From the book
Centuries of Meditations
Thomas Traherne · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordLiberty is the power to act without coercion.
- In TraherneCreation can bestow worlds and faculties, but it cannot make an involuntary response count as friendship.
- In this editionLiberty concerns voluntary action and response in these passages.
- A place to beginCreated liberty permits friendship, obedience, and free imitation that gifts alone cannot secure.
Meaning
Liberty is the power to act without coercion. Here it particularly concerns the creature’s capacity to receive, refuse, imitate, and love.
Use in the book
Creation can bestow worlds and faculties, but it cannot make an involuntary response count as friendship. IV.46 accordingly represents liberty as the gift through which created beings become fountains of actions resembling God’s. Their free praise and imitation give the world a use that mere abundance cannot supply.
IV.48 places the responsibility directly on the reader. Even the most lavish gifts achieve no enjoyment if they are despised or neglected. Liberty is thus more consequential than many exterior events: the decisive work is to receive and esteem. Traherne’s language of divine generosity never eliminates the possibility that the creature can frustrate the good intended for it.
Places to read
In this edition
Liberty concerns voluntary action and response in these passages. It is not primarily a claim about civil rights or release from political restraint.