From the book
Centuries of Meditations
Thomas Traherne · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordBy way of eminence means in a higher, more excellent manner.
- In TraherneTraherne first uses the phrase of God’s comprehensive enjoyment of the world.
- In this editionThe scholastic explanation belongs to the 2026 note to III.74.
- A place to beginGod possesses and enjoys all things comprehensively and by way of eminence.
Meaning
By way of eminence means in a higher, more excellent manner. In theological use a perfection found in creatures can be attributed to God without making Him one instance of their limited kind.
Use in the book
Traherne first uses the phrase of God’s comprehensive enjoyment of the world. He then applies it to the soul’s loving riches: stellar influences, sunlight, precious materials, living sensation, and angelic life are gathered in it in an elevated form. The soul does not literally turn into a heap of these things. It knows, enjoys, and communicates their excellencies. The phrase helps a reader understand how a spiritual subject can contain bodily and cosmic goods without being spatially compounded from them.
Places to read
In this edition
The scholastic explanation belongs to the 2026 note to III.74. Here eminence is not social celebrity, official rank, or physical elevation.
Source note
Primary text: III.74, IV.82; theological gloss: 2026 edition note to III.74.