Lent with Jeremy Taylor: Meditation
Today's extract continues this focus on Taylor 'democratising' the practice of meditation, particularly emphasising that it is not the pursuit of spiritual experiences but, rather, a regular, even prosaic, means of being sustained in the Christian life: "It is more healthful and nutritive to dig the earth and to eat of her fruits, than to stare upon the greatest glories of the heavens, and live upon the beams of the sun". (And what a wonderful illustration this is, almost certainly a deliberate echo of Psalm 1: see below.) This reflects a wider Reformation emphasis - shared with the Devotio Moderna - of encouraging laity to share in practices which had often become a preserve of monastic communities in medieval Latin Christendom.
The "healthful and nutritive" practice of meditation, therefore, is to be a common Christian practice, for laity and clergy, a means to "nourish and refresh", not desiring rarefied spiritual experiences, but to bear fruit in holy living.
And this was the cause holy Scripture commands the duty of meditation in proportion still to the excellencies of piety and a holy life, to which it is highly and aptly instrumental. "Blessed is the man that meditates in the law of the Lord day and night." And the reason of the proposition and the use of the duty is expressed to this purpose: "Thy words have I hid in my heart, that I should not sin against thee." The placing and fixing those divine considerations in our understandings and hiding them there, are designs of high Christian prudence, that they with advantage may come forth in the expresses of a holy life ...
In meditation let the understanding be restrained, and under such prudent coercion and confinement, that it wander not from one discourse to another, till it hath perceived some fruit from the first; either that his soul be instructed in a duty, or moved by a new argument, or confirmed in an old, or determined to some exercise and intermedial action of religion, or hath broke out into some prayers and intercourse with God in order to the production of a virtue. And this is the mystical design of the spouse in the Canticles of Solomon: "I adjure you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes and by the hinds of the field, that you stir not up, nor awake my love till he please." For it is lightness of spirit to pass over a field of flowers and to fix nowhere, but to leave it without carrying some honey with us: unless the subject be of itself barren and unfruitful, and then why was it chosen? or that it is made so by our indisposition, and then indeed it is to be quitted. But, (it is St. Chrysostom's simile,) as a lamb sucking the breast of its dam and mother, moves the head from one part to another till it hath found a distilling fontinel, and then it fixes till it be satisfied, or the fountain cease dropping: so should we in meditation reject such materials as are barren like the tops of hills, and fix upon such thoughts which nourish and refresh, and there dwell till the nourishment be drawn forth, or so much of it as we can then temperately digest ...
In meditation strive rather for graces than for gifts, for affections in the way of virtue more than the overflowings of sensible devotion: and therefore, if thou findest any thing by which thou mayest be better, though thy spirit do not actually rejoice or find any gust or relish in the manducation, yet choose it greedily. For although the chief end of meditation be affection, and not determinations intellectual, yet there is choice to be had of the affections, and care must be taken that the affections be desires of virtue, or repudiations and aversions from something criminal; not joys and transportations spiritual, comforts and complacencies, for they are no part of our duty ...
It was therefore an excellent desire of St. Bernard, who was as likely as any to have such altitudes of speculation, if God had really dispensed them to persons holy, fantastic, and religious: "I pray God grant me peace of spirit, joy in the Holy Ghost, to compassionate others in the midst of my mirth, to be charitable in simplicity, to rejoice with them that rejoice, and to mourn with them that mourn; and with these I shall be content. Other exaltations of devotion I leave to apostles and apostolic men: the high hills are for the harts and climbing goats, the stony rocks and the recesses of the earth for the conies." It is more healthful and nutritive to dig the earth and to eat of her fruits, than to stare upon the greatest glories of the heavens, and live upon the beams of the sun.
(From Taylor's 'Discourse III Of Meditation' in The Great Exemplar, Part I, 1649)
On a practical level, what practices would Taylor consider “meditation”? Simply thinking about religious topics?
ReplyDeleteNo, that would not at all suffice for Taylor. He says (in the extract quoted on the blog on the feast of the Presentation) that "the greatest mysteries of Christianity are plainest, and yet most fruitful of meditation": in other words, Our Lord's Incarnation, Life, Ministry, Death, and Resurrection. Meditation would also involve - as has been shown in the other extracts in this series - personal prayer, reading of the Scriptures, and praying of the Psalter. In other words, 'simply thinking about religious topics' would be very far removed indeed from which Taylor means by meditation.
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