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17th Century Poetry, Edward Taylor, Edward Taylor Meditation 47, Poem Analysis, Poetry Analysis, Puritan Poetry
Meditation 47
In the 7th chapter of Romans describes a conflict with takes place within the heart of one man. The poem likewise takes a look at the inconsistency of the human heart. Paul, in Romans, writes:
Romans 7:14–25 (ESV)
14 For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. 15 For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. 16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. 17 So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.
There is a debate which takes places among exegete’s as to whether Paul writes of a believer or one merely instructed in the Law, or some other person. For our purposes, John Owen’s reference to this passage will suffice:
The seventh chapter of the Romans contains the description of a regenerate man. He that shall consider what is spoken of his dark side, of his unregenerate part, of the indwelling power and violence of sin remaining in him, and, because he finds the like in himself, conclude that he is a regenerate man, will be deceived in his reckoning. It is all one as if you should argue: A wise man may be sick and wounded, yea, do some things foolishly; therefore, every one who is sick and wounded and does things foolishly is a wise man. Or as if a silly, deformed creature, hearing one speak of a beautiful person, should say that he had a mark or a scar that much disfigured him, should conclude that because he hath himself scars, and moles, and warts, he also is beautiful. If you will have evidences of your being believers, it must be from those things that constitute [true] believers. He that hath these things in himself may safely conclude, “If I am a believer, I am a most miserable one.” But that any man is so, he must look for other evidences if he will have peace.
John Owen, The Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold, vol. 6 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, n.d.), 49–50.
Taylor begins his mediation with the agonized prayer that his heart is indeed “strange”. It is strange because it can reach in joy to the goodness of God and plummet almost instantly down. His heart “rowels” with grief and joy when he was dressed with an angel’s livery. And there at the height of his joy a spider spit poison upon him:
Strange, strange indeed. It rowell doth my heart
With pegs of grief, and tents of greatest joy:
When I wore angels’ glory in each part
And all my skirts wore flashes of rich dye
Of heavenly color, hedg’d in with rosy reeches 5
A spider spits it venom in my cheeks.
It creates a fascinating image with the interplay of “pegs” and “tents”, because these are each part of a whole. That whole here is grief and joy, as his exaltation and fall where all part of one construction. Hence the sorrow of the believer who both possesses the highest right and is chained to such inconsistency in this work.
Taylor makes use of angel’s as an emblem for the highest position a creature can bear before the Creator. He does not busy himself with the choirs of heaven as Pseudo-Dionysus in the Celestial Hierarchy. There are “angels” of all ranks.
“Rowell” is either a wheel or spur, and both make sense here. The “It” in line one can only refer back to either “strange” or “heart.” Since “heart” is the object of “rowell”, “strange” must be the actor. What is missing from this reference is then what is “strange”? His heart suffers the state of being strange, but what strange actor does his heart suffer to alternate high and low in this manner?
There is a spider which causes grief at the end of the stanza, but that seems to be an agent of this unstated trouble at the beginning. It could be Sin, not as a discrete action but as a force which ruins this world. However, Sin could not bring about joy.
Perhaps we could untangle the thought, It is strange that my heart spins from grief to joy. Here the actor is made into an unnamed entity which remains unnamed. In that case, the irrationality of Sin interrupting joy is the actor. Joy acts, and then irrational Sin acts.
The action is recast in the second half of the stanza from the subjective states of joy and grief to the objective pollution of the spider.
I was dressed in the finest livery possible. I was decked out in the robes of angels. The colors were so spectacular, the robes “flashed.” I was at the exaltation I could most experience in this life, and there the spider befouled the whole.
The Christian can be the greatest range of glory. There is an old song I heard as a child,
I’ve been on the mountain
And I’ve seem the otherside
I spent the day with Jesus
And my soul is satisfied.
The image of the spider spitting on him is the objective picture of the subjective sin. I have had such joy, and then I fell into such sin.
The sin does not need to be the most despicable of wrongs. No sin can be present in that place. Holiness is not a dour restraint. It is a joyous glory. It is not painful to be freed from sin. Temptation does not offer me something good, it offers me something false.
And now, to be stained in part is to be stained in all. I have heard it explained that the law of God is like a window which a hole in one part ruins the whole. It is not a “small” sin. To use the old saying, no one is a little bit pregnant. It is all or nothing. Likewise, the spider’s venom is not in one place but infests the whole:
This ranckling juice bindg’d in its cursed stain
Doth permeate both soul and body: soil
And drench every fiber, and infect each grain.
Its ugliness swells over all the ile. 10
Whose stain’d misshapen bulk’s too high and broad
For th’entry of the narrow gate of God.
He becomes swollen with this sin, he no longer fits through the “strait gate” (as dire strait, a narrow place). It swells him and keeps out of the gate and thus out of the Lord’s presence