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Edward Taylor, Meditation 32, Sixth Stanza

26 Friday Mar 2021

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Sixth Stanza

Thine ordinances, Grace’s wine-vats where

Thy Spirit walks and Grace’s runs do lie

And angels waiting stand with holy cheer

From Grace’s conduit head, with all supply.

These vessels full of Grace are, and bowls 

In which their taps do run are precious souls.

Summary

In this stanza, he pictures the flow from grace which runs into the souls of those who receive the ordinance, the Lord’s Supper. Grace is poured out as wine. 

Notes:

The entire stanza is a display of the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper. The rite is performed with bread and wine, hence the display of wine as the grace of God. 

The praise of the ordinance is not a matter unique to Taylor. Here, is a section from a near contemporary, Thomas Watson:

The gracious soul flies as a dove to an ordinance, upon the wings of delight. The sacrament is his delight. On this day the Lord makes “a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined,” Isa. 25:6. A sacrament day is a soul-festival day; here Christ takes the soul into his banqueting-house, and “displays the banner of love over it,” Cant. 2:4. Here are heavenly delicacies set before us. Christ gives us his body and blood. This is angels’ food, this is the heavenly nectar, here is a cup perfumed with the divine nature; here is wine spiced with the love of God. The Jews at their feasts poured ointment upon their guests; here Christ pours the oil of gladness into the heart. This is the king’s bath where we wash and are cleansed of our leprosy: the withered soul, after the receiving this blessed eucharist, hath been like a watered garden, Isa. 58:11. or like Egyptian fields, after the overflowing of the Nile, fruitful and flourishing; and do you wonder that a child of God delights in holy things? he must needs be a volunteer in religion.

Thomas Watson, A Divine Cordial; The Saint’s Spiritual Delight; The Holy Eucharist; and Other Treatises, The Writings of the Doctrinal Puritans and Divines of the Seventeenth Century. Here we see many of the same elements: wine, love, delight, angels, cups, et cetera.

Here are the particular elements of the scene:

The whole takes place at “Grace’s wine-vats.”  The word in the manuscript is apparently “fat,” but vat makes more sense

He then details what is seen there: 

First, it is the place where, “Thy Spirit walks.”  This is an unusual way to speak of the Spirit. But to have the Spirit here at the head of the understanding of the ordinance is quite understandable for Taylor. As Calvin writes in the Institutes, the Spirit communicates Christ to the recipient:

To summarize: our souls are fed by the flesh and blood of Christ in the same way that bread and wine keep and sustain physical life. For the analogy of the sign applies only if souls find their nourishment in Christ—which cannot happen unless Christ truly grows into one with us, and refreshes us by the eating of his flesh and the drinking of his blood.

Even though it seems unbelievable that Christ’s flesh, separated from us by such great distance, penetrates to us, so that it becomes our food, let us remember how far the secret power of the Holy Spirit towers above all our senses, and how foolish it is to wish to measure his immeasurableness by our measure. What, then, our mind does not comprehend, let faith conceive: that the Spirit truly unites things separated in space

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion & 2, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, vol. 1, The Library of Christian Classics (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 1370. And so, the Supper is indeed a place where the Spirits walks (if you will). This point could be further developed, but this suffices to show what Taylor intends by place the Spirit first at these vats of Grace.

Next, he says this is the place where “Grace’s runs do lie.”

This is the place where grace flows, which matches the remainder of the poem’s image of grace flowing from the throne. 

Next, there are angels standing as it were with cups of this heavenly wine, the “holy cheer.” The use of angels is interesting, because angels are not directly associated with the Supper. However, angels are said to be “ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit eternal life.” Heb. 1:14. Their mention also identifies this a spiritual or heavenly scene. 

The whole flows from “Grace’s conduit head” – which was identified in the previous stanza as the Father’s throne and the Lord’s heart. 

with all supply: this phrase means it is endless: the source for this grace is full-up.

The use of the word “bowls” in apposition to “vessels” makes it plain these are drinking bowls.

And in the end of the scene we see where the grace flows into “precious souls” – those who receive the supper.

At this point, it should be noted that the understanding of the “grace” received by the recipient differs among the various Christian traditions. And so Taylor would not have the same understanding of either the communication grace from God and the reception of grace by the communicant as would a contemporary Roman Catholic theologian. 

Musical

The first line contains an express pause at the comma after ordinance, but also an unmarked pause after vats:

Thine ordinances – pause – Grace’s wine-vats – pause – where

The “where” sets up the following lines; all that follows answer the question of what is there. Since it is an orphaned foot it rushes on to next line. 

The lines scan regularly from thereon. 

Edward Taylor, Meditation 32, Fifth Stanza

24 Wednesday Mar 2021

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Fifth Stanza

Oh! Grace, Grace! This wealthy grace doth lay

Her golden channels from thy Father’s throne,

Into our earthen pitchers to convey

Heaven’s Aqua Vitae to us for our own,

O! Let thy golden gutters run into 

My cup this liquor till it overflow.

Summary: This is a pray of praise and request. The quatrain is a pray of praise for the grace received: The water of life which flows from the Father’s throne. The couplet is a prayer of request that this grace continually flow until it overflows.

Notes:

The predominate praise in the quatrain is an element which is struck in Puritan writing, but is often missing and even obscured in broadly Christian works. The doctrine he proclaims is this: The love of the lost is in the Father before it is procured by Christ. The Father does not come to love the lost because Christ has died. The belief is that the Father is angry and the Son somehow pacifies the Father. While the death of Christ does propitiate the wrath of God; there is love which lies behind it all. 

Yes God has anger at sin. That is not in dispute. But, the Father loves the lost who are sinning against God. The Father is the fountain of love which is displayed by the Son. This love is unmeasurable toward the rebellious creatures. It is not only that the Son gives himself on our behalf. It is also that the Father gives the Son.

The great Puritan divine John Owen expresses it thus:

I come now to declare what it is wherein peculiarly and eminently the saints have communion with the Father; and this is LOVE,—free, undeserved, and eternal love. This the Father peculiarly fixes upon the saints; this they are immediately to eye in him, to receive of him, and to make such returns thereof as he is delighted withal. This is the great discovery of the gospel: for whereas the Father, as the fountain of the Deity, is not known any other way but as full of wrath, anger, and indignation against sin, nor can the sons of men have any other thoughts of him (Rom. 1:18; Isa. 33:13, 14; Hab. 1:13; Ps. 5:4–6; Eph. 2:3),—here he is now revealed peculiarly as love, as full of it unto us; the manifestation whereof is the peculiar work of the gospel, Tit. 3:4.

1. 1 John 4:8, “God is love.” That the name of God is here taken personally,1 and for the person of the Father, not essentially, is evident from verse 9, where he is distinguished from his only begotten Son whom he sends into the world. Now, saith he, “The Father is love.” that is, not only of an infinitely gracious, tender, compassionate, and loving nature, according as he hath proclaimed himself, Exod. 34:6, 7, but also one that eminently and peculiarly dispenseth himself unto us in free love.” So the apostle sets it forth in the following verses: “This is love.” verse 9;—“This is that which I would have you take notice of in him, that he makes out love unto you, in ‘sending his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him’ ” So also, verse 10, “He loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” And that this is peculiarly to be eyed in him, the Holy Ghost plainly declares, in making it antecedent to the sending of Christ, and all mercies and benefits whatever by him received. This love, I say, in itself, is antecedent to the purchase of Christ, although the whole fruit thereof be made out alone thereby, Eph. 1:4–6.

John Owen, The Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold, vol. 2 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, n.d.), 19–20. Owen can be difficult at times in his learning and profusion. But the concept which Owen works out in detail, Taylor here displays in the picture of love flowing through golden channels from his throne to us.

That we are called “earthen pitchers” is taken directly from Paul, 

2 Corinthians 4:5–7 (AV)

5 For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake. 6 For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. 7 But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.

The glory of God is poured into and is displayed in earthen vessels. The idea here is that God has poured his glory into human beings who are made of the earth and are vessels or pitchers which hold this heavenly beauty. The glory redounds to God, because the clay pitchers are commonplace and certainly not glorious.

Aqua Vitae means water of life and comes from John’s Gospel. The image is used twice by Jesus. First, it is used in his conservation with the Samaritan woman at the well: 

John 4:10–15 (AV)

10 Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water. 11 The woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from whence then hast thou that living water? 12  Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle? 13 Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: 14 But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. 15 The woman saith unto him, Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw.

And later at the Temple:

John 7:37–39 (AV) 

37 In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. 38 He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. 39 (But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.)

The couplet turns the praise into a prayer of request: He asks that this grace be poured into him until it overflows.

Here Taylor displays (again) great theological precision. In John 7, as quoted, Jesus uses the image of the overflowing water of life as an image for the Holy Spirit.  (Note this is a profoundly Trinitarian passage: The love of the Father in the Son is conveyed to the poet by the Spirit – which is also the manner in which this was explained by Calvin, of whom the Puritans were quite familiar). 

The idea of being overfilled with the liquor of the Spirit is explained by Paul in Ephesians

Ephesians 5:18–20 (AV)

18 And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit; 19 Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord; 20 Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; 

The congruence of Taylor and his sources is seen in the fact that he not merely alludes to Ephesians 5 in the couplet but he also performs the work called upon by Ephesians 5: beign filled with praise.

Musical:

The great note here is on the word “grace” and the alliterative “G”

Oh! Grace, Grace! This wealthy grace doth lay

Her golden channels from thy Father’s throne,

Into our earthen pitchers to convey

Heaven’s Aqua Vitae to us for our own,

O! Let thy golden gutters run into 

My cup this liquor till it overflow.

Edward Taylor, Meditation 32, Stanza 4

18 Thursday Mar 2021

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Fourth Stanza

Then Grace, my Lord, wrought in thy heart a vent

Thy soft soft hand to this hard work did go  (20)

And to the milk white Throne of Justice went 

And entered bond that Grace might overflow

Hence did thy Person to my nature tie

And bleed through human veins to satisfy.

Summary: This stanza turns to the means by which the grace of God was actually conveyed. The paradox and wonder of the Christian Gospel is laid out. The grace of God was provided with his own blood (as Paul puts in Acts 20:28, “the church of God which he obtained with his own blood”). In line 19, the blood comes from a vent in the heart of God. In line 24, that blood was shed through “human veins”. And in a further paradox, this pardon and mercy were obtained from the “Throne of Justice.”

Notes: 

First, note the agent of this work:

Then Grace, my Lord, wrought in thy heart a vent

Thy soft soft hand to this hard work did go  

In line 19, the agent is “grace” – as if it were an actor. In line 20, it is God’s own “hand” (his own agency). Placing “grace” as the primary motivation for this action is foregrounded in Ephesians: 

Ephesians 1:2–10 (AV) 

2 Grace be to you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. 

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenlyplaces in Christ: 4 According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:

5 Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, 6 To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. 

7 In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace; 8 Wherein he hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence; 

9 Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself: 10 That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him:

And:

Ephesians 2:1–8 (AV) 

1 And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins; 2 Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: 3 Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. 

4 But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, 5 Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) 6 And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: 7 That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in hiskindness toward us through Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: 

Note also the same movement of thought in Ephesians 2 as in Taylor’s poem: I am in rebellion (“Children of disobedience”), but God has shown me grace in Jesus Christ. 

This hard work: Is the death of Christ. The love of God, the grace of God is the motivation; God himself is the actor:

John 10:17–18 (AV)

17 Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. 18 No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father.

This work of mercy is done at the Throne of Justice: God’s mercy is not contrary to God’s justice: In forgiving the rebel, God establishes justice. The penalty of sin is fulfilled by Christ.

This then brings us to the couplet:

Hence did thy Person to my nature tie

And bleed through human veins to satisfy.

Two things are present here: Again we come to a paradox of the Incarnation. God fulfills the demands of the Law which were imposed upon human beings by becoming a human being: Thus, the penalty of death was paid by a human being  on behalf of human beings.

And in so doing, the Son “tied” himself to human nature in the person of Jesus (which is of two natures and one person). 

Justice bleeds mercy. God bleeds as a man. Grace is shown to the rebellious. The innocent gives life for the guilty. God is the agent of fulfilling justice and mercy at the same moment. 

Yahweh Elohim in the Old Testament, though just, holy, zealous for his honor, and full of ire against sin, is also gracious, merciful, eager to forgive, and abounding in steadfast love (Exod. 20:5–6; 34:6–7; Deut. 4:31; Ps. 86:15; etc.). In the New Testament God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is the God of all grace and mercy (Luke 6:36; 2 Cor. 1:3; 1 Peter 5:10). There is no antithesis between the Father and Christ. As full of love, merciful, and ready to forgive as Christ is, so is the Father. It is his words that Christ speaks, his works he does. The Father is himself the Savior (σωτηρ; Luke 1:47; 1 Tim. 1:1; Titus 3:4–5), the One who in Christ reconciles the world to himself, not counting its trespasses against it (2 Cor. 5:18–19). Christ, therefore, did not first by his work move the Father to love and grace, for the love of the Father is antecedent and comes to manifestation in Christ, who is himself a gift of God’s love (John 3:16; Rom. 5:8; 8:32; 1 John 4:9–10).

Herman Bavinck, John Bolt, and John Vriend, Reformed Dogmatics: Sin and Salvation in Christ, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), 368.

Musical:

There are two lines which deserve special consideration. First, 

Thy soft soft hand to this hard work did go  

First, the repetition of “soft” slows down the line and creates a contrast with “hard”. The accented words are soft soft hand … hard work … go. We have an extra accent in this line. The emphatic ‘soft’ thus helps to underscore the paradox: 

Next note the  hand … hard work. Hand and hard come on opposite sides of the line pause, which is an element of Anglo-Saxon alliterative poetry: it holds the halfs of the line closely together. Next the “r” of “hard”  is picked up in work. 

The opening of the couplet begins with an accented “Hence.” This draws the conclusion from the proceeding passage. The conclusion is not a logical deduction but rather the working out of this work of grace: To fulfill justice, extend mercy, rescue me, My Lord tied his nature to mine.

Edward Taylor, Meditation 32, Third Stanza

15 Monday Mar 2021

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Third Stanza 

Eternal love an object mean did smite

Which by the Prince of Darkness was beguiled,

That from this love it ran and swelled with spite. (15)

And in the way of filth was all defiled

Yet must be reconciled, cleansed and begraced

Or from the fruits of God’s first love displaced.

Summary: Eternal love rescued the poet. The poet was unworthy of such love. This rescue and reconciliation were necessary or the poet would have been lost. 

Notes:

Here he continues with the striking metaphor of the violent overthrow brought about by God’s love.  In the first stanza, he spoke of God’s grace being a torment to him as he sought to find words to express this wonder. 

In this stanza he uses a similar metaphor: Eternal love, which is another way to refer to God’s grace, actually strikes him violently as in a war. He could only be stopped by a violent act of God overthrowing his rebellion.

In this way, there is a relationship between this poem and Donne’s sonnet, Batter my heart

Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you 

As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; 

That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend 

Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new. 

I, like an usurp’d town to another due, 

Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end; 

Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend, 

But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue. 

Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov’d fain, 

But am betroth’d unto your enemy; 

Divorce me, untie or break that knot again, 

Take me to you, imprison me, for I, 

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, 

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

The work of God’s love is violent from the perspective of the poet in his state of rebellion. God to redeem the poet and show him love, had to first overcome the utter refusal to be reconcile to God. Note the elements of the poet’s pre-conversion status:

Which by the Prince of Darkness was beguiled,

That from this love it ran and swelled with spite

And in the way of filth was all defiled

The poet had been taken over to the enemies camp: he had been seduced, beguiled by the Prince of Darkness. (For this name for the devil, consider Luther’s hymn, A Mighty Fortress, “The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him.”

The poet did not merely refuse God’s love but actively rejects such love to the point of running away from God. And, he did not merely run away, but he actively hated God. He describes himself as having “swelled with spite.” This is an interesting phrase because it plays off the idiom “swell with pride.”  To swell with pride was a phrase used by other writers, for instance, “See the difference between an heart that is swelled with pride, and that which is ballasted with humility>”

Thomas Watson, The Select Works of the Rev. Thomas Watson, Comprising His Celebrated Body of Divinity, in a Series of Lectures on the Shorter Catechism, and Various Sermons and Treatises (New York: Robert Carter & Brothers, 1855), 510.

But this phrase, “swell with spite” is exceptionally rare. Even an internet search came back with only one use of the phrase. I found nothing in the published books catalogued by Google, and nothing in the writings of the contemporary Puritans. 

The poet describes himself as being stuffed with spite for God. 

And so he was a member of the opposing forces. He sought to evade God at all costs and he hated God. Finally, he was morally corrupt:

And in the way of filth was all defiled

Here again he plays upon a common idiom, “Way of life.”  Here is an apropos example of the common idiom: “Who would lose that which is certain and present, for the hope or fear of that which is to come and doubtful, when they suspect or believe it not fully? No wonder they go on still in the paths that lead down to the chambers of death, and are prejudiced against the ways of life. But why are men such infidels as to future things?” Thomas Manton, The Complete Works of Thomas Manton, vol. 2 (London: James Nisbet & Co., 1871), 367.

But rather than being in the “way of life,” the poet was in the way of filth. 

Think again about the picture painted here: A man seething with hatred is running away from a fearsome enemy. In his struggle to escape his enemy, he is plunged into an open sewer, wading through the refuse and vermin, defiled – disgusting. And then his enemy overtakes and smites him in the midst of rebellion and escape. 

But what is the nature of this attack, “Eternal love.” 

Now consider the necessity mentioned in these lines:

Yet must be reconciled, cleansed and begraced

Or from the fruits of God’s first love displaced.

There are two sorts of necessity: One sort is merely conditional necessity. In this instance, if God does not rescue Taylor, Taylor will not be rescued. It is as simple as that. “He must be reconciled” or he will be lost as a conditional matter.

But there is a second sort of necessity, the necessity of compulsion. Taylor speaks of a sort of compulsion in the love of God. 

Edward Taylor, Meditation 32, Second Stanza

14 Sunday Mar 2021

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Stanza Two

But plunged I am, my mind is puzzled

When I would spin my fancy thus unspun

In finest twine of praise I’m muzzled

My tazzled thoughts twirled into snick-snarls run. (10)

Thy grace my lord is such a glorious things

It doth confound me when I would it sing. 

Summary: The quatrain speaks directly of his inability to form adequate thoughts of the subject matter. He then turns to God confesses, that the glorious nature of grace overwhelms his capacity to speak on the subject. 

Notes

The quatrain which lays out his frustration demonstrates in itself the difficulty he is having. Imagine one who says that he is quite frightened and is perfectly composed: the proposition and the person would not match. Here, the proposition and the presentation do match.

The concept is relatively simple: The image is of one spinning yarn from wool. The act of bringing his imaginative powers – his “fancy” – into an orderly and fit presentation of verse is like wool being spun into yarn. And yet, rather than an orderly creation of yarn, his yarn has “unspun.” His fancy has not resulted in an orderly poem, but his imagination has “unspun.”

In finest twine of praise I’m muzzled

My tazzled thoughts twirled into snick-snarls run.

Drawing together his image of spinning yarn with the work of creating a poem is a “twine of praise.” But here, rather than the production of praise, there is nothing, “I’m muzzled.” Which is ironic, because this muzzled poem is speaking. 

The ninth line is wonderful. There is a spinning of thoughts, but they, they are twirled, but they are also “tazzled.” 

Tazzle is an uncommon word. A glossary of the dialect of the hundred of Lonsdale. Together with an essay on some leading characteristics spoken in the six northern counties of England. Ed. by J. C. Atkinson, defines “tazzle” as a wicked, drunken person. That definition does not help much but, The The English Dialect Dictionary, Being the Complete Vocabulary of All Dialect Words Still in Use, Or Known to Have Been in Use During the Last Two Hundred Years: T-Z. Supplement. Bibliography. Grammar, published in 1905, and edited by Joseph Wright

has “tazzle” a dialect formation of “teazle” to entangle. Thus, “tangled, fuzzy, twisted, knotted; a tangle, a state of disorder, esp. used of hair.” Which meets the case: this thoughts are tangled up. 

They are not merely tazzled, they are twirled and finally in a snick-snarl, which is exactly as it sounds. 

The poem which runs through my mind as a comparative exercise is Shakespeare’s sonnet 23 with the lines

Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,

Whose strength’s abundance weakens his own heart

The very desire and necessity of the poem makes the poem impossible to construct. The glorious grace of God is such that what poem could address such glory?

The couple makes an interesting move. He has been describing his jumbled thoughts, apparently to a reader. But at the couplet he turns from the human audience and directly addresses God:

Thy grace my lord is such a glorious things

It doth confound me when I would it sing. 

Here we come to a confession: At this point is matches most closely with the tone of sonnet 23. It is the very desire to speak which has tied my tongue.

Poetical:

As a final point, to describe the effects of sound and sense would be take away from their effect. Rather than comprehended this particular stanza must merely spoken and experienced.  Although not the sing-song chant of Dr. Seuss, I delight in sounds and sense is evident. Another possible comparison would be some poetry of Lewis Carol, like Jabberwocky.

Edward Taylor, Meditation 32

12 Friday Mar 2021

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Thy grace, dear Lord’s my golden wrack, I find

Screwing my fancy into ragged rhymes, 

Tuning thy praises in my feeble mind

Until I come to strike them on my chimes. 

Were I an angel bright, and borrow could (5)

King David’s harp, I would them play on gold.

Summary: In this stanza, the poet speaks of how painful it is for him to write these mediatory poems. If he had access to David’s greater gift, he would use it. 

General Notes:  What a remarkable introduction to a poem. The grace of God is both a wrack and screw. These implements of torture were in actual use by the English government (of which Taylor was a subject, even though he lived in the New England) at the time was written.

This does make an interesting discussion of Taylor’s creative process: He is faced with an extraordinary good. He finds himself compelled to translate the beauty with which he is faced into poetry. 

However, this process has two effects upon him. As has been the case many of the meditations, the contemplation of the grace of God causes in him an overwhelming sense of his own unworthiness and sinfulness. 

In this poem he references a related though distinct response: Here he finds himself inadequate to the process. He is unable to adequately make the translation.

The compulsion to write, to sense of sin and the inability to match the original he experiences like an implement of torture. In fact, when it comes to actual creation of the poem, the process is a torment, because he is the one operating the screw. 

Instrument Of Torture Stock Photos and Pictures | Getty Images

These responses are interestingly not inconsistent with the biblical account. 

This coming into knowing contact with the holy has a profound effect. Consider two stories of the disciples making a realization of the true nature of Jesus:

Luke 5:1–10 (AV) 

1 And it came to pass, that, as the people pressed upon him to hear the word of God, he stood by the lake of Gennesaret, 2 And saw two ships standing by the lake: but the fishermen were gone out of them, and were washing their nets. 3 And he entered into one of the ships, which was Simon’s, and prayed him that he would thrust out a little from the land. And he sat down, and taught the people out of the ship. 4 Now when he had left speaking, he said unto Simon, Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught. 5 And Simon answering said unto him, Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing: nevertheless at thy word I will let down the net. 6 And when they had this done, they inclosed a great multitude of fishes: and their net brake. 7 And they beckoned unto their partners, which were in the other ship, that they should come and help them. And they came, and filled both the ships, so that they began to sink. 8 When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord. 9 For he was astonished, and all that were with him, at the draught of the fishes which they had taken: 10 And so was also James, and John, the sons of Zebedee, which were partners with Simon. And Jesus said unto Simon, Fear not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men. 

Or in Mark 4, when Jesus stills the storm:

Mark 4:40–41 (AV) 

40 And he said unto them, Why are ye so fearful? how is it that ye have no faith? 41 And they feared exceedingly, and said one to another, What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him? 

But more to the point in this particular stanza are two instances from the prophet Jeremiah. In chapter 20, the prophet has determined that he will no longer speak because it has become too painful for him:

Jeremiah 20:7–9 (AV) 

7 O LORD, thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived: thou art stronger than I, and hast prevailed: I am in derision daily, every one mocketh me. 8 For since I spake, I cried out, I cried violence and spoil; because the word of the LORD was made a reproach unto me, and a derision, daily. 9 Then I said, I will not make mention of him, nor speak any more in his name. But his word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay. 

And the Lord speaking to the prophet:

Jeremiah 23:29 (AV) 

29 Is not my word like as a fire? saith the LORD; and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces? 

The pain of the first three gives way to an expression: First, there is tuning (line 4) and then striking the music on chimes (line 5). What we have with the poem before us is the tune struck out on chimes. 

The only adequate response to such grace would be found in a heavenly access ot David’s prophetic poetry. Only in heaven could there be sufficient skill and language for this task.

Poetics:

The stanza used is a quatrain of iambic pentameter followed by a couplet. The rhyme scheme is ABABCC.

The effect of the first three lines is striking:

Thy grace, dear Lord’s my golden wrack, I find

Screwing my fancy into ragged rhymes, 

Tuning thy praises in my feeble mind

Until I come to strike them on my chimes. 

There are two pauses in the first line, one after the first foot (thy grace) and at the last foot (I find). By using two pauses and breaking at the last foot, the words “I find” are joined to the second line. The second and third lines begin with an accented syllable. The iamb at the end of line one followed the accented first syllable in line two drives the poem along, almost as if it were falling downstairs.

By repeating the accent on the first syllable of the third line, it creates a parallel structure. Screwing: tuning. 

What is interesting with the second verb is we move from torment to music: It is as the poem begins with the tuning.

The end rhythms of the second and third lines also match: RAGged RHYMES/FEEble MIND. 

Since all end rhymes contain a long “I”, (find/rhyme/mind/chimes) there are full and near rhymes on every line.

The final couplet work similar to the couplet in a Shakespearean sonnet: there is a discontinuance and comment in the couplet upon that which proceeds. 

Here he moves from the discussion of his own creative process to an aside of what could be: If I were David, if I were an angel, this would be better. 

Edward Taylor, Meditation 31, Begraced by Glory.5

14 Sunday Feb 2021

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Stanza 5

By me all lost, by thee all are regained.

All things are thus fall’n now into thy hand.

And thou steep’st in thy blood what sin had stained

That th’stains and poisons may not therein stand.

And having stuck thy grace o’re all the same (35)

Thou giv’st it as a glorious gift again.

Summary: The eschatology of Christianity is both personal and universal; it is both in time and beyond time. The time before the Fall is brought forward into eternity. The tree of life which was lost in the Fall in the Garden is in the New Heavens and New Earth. (Rev. 22:2) The rivers of Eden return as the River of Life. (Rev. 22:1) What was had – and lost – is given “as a glorious gift again.” There is also the person eschatology: The damage done by sin is remedied by blood of Christ – which is both a healing gift of grace, and what makes the poet fit to receive grace.

Notes:

By me all lost, by thee all are regained.

This language of “all” comes directly from motto for this poem, “All things are yours .. the world or life or death or the present or the future”. This theme of “all” played a substantial element of Puritan theology. Thomas Watson wrote an entire book on the subject, “The Christian’s Charter.” Often this “all things” is contrasted at length with good which we can have in this world: goods which do not keep. So for instance, George Swinnock, in chapters 14 & 15 of The Fading of the Flesh, contrasts the difference between what is had the graceless and gracious (one who has received grace) in this world and the different between the sinner’s and the saint’s portion in the life to come. 

The all received by grace is not merely the consummation of the world and a life to come. It is a thing present now in this life. 

A passage by Thomas Brooks may help to understand what is regained:

O sirs! if God be your portion, 

then every promise in the book of God is yours, 

and every attribute in the book of God is yours, 

and every privilege in the book of God is yours, 

and every comfort in the book of God is yours, 

and every blessing in the book of God is yours, 

and every treasury in the book of God is yours, 

and every mercy in the book of God is yours, 

and every ordinance in the book of God is yours, 

and every sweet in the book of God is yours; 

if God be yours, all is yours.

Thomas Brooks, The Complete Works of Thomas Brooks, ed. Alexander Balloch Grosart, vol. 2 (Edinburgh; London; Dublin: James Nichol; James Nisbet and Co.; G. Herbert, 1866), 66.

All things are thus fall’n now into thy hand.

There is an irony in this line: in the fall all was lost; but now through the reversal of sin and death by Christ suffering death for others sin, and thus the “all” falls into his hands.

And thou steep’st in thy blood what sin had stained

That th’stains and poisons may not therein stand.

There has been an irony in Christian imagery that the blood of Christ washes the sinner clean. A much later song which became well-known through the Salvation Army’s use:

Are you washed in the blood,
In the soul cleansing blood of the Lamb?
Are your garments spotless?
Are they white as snow?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?

The perhaps the most direct biblical allusions which line behind this line

Isaiah 1:18 (AV)

18 Come now, and let us reason together, 

saith the LORD: 

though your sins be as scarlet, 

they shall be as white as snow; 

though they be red like crimson, 

they shall be as wool.

There is also the imagery of the sacrifice which runs through the Bible. What is always so strange of these passages is how something can be cleansed with blood? Blood would never make anything clean. 

Taylor explains that the sin which has stained his life is removed by means of the blood shed, because the blood takes the place of the sin stained.  The garment becomes so soaked in blood that there is no room for the poison and stains

There is an implied image of the thing being cleansed being a garment. The image of the garment being cleansed is present in certain rules concerning being unclean, but perhaps is most directly taken from Jude 18, “the garment spotted by the flesh.”

And having stuck thy grace o’re all the same (35)

Thou giv’st it as a glorious gift again.

The restored garment – the restoration of the entire life – is given back to Taylor as a gift. One relationship here is found in the return of the Prodigal Son. The son who has hatefully rebelled against his father and lost his inheritance returns home to hope for the life of a servant is given a glorious robe and invited to a feast. 

This also is similar to the imagery of Pilgrim’s Progress where Christian is given glorious clothing to make his new life. 

Also note that the grace conveys “glory”. The hope of the Christian is glorious, but is also glory:

1 Peter 1:3–9 (AV)

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, 5 Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 

6 Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations: 7 That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ: 8 Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory: 9 Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.

Thus, while the renovation of the Creation will be glorious, there also will be glory of each individual. We will become glorious. In the Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis wrote, ““the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship.” 

Union with Christ

One final note on this stanza is the blood which is graciously given which makes him fit to receive the grace. Blood is as intimate as could exist. Moreover, the life is in the blood. Lev. 11:17. The is this life blood which works the transformation. His identification as being covered in this blood is the gracious condition which makes “all yours.”

Musical:

And thou STeep’Tt in thy blood what Sin had STained

That th’STains and poiSonS may not therein STtand.

And having STuck thy Grace o’re all the Same (35)

Thou Giv’ST it as a Glorious Gift aGain.

The repetition of the sounds as noted, tied these lines together. 

The scansion has some interesting features:

and thou STEEP’ST in THY BLOOD what SIN had STAINED

that TH’STAINS and POIsons may NOT therein STAND

and having STUCK thy GRACE o’re ALL the SAME

THOU GIV’ST it as a GLORious GIFT aGAIN

The accents tracks the alliteration, so that each underscores the other. Thus, the rhythm and the sounds each seek to press the emphasis on meaning of the words. 

Edward Taylor, Meditation 31, Begraced by Glory.5

12 Friday Feb 2021

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Stanza 5:

What e’re we want, we cannot cry for, nay, (25)

If that we could, we could not have it thus. 

The angels can’t devise, nor yet convey

Help in their gold pipes from God to us.

But thou my Lord (heart leap for joy and sing)

Hast done the deed: and’t makes the heavens ring. (30)

Summary: The poet undertakes an interesting distance from himself throughout this poem. First, he has been operating from an interesting psychological point of view because he sees himself addicted helpless to sin and simultaneously sees himself from the outside as some sort of loathsome beast. He is an addict who cannot put down the needle and who in the same moment wretches for the vile creature he has become. 

In this stanza the looks to find some relief, but knows it is impossible:

We e’re want [that is, whatever it is we lack] we cannot cry for.

There is something we need but there is no way to fulfill this need: we cannot even cry for it.

We cannot look to angels, because we need is from God, and angels cannot convey this to us. Only God himself can do so – and has done so. This unwarranted and unobtained benefit is a cause for joy.

Notes:

We cannot cry: Crying out in distress is the refrain of the book of Judges. The people of Israel repeatedly turn to idolatry. In response, God leaves them to their unfriendly neighbors. The Israelites then cry out to God, who in turn says them. In the beginning of chapter 2 (the book is not chronological), the Angel of the Lord “went up from Gilgal to Bochim.” Bochim is a Hebrew word which means “weeping.”  The Angel tells the people that since they have refused to keep their covenant with God, God will no longer hear their cries and defend them. 

Later in Judges 10:14, God again confronts the people who have turned from him. “God and cry out to the gods whom you have chosen; let them save you in the time of your distress.”

Taylor seems to have an illusion to these passages: I am so deeply embedded in sin that I cannot cry for help. In particular, the end of line 26 underscores this point: our cry – were able to make such a cry would be of no use, “we cannot have it thus.”

The Angels cannot convey: Even though angels are given as “ministering spirits set out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation” (Heb. 1:14) there are limits on the help they can convey. 

The degree help needed by Taylor in his state of sin exceeds the assistance of angels. The lack of the human being in the state of sin exceeds some external aid. The language used to describe the condition of sin speaks to an irremediable condition.  

The angels are said to have conveyed the law (Heb. 2:2, “the message declared by angels”). This seems to put something into human hands, but “by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.”

The “golden pipes” of the angels in end only could convey knowledge of guilt.

But thou my Lord … hast done the deed: This speaks to the work of Jesus who destroyed sin and death, and him who had the power of death (Heb. 2:14). 

 Heart leap for joy and sing … “Rejoice in the Lord always and again I will say rejoice.” (Phil. 4:4)

And’t makes the heavens ring: “Let all God’s angels worship him.” Heb. 1:6. 

Psalms 118:23-24

This is the Lord’s doing

It is marvelous in our eyes.

This is the day the Lord has made

Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Musical

What e’re we want, we cannot cry for, nay

If that we could, we could not have it thus.

These lines have an interesting rhetorical structure: A conditional, followed by an unconditional rejection: Whatever it is we need, we cannot have it. And even if we could have it, we cannot. The structure of the clauses is held together by the repetition of the word “we”: we want, we cannot cry, we could, we could. 

This is an example of anaphora: http://rhetoric.byu.edu/Figures/A/anaphora.htm

Edward Taylor, 28th Meditation.5

13 Tuesday Oct 2020

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Where Have We Been and Where Are We Going?: The Samaritan Woman encounters Christ at the Well of ...
Paolo Veronese: Christ and the Samaritan woman at the well.

In this last stanza, Taylor shifts the metaphor slightly. Now rather than wine from a cask it is water in a spring. Just as he never directly uses the word “wine,” but rather makes the allusion, here he never uses the word “water.”

The concept of water is apparent from the words “font,” “sea,” “spring,” and to a lesser extent “flow.” The dispersion of the grace from God to Taylor is still one of great to small: a “sea” of grace which “drops” into a “vessel.” The vessel is still “earthen.” 

But here there is something new. The intake of the grace results in dispersion of the grace from Taylor, “Spring up O well. My cup with grace make flow.” The grace which comes to him is not stagnant, but flows out. 

Finally, there is one additional new movement: The reception of grace itself becomes praise: “They drops will on my vessel sing thy praise.” And finally, this will become the basis for Taylor’s praise, “I’ll sing this song, when these drops embrace.” This actually makes for an interesting move in Taylor’s poetry: As he works through a matter, we realize that the poem is not the recollection of some earlier event but is itself the working through the difficulty with God. The poem in the end is the praise which he is seeking to bring at the beginning. 

My earthen vessel make thy font also:

And let thy sea my spring of grace in’t raise

Spring up O well. My cup with grace make flow.

They drops will on my vessel sing thy praise.

I’ll sing this song, when these drops embrace.

My vessel now’s a vessel of thy grace.

In making this movement to the reception and then dispersal of grace under the image of water, Taylor is again mining the Gospel of John. There are two places in John which distinctly makes this move. The first is in John 4, where Jesus sits with the Samaritan woman at the well. He asks her for drink of water. She says the well is deep, and I have nothing to draw water. He then turns the question on her and says, she should ask him for living water:

11 The woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from whence then hast thou that living water? 12 Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle? 13 Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: 14 But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. 15 The woman saith unto him, Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw. 

John 4:11–15. This is precisely the position of Taylor: He wants that living water. He knows that if he has this water, the water will well up within him so that he becomes a spring of the water:

My earthen vessel make thy font also:

And let thy sea my spring of grace in’t raise

Spring up O well. My cup with grace make flow.

He wants to become a font of the grace: it flows into and then through him.

The next source for Taylor’s imagery is found in John 7:

37 In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. 38 He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. 39 (But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.) 

John 7:37–39. Again, water flows in and then through. However, on this instance, the imagery is further complicated by introduction of the new element of the Spirit. 

Thus, in this accumulation and complication of imagery, Taylor is not operating in the “normal” vein of a poet who carefully develops a single image. But he is mining his source text for imagery concepts and is not operating in a manner contrary to John’s Gospel.

The final element in the poem comes from the final scene in John’s Gospel. When the Risen Christ appears to the Disciples, Thomas is not present and famously doubts. But when Thomas himself meets Jesus, Thomas praises, “My Lord and my God!” John 20:28.

Edward Taylor, 28th Meditation.3

08 Thursday Oct 2020

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Thou, thou my Lord, art full, top full of Grace,

The golden sea of grace whose springs thence come

And precious drills, boiling in every place.

Untap they cask and let my cup catch some

Although it is in an earthen vessel’s case

Let it no empty vessel be of grace.

This stanza begins with two stressed syllables separated by a pause: THOU — THOU my LORD…. The emphasis thus falls most heavily upon the addressee. This functions almost as a new invocation: he has asked to fill him, and here he repeats and makes even more emphatic the call for grace. 

In the second half of the line, Taylor does something similar where he repeats “full” with an emphasis falling on the second full (which is not merely full, but is “top full”). 

Although it is a “fault” with the line, it ends with an emphasized “grace”. The fault is that Taylor has put 6 stresses in a 5 stress line. Yet even though it is a technical fault, it helps underscore the desire of the poet. I truly need this. 

The second line smooths out with a fine alliteration of “g” from the end of the first line: grace … golden … grace.

The springs are rising up from the depth of the sea: the sea is so completely filled with grace, and grace wells-up continually so that the surface is “boiling” with rising streams of grace. And so matches the nature of the gospel of our grace: Our need is continual, but the grace of God in Jesus Christ is greater, inexhaustible. No matter the depth of our need, it cannot begin to exhaust the supply. 

A hymn has it

Grace, grace, God’s grace

Grace that is greater than all our sin.

The theology which underlies Taylor’s prayer in this poem: his own inability and need vs. Christ’s inexhaustive grace owes much to Luther’s statement in the Heidelberg Disputations no 18, “It is certain that one must utterly despair of oneself in order to be made fit to receive the grace of Christ.” Whether Taylor ever read the disputations, I do not know. But the theology set forth there was much developed by Lutheran and Reformed theologians and showed up theology which Taylor would have known.

He then uses the image of a cask filled with wine: He asks that the cask be tapped and that the grace flow into the empty, earthen vessel, until it is full:

Untap they cask and let my cup catch some

Although it is in an earthen vessel’s case

Let it no empty vessel be of grace.