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.74

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English Edition · Branch 388 of 454

The Fourth Century · Meditation IV.74

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Centuries of Meditations

p. 388

74

But what is there more that will more amaze us? Can anything be behind such glorious mysteries? Is God more Sovereign in other excellencies? Hath He showed Himself glorious in anything besides? Verily there is no end of all His greatness, His understanding is infinite, and His ways innumerable. How precious, saith the psalmist, are Thy thoughts to me, O God; when I would count them they are more than can be numbered. There is no man that reckoneth them up in order unto Thee. O my Lord I will endeavour it: and I will glorify Thee for evermore. The most perfect laws are agreeable only to the most perfect creatures. Since therefore Thy laws are the most perfect of all that are possible; so are Thy creatures. And if infinite power be wholly expressed O Lord, what creatures! what creatures shall we become! What Divine, what illustrious Beings! Souls worthy of so great a love, blessed forever. Made worthy, though not found; for Love either findeth or maketh an object worthy of itself. For which cause Picus Mirandula admirably saith, in his tract De Dignitate Hominis, I have read in the monuments of Arabia, that Abdala, the Saracen, being asked, Quid in hâc quasi mundanâ Scenâ admirandum maxime spectaretur? What in this world was most admirable? answered, MAN: Than whom he saw nothing more to be admired. Which sentence of his is seconded, by that of Mercurius Trismegistus, Magnum, O Asclepi, Miraculum, Homo; Man is a great and wonderful miracle: Ruminating upon the reason of these sayings, those things did not satisfy me, which many have spoken concerning the excellency of Human Nature. As that man was Creaturarum Internuncius; Superis familiaris, Inferiorum Rex; sensuum perspicaciâ, Rationis Indagine, Intelligentiae Lumine, Naturae Interpres, Stabilis Aevi et fluxi Temporis Interstitium, et (qd. Persae dicunt) Mundi Copula immo Hymenaeus: A messenger between the creatures, Lord of inferior things, and familiar to those above; by the keenness of his senses, the piercing of his reason, and the light of knowledge, the interpreter of nature, a seeming interval between time and eternity, and the inhabitant of both, the golden link or tie of the world, yea, the Hymenaeus marrying the Creator and His creatures together; made as David witnesseth a little lower than the angels. All those things are great, but they are not the principal: that is, they are not those which rightly challenge the name and title of most admirable: And so he goeth on; admiring and exceeding all that had been spoken before concerning the excellency of man. Why do we not rather admire the Angels and the Quires above the Heavens? At length I seemed to understand, why man was the most happy, and therefore the most worthy to be admired of all the creatures: and to know that estate; which in the order of things he doth enjoy, not only above the beasts but above the stars and that might be envied even of the supra-celestial spirits, which he styleth, ultra-mundanis mentibus invidiosam.

314.Psalm 139:17-18, where God’s thoughts are precious and more than the psalmist could count, run together from memory with Psalm 40:5, where they “cannot be reckoned up in order unto thee” and are more than can be numbered. “His understanding is infinite”, just before, is Psalm 147:5.

315.Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-94), Italian philosopher. His Latin oration of 1486 was written to open a public debate in Rome on his nine hundred theses; it was first printed in 1496, and the title De Dignitate Hominis (On the Dignity of Man) was given it in later collected editions. From here to the end of IV.77 Traherne translates the opening of the Oration, apparently in his own version, since no English translation was printed until the nineteenth century.

316.Pico begins “I have read, most reverend Fathers, in the records of the Arabs”; Traherne drops the address to the Fathers. Monuments are written records (Latin monumenta). Abdala has not been securely identified; the historian George Makdisi proposed the ninth-century Arabic man of letters Ibn Qutayba. The Latin question means “what on the world’s stage, as it were, was most to be wondered at?”, and Traherne’s English drops the stage.

317.Hermes Trismegistus (Thrice-greatest Hermes), the Egyptian sage to whom the Renaissance ascribed the Hermetic writings and a great antiquity. The saying is from the Latin dialogue Asclepius (6), magnum, o Asclepi, miraculum est homo, which Pico quotes; Asclepi is the vocative, O Asclepius, the name of Hermes’s pupil. Dobell misread the manuscript here and printed Asclepiades. Traherne also knew the Hermetica in John Everard’s English Divine Pymander (1650).

318.Pico’s list of man’s praises, which Traherne translates in the words that follow, leaving qd. Persae dicunt, as the Persians say, in Latin. A copula is a bond or link and Hymenaeus the god or song of marriage, so that man is the wedding-bond of the world’s parts. Two phrases of the English are Traherne’s own, “the golden link or tie” and the marriage of “the Creator and His creatures”. The words from David are Pico’s, citing Psalm 8:5.

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.