Tag Archives: Meditation

Edward Taylor, 28th Meditation.1

26 Saturday Sep 2020

Posted by in Edward Taylor, Literature, Puritan

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The 28th Meditation of Edward Taylor takes as its text John 1:16. In context, the passage (as it would have stood in Taylor’s Bible) reads as follows:

14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. 15 John bare witness of him, and cried, saying, This was he of whom I spake, He that cometh after me is preferred before me: for he was before me. 16 And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace. 17 For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. 18 No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. 

John 1:14–18  

The poem will center upon the receipt of the grace which is in the Word made Flesh. However, as is a consistent theme in Taylor, it begins with the distance from God and the disorder of mind. Although not discussed in this place, the noetic effect of sin – the disordering effect of sin upon the thoughts, affections and behavior – lies behind  his description of his sense as “bewildered” and his “befogged dark fancy”. 

It should be noted that the effects are not simply in a cause-and-effect relationship with some particular sinful action, but are inherent in any human being on this earth. The damage done by Adam’s fall is not completely removed prior to one’s death and personal resurrection.

The poem begins with a self-conscious discussion of the poem itself as a matter of praise, sending some “glory home”. But this glory is returned in small sums, “bits” rather than in “lumps.” (Incidentally, “lumps” does not have the negative connotations it does in contemporary vernacular.) The first stanza reads:

When I Lord, send some bits of glory home

(For lumps I lack) my messenger, I find,

Bewildered, lose his way being alone

In my befogged dark fancy, clouded mind.

Thy bits of glory packed in shreds of praise

My messenger doth lose, losing his ways.

The first line creates an interesting rhythmic effect by beginning with a Bacchic foot: “when I LORD” followed by a pause.  The unusual English rhythm ending on a stress followed by a pause is difficult to read. The awkwardness creates an emphasis on the words. The vocative, Lord, would normally stand at the beginning of a clause, “Lord, when I send ….” Thus, the relationship between “I” and “Lord” is foregrounded.

The remainder of the first line and the second then flow along more easily. However, the poem introduces a puzzling reference, “my messenger”. The messenger is the means by which he is returning glory to the Lord. The precise identity of the messenger is not otherwise clarified. What is the means by which he is sending glory home: the messenger is the poem itself.

And so, as is common in Taylor, his poem is in part about the poem itself. His thinking which creates the poem is bewildered. His “befogged dark fancy” would be the weakness of his ability to conceive and create the poem.

And here comes the problem: he seeks to return some glory to the Lord within the praise which is the poem itself, but the glory falls out (is lost) from the poem:

Thy bits of glory packed in shreds of praise

My messenger doth lose, losing his ways.

Thomas Watson, 24 Helps to Read Scripture.8

13 Friday May 2016

Posted by in Meditation, Reading, Thomas Manton, Thomas Watson, Uncategorized

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The previous post in this series may be found here

VIII. Meditate upon what you read. Psalm 119:15: “I will meditate in thy precepts.” The Hebrew word to meditate, signifies to be intense in the mind. In meditation there must be a fixing of the thoughts upon the object.

Meditation means serious consideration. Rather than emptying the mind, it means to fill it. Thomas Manton has a useful expansion on the concept of meditating upon what one reads: give it entertainment, treat it like a guest:

Receive the word, give it a kind entertainment. There is an act of consideration; meditate upon it seriously, that truth may not float in the understanding, but sink into the heart: Luke 9:44, ‘Let these sayings sink down into your hearts.’ Believe it: the truth is a sovereign remedy; but there wanteth one ingredient to make it work, and that is faith: Heb. 4:2, ‘The word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it.’ There is an act of the will and affections, which is called, ‘a receiving the truth in love,’ 2 Thes. 2:10. Make room for it, that carnal affections may not vomit and throw it up again. Christ complaineth that ‘his word had no place in them,’ John 8:37, οὐ χωρεῖ ἐν ὑμῖν, like a queasy stomach possessed with choler, that casts up all that is taken into it: 1 Cor. 2:14, ‘A natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God.’ Let it lodge, and quietly exercise a sovereign command over the soul.

Thomas Manton, The Complete Works of Thomas Manton, vol. 10, Sermons on the 17th Chapter of John, Sermon XI, (London: James Nisbet & Co., 1872), 237. We must to know the words if they are to have any effect upon us. Francis Bacon in his essay, On Studies, speaks of “digesting” a book:

Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books, else distilled books are like common distilled waters, flashy things. Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. And therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit: and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know, that he doth not.

Watson concludes:

Luke 2:19: “Mary pondered those things.” Meditation is the concoction of Scripture; reading brings a truth into our head, meditation brings it into our heart; reading and meditation, like Castor and Pollux, must appear together. Meditation without reading is erroneous; reading without meditation is barren. The bee sucks the flower, and then works it into the hive, and so turns it into honey; by reading we suck the flower of the word, by meditation we work it into the hive of our mind, and so it turns to profit. Meditation is the bellows of the affection. Psalm 39:3: “While I was musing the fire burned.” The reason we come away so cold from reading the word, is because we do not warm ourselves at the fire of meditation.

Thomas Watson, “How We May Read the Scriptures with Most Spiritual Profit,” in The Bible and the Closet: Or How We May Read the Scriptures with the Most Spiritual Profit; and Secret Prayer Successfully Managed, ed. John Overton Choules (Boston: Gould, Kendall and Lincoln, 1842), 24–25.

 

 

The Spiritual Chymist, Meditation XXIV

06 Wednesday Jan 2016

Posted by in Uncategorized, William Spurstowe

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The previous post in this series may be found here

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Upon Gravity and Levity

The stoic philosophy was famous for paradoxes, strange opinions, improbable and beside common conceit [thinking] for which it was much admired by some an is greatly controlled and taxed by others. Howbeit, not Stoicism only but every art in course of life and learning has some paradoxes or other, the Christianity has many more which seem like nothing less than truth and yet are as true as strange.

What can be more contrary to the principles and maxims the philosophers then to hold that there is your grass from eight total privation to a habit? It was that which the Epicureans and the Stoics derided in Paul when he preached the resurrection from the dead, and yet Christians build all their happiness and confidence upon it.

What can seem to carry more contradiction in it and the saying of our Savior, He that will lose his life shall find it? And yet it is the truth of that importance whosoever follows not Christ counsel will certainly miss of life.

What will happily appear more novel and strange then that which I shall now add by inverting the axiom and affirming this truth, Light things fall downwards, and heavy ascend upward. Lighter they are, the lower they sink; and the heavier they are, the higher they rise: and yet this riddle has a truth in it. In Scripture the wicked that must fall as low as hell are resembled the things of the greatest levity as well as vileness, dust, chaff, smoke, fame, scum; and the saints that must ascend as high as Heaven I likened to things of weight as well as worth: to wheat, the heaviest of which is the best; to gold, which is of metals the weightiest as well as richest; to gems and precious stones, that are valued by the number of carats which they weight, as well as by their luster with which they sparkle.

Yea, God has his balance to weigh men and their actions, as well as his touchstone to try them. He is a God of knowledge, by whom actions are weighed, says Hannah in her song. And if he find great men a lie and vanity upon the balance he will not spare them. What is the fear judgment did God execute upon Belshazzar who being weighed and found wanting was in the same night cast out of his kingdom and from the land of the living?

And what a dreadful sentence has Christ foretold shall come up on his mouth and they great day against those who have made a vain an empty profession of his Name; who are bid to depart from him and go accursed into everlasting fire, not for doing evil against his but for not doing of good onto them? A form of godliness without the power will condemn, as well as Real an open wickedness. To be found too light and God’s scale maybe a bar to heaven, as well as the load of many sins.

Oh remember who has said it, Except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. How gladly then I would persuade Christians at the best way to climb to Jacobs ladder which has its foot on earth and its top in glory is to be fully laden with all fruits of holiness.

The burden of Christ is not a pressing weight but a winged thing which carries the soul upwards and helps it to soar aloft towards God himself. None are crowned with the greater glory or set up on higher grounds then they who have their fruit under true holiness above others.

The Spiritual Chymist, Meditation XXIII, Upon a Multiplying Glass

03 Sunday Jan 2016

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“A Growing Sense of Cowstraphobia”

Photo courtesy of Erin Perry

What a vain in fictitious happiness with that be a poor man who had only a small piece of money should, by the looking outfit through a multiplying glass [something like a kaleidoscope] , please himself and believing that he is now secure from the fears of pressing wants, hey single piece being suddenly minted into many pounds, with which she can readily furnish himself with fuel to warm him, clothes to cover him, and food to satisfy him.

But alas, when he puts forth his hand to take a supply from what he beholds, you can feel nothing of what he sees; when the glass is gone that presented him such treasure, he can then see nothing but his first pittance which also becomes the less desirable because of the disappointment of his hopes.

Upon what better foundation does the felicity of the greater part of men stand, which is not fixed upon any true and spiritual good as its proper base, but up on the specious semblances of a corrupt and mutable fancy? What is it that rich men do promised themselves, who conceive riches to be a strong tower? They think they can laugh at famine, and when others like the poor Egyptians, whose substance is exhausted, sell themselves and their children for food, they can buy bread at a better rate. If enemies rise up against them, they question not but they can purchase at peace or victory. If sickness comes, oh how they can please themselves and thinking that their purse can command the physician’s skill and the drugster’s shops. Elixirs, cordials, magisterial powders, they concede before hand will be prescribed both as their diet and physic. And every Avenue of the body at which disease or death may threaten to enter chubby so fortified exit both of them shall receive an easy and quick repulse.

Now what are all these representations but the impostures of the glass of fancy, which like the colors and the rainbow have more of show than of entity.

Does not Solomon counsel men not to labor to be rich? And expostulate with them, Will you set your eyes up on that which is not? Does not our Savior call them deceitful riches? And Paul, uncertain riches? What then can they contribute to the real happiness of any man? Surely the transient sparks that with much difficulty are forced from the Flint, me as soon add light to the sun as riches can yield any solid comfort to the soul, or keep it away from lying down in the bed of darkness and sorrow.

Away from me then you flattering vanities and gilded nothings of the world, get you to the bats and the moles and try what beauteous rays you can dart into their eyes. I will hence no more the hold you in the glass of fancy, but in the glass of the Word which discovers that you were always vanity and vexation, no objects of trust in times of strait, or the price of deliverance in the day of wrath. It is me thinks observable that four times in Scripture the saying is repeated, that riches and treasures profit nothing in the day of wrath (twice in the book of Proverbs, and then again by the two prophets, Ezekiel and Zephaniah). Doubtless these holy men knew
What are universal proneness there is in the minds of most to exalt riches above righteousness, And to think that by them Heaven might be purchased and the flames of hell bribed. How else could such words ever drop from the mouth of any, That they made a covenant with Death and were add an agreement with Hell to pass from them?

Lord,
Keep me from imagining
To save my soul by merchandize
Or of entitling myself any other way of inheritance of Heaven
Than by the blood of Christ
Who is my Life,
My riches
My rejoicing
My true confidenc

The Spiritual Chymist, Meditation XIX: Upon a Greek Accent

02 Wednesday Dec 2015

Posted by in Biblical Counseling, Confession, Humility, Meditation, Repentance, William Spurstowe

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From William Spurstowe, The Spiritual Chymist, 1666. The prior post is this series is here.

Delphi (XIX)

Accents are by the Hebrews aptly called Sapores, tastes or savors that speech or [those] word without some observance of them are like Job’s white of an egg, without salt, insipid, and unpleasant. In the Greek they derive their name from the due tenor, or tuning of words, and in that tongue words are not pronounced according to the long or short vowels, but according to the accent set up on them, which directs the rise or fall, the length or brevity of their pronunciation.

Now, what accents are to Greek words, that methinks circumstances are to sins, which, as so many moral accents do fitly serve to show there just and certain dimensions, and teach us aright to discern how great or small they be. And he, that without respect had onto them, does judge of that bigness of sins, is like to error as much as a man that should take upon him, without mathematical instruments, to give it exactly the greatness of the heavenly bodies, and to pronounce of altitudes, distances, aspects, and other appearances, by the scanning of the eye.

Is this not the Scripture way to set out sin, by the place, time, continuance in it, and repetitions of it? They provoked him at the Red Sea, where they saw the mighty works of his power, and making the deep to be their path to Canaan, and the Egyptian’s grave. They tempted him in the wilderness, where their food, drink, clothes, were all made up by miracles. The clouds yielding them meat [their food], the dry rock water, and their garments not waxing old.

Does he not aggravate them, by the long space of their continuance in them, saying that they grieved him 40 years? Does he not number the times of their reiterated, murmurings and rebellions, and make it as a ground for his justice to destroy them?

Necessary therefore it is, that in the duty of self-examination, and reviews of the book of conscience, we do not only read over the naked facts which have been done by us, but that we look into those apices peccati, little dots and tittles which are set up on the head of many sins(the circumstances I mean with which they are committed) or else we shall never read that book aright, or learn to know what sins are great or what small. The fact and circumstances are both noted in the journals of conscience, though they be not equally legible. And he that is truly penitent will make it a chief part of his work to find out one as well as the other, as being the best means both to get the heart broken for and from sin.

What shame? What fear? What carefulness? What revenge will a serious sight of the several aggravations that meet in the interpretation of a sin move up and stir the heart of the sinner? Will he not say, what a beast am I to sin against so clear a light? To break so often my own vows, to defer so long my repentance and rising again? What revenge shall I now take of myself to witness my indignation? What carefulness shall I exercise to evidence the truth of my return? With diligence shall I use to redeem my lost time, who have joined the morning of the task and the evening of the day together? These, and such like thoughts, will sin, when it is read as it is written, and accented in the conscience produce.

But a general knowledge and sight of it, without such particularities, will neither make nor leave any impressions but what they are both slight and confused.

Do thou therefore, holy God,
teach me to understand the errors of my ways aright,
And by the light of thy Spirit
Make me to see that circumstances in sins are not motes, but beams,
and greatly intend their guilt — if not their bulk.
That so I may mourn for those sins which carnal men conceive to be but so many black nothings;
And abhor myself for those corruptions in which they indulge themselves.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 1.11 — The One Percent

28 Saturday Nov 2015

Posted by in Greek, Greek Translation, Marcus Aurelius

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From Fronto
To understand what sort of witchery, subtlety, and hypocrisy belong to tyranny — and how common traits are to those like us who are called patricians, who at times lack natural affections.

Greek Text and Notes

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The Spiritual Chymist, Meditation XVIII: The Philosopher’s Stone

04 Wednesday Nov 2015

Posted by in Biblical Counseling, Revelation, William Spurstowe

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From William Spurstowe, The Spiritual Chymist, 1666. The prior post is this series is here.

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[The “philosopher’s stone” was a supposed stone or process that could something expensive such as lead into something expensive such as gold. A “base” metal would be inferior, less expense metal. The process was called “sublimation” of metals. As noted, one might expend an entire fortune in this fruitless experiments in chemistry.]
This lemma, or title, may happily as much affect such to make gold their God as the sight of the star did the Wise Men, hoping that it will be both a light and a guide to the discovery of that rare and matchless secret of turning the more base and inferior metals into the more noble: iron into silver, and brass into gold, and so enrich them with artificial Indies [The “Indies”, India were a source of riches by means of trading.].

But I can scarce resolve myself whether the Philosopher’s Stone which is thus framed for wonders, be not rather a speculation in absolute reality, or an attempt tried by many, rather than achievement attained by few or any.

How many have melted down ample revenues in their crucibles, and while they have with much labor sought the sublimation of metals, have sunk themselves into the deepest beggary? And how have others consume their time, if not wasted their estates in a fruitless pursuit of it? And yet have seen no other change than what age and care has made in them, turning their golden hair into silver hair; or at best have gleaned up some few experiments only, and have not compensated their cost and travel.

But what if any man, after a long search and study, can Archimedes like cry out joyfully that it is found? Yea, what if every man, who has busied his thoughts, and employed his time in diving into this mystery should be able to effect such a change and to multiply his treasures as the sand?

Yet how worthless and inconsiderable would such productions of his philosophical stone be found, as compared within noble and transcendent effects of the Divine, or Theological Stone, which Christ promised in Revelation [2:17] to him that overcomes: whose worth as it is far greater [than the Philosopher’s Stone], and the way to obtain it is more facile and certain — it being not a work of labor, but a gift of grace.

This stone is of such power and energy, that whosoever is possessed of it, can have nothing befal him, which he changes and turns not to his good.
It turns all temporal losses into spiritual advantages;
all crosses into blessings;
all afflictions into comforts;
it dignifies reproach and ignomy;
it changes the hardship of a prison into the delights of a palace;
it is a heavenly anodyne against all pains, and makes the soul to possess itself in patience in every condition;
it is a panacea, a universal salve for every sore, to all accidents that can befall a man. It is the seal to the wax, putting up on them a new stamp and figure and making them to be what they were not before, and what they could never have been without it.
Such it is that he who has it, has all good.
And he that lacks it (whatever else he seems to possess) has little lees than nothing.

Who then can without mourning as well as wondering, pity the prodigious folly of those men who labor in a continual fire to effect the stone of the transmutation of metals, and yet deem this divine stone scarce worth the begging of God in prayer?

Is this wisdom to toil in the refining of clay, and to be able to make a dull piece of earth to shine, and then to value our happiness by it?

Is this wisdom to set a low rate upon what God has promised to give, and then to highly esteemed but we can do?

Oh Lord, if this be the world’s wisdom,
let me become a fool.
I had rather have this divine stone of thy promise,
than all the treasures that nature and art can yield.
Let the mountains be turned into Gold,
the rocks into diamonds,
the sand into pearls,
yet this Stone, with the new name written in it, is to me more desirable than all,
as being a sure pledge of life and happiness and in heaven

The Spiritual Chymist, Meditation 17

16 Friday Oct 2015

Posted by in Confession, Prayer

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From William Spurstowe’s The Spirit Chymist, 1666

Upon a Chancery Bill

[Note: A chancery bill would be a pleading in a court; a request for some redress from the court. The plaintiff begins the lawsuit by filing a bill which accuses the defendant of many wrongs. It is common for plaintiffs to accuse the defendant of many things which the plaintiff does not reasonably believe the defendant to have done. The plaintiff does this so that the plaintiff can conduct discovery [seek evidence] on the matters accused in the bill. A chancery court also permits the judge to act with “equity”; the judge can do things which are not precisely specified in the law. Here, Spurstowe uses that power to show that God may show mercy.]

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One cause and original can have but one orderly and genuine birth, for else what means our Savior’s question, Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?

Or that of St. James, Does a fountain at the same time send forth water sweet and bitter?

May it not then justly be the opinion and mind of many, that the least fruit of any holy meditation can never grow from such a bramble of contention is a Chancery bill? And that from such a spring of march [Exodus 15:23; marah means “bitter”], a sweet and delightful stream can never issue?

Yea, who will not be ready to take up Nathanael’s question, Can any good thing come out of Nazareth? And then, what better answer can I return to such then Phillip’s, Come and see? [John 1:46]

And now let me say what I have often thought, that between such a bill and most men’s confession of sin in prayer, in which they implead [a legal term, state the charges, thus here, confess/accuse] themselves to God, there is too great a likeness in this respect, that the complaints in both have more of course and form than truth and reality.

In the one it is the usage in custom of the court for the plaintiff to pretend fraud, rate, combinations [conspiracy], concealments done and made to the prejudice of his right, which yet he never intends to prove against the defendant, but only to make use of it as a ground of discovery.

And is it not thus also in the other? Are there not in prayer large catalogues and enumerations of sin which many charge themselves with before God in their self condemnation? Pride, wantonness, hypocrisy, contumacy, are the black, shall I say, or scarlet sins that are among others instanced in [set forth in the prayer]?

And yet what other thing is intended by them than to make up the outside of their prayer? The sins are only placed in it, as dark shadows in a picture to set it off with more advantage, and to commend it rather to mend them to God.

In the doing of the duty they think not in the least the worst of themselves or what they say against themselves, nor would have others so say to do, else how comes it to pass that in charging themselves so deeply at God’s Tribunal, there is as little appearance of shame or sorrow in their face as there was of a cloud in the heavens
when Elijah servant returned his answer, there was nothing? [1 Kings 18:23]

Now that would be no part either of my work or purpose to justify or condemn the practices of humane judiciaries, which admit new suggestions [I am not talking about how courts conduct themselves], which admit loose suggestions, that are ours arrow shot at random, because that now and then they may serve there discovery.

Yet I cannot but condemn and abhor that the confession of sin in prayer should be as slight and overly as the complaints of a chancery bill, and that particular sins specified in it, and aggravated and heinous circumstances, should be no other than things of course, done rather to length out the duty than affect the heart? To discover quickness of parts rather than truth of grace.

What is this but to make prayer in itself, which should be as sweet as incense burning up on the golden altar, to be as an offering of sulfur? What is this but to mock God, the great searcher of the heart, with vain words, and to publish to the world how little they fear his anger or value is pardon?

For if the confession of sin be formal, how can the seeking of forgiveness be real?

O Holy lord preserve me from such hypocrisy,
and remember not what in this kind I have been guilty of
my desire is to judge myself,
not in word,
but in truth,
and unfeigningly to beg,
That I, who am in the court of thy justice wholly inexcusable,
may in the Chancery of a mercy become altogether inaccusable.