Understanding Puritan Meditation |
Intellectual aspects of Puritan meditation
Puritans believed that meditation was a strongly intellectual activity. The Christian life involved training one's thoughts to be godly - often through set times of focused meditation - as well as living in a state of godly cognition. This would include thinking biblically about such visible or invisible realities as God, humanity, the world, life, death and the afterlife. In many ways, this can be summarized within the term "worldview." Further explanation
To the Puritans, divine meditation involved personal devotion and edification in the sense of thinking godly thoughts - thinking the type of thoughts that Jesus Christ Himself might think. Or, as Richard Baxter put it,
"...meditation is but the reading over and repeating God's reasons to our hearts, and so disputing with ourselves in his arguments and terms." As scholar Richard Douglas Jordan has said, Baxter also "took a stand against enthusiasm in devotion and saw meditation as involved with reason and the written word. In his Christian Directory,
Baxter spoke of the Christian's delight in God as a 'solid rational' experience." These understandings stemmed both from Scriptural examples such as those in the Psalms and from biblically-based doctrines of salvation, sanctification, and more, which provide motivation for many of the Christian disciplines.
What shal we think of them then, which are loth to practice this duty? Most men are loth, though they be willing enough to meditate on their worldly affairs. The Mariner meditates and considers his course by his Compasse, or else he might soon runne on the quick-sands; a Pilgrim is full of thoughts, what? am I in my right way? ...But it is one thing to look to that which is thine, and another thing to look to thy self, Take heed to your selves, saith the Lord, Deut. 11.16. Deut. 12.130. Deut. 4.9. Exod. 34.12. as if he should say, think on thy self, & of thy poor soul, let thy Meditation run on thy poor soul Nathanael Ranew argues similarly, agreeing that causing the thoughts to dwell long on a subject is very difficult, but he points out the importance of the end of meditation and also the spiritual resources in Christ which provide a meditating believer "strength to hold on." Thomas Goodwin also reminds his readers that the reason why doing this blessed duty is difficult for them is due to a problem in their hearts, not in the duty itself: "...the vanity and sinfulnesse of the minde appears in the godly, that though they entertaine good thoughts, yet the minde is not, will not bee long intent on them...." Indeed, divine meditation was no light undertaking. For this reason, even though meditation is a personal discipline, interpersonal encouragement and aid, often through written works, could be useful in these intellectual pursuits. Although the manuals and sermon collections do not focus on encouraging use of extra-biblical sources as aids to meditation, their work certainly could have served that purpose for others. Ranew, in addition to providing Scriptural bases for his understanding of meditation, often grows almost poetic, urging his readers to consider the importance of certain topics. Some of these writers actually included collections of meditations after their words of explanation and instruction in order to aid others in this duty, and others published collections of examples of or helps for meditation - for instance, James Ussher's 1651 A method for meditation, or, A manuall of divine duties, fit for every Christians practice provides help for meditating on six important aspects of the Christian life. Puritan writers generally recognized two divisions within divine meditation. They saw both as profitable and important but drew certain distinctions between the two. In set or deliberate meditation, one regularly put aside a specific time to study and contemplate biblical ideas at length. Alternately, in occasional meditation, some event, experience or thought that one had during the day (on some "occasion" or other) would cause one's thoughts to jump from that event to some biblical or theological truth and ponder it for a time. For example, consider the following typical occasional meditation by Bishop Joseph Hall, whose work in the early 1600's influenced Puritan works on meditation later in the century: Upon the Sight of a Man Yawning Many writers published collections of occasional meditations. For instance, Hall authored a book, Occasional Meditations (1630), containing 91 individual meditations; this number increased in later editions of the work. These meditations, which are typically one to two paragraphs in length, encompass a broad range of subjects. The number of Puritan writings and publications featuring occasional meditations was quite large. It was also not restricted to members of the clergy; for instance, some occasional meditations authored by Mary Rich, Countess of Warwick, were published after her death. These occasional meditations helped believers to take advantage of everyday situations for spiritual benefit and to consider the world around them through a godly doctrinal framework. Set, deliberate times of meditation also helped a believer to gain a more biblical worldview as he or she took time to consider and mentally work out the implications of a Scripture passage, both in general and in terms of practical life situations. Of deliberate meditations, Ranew especially reminds his readers that they must not just set aside time to think, but must discipline their minds to think earnestly and seriously: "There is a slight and easy thinking, an acting of thoughts cursorily, and when a thing is out so soon as in, and the thought off so soon as on; and there is a serious thinking." Indeed, the intellectual aspects of meditation are central to the Puritan doctrine of it. While discussing the subject throughout the work, Ranew composed four chapters specifically to address the importance of applying the mind and thoughts to meditation. The titles of these chapters indicate that meditation is, among other things, "a serious Thinking" "a Searching and Scanning" and "a Dwelling of Thoughts." Regarding the importance of intellectual focus, he argues that, "God complains of men when bodies are brought, and hearts are left out: well may he complain, if we go about meditation, a mind, a thought exercise, if we let the mind and thoughts be sent abroad, and not called home." The areas in which Puritans believed that meditation was useful encompassed all the traditional loci of Reformed systematic theology. Notably, authors of meditative manuals urged their readers to soberly consider the person and works of the Members of the Trinity, the sinful condition of the believer's heart, the doctrines "relating to the paradigm of salvation," the four last things - death, judgment, hell and heaven - and more. Any subject relating to God, the world, and humankind could be useful for making one's intellectual framework more godly - although Puritans did warn against meditating too long on human-centered issues such as self and sin without constantly raising the thoughts to God, His holiness, and His sacrifice and provision for man. |
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Copyright © 2007 Amy Gant, University of Nebraska-Lincoln