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 Second Century · Meditation II.84

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English Edition · Branch 198 of 454

The Second Century · Meditation II.84

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Centuries of Meditations

p. 198

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.

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”.

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.