Chapter 2: Showing the Nature of Meditation
If it be enquired what meditation is, I answer, meditation is the soul's retiring of itself, that by a serious and solemn thinking upon God, the heart may be raised up to heavenly affections. This description has three branches.
1. Meditation is the soul's retiring of itself; a Christian, when he goes to meditate, must lock up himself from the world. The world spoils meditation; Christ went apart into the Mount to pray, Matthew 14:23. So, go apart when you are to meditate. Isaac went out to meditate in the field, Genesis 24:63. He sequestered and retired himself that he might take a walk with God by meditation. Zacchaeus had a mind to see Christ, and he got out of the crowd, He ran before, and climbed up into a sycamore-tree to see him, Luke 19:3, 4. So when we would see God, we must get out of the crowd of worldly business, we must climb up into the tree by retiredness of meditation, and there we shall have the best prospect of heaven. The world's music will either play us asleep, or distract us in our meditations. When a mote is gotten into the eye, it hinders the sight; when worldly thoughts, as motes, are gotten into the mind (which is the eye of the soul) it cannot look up so steadfastly to heaven by contemplation. Therefore, as when Abraham went to sacrifice, he left his servant and the Ass at the bottom of the hill, Genesis 22:5. So when a Christian is going up the hill of meditation, he should leave all secular cares at the bottom of the hill; that he may be alone, and take a turn in heaven. If the wings of the bird are full of lime, she cannot fly: Meditation is the wing of the soul, when a Christian is belimed with earth, he cannot fly to God upon this wing. Saint Bernard when he came to the Church-door, used to say, stay here all my worldly thoughts, that I may converse with God in the Temple; so say to yourself, I am going now to meditate, O all ye vain thoughts stay behind, come not near. When you are going up the mount of meditation, take heed the world does not follow you, and throw you down from the top of this pinnacle. This is the first thing, the soul's retiring of itself; lock and bolt the door against the world.
2. The second thing in meditation, is, a serious and solemn thinking upon God. The Hebrew word to meditate, signifies with intenseness, to recollect and gather together the thoughts: Meditation is not a cursory work, to have a few transient thoughts of religion. Canis ad Nilum; like the dogs of Nile, that lap and away; but there must be in meditation a fixing the heart upon the object, a steeping the thoughts; carnal Christians are like quicksilver, which cannot be made to fix; their thoughts are roving up and down, and will not fix; like the bird that hops from one bough to another, and stays nowhere. David was a man fit to meditate, O God my heart is fixed, Psalm 108:1. In meditation there must be a staying of the thoughts upon the object; a man that rides post through a Town or Village, he minds nothing; but an Artist or Limner that is looking on a curious piece, views the whole draught and portraiture of it, he observes the symmetry and proportion, he minds every shadow and color. A carnal flitting Christian is like the traveler, his thoughts ride post, he minds nothing of God; a wise Christian is like the Artist, he views with seriousness, and ponders the things of religion, Luke 2:19. But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.
The third thing in meditation is the raising of the heart to holy affections. A Christian enters into meditation, as a man enters into the Bath, that he may be healed. Meditation heals the soul of its deadness and earthliness; but more of this after.
