Chapter 4: Showing How Meditation Differs from Memory

The memory (a glorious faculty) which Aristotle calls the soul's scribe, sits and pens all things that are done. Whatsoever we read, or hear, the memory does register; therefore God does all his works of wonder that they may be had in remembrance. There seems to be some Analogy and Resemblance between Meditation and Memory. But I conceive there is a double difference.

1. The meditation of a thing has more sweetness in it than the bare remembrance. The memory is the chest or cupboard to lock up a truth, meditation is the palate to feed on it; the memory is like the Ark in which the Manna was laid up, meditation is like Israel's eating of Manna. When David began to meditate on God, it was sweet to him as marrow, Psalm 63.5, 6. There's as much difference between a truth remembered, and a truth meditated on, as between a cordial in a glass, and a cordial drunk down.

2. The remembrance of a truth without the serious Meditation of it will but create matter of sorrow another day. What comfort can it be to a man when he comes to die, to think he remembered many excellent notions about Christ, but never had the grace so to meditate on them, as to be transformed into them? A Sermon remembered, but not ruminated, will only serve to increase our condemnation.