with an introduction, explanatory notes, an outline, and textual apparatus.

Historical Text

The Centuries survive in Traherne’s manuscript and were first published by Bertram Dobell in London in 1908. The supplied edition follows the corrected Dobell text, with manuscript readings documented in its Note on the Text and Textual Notes. The four complete Centuries contain one hundred meditations each; the unfinished Fifth contains ten.

About This Edition

Diotimos Editions prepared the introduction, explanatory notes, glossary, reading guide, outline, and textual apparatus for this English original. Century and meditation numbers preserve the work’s structure, while verse line breaks, italics, and struck-through manuscript cancellations remain visible. Notes accompany their passages in the reader and Book Mode.

Rights

Thomas Traherne’s historical text and Bertram Dobell’s 1908 printing are in the public domain. The introduction, notes, and apparatus are © 2026 Diotimos Editions. Historical printing and transcription links identify the edition’s copy-text; manuscript corrections and unresolved readings are documented in the supplied editorial apparatus.