ABSTRACT

THOMAS TRAHERNE: ETERNITY-TIME
AND THE CENTURIES

 

BY

Richard Douglas Jordan

Thomas Traherne, seventeenth-century English poet
and religious writer, believed that time was contained in
the ever-present "now" of eternity. He maintained that
knowledge of all things within this eternity-time was
available to the human understanding. As audacious and
mystical as such a concept may seem, its rational and
philosophical justifications and implications were worked
out in great detail by Traherne. The concept is of im-
mense importance to all of his philosophy and to his art.

Time, for Traherne, was a successive duration made
up of events or "acts," all of which were always in ex-
istence, a successive duration permanent in all its parts.
I trace the historical background of this concept and view
it in its relationship to other ideas of eternity and time.
Though not in the main stream of philosophical or Christian
thought about time, the idea that time is part of eternity

does go back at least to Boethius. The concept is developed

Richard Douglas Jordan

by Traherne to a greater extent than it had ever been be-
fore, and Traherne stands apart in making this vision of
eternity-time characteristic of man as well as of God.

Traherne justifies his belief in the ability of a
man to know eternity-time through an examination of the
nature of the human soul. The soul is the image of God;
and, in reflecting Him, reflects His eternity. In addition,
the soul is able to take events and actions into itself by
means of its understanding. It can maintain them in its
memory, and it can create future events and actions in its
imagination. Thus the material of which eternity-time is
made can be contained within the soul. The soul can learn
about and take in events occurring before its entrance into
the world through the study of history, primarily as it is
contained in the Bible. Thus Traherne justifies his ideas
about the soul's power on religious, psychological and
philosophical grounds.

In his study of events in time, Traherne found
many that were of a parallel nature; and he learned from
this that in contemplating one temporal object all others
of the same character might be present to the soul. This
led, in his writing, to the employment of a typological
system based on the "estates" of Innocence, Misery, Grace
and Glory, a line of development which he saw to be that
of both the individual and of the history of the world.
Adam in Paradise, the world after the Fall, the life of

Christ, and the New Jerusalem as typified in the Psalms of

Richard Douglas Jordan

David become figures for these personal and universal
estates.

Traherne's Centuries are meditations designed to

 

expand the soul to its potential vision of all things in
eternity-time. In this study, I trace the development of
that design. By precept and example, Traherne guides the
reader through an examination of the proper growth of human
knowledge and love in regard to the external creation
(Century I-Century II, 69) and in regard to the soul of

man (Century II, 70-Century IV). In both the journey out-
ward and the journey inward, Traherne includes an account,
based on his "estates," of the growth with which he is

dealing. The Centuries culminate (V) with a discussion of

 

what stands at the end of these twin mental journeys, God;
this Century was never completed.

Such things in Traherne's writings as comparisons
of himself as a child to Adam and the world he saw when
young to Eden are not simply literary devices but are part
of his philosophy of being. His statements about seeing
into eternity and infinity are not hyperboles or unexplain-
able visions but are the results of a carefully constructed
theory of knowledge. Because Traherne's philosophy and his
art, the methods he used to present his ideas, were one,
there is a remarkable unity and sustained intensity to be

found in the whole of what he has written.

THOMAS TRAHERNE: ETERNITY-TIME

AND THE CENTURIES

 

BY

Richard Douglas Jordan

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of English

1970

To the memory of my daughter,

Linda Lee Jordan

ii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to express my gratitude to the chairman of
my committee, Dr. Joseph H. Summers, for his kindness,
tolerance, and good advice. I also extend thanks to the
other members of my committee, Dr. Lawrence Babb and Dr.
James Pickering, for the assistance they have given me.
And to Dr. James M. Osborn, Yale University, who allowed
me to read and quote from the "Select Meditations" manu-

script, I owe especial gratitude.

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter Page
I. "A PHILOSOPHER A CHRISTIAN AND A DIVINE" . . 1
II. ETERNITY-TIME . . . . . . . . . . . 15
III. THE TEMPLE OF ETERNITY . . . . . . . . 45
Iv. TYPES AND SHADOWS. . . . . . . . . . 84
v. THE JOURNEY OUTWARD . . . . . . . . . 107
VI. THE JOURNEY INWARD . . . . . . . . . I41
VII. THE ONE . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
BIBLIOGRAPHY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174

iv

CHAPTER I

"A PHILOSOPHER A CHRISTIAN AND A DIVINE"

When the poems and meditations of Thomas Traherne,
seventeenth-century Anglican priest, were discovered at the
turn of the present century, critics responded with a wave
of enthusiasm that, in spite of its apparent magnitude, was
rather quick to break and was long in being followed by
another swell. After the initial celebration of the most
obvious qualities of Traherne, a celebration of his strik-
ing glorifications of childhood, his bold and enraptured
exclamations, his masterful prose, generally felt to be
superior to his poetry, critics (with important exceptions)
seemed at a loss about what to do with him. Some attempted
to make comparisons between Traherne and the Cambridge
Platonists, but found such comparisons could only be very
general. Chapters, articles and, in Germany, dissertations
were written dealing with the nature of Traherne's "mysti-
cism." The usual general appreciations, some of them very
perceptive, continued to appear; but in the middle or late
forties, a few years after the publication of Gladys Wade's

speculative Thomas Traherne: A Critical Biography

(Princeton, 1944), scholarly interest in Traherne all but
died.

To be sure, some good work on Traherne was done in
the fifties; and it was in 1958 that H. M. Margoliouth

published the first scholarly edition of the Centuries,

 

Poems, and Thanksgivings (Oxford). But it took until the

 

nineteen sixties for the explosion that had taken place in
other areas of literary research to reach the study of
Traherne; and it was not until late 1968 that a modern,

critical edition of Christian Ethicks was finally issued.

 

Some of the new Traherne scholarship has been like that of
the past; some of it has gone on to examine Traherne's
poetry in terms of the New Criticism; and some of it has
been research into Traherne's ideas, influences and sources.
It is to this last category that the present study pri-
marily belongs. In the following chapters, I examine an
idea and its background; I see to what extent Traherne
developed this idea, and I make a judgment about the effect

this idea had on Traherne's literary productions.1

 

1I cite throughout H. M. Margoliouth's two-volume
edition of the Centuries, Poems, and Thanksgivings (Oxford,
1958 [1965 reprint]) for the works it contains. I refer
to the Centuries as 9 followed by the number of the Century
in Roman caps and the section in Arabic numerals. The
poems and "Thanksgivings" are indicated by title and line
numbers. For Christian Ethicks I cite the text edited by
Carol L. Marks and George Robert Guffey (Ithaca, New York,
1968), abbreviated CE. For Meditations on the Six Days of
the Creation, I use the reprifit introduced by George Robert
Gaffey (Los Angeles, 1966). "Select Meditations" is a
Traherne MS. in the Osborn Collection, Yale University
Library.

 

 

 

 

According to the philosophy of Thomas Traherne,
time is contained in the ever-present "now" of eternity.
Though this idea, in its most elementary form, is not
original with him, Traherne carried out its implications
to a further extent than had any previous philosopher.

The concept, indeed, is one of the primary footings on
which his entire system rests; and therefore, in an effort
to gain a better understanding of that system, I have
attempted in the following chapters to define Traherne's
view of the nature and relationship of time and eternity
and to trace the influence of that view in other elements
of his thought and art. Traherne's concept and these other
elements which as well have an influence upon it really
form a whole of which it is difficult and misleading to
talk of any one part in isolation. To examine, for in-
stance, what Traherne says of God's eternity without an
understanding of how man can have knowledge of such a
thing, makes the concept appear more abstract and esoteric
than it is and thus, for some perhaps, less reasonable.
But since it is impossible to take in the whole in one
bite and still be certain of what is being eaten, I have
settled on the following divisions for my discussion.

I begin, in the following chapter, with a consider-
ation of what might be called the concept in its absolute
or pure state. Neglecting for the present the problem of
the limited power of human perception and the road that

leads a man up to a vision of the God-nature, I examine

Traherne's thoughts about eternity and time. Traherne's
own statements brought together here establish clearly,
what he meant by the presence of time in eternity and are
meant to show that he has made a consistent, systematic
formulation. Examining this formulation in its relation-
ship to past philosophical considerations of the subject
and to views of Traherne's contemporaries, as this chapter
goes on to do, not only establishes the place of the con-
cept in the history of thought but also shows the unique
extent to which Traherne has worked out the details of it.
This historical examination should also combine with the
original presentation of the concept to counter what seems
to be a tendency of some modern readers to regard Traherne's
statements about eternity, time and related subjects as
hyperbolic metaphors or as solely the results of a child-
like, psychological perception Of a timeless universe.

In the third chapter, having defined the abstract
concept of eternity-time (as I will call, for simplicity's
sake, the succession of time as it exists in the permanent
now of eternity), the next step is to see how human beings
can perceive this mode of existence. According to Tra-
herne, man is capable of knowing all eternity even though
it is an attribute of the Deity, part of His nature.

This chapter is consequently concerned with the infinite
capacity of the soul, how the soul by its nature reflects
God and thus all of God's attributes; but specifically,

how the soul in this world sees not only everything in

the present moment with its spiritual eye but through
"Faith" (which is far from being a non-rational acceptance
of religious truths) also gains sight of the past and
through "Hope" achieves an accurate vision of the future.
Traherne bases his method for achieving the ability to see
the past and the future on a knowledge of history, for
which he takes the Bible as the most reliable text. Thus
the study of history in the Bible and application of its
examples to the present and future takes on an immeasurable
importance, for it is such activity which unites the soul
with eternity, with God. I treat Traherne's view of the
soul's capacity, in this third chapter, in its relationship
to previous and contemporary philosophies; but, since this
matter has been discussed by other scholars, my emphasis
here is on correcting what I believe have been some faulty
interpretations of Traherne rather than in tracing in de-
tail the historical line of thought. Partially of such a
nature is my discussion in this chapter of the soul's per-
ception of space. Other writers have found this an im-
portant matter in Traherne, a result of the New Science;
but they neglect the fact that this perception is inextri-
cably involved in that of eternity-time. With such an
omission, a reader may make the mistake of taking the
limitlessness of space for the infinity of God in Traherne.
Traherne not only defines eternity-time and the
soul which can know it, he also presents a method by which

a sinful, mortal being may grow into his infinite capacity

and gain the perception of eternity-time, a method that
builds on yet goes beyond the study of the Bible as simple
history. Traherne says that man can participate in a three—
or four-stage process, the stages of which he names Inno-
cence, Misery-Grace and Glory.2 Innocence is the estate

of a child when the vision is uncorrupted as yet by the
world. Misery-Grace is that transitional state of adult
life in which a man, having lost his childhood innocence,
is progressively released from sin and misery as he works
his way back up to God. Glory is the highest estate of
all, actually realized only after death when the soul
finally fulfills all of its divine nature. This progress
takes place not only in individual human lives but also in
the history of the world itself. Adam, Christ and the New
Jerusalem are figures for these estates in Traherne's
works; and the stages of human progress are not only
parallel to the spiritual history of the world represented
by these three, but are lived in the fullest through medi-
tation upon these figures. Traherne's, like Milton's, is

a constantly typological habit of thought, so much so that
his recurrent use of "I" is anything but egotistic, serving
as it does as a device for instruction and a type of "Thou,"
of Adam, of Christ and of the soul as it will exist in
Glory. My fourth chapter, then, deals with this progress,

this habit of thought and the things Traherne

 

2My grouping together of Misery and Grace is
explained in my fourth chapter.

characteristically associates with each estate. The pro-
gress through these estates is really one leading the human
soul up to all of the divine attributes, but it is es-
pecially a journey to the participation of the soul in
eternity.

It is Traherne's Centuries that show these ideas

 

about eternity-time and the road to its perception put to
their highest didactic and artistic use. Traherne was not
only a religious teacher and philosopher, but an artist,
a skilled craftsman, as well. He had no noble view of
art per se, as he shows in Christian Ethicks where it is
defined as,
that Habit, by which we are assisted in composing
Tracts and Systems, rather then in regulating our
Lives, and more frequently appears in Fiddling and
Dancing, then in noble Deeds: were it not useful in
Teachers for the Instruction of others, we should
scarce reckon it in the number of Vertues (p. 24);
but the art he employed in his instruction of others is
surely to be counted one of Traherne's greatest virtues.

My remaining chapters, then, trace the structure of the

Centuries, demonstrating the various ways in which Tra-

 

herne persuades the soul to unite itself with the knowledge
of eternity-time. My last chapter touches on some of the
"Thanksgivings” as well as treating the Fifth Century

because, as I explain there, I believe the Centuries to

 

be unfinished; and, basing my opinion on the opening
remarks of the Fifth Century, I feel these "Thanksgivings"

may indicate where the remaining sections would have gone.

This examination of the Centuries provides a picture of the

 

tremendous edifice Traherne has built upon the concept of
eternity-time.

It may still seem strange to some readers to talk
of Traherne uncompromisingly as a philosopher when past
critics have so often treated him as a mystic, an ec-
clectic thinker who "cared little for logic, but gleaned
from various theories,"3 or simply a writer of poetic
raptures. Even a recent writer is able to describe
Traherne as one who "by-passes ratiocination . . . simply
by believing implicitly in the efficacy of the imagination

4 But there have always

as an instrument of Knowledge."
been some who recognized Traherne as a more systematic
thinker. Itrat-Husain, for example, though limiting him-

self by the very nature of his work (The Mystical Element

 

in the Metaphysical Poets of the Seventeenth Century),

 

 

claims: "Thomas Traherne alone of all the mystical poets
of the seventeenth century has tried to give us a system-
atic exposition of his philosophy."5 Itrat-Husain sees in
Traherne a "mind highly trained" (p. 266) with a wide

knowledge of Neo-Platonic philosophy. And Margaret

 

30. Iredale, Thomas Traherne (Oxford, 1935), p. 54.

 

4Elizabeth Jennings, "The Accessible Art, A Study
of Thomas Traherne's Centuries of Meditations," Twentieth
Century, CLXVII (1960), 143.

 

5(Edinburgh, 1948), p. 264.

Bottrall has called Traherne "an extremely consistent and
coherent reasoner (if his initial premises be granted),"6
though she finds his imaginative power more significant.
Of great importance in establishing Traherne's relation to

philosophy have been the work of Marks and Guffey in their

edition of Christian Ethicks and the learned articles of

 

Miss Marks (now Mrs. Sicherman) which show the broad back-
ground in philosophy Traherne possessed.7
At the beginning of the Fourth Century, Traherne,
speaking of himself in the third person, tells of his
desire to be a philosopher:
He thought that to be a Philosopher a Christian and
a Divine, was to be one of the most Illustrious
Creatures in the World; and that no man was a Man in
Act, but only in Capacity, that was not one of these;
or rather all. for either of these Three include the
other two. . . . evry man ought to spend his time, in
studying diligently Divine Philosophy. (IV, 3)
It is under the aspect of divine philosophy that this
principle of eternity-time comes for Traherne, and its

study was one of the major pursuits of his intellectual

career. It is my purpose here to establish more securely

 

6"Traherne's Praise of the Creation," Critical

Quarterly, I (1959), 130.

7Carol Marks Sicherman's articles on Traherne are
"Thomas Traherne‘s Commonplace Book," Pa ers of the Biblio-
graphical Societ of America, LVIII (1964), 458-465;
'Thomas Tra erne and Hermes Trismegistus," Renaissance
News, XIX (1966), 118-131; "Traherne's ChurchTs Year-Book,"
PBSA, LX (1966), 31-72; "Thomas Traherne and Cambridge
Platonism," PMLA, LXXXI (1966), 521-534; "Thomas Traherne's
Early Studies," PBSA, LXII (1968), 511-536; and "Traherne's
Ficino Notebook," PBSA, LXIII (1969), 73-81.

 

 

10

Traherne's position in philosophy, to show how one concept
(or set of concepts, if you will), eternity-time, was
systematically and consistently developed by him. Though
admittedly the above outline of this study may not have
presented a system that at first glance appears ”logical"
to the modern mind, unfamiliar with the Scholastic View of
eternity, the detailed study of this part of Traherne's
philosophy should make it appear somewhat more reasonable,
though not necessarily more "true"; for that to be so one
would have to accept Traherne's postulates as well as the
logic of his conclusions.

Traherne's ideas about eternity and/or time have
been discussed before, though briefly, by Robert Ellrodt
in Les Poétes Métaphysiques Anglais8 and by N. S. Thompson
in his 1929 article, "The Philosophy of Thomas Traherne."9
In addition, Louis Martz links Augustine's theory of the
perception of time with Traherne's in The Paradise Within;10
and both Malcom Day and Rufus Jones include a summary of

Traherne's concept in their respective treatments of him.11

 

8(Paris, 1960), I, ii, 343-353.

9Philological Quarterly, VIII, 97-112.

10(New Haven, Conn., 1964).

11Day in "Traherne and the Doctrine of Pre-
existence," Studies in Philology, LXV (1968), 90; Jones in
Spiritual Reformers :§:Ehg 16th §_17th Centuries (London,
1928), P. 335.

 

 

11

Other writers as well have made passing remarks about what
time was to Traherne, but none have realized the determining
power this concept had on so much of Traherne's thinking.

In discussing the structure of the Centuries, I am

 

entering a field that has had a little more tillage. This
subject has been considered by Martz, by Allan H. Gilbert
and by others.12 Some of these considerations have been
simply descriptive analyses of the contents, grouping areas
of related subject matter together; one, that of Martz,
has attempted to demonstrate the presence of an external
pattern, the Augustinian meditation. My own examination
is on the whole only slightly related to either of these
types. I show a philosophical concept as it determines
the structure of an artist's thought, a structure which
does not exclude other, simultaneous patterns, but which
is more interior, more directly related to specific ele-
ments in the thought process of Traherne himself.

My interest in this study is both philosophical
and literary, but I must admit that it is predominantly
literary. I am not trying to establish Traherne as a
member of a school of philosophy, nor am I interested in
making a claim for Traherne's original contributions. I
am in the main interested in the concept of eternity-time

for the value I believe it gives Traherne's art.

 

12Martz in The Paradise Within; Gilbert in "Thomas
Traherne as Artist," Modern Language Quarterly, VIII
(1947), 319-341, 435-447.

 

 

12

Hans Meyerhoff, in his book Time in Literature,

 

describes the "literary treatment of time" as an inner,
psychological one in which "the causal connections (or
associations) between events within memory do not consti-
tute an objective, uniform, consecutive order of 'earlier'

13

and 'later' as they do for events in nature." Meyerhoff

labels this quality "dynamic interpenetration, using
Bergson's term. I suppose it could be debated whether
this timeless frame of mind is really characteristic of
all great literature. Certainly its importance varies as
well as the quality of its use. It reaches perhaps its
lowest ebb in the Gothic novel, where the intrusion of the
past and future on the present becomes a seemingly super-
natural but nonetheless physical one. It reaches its
culmination in the novels of Joyce and Proust, in the

14 and in the art of Thomas Tra-

style of Gertrude Stein,
herne. Traherne says that man "can se Eternity, & possess
infinity" ("Select Meditations,” III, 91). when in his

writing he participates in this activity, Traherne is not

only a Christian divine instructing his fellows in the way

to felicity; he is also a literary artist making use of

 

13(Berkeley, 1955), p. 22.

14For a lively discussion of time in the works of
a wide range of authors see Madeline B. Stern, "Counter-
clockwise: Flux of Time in Literature," Sewanee Review,
XLIV (1936), 338-365. The influence of time theories on
modern literature is treated by Wyndham Lewis in Time and
Western Man (New York, 1928).

 

13

associations which range throughout eternity. Because this
use of association is no mere psychological or literary
device but an integral part of his philosophy of knowledge,
the effect of the concept of eternity-time on his art is

all the stronger. Because "mind" for Traherne was a

function of the soul, itself the image of God, this now
of consciousness in his work becomes more nearly universal
than for any other writer.

Before beginning an examination of just what the
eternal now was to Traherne, I should like to add a few
words about what this work does not do. It does not deal
in any detail with matters of Traherne's biography nor
recount the history of the discovery of his manuscripts.15
Nor, with the exception of a lapse in the previous para-
graph, does it spend time comparing Traherne with writers
and thinkers who followed him by a considerable period.

In regard to this last, while it may be in some ways
interesting to see how Traherne anticipates Blake or
Wordsworth, such comparisons do not really do much to
explain Traherne, my purpose here. Neither do they explain

much except in a very general way about Blake and Words-

worth, since neither knew of Traherne. These comparisons

 

15This material may be found in all too many
places; the best presentation is in the introduction to
the Margoliouth edition. The story of the "Select Medi-
tations" MS. may be found in James M. Osborn, "A New
Traherne Manuscript," London Times Literary Supplement,
October 8, 1964, p. 928.

14

do, however, place Traherne in noble company, which is
perhaps the intention of those who make them. But to see
Traherne as a Romantic is an anachronism that would take a
concept of the intermingling of times more confounding than
even Traherne's to justify. For similar reasons, I do not
compare Traherne's view of time with modern views, for
example, that of Bergson, interesting as such a comparison
might be. Though I must of necessity look back with
twentieth-century eyes, I try to understand Traherne as

he stood in his times and in relation to the history of
thought before him. It is hard to look back three hundred
years without some distortion of vision, but the attempt
should nevertheless be made. For man the past no longer

exists when he ceases recalling it.

CHAPTER II

ETERNITY-TIME

One of the lesser controversies of an age charac-
terized predominantly by religious controversy was over the
nature of eternity. The seventeenth century saw a reaction
against the Scholastic View that eternity "is entire all at
once without any successiveness,"l a reaction participated
in by such widely different individuals as Thomas Hobbes
and George ("Bloody") Mackenzie, persecutor of the Cove-
nanters. This reaction was one, in Hobbes' case at any
rate, in favor of what today has become the popular if not
necessarily the theological view of eternity, that eternity
is an an unending length of time, without beginning or end.
Hobbes, condemning "vain philosophers," says:

For the meaning of Eternity, they will not have it to
be an Endlesse Succession of Time; for then they should
not be able to render a reason how Gods Will, and
Praeordaining of things to come, should not be before
his praescience of the same, as the Efficient Cause
before the Effect, or Agent before Action, nor of many

other their bold Opinions concerning the Incompre-
hensible Nature of God. But they will teach us that

 

1Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Ia, x, l, in §E-
Thomas Aquinas: Philosophical Texts, trans. and ed.
Thomas Gilby (London, 1951), p. 83.

 

 

15

16

Eternity is the Standing still of the Present Time,

a Nunc-stans (as the Schools call it;) which neither
they, nor any else understand, no more than they would
a Hic-stans for an Infinite greatness of Place.

 

 

And Mackenzie, in his anonymous Religio Stoici, also

 

attacks the established doctrine for its unintelligibility:
"That Eternity is all present, and that in it, there is
neither preterit, nor future, is but a conceit, and a
needless mysterie imposed upon our belief, which is really
more mysterious then the Trinity."3
Thomas Traherne, in spite of his occasional, con-
ventional condemnation of Scholasticism, stood with Aquinas
in his philosophy of the nature of eternity, but with an
all-important difference: Traherne included time as a part
of eternity, a difference which reconciles in his philosophy
the two opposing camps. Traherne defines eternity in
Christian Ethicks as "an infinite Length of Duration, a1-
together present in all its parts in a Stable manner"
(p. 67). Even in this simple definition, we see the major
adaptation that was necessary in order for Traherne to
accommodate eternity to time: the postulation of a per-

manent duration or extension of which the eternal "now"

is composed. Again from Christian Ethicks: "Eternity is

 

an everlasting Moment, infinite in duration, but permanent

 

2Leviathan, pt. 4, chap. 46, ["Everyman" ed.]
intro. A. D. Lindsay (New York, 1959), p. 370.

 

3(Edinburgh, 1665), p. 25.

17

in all its parts, all Things past, present, and to come,
are at once before him, and eternally together" (p. 184).
Thus not only are all things before God in eternity, they
are also themselves "eternally together," one period of
time being present to another. Perhaps Traherne's view of
God's eternity is best summed up in a seemingly paradoxical
line of the poem, "The Anticipation": "His Name is NOW,
his Nature is forever" (1. 26). The duration of "forever"
is in its entirety part of the "now."

For Aquinas eternity was absolutely separate from
time. Though God can surely perceive time and all things
in it, time itself is not part of His nature; time is
mutable. "Eternity is the measure of permanence; time
the measure of change."4 Traherne, however, felt this
distinction to be a faulty one. If God can see all of
time at once, there can be no change in the whole he per-
ceives; time therefore is all present, complete, thus
identical in its attributes to eternity. Time continues
to exist as a duration, and though there are differences
between the successive units along the immutable line, the
line itself is permanent, unchanging, eternal.

"We cannot tell how to conceive," Traherne says,
"what the Learned constantly affirm, that all Eternity is
at one Time. All I shall observe in Order to the explain-

ing of this Mystery, is onely this, that tho the World

 

4Summa, Ia, x, 4, Gilby, p. 83.

18

begins and Ends with Time, yet Eternity does immutably
include Time" (CE, pp. 68-69). To include time in eternity
Traherene thus does not need to make time infinite in
duration; time is not necessarily characteristic of the
whole of eternity. Traherne seems to avoid the old argu-
ment about whether time existed before the creation of the
world, though there is one point where he does suggest the
possibility of time existing in all of eternity. Speaking
of the place of the "Ages" of time in eternity, Traherne
says, "Whether they are commensurat with it or no, is
difficult to determine" (9, V, 7). I believe Robert
Ellrodt misinterprets Traherne's meaning when he recounts
this hypothesis and says of it that, in spite of the fact
Traherne neither adopts nor rejects it:
Qu'il le veuille on non, 1e langage du poéte, suivant
sa forme d'esprit, l'épouse spontanément: ne ménage-
t-il pas 5 chaque siecle une niche dans l'éternité?
Ne distingue-t-il pas dans 1'éternité méme, indivis-
ible par définition, entre les "durées vides" avant
que Dieu n'ait créé le monde et les "durées pleines"
depuis la Création?5
The question is not whether the ages are contained in
eternity, Traherne says definitely that they are, but
whether time exists throughout all of eternity, is "com-
mensurat" with it throughout those periods when the world
and its time are not. There is no doubt that for Traherne

there are durations before and after the life of the world,

but whether these durations have the successive nature of

 

SLes Poetes Métaphysiques Anglais, I, ii, 347.

19

time or are in themselves temporally undifferentiated
Traherne does not specifically consider. This is not, I
believe, from any fear of committing heresy, but simply
from a sense of the limit of present perception.

Traherne does feel it necessary, however, to answer
the equally involved question of what, aside from the possi-
bility of time, fills that eternity before the creation.
What was God doing that he could not have created the world
sooner? In the "Select Meditations" (III, 89), Traherne
declines to take the way out of the problem offered by the

merry theologian cited in Augustine's Confessions (Traherne

 

credits the view to Augustine himself) who answered such
inquiries with the claim that God during this stage "'was

I "6 In-

preparing hell . . . for pryers into mysteries.
stead, says Traherne, God spent the time (or rather, the
duration) doing his homework, preparing to do the best job

possible. Traherne presents the same explanation in

Christian Ethicks:

 

All Things were from all Eternity before his Eyes,
and he saw the fittest Moments wherein to produce
them: and judged it fit in his Wisdom first to fill
Eternity with his deliberations and Counsels, and
then to beautifie Time with the execution of his
Decrees. (p. 183)

This action is not really "before" time, for all things
and all moments are immediately present during it. It

is in a measure, though, outside of time. Though the

 

6[Modern Library ed.] trans. Edward B. Pusey
(New York, 1949): p0 252.

20

necessities of language tend to make statements like the
above somewhat ambiguous, Traherne never really confuses
the two characteristics of order and simultaneity. Both
are equally true and have attributes pertinent to them-
selves alone.

As quotations in the above discussion indicate,
Traherne often explains the existence of time in eternity
through the use of analogy with physical things in space.
Thus eternity is an object which can be filled, time can
occupy a place, as in this quotation about God's oper-
ations in time:

Among other Objects of Felicity to be enjoyed, the
Ways of GOD in all Ages are not the least considerable
and Illustrious. Eternity is as much Beautified with
them, as his Omnipresence is with the Works of the
Creation. For Time is in Eternity, as the World is
in Immensity. (CE, p. 111).
And speaking of the fleeting units which are ordinarily
thought to constitute time Traherne says:
Eternity is a Mysterious Absence of Times and Ages:
an Endless Length of Ages always present, and for
ever Perfect. . . . All Ages being but successions
correspondent to those Parts of that Eternitie
wherin they abide, and filling no more of it, then
Ages can do. (g, V, 7)
Perhaps the most vivid spatial image is in the "Select
Meditations" and is concerned with an experience we have
all had, though for us it has been more likely out the
window of a car or train:
Tis we are Successiv Eternity is not so. Trees in

a walk are past by, They them Selves Stand Still.
And to him that runs Seem to run Backward. The

21

moments Stand, we mov by, & cry that The Time
passeth away. (I, 95)7

Robert Ellrodt has pointed out that "Méme en ses

impressions d'enfance, Traherne n'a jamais séparé lg

sentiment d2 l'éternité d3 sens d§_l'infini." (I, ii, 346),

 

 

referring the reader to Century III, 3 ("The Corn was
Orient and Immortal Wheat, [etc.]"). But it is possible
to carry these analogies with space and things in space
too far. It must not be assumed that Traherne was really
claiming a physical, spatial "place" where all things in
time exist. Space and time are two different continua (or
extensions, to use the seventeenth-century term) each use-
ful for the illustration of the other because each is con-
tained within an attribute of God. Space is part of God's
omnipresence; time, of God's Eternity.8 The "place" in
which all parts of time are present is, however, identical
with that in which all parts of space are contained in that

9

both, though themselves separate, abide in God. "93

 

7The same image is used, with a ship and the shore
substituted for the runner and the trees, in C, V, 8.
Images for eternity in the Centuries are discfiSsed briefly
by Zenos Johan Bicket, "An Imagery Study in Thomas Tra-
herne's Centuries of Meditations" (diss. University of
Arkansas, 1966), pp. 100-102.

 

81 discuss space in greater detail at the end of
the following chapter.

9Malcom M. Day recognizes that for Traherne time is
contained in eternity, but he wrongly labels this part of
"the doctrine that time is the moving image of eternity"
("Traherne and the Doctrine of Pre-existence," SP, LXV, 90).
Aside from the historical differences of the two positions,

22

comprend alors que le poéte nous invite é 'contempler'

 

l'éternité comme 2E 'object,'" says Ellrodt (I, ii, 346-

 

347); and he is right. But it must be remembered that the
comparison is that of simile; it is not an identification.
To make our own analogy, eternity could perhaps be
described as a phonograph record (though it would have to
be one of infinite length) along which a needle, you and I
in our present moment, runs. The whole record always
exists in all its parts; the whole song is on it, but the
groove is a line of infinite successive duration of which
only one part is at the point of the needle (infinitely
small) where the future becomes the past. Even this analogy
is only partially successful; for it is the needle that must
move, the record stands still, and the movement of the
needle is also itself somehow recorded. The needle, in
addition, has the power to determine for itself what it
will play, though the groove has been cut from eternity by
the manufacturer. Thus physical analogy breaks down.
Having defined eternity and the relationship it has
to time, we must still determine just exactly what "time"
is for Traherne. We have seen something of its nature
already; it is a successive duration. That is, although

all parts of it may always be in existence, these

 

discussed below, this takes for an image what is an
identity. This is all the more surprising since the major
part of Dr. Day's article takes for an identity what is
really an image, the soul and its relationship to God, a
problem discussed in my next chapter.

23

parts follow a certain established order. The successive
units are variously divided up as ages, moments, etc.; but
of what, we still ask, do these consist? Of what is time
made up? According to Traherne, it consists of nearly
everything which is not physical or spatial. Time is
filled with acts, operations, events, all of which have
no primary material existence. What holds true for time
is, of course, also true for eternity:
All the parts of Eternity are filled with Operations,
which, tho they are one in GOD, like that of shining
in the Sun, are manifold in Effects, as the Beams of
the Sun in their different Works among all the
Creatures. (CE, p. 69)
This eternality of operations gives tremendous importance
to even the most insignificant human action: "Every little
Act we perform is a fruit & Off-spring of the whole Crea-
tion. . . . For being done it is admitted into Eternity,
and shall remain in its Place, and be visible forever"
(CE, p. 77).

All acts are not always being enacted by the
creatures who performed them, for that would violate the
principle of succession and would also include physical
agents in the make-up of non-physical eternity. "All Acts
are Immortal in their places, being enbalmed as it were by
Eternity, till the Soul revive and be united to them"

(CE, p. 165). (Recall our phonograph record.) This makes
the commission of a sin worse than the total destruction

of the world: "For the World might be Created again with

ease, and all that is in it be repaired with a word: but

24

a Sin once committed, can never be undone; it will appear
in its place throughout all Eternity" (CE, p. 186). In
the "Select Meditations" Traherne tells how all of our
tears are in eternity at the moment when they fell, always
present, with the rest of eternity, to God and to the
understanding (I, 93). But these tears are, of course,
symbolic; for "things," the material elements of which
creation is made, do not, simply as matter, live in
eternity:

Wheras things in them selvs began, and quickly end.

Before they came, were never in Being; do service

but for new Moments; and after they are gone, Pass

away and leav us for ever. Eternity retains the

Moments of their Beginning and Ending within it self.

(9, V, 8)
It is this nature of matter that enables Traherne to praise
the human body so highly in some contexts and condemn it so
strongly in others; for in its actions it participates in
eternity and can produce something divine. But in its
physical existence it is "a Dull Lump of Heavy Clay, by
which thou art retarded, rather then doest move" (9, II,
51). There is no indication in this that, as some readers
have assumed, Traherne did not believe in the existence of
matter. Matter is real, it simply is not made up of the
elements characteristic of eternity. It can be affected
by the eternal; but without participation in act, matter
is dead. Life is operation and is lived in eternity.

The eternal nature of acts does not exclude free

will from Traherne's philoSOphy. Freedom of the will is a

25

primary tenet of his philosophy and intimately related, as
it was for Boethius, to the concept of eternity-time. In
the succession of time every man has freedom to choose.

In eternity the choice may already have been made, but

this does not affect the original freedom. Problems about
the possibility of free will can arise only when eternity-
time's character of succession is confused with its equally
real but fundamentally different character of permanence.
The question of "will" has nothing to do with this latter
characteristic; choices take place only in the succession
of time. It is as if we were characters in a movie, not
the actors, but the human figures on the screen when the
picture is being shown. We do not know the end of the
film. We act as we think best in each situation. But the
film is in reality complete; and each frame, not just the
one in which we appear at the moment, exists without motion
in itself, permanent.

Thus, to summarize Traherne's concept of eternity-
time, there is an eternal "now" which is the simultaneous
presence of all parts of time and eternity. This "now" is
an infinite, successive duration or extension which we
divide into units with our terms "moment," "age," etc.;
but which is really one whole, unending continuum, all of
which is always in existence. Whether those parts of
eternity outside the world's time are also successive
Traherne does not decide. The duration of eternity-time

holds all acts and operations that have ever been made or

26

ever will be made, though free will is not thereby ex-
cluded. Being in eternity, time is contained in an attri-
bute of God.

Ellrodt, then, is misleading when he says that

Traherne "congoit l'éternel non point comme 2E mode

 

 

d'existence--l'étre méme--mais comme un mode de con-

 

 

 

 

naissance 92 EB objet 92 connaissance" (I, ii, 348). For

 

Traherne eternity is both. One, for that matter, could
not exist without the other. Eternity is an object of

the understanding because it is being itself and a mode

of being. And the answer to Ellrodt's rhetorical question,

"E§.£EEEZEL point conclure que Traherne n'eut point

 

l'intuition véritable d3 1'éternité, mais seulement d3

 

 

 

l'éviternité?" (ibid.) is that in reality Traherne recon-

 

ciles the seemingly irreconcilable notions of eternity and
everlastingness; and he does so not by making the two
merely different points of view, but by making all the
infinite duration of the one the very being, permanent in
all its parts, of the other. The contents of eternity are
not physical, but this does not make them solely mental.
They are spiritual; and though for Traherne mind too is
spiritual, it is not for him, as it has become for us, the
only spirit. Both spatial and temporal objects can exist
in the understanding, but both are still equally "real"
and possess individual being. God's eternity has an

existence independent of man's comprehension of it.

27

In two of the quotations from Traherne given in the

above discussion, he refers to the nature of eternity as a
"Mystery" and "Mysterious." Before going any further, it
might be well to establish just what "mystery" means in
these contexts, since I am trying to present Traherne as
a systematic philosopher, and the word may tend to relate
the concept of eternity-time to some sort of "mystic"
intuition. When Traherne uses the word, it is usually
in regard to something for which he proceeds to give an
immediate explanation, as in these quotations. Mysteries
are not incomprehensible workings of the Deity but rather
are hidden truths which can eventually be understood.
Traherne states the purpose of his explaining of mysteries
in the prefatory poem, "The Author to the Critical Peruser":

The naked Truth in many faces shewn,

Whose inward Beauties very few hav known,

A Simple Light, transparent Words, a Strain

That lowly creeps, yet maketh Mountains plain,

Brings down the highest Mysteries to sense

And keeps them there; that is Our Excellence:

At that we aim; to th' end thy Soul might see

With open Eys thy Great Felicity,

Its Objects view, and trace the glorious Way

Wherby thou may'st thy Highest Bliss enjoy.

(11. 1-10)10

In his emphasis on the rational explanation of

mysteries, Traherne is like the Cambridge Platonists,
particularly Henry More. In his Divine Dialogues, More

seems to be making fun of those who would make something

recondite out of philosophy when he has Cuphophron defend

 

10For examples of this use of "mystery" in the
Centuries see I, 3; I, 100; II, 3; III, 81; and IV, 81.

28

himself with the exasperating claim, "Metaphysicks were not
Metaphysicks, Hylobares, if they were not mysterious."ll
More gives his own definition of "mystery" at the opening

of his book, An Explanation of the Grand Mystery 2: Godli-

 

ness (London, 1660), a definition that accords with Tra-
herne's use of the word:

Every legitimate Mystery comprehends in it at

least these Four Properties. It is a iece of Knowl-

Mg First, competently Obscure, Recondite and
Abstruce: That is, It is not so utterly hid and intri-
cate, Eu t that, in the Second place, It‘is‘in‘a_ due
measure Intelligible. Thirdly, It is not only
Intelligible, what is meant by_ it; but— it is evi-
dently and certainly+True. Fourthly and lastIyT It
is no impertinent or idle Speculation, but a Truth
ver ry —Usefull and Profitable: We may well add also,

for some Religious End. (p. l)

 

 

 

 

Traherne's explanation of the mystery of eternity-
time was built on premises not necessarily original to him,
though the elaborate structure he built on these premises
is unique. The elements of Traherne's basic concept had
both ancient and contemporary parallels.

Aquinas' belief in the eternal "now," divorced
from time, has already been mentioned. The origin, how-
ever, of the doctrine that there is an unchanging, stable
eternity is traditionally attributed to the philosopher,
Parmenides. Though a recent commentator and translator
of his poem has denied the validity of this, maintaining

that in reality "Plato was the first Greek philosopher to

 

1(London, 1668), I, 150.

29

grasp the notion of atemporal eternity and to distinguish
it from the perpetuity of infinite duration,"12 in the
seventeenth century, Ralph Cudworth, another of the Cam-
bridge Platonists, expresses what has been the usual View
of this pre-Socratic philosopher. In his monumental though
incomplete True Intellectual System g£_the Universe,
Cudworth credits Parmenides with believing in a supreme
Being who was
altogether immutable or unchangeable, whose duration
therefore was very different from that of ours, and
not in a way of flux or temporary succession, but a
constant eternity, without either past or future.
From whence it may be observed, that this opinion of
a standing eternity, different from that flowing
succession of time, is not so novel a thing as some
would persuade, nor was first excogitated by Christian
writers, schoolmen or fathers, it being at least as
old as Parmenides.
Traherne was familiar with Plato's dialogue, the Parmenides,
or at least with Ficino's epitome, since he copied about
half of Ficino's "argumentum" to it (glossing over a
portion with a summarizing phrase) in the "Ficino Note-

14

book." The argumentum summarizes the various hypotheses

 

of the dialogue "vel d3 uno rerum omnium principio, vel d2

Idaeis" without any specific application to eternity or

 

12Leonardo Taran, Parmenides (Princeton, 1965),
p. 187.

 

13(London, 1845), II, 42-43.

14British Museum MS. Burney 126, f. 17. For a
general description of the notebook see Carol Marks
Sicherman, "Traherne's Ficino Notebook," PBSA, LXIII,
73-81.

30

time. But, of course, in the dialogue itself Traherne
would have found the hypothesis that the One "cannot be
older or younger, or of the same age, either with itself
or with another. . . . cannot be in time at all."15
For Plato, whether or not it was true for Parmen—
ides, there was a timeless, unmoving eternity. Though
time was created a moving image of that eternity, as he
says in the Timaeus, it nonetheless remained absolutely
separate from it. This separation of time and eternity
was reinforced by Plotinus who in the Enneads stressed
that "Eternity and Time" were "two entirely separate
things."l6 Plotinus defined eternity as:
a Life changelessly motionless and ever holding the
Universal content (time, space and phenomena) in
actual presence; not this now and not that other, but
always all; not existing now in one mode and now in
another, but a consummation without part or interval.
All its content is in immediate concentration as at
one point; nothing in it ever knows development: all
remains identical within itself, knowing nothing of
change, for ever in a Now, since nothing of it has
passed away or will come into being, but what is now,
that is ever. (III, vii, 3, p. 224)
Though the material of time is present to eternity like a
mirror image to its beholder, time as it actually exists

does not have an eternal nature. Rather than being only

an image, as it was for Plato, time for Plotinus was "a

 

15The Dialogues of Plato, trans. B. Jowett (New
York, 1937), II, 104.

 

16III, vii, l, trans. Stephen MacKenna (New York,

3l

descent from Eternity" (III, vii, 7, p. 229), the result of
a progressive downward development from the eternal.17

It is to the medieval Christian philosophers we
must turn to find the precedent for Traherne's explicit

inclusion of time in the "now" of eternity, going first to

Boethius. Marks and Guffey, in their edition of Christian

 

Ethicks, note that Traherne's definition of eternity as
"an infinite Length of Duration, altogether present in all
its parts in a Stable manner" (p. 67):

appears close to that of Boethius in De consolatione

 

 

philosophia, V.6 (Chaucer's translation): ffEternite
. . . is parfit possessioun and altogidre of lif
interminable." (p. 330n.)

These parallel passages do point out an important relation-
ship between Traherne and Boethius. Not that in both
eternity is a permanent "now"; for, as we have seen, this
antedates Boethius. But that in both eternity is in some
measure a duration ("lif interminable") as well. However,
the really significant similarity of these two philosophers
is only implied in the quoted passages; namely, that for
both Eimg, past, present and future, is a part of dur-
ational eternity. Boethius, after the passage quoted by
Marks and Guffey, goes on to talk of the mutability of
things in time; and Traherne also acknowledges that to

human perception time passes. But human perception is not

 

17Ellrodt contrasts Plotinus to Traherne (I,ii,
348), and Marks and Guffey refer the reader to Plotinus
in connection with Traherne's view of eternity (CE, p.
330n.).

32

necessarily God's, is not absolute; and Boethius concludes
his remarks on this subject by saying that God,

comprehending the infinite space of that which is past
and to come, confideth a1 things in his simple knowl-
edge, as though they were now in doing. So that, if
thou wilt weigh his foreknowledge, with which he dis-
cerneth all things, thou wilt more rightly esteeme it
to bee the knowledge of a never fading instant than a
foreknowledge as of a thing to come.1

And that this "knowledge" of God's is an actual partici-
pation, not simply a proximity as it was for Plotinus,
Boethius makes clear in his tractate, "De Trinitate":

But the expression "God is ever" denotes a single
Present, summing up His continual presence in all the
past, in all the present--however that term be used--
and in all the future. Philosophers say that "ever"
may be applied to the life of the heavens and other
immortal bodies. But as applied to God it has a
different meaning. He is ever, because "ever" is
with Him a term of present time, and there is this
great difference between "now," which is our present,
and the divine present. Our present connotes changing
time and sempiternity; God's present, abiding, un-
moved, and immoveable, connotes eternity.l

Boethius' view of the participation of time in
eternity is echoed and developed by St. Anselm, whom

Traherne mentions in the Centuries (I, 91). Anselm dis-

 

cusses the matter both in the "Proslogion" and the "Mono-

logion," and it is not unlikely that Traherne would have

 

18"I.T.'s" translation of the Consolation of
'Philosophy, ed. William Anderson (Carbondale, Illinois,
1963), p. 116.

 

19Boethius, The Theological Tractates, [Loeb ed.]
trans. H. F. Stewart and E. K. Rand (Cambridge, Mass.,
1962), p. 21.

 

 

33

20

been familiar with these. In the "Monologion," Anselm

an

interminable life, existing at once as a perfect whole."21

defines the eternity of God somewhat as Boethius did,

He clears up a point that in Boethius could tend toward
ambiguity, saying of eternity:

If the usage of language permitted, it would, there-
fore, seem to be more fittingly said that it exists
with place or time, than that it exists in place or
time. For the statement that a thing exists in an-
other implies that it is contained more than does the
statement that it exists with another. (p. 81)

 

Thus though, according to Anselm, God is "simultaneously
present in every place or time" (p. 80), space and time
do not limit his existence. For Anselm and Traherne space
and time are merely elements of infinity and eternity.
"For just as an age made up of times contains all temporal
things, so thy eternity contains the ages of time them-
selves."22
Anselm's view, however, was not that which pre-

vailed in Christian thought. Aquinas' rejection of the

includion of time in eternity came about even though he

 

20Anselm had been in print almost since the intro-
duction Of movable types. Seventeenth-century editions of
his "complete works" were published by Joannis Picardi
(Cologne, 1612), Theophilus Raynaud (Lyons, 1630), and
Gabrielis Gerberon (Paris, 1675).

21Saint Anselm: Basic Writings, trans. S. N.
Deane (LaSalle, Illinois, 1962 [orig. 1903]), p. 83.

 

 

22Anselm's "Proslogion" in A_Scholastic Miscellany:
Anselm E9 Ockham, ed. and trans. Eugene R. Fairweather in
The Library of Christian Classics, ed. John Baille et al.,

 

x (London, 167376), 87'.

 

34

used Boethius as the authority for his definition of
eternity. But even before Boethius saw the two united in
God, St. Augustine had made the contrast between time and
eternity which became characteristic of the main stream

of Christian thought. In his Confessions, Augustine asks

 

of eternity:
Who shall hold it, and fix it, that it be settled
awhile, and awhile catch the glory of that ever-fixed
Eternity, and compare it with the times which are
never fixed, and see that it cannot be compared; and
that a long time cannot become long, but out of many
motions passing by, which cannot be prolonged alto-
gether; but that in the Eternal nothing passeth, but
the whole is present; whereas no time is all at once
present.23
This insistence on the contrasting nature of
eternity and time, a separation so absolute that, as
Gregory of Nyssa put it, "extensions in time find no
admittance in the Eternal life,"24 is fundamentally
different from the Platonic doctrine in which the separ-
ation that exists is one of an object and its mirror
image, the emphasis there being on the similarities in
spite of the separation; and it is absolutely different

from the doctrine of Boethius, Anselm and Traherne. The

reluctance of Christian thinkers to enshrine the mutations

 

23P. 251. The question of Augustine's theory of
the human perception of time, a very important one in
determining his relationship to Traherne, is discussed in
the next chapter.

24Against Eunomius, I, 42, in Nicene and Post-
Nicene Fathers, ed. PHiIIp Schall and Henry Wace (Grand
Rapids, Michigan, 1954 [American ReprintJ), V, 100.

 

35

of time in eternity is, of course, understandable. Such

an incorporation would seem to violate the basic dicotomies
of a religion which postulates compensation in another
world for the evil in this and which asks its adherents

to renounce the world, the flesh and the Devil. It is not
necessarily a different religion, but certainly a very
different emphasis which enables men like Traherne to see
opposites contained in each other, the world an object for
love and thanksgiving, the flesh able to express the divine
attributes, evil working in spite of itself to produce
good. Such an emphasis results from a sight acutely aware
of the oneness of being. Traherne's method of thought is
that of the reconciliation of opposites; his greatest
reconciliation, that of time and eternity.

In Traherne's own period there was, as we noted at
the beginning of the chapter, a reaction against the tra-
ditional notion of eternity as a permanent "now." The
alternative idea, an "Endlesse Succession of Time," re-
vived by Hobbes, had always been opposed on the basis of
Aristotle's stipulation that it was impossible to have a
series without a first term. Ralph Cudworth makes an
attack on the idea of an "everlasting" eternity from this
direction, showing that a belief in the eternal extension
of past time would result in "an infinity of time past
which was never present" (II, 528), a logical impossibility.
He nevertheless claims the necessity of something being of

infinite duration; but, in spite of "Atheists" who will

36

"smile, or make faces, and show their little wit in
quibbling upon nunc-stans, or a 'standing now' of eternity"
(II, 529), he says this infinite duration can be charac-
teristic only of God, and, unlike time, it is a "permanent
duration, never losing any thing of itself once present, I
as sliding away from it, nor yet running forwards to meet
something of itself before, which is not yet in being"

(II, 529). Thus, like Traherne, Cudworth incorporates
duration into his concept of eternity; but, unlike Tra-
herne, he excludes the duration of human time. For
Cudworth the words "infinite and eternal" are "attributes
belonging to the Deity, and to that alone" (II, 531).

Man apparently can conceive of this eternity but he does
not experience it.

While Traherne and Cudworth tried in their own
ways to reconcile the notion of infinite duration with
that of the permanent now, others reacted differently.

John Bramhall condemns the whole of Hobbes' view in The

Catching 2f Leviathan, claiming that its result is to make

 

God into something finite. "Our God," he says, "is immut-
able without any shadow of turning by change, to whom all
things are present, nothing past nothing to come. But
ELE; his god is measured by time, loosing something that

is past, and acquiring something that doth come every

37

25

minute." Not quite so uncompromising is John Bartlet

26

(whose use of "estates" parallels Traherne's ). Bartlet

solved the problem by favoring both sides simultaneously:

There is a double Eternity; one 3 parte ante, and
another 3 parte post; one that hath neither beginning
nor end, another that hath a beginning, but no end.
For the first; so God onely is Eternal. . . . For the
other Eternity . . . This is the Eternity of Angels
and Men.27

 

 

Thus for Bartlet eternity and sempiternity are equally
real, but different modes of being.

Marks and Guffey, in a note to Christian Ethicks

 

(p. 331), point out that Traherne had read two contemporary
works containing discussions of eternity: Henry More's
Divine Dialogues, vol. I (London, 1668) and Thomas Jack—

son's Treatise of the Divine Essence and Attributes (London,

 

1628). Both of these works propose an eternity which is,
like Traherne's, a permanent "now" containing all the
succession of time. Neither develops the idea beyond the
brief remarks quoted by Marks and Guffey. Traherne's
editors, however, misread the lines they cite from Henry
More when, after quoting Hylobares definition of eternity,

"That it is an essential presence of all things with God,

 

25In The Works of . . . John Bramhall (Dublin,
1676), p. 873.

 

26See CE, p. 307n. and Chapter IV of the present

study.

27The Practical Christian (London, [1670]),

p. 241.

38

as well of things past, present, as to come; and that the

Duration of God is all of it, as it were, i2 one steddy and

 

permanent . . . Instant at_once," they go on to say,

 

"Philotheus stigmatizes this description as a 'Notion of
Eternity that some have rashly pitched upon.'" What is
being stigmatized is 222 this definition but the impli-
cation which Hylobares draws from it and finds a contra-
diction that past, present and future are in eternity and
yet "that eternall Duration should be indistant to itself,
or without continuation of Intervalls" (More, p. 59), in
other words, that eternity contains a succession, time,
but yet is not in itself successive. The view More is
reacting to is not a fabricated one but is expressed by
at least one other contemporary of Traherne's, Robert
South, whose interest in the state of innocence Sir Arthur
Quiller-Couch has set along side that of Traherne and his
contemporaries as characteristic of the seventeenth-

century mind.28

In regard to eternity, South says that

it "nonplusses the strongest and clearest conception, to
comprehend how one single act of duration should measure
all periods and portions of time, without any of the dis-

tinguishing parts of succession."29 South is content,

however, to let the mystery stand.

 

28

Studies i3 Literature (New York, 1918), I,
147-150.

 

29Sermons Preached Upon Several Occasions (Phila-
delphia, 1850), , 10. South'has much to say that is like

 

39

It is to this contradiction rather than in oppo-
sition to the original definition that Philotheus offers
the solution quoted by Marks and Guffey:

That the whole Evolution of Times and Ages from ever-
lasting to everlasting is so collectedly and present-
ifickly represented to God at once, as if all things
and Actions which ever were, are, or shall be, were
at this very Instant, and so always, really present
and existent before him. (quoted CE, p. 331n.)
Philotheus does not in the least amend the first definition
but removes the suggested contradiction by showing the
continued existence of succession in the duration of God's
now.
Continuity of Duration is also compatible to the
Divine Existence, as well as Eternity or Life eternall
. . . The Comprehension of the Evolution of all Times,
Things, and Transactions is permanently exhibited to
God in every moment of the succession of Ages. (More,
pp. 60-61)
Thus there is no confusion of separate times nor a chaotic
mixing together of all things temporal. Everything exists,
as Traherne would phrase it, in its place. Eternity, then,

is defined conventionally enough by More. In his philo-

sophical poem, Psychozoia, he says:

 

 

Traherne about the power of the human soul, a matter dis-
cussed in the next chapter. South entered Oxford on

11 December 1651, a little less than sixteen months before
Traherne matriculated. He was made public orator for the
university in 1660 and was chaplain to Lord Clarendon
until his fall; he was afterwards chaplain to the Duke

of York, during which period Traherne was chaplain to

Sir Orlando Bridgman, Lord Keeper.

40

Joyfull M1
Admits no change or mutability,

No shade of change, no imminution,

No nor increase; for what increase, can be

To that that's all?30
But eternity for him also includes infinite, permanent
duration and the limited succession of time. For More as
for Boethius, Anselm and Cudworth, however, this eternity
of God is still apart from the world as men perceive it.

"The Duration of God is like that of a Rock, but the

Duration of natural things like that of a River."31 Time

 

as it exists in eternity becomes something like what Newton
would describe as absolute time, real but basically un-
knowable in its true nature. It is in making eternity-
time applicable to human experience and available to human
knowledge that Traherne parts company with his predecessors
and contemporaries in the concept.

To what Marks and Guffey give from Thomas Jackson,
I would add that Jackson, like Traherne, explainsleternity
through its analogy to infinity or omnipresence. "Whatso-
ever hath beene, or rightly may be conceived of divine
immensity," says Jackson, "will in proportion as well suit
unto eternity" (p. 62). And when Traherne says that "Time
is in Eternity, as the World is in Immensity" (CE, p. 111),

he echoes Jackson's remark that "There is no period of time

 

30(Cambridge, 1642). p. 3.

31Divine Dialogues, I, 64.

 

41

to us imaginable, which is not so invironed by Eternity,
as the Earth or Center is with the Heavens; save onely
that the Heavens are finite, and Eternity infinite" (p.
78). In addition to the views of the authors listed by
Traherne's editors, Jackson also cites Boethius' idea of
eternity. Thus, whether Traherne read Boethius or not,
he would have been familiar with his definition. It is
Boethius' View that Jackson adopts as his own.
Before leaving Traherne's seventeenth-century

English contemporaries, I should like to take note of a

statement by Joan Webber in her book, The Eloquent "I"

 

(Madison, 1968). She remarks there that for all the con-
servative Anglicans, as she calls the group of writers in
which she includes Traherne, "time . . . is an aspect of
eternity; there is nothing new under the sun; every man is
like Adam, who contained all" (p. 7). Miss Webber quali-
fies this in a note by saying, "I am considering this
literary, ideological view of time as literary charac—
teristic, and do not intend to suggest that in his writing
or out of it the Anglican is unaware that chronological
time governs the daily lives of men" (p. 269). Though
Traherne was certainly aware of chronological time, he
alone of all the major "Anglican" literary figures of the
seventeenth century actually claimed time's existence
under the aspect of eternity as part of his philosophy of
being. For even Vaughan, who "saw Eternity the other

night," in its old Neo-Platonic circle, saw it completely

42

separated from Time "In which the world / And all her
train were hurl'd."32
Elbert N. S. Thompson compares Traherne with

another contemporary thinker who certainly did see time

sub quadam aeterni specie, Benedict de Spinoza. A large

 

part of the trouble in comparing Traherne to Spinoza (the
same trouble critics have had in comparing Traherne to
Berkeley) is not so much in determining Traherne's position
as in determining that of the second half of the comparison.
On the matter of eternity and its relationship to time,
Spinoza was anything but clear. Modern scholars are,
however, somewhat in agreement on what Spinoza meant; and
I try to follow the general consensus here.

Thompson says that "by eternity [Spinoza] means
not an unending period of time, but the infinite complete-
ness of God. . . . Eternity denotes not a continuance of
33

existence, but a manner or quality of existence."

Thompson cites H. H. Joachim's Study pf the Ethics pf

 

Spinoza (Oxford, 1901) to support his view that this manner
of existence is, according to Spinoza, one in which the
human mind can participate, viewing things in time under

the aspect of eternity. Rosalie Colie, in a note to her

 

32"The World," 11. 1, 6-7, in The Works 9: Henry
Vaughan, ed. L. C. Martin (Oxford, 1957 [orig. 1914]),
p. 466.

 

33
104-105.

"The Philosophy of Thomas Traherne," Pg, VIII,

43

article, "Thomas Traherne and the Infinite: The Ethical
Compromise," calls "Thompson's statement on Traherne's
likeness to Spinoza's view . . . wrong, the result of the
deceptive similarity in the vocabulary of ideas that tends

"34

to obscure seventeenth-century distinctions to us. But

I fail to see how Thompson's comparison is "wrong,' except
in being too limited. There are points of difference in
the two time-philosophies; but in that both view eternity
as a state of being which is "not an unending period of
time," and in that both claim the human mind can see things
in time under the aspect of eternity, they are comparable,
and these are the comparisons Thompson makes.

It is necessary, however, to point out that though
all things exist in eternity, time itself, for Spinoza, is
not necessarily a real thing. Spinoza's doctrine, accord-
ing to H. F. Hallet, "conceives created beings, whether
finite or infinite, to be eternal, and durational beings
fragmentary and confused privations of such eternal beings
as 'projected' on the 'reference system' of the indi-

vidual."35

Thus time for Spinoza is the result of cor-
rupted perception and its succession has really nothing
to do with the now of eternity as it does for Traherne.

Spinoza, according to Emile Bréhier, has a three-part

 

34Huntington Library Quarterly, XXI (1957), 75.

35Benedict 93 S inoza: the Elements 93 His
Philosophy, (London, 1957 , p. 48.

 

44

system by which man progresses from time to eternity; but
the progress is simply a change in the method of per-
ception until things are seen in their eternal nature.36
The important point for a comparison of Traherne and
Spinoza is that in spite of differences in points of View,
for both all creation exists i3 eternity. "I understand
ETERNITY," says Spinoza, "to be existence itself."37
For Traherne and Spinoza eternity was not merely a
possession of God but was equally available to man. For
Traherne, at least, this was due to the nature of the
human soul, created in the image of God. It is therefore
appropriate to ask next just what the nature and power of

the soul was for Traherne and, specifically, how man knows

himself to live in God's eternity.

 

36222fl§i§§9£y.g£_Philosophy: The Seventeenth
Century, trans. Wade Baskin (Chicago, 1966), pp. 183-185.

 

 

37Spinoza's Ethics [Everyman ed.], trans. Andrew
Boyle (London, 1910), p. 2. Spinoza was known in England
in Traherne's lifetime, and Henry More was aquainted with
his work; but the Ethics, which contains the primary
materials on Spinoza's view of eternity, was not published
until after Spinoza's death in 1677.

CHAPTER III

THE TEMPLE OF ETERNITY

While Traherne saw time and space as part of God's
eternity and immensity, he did not, like the "Familists"

whom Theophilus Gale condemns in the Court pf the Gentiles,
1

 

believe all existing things to be "particles of God."

 

lIV (London, 1677), 291. According to Carol
Marks, Traherne extracts portions of Part II (Oxford, 1670;
I use the London edition of 1676 in the following) in the
Commonplace Book. He also includes passages from this part
of Gale's work in the "Ficino Notebook." Parts III and IV
of Court pf the Gentiles were not published in Traherne's
lifetime. On Traherne and Gale see Marks, "Thomas Tra-
herne's Commonplace Book," PBSA, LVIII, 458-465, and
"Traherne's Ficino Notebook," PBSA, LXIII, 73-81, as well
as the introduction and notes to the Marks and Guffey
edition of Christian Ethicks. One cannot help wondering,
with James M. Osborn,'if the "T.G.” addressed in the
"Select Meditations," II, 38 is not Gale (see "A New Tra-
herne Manuscript," EE§I Oct. 8, 1964, p. 928). In a 1917
article, J. W. Proud suggested that Traherne had written
"some anonymous laudatory poems prefixed to Parts I and II
of Theophilus Gale's great work, The Court of the Gentiles"
("Thomas Traherne: A Divine Philosopher," Friends Quarterly
Examiner, no. 201, p. 66). There seems to be no evidence
for this; and, in spite of the fact that one poem does use
an image important in Traherne, the reflecting pool of
water, I cannot see Traherne's using it in such a negative
way:
"Thus with dejected Eye
In standing pools we seek the skie:
To find the milkie way,
Not only lose the day:
But down to Caverns, and vast tracts of night
Go to improve the sight." (II, bZV)

Gale was at Oxford, as student, then as tutor, from 1647-
1660.

 

 

 

 

45

46

Matter, as we have said, though it has being, does not
exist in the eternal; it can, nevertheless, be affected
by it. Of a very different nature, though still not part
of God, is the soul. The soul is spiritual, the image of
God, potentially able to reflect all of God's attributes,
thus infinite in its capacity for eternity and immensity.
The idea of the infinite capacity of the soul was
a common one in Renaissance Platonism, coming to Traherne's
England largely from the writings of Ficino and from
Ficino's publishing and publicizing of Hermetic and Pla-
tonic documents. Traherne, ever reconciling, interprets
the doctrine of the unlimited soul through his concepts of
"Faith" and "Hope," thus Christianizing the idea to a
greater extent than it had been while making it compatible
with his concept of eternity-time. In addition to Faith
and Hope, Traherne employed the basic assumptions of
Renaissance faculty psychology in developing his philOSOphy
of the infinite capacity of the soul, thus, in the end,
demonstrating the ability of the soul to perceive eternity-
time on philosophical, religious and psychological grounds.
In my discussion of these grounds, I will begin by examin-
ing what Traherne has to say of the soul's relationship to
the body, and then go on to treat the soul's likeness to
God. From here I will proceed to examine the historic
background of Traherne's basic concept of the soul, and,

having established this groundwork, then deal specifically

47

with Traherne's philosophy of the soul's perception of
eternity-time.

We saw in the last chapter that the reason why
Traherne could condemn the human body so strongly at some
times and yet also write such things as the "Thanksgivings
for the Body" was because a body, being matter, does not
partake in the nature of God, is, in essence, dead. Yet,
as it is used to express ggpgg, the bodily form does in a
manner participate in divinity. The primary agpgs which
the body expresses is the soul; and because the soul is
the image of God, the body, however indirectly, expresses
Deity. The "Thanksgivings for the Body" show how this
"Dull Lump," once it is given form (and "form" is not
physical) expresses spirit even in its parts. For God
made

Limbs rarely poised,
And made for Heaven:
Arteries filled
With celestial Spirits:
Veins, wherein Blood floweth,
Refreshing all my flesh,
Like Rivers.
Sinews fraught with the mystery
Of wonderful Strength,
Stability,
Feeling.
O blessed be thy glorious Name!
That thou hast made it,
A Treasury of Wonders,
Fit for its several Ages;
For Dissections,
For Sculptures in Brass,
For Draughts in Anatomy,
For the Contemplation of the Sages.
Whose inward parts,
Enshrined in thy Libraries,

48

The Amazement of the Learned,

The Admiration of Kings and Queens,
Are The Joy of Angels;

The Organs of my Soul,

The Wonder of Cherubims. (48-73)

The body itself is but an organ of the Soul and,

as Traherne says in Christian Ethicks (p. 47), useless

 

without it. As the soul stands in regard to the body, so
the body is to the world: "The visible World was made for
the sake of these Bodies, and without such persons as men
are, it would be utterly useless" (CE, p. 104). Thus the
entire value of the physical creation (though not the
pgipg of it) rests ultimately for Traherne upon the
activity of the soul within it. We noted that it is
action, operation, which, being spiritual, dwells in
eternity-time. Traherne recognized that all actions, like
the soul itself, have a physical expression. Yet even
this visible manifestation of an action is worthless
except for its spiritual, inner cause and nature. As the
body is to the soul, so are actions as they appear in the
world to the divine Act.2 This is not to say that the soul
could not exist without the body; it can and, after death,
does. But, in keeping with the principle of plenitude,
God made man a combination of body and soul in order that

all possible things might have value as well as being.3

 

See "Select Meditations," II, 94.

See CE, p. 182.

49

Man, however, must at last leave the things of the body he-
hind, realizing that the value these things have comes from
their relation to his soul rather than from anything in
their independent existence. Man has come mistakenly to
take his bodily existence for his real being, but "you are
never your true self, till you live by your Soul more then
by your Body" (9, II, 92). You must come out from "under
the Disguise of this apparent Clod" in order to find your-
self "a mighty Great and Coelestial Personage, a Divine
and Glorious Creature, Miraculous and Mysterious, even the
Image of the Deity" (CE, p. 168).

Man's soul is the image of God, but it is not God.
Malcom Day, in his article on "Traherne and the Doctrine
of Pre-existence," asserts: "Traherne identifies God and
the Soul in essence."4 He seems to take Traherne's state-
ments about the infinite capacity of the soul and parallel
remarks about the infinite nature of God as referring to
one and the same thing. Thus there are not in reality
many individual souls, but one World Soul of which indi-
vidual souls are deprived participants. In response to
this, the historical position of Traherne could perhaps
be cited, for Traherne lived in a time when it would have
been all but impossible for him to believe that all souls
are really one. The Averroist heresy had been attacked in

earnest by Ficino, but it was really a dead horse when

 

4S2, LXV, 86. The italics are his.

50

Henry More took a stick to it in Antimonopsychia, 93 That

 

 

all Souls are not one.5 However, Traherne himself says

 

clearly that souls are images of God, that they are created,
and that they are many.

"For he hath made my Soul / In the Image of him-
self" ("Thanksgivings for God's Attributes," 9-10). In the

Centuries Traherne goes so far as to say that even if God

 

had wanted to make a soul identical with himself he could
not have done so: "It is no Blasphemy to say that GOD
cannot make a GOD: the Greatest Thing that He can make is
His Image" (III, 61). God has placed in our souls not his
actual power but rather, "he hath implanted the Similitude
of his power" (CE, p. 52). Man should love everyone as
God does," for this will make a man the Image of GOD, and
fill him with the mind and spirit of Christ, it will make
every man that is, the Representative of GOD and of all
the World unto him" (CE, p. 253). One soul is of infinite
capacity, but "the Existence of many Souls is so far from
abating the value of one, that it is by reason of their
multitude more useful and Excellent" (CE, p. 38). And, of
course, because of their spiritual natures all souls can

possess infinity and eternity without any conflict of

 

5In Psychodia Platonica (Cambridge, 1642). On
even More's recognition of this as a dead issue, see
C. A. Staudenbaur, "Galileo, Ficino and Henry More's

Ps chathanasia," Journal of the History of Ideas, XXIX
(1968), 575.

 

 

51

ownership. Thus it would be a serious error to edit out
the plural form of "soul" in Traherne.

That Traherne believed the soul to be of unlimited
capacity, as Day and many other readers recognize, is
beyond question. Traherne, as Rufus M. Jones says, "is
never tired of declaring the infiniteness of the human
soul."6 In his poetry Traherne sings of "A vast and
Infinit Capacitie" that "did make my Bosom like the Deitie,
/ In Whose Mysterious and Celestial Mind / All Ages and
all Worlds together shind" ("Silence," 75-78). "Free Souls

can know no Bound," he says in "The City" (55). And in

Christian Ethicks Traherne explains that "the Sphere of

 

[the soul's] Activity is illimited, its Energy is endless
upon all its Objects. It can exceed the Heavens in its
Operations, and run out into infinite spaces" (p. 40). In
the "Select Meditations" Traherne specifies four ways in
which the soul's infinity is like that of God: in its
omnipresent extension, in its immortal duration, in its
spiritual essence, and in its value (II, 28). In contain-
ing these attributes the soul becomes sanctified, and
Traherne constantly refers to it as a temple:

. . . a Temple unto God.

A living Temple of thine Omnipresence.
An understanding Eye.

A Temple of Eternity. ("Thanksgivings for the Soul,"
18-21)

 

6Spiritual Reformers $3 the 16th 3 17th Centuries,

 

p. 328.

52

And in this temple may be contained everything that is.
"All things are penetrable to the Soul of Man. / All
things open and naked to it" (217-218).

This belief in the infinite power of the soul is
typical, as I have said, of many thinkers in the Renais-
sance. But those thinkers merely developed ideas inherent

in the ancient philosophers: "There's a greatness,’ says

Seneca, "an aristocracy in the soul of man. It will suffer

the setting of no limit but such as it shares with God.

. . . It accepts no pinched dole of life. 'All the years,‘

it says, 'are mine. No age is shut against great intel-

lects, no time is impenetrable to thought.”7
For authorities on his view of the soul, Traherne

turned to the works attributed to "Hermes Trismegistus"

and to Pico Della Mirandola's oration, 23 Dignitate

 

Hominis. Traherne's debt to Hermes has been examined by
Carol Marks in "Thomas Traherne and Hermes Trismegistus"
(RN, XIX, 118-131) and in brief in other of her articles.

Traherne quotes Hermes at length in Christian Ethicks to

 

support his own contention that God's "Omnipresence and
Eternity fill the Soul, and make it able to contain all
Heights and Depths, and Lengths and Breadths whatsoever"

(p. 227). He quotes Pico in the Centuries (IV, 74-78)

 

illustrating the ability of human nature to become whatever

 

7Seneca's Letters 22 Lucilius, trans. E. Phillips
Barker (Oxford, 1932), II, 197-198.

53

it will, since the seeds of all possible lives are planted
in it.

But nearly everything in Renaissance Platonism
leads somehow to Ficino. As more and more is learned about
Traherne, his relationship to Ficino appears all the
stronger. S. Sandback, in his article "Thomas Traherne

on the Place of Man in the Universe, compares the phi-
losophy of the nature of the soul espoused by Ficino with
that of Traherne.8 He finds in both the "Circulation
Doctrine" which maintains "the human soul, knowing the
lower in terms of the higher world, collects it, purifies
it, and lifts it up to universality, thus restoring the
unity of Being itself" (p. 122). Sandbank cites Ficino's
belief that the mind "'can take on the spiritual forms of
all things and become all'" (p. 126) and says that Traherne
combines this theory of the mind transforming "things"

into "thoughts" with the Aristotelian notion of thinking

as "a transition from power to act" (p. 126). It should

be noted however that the two theories of the working of
the mind exist already in combination in Ficino who main-
tained, as Paul Oskar Kristeller points out, "The corres-
pondence of the mind to an object consists in the fact

that the mind brings from potentiality to actuality that

particular one of its innate forms which corresponds to

 

8Studies ip English Language and Literature, ed.
Alice Shalvi and A. A. Mendilow (Jerusalem, 1966), pp.
121-136.

54

that particular object."9 In Traherne the forms of the
mind are not innate; but rather, they are created, a
matter touched on later in this chapter.
The soul for Ficino as for Traherne is capable

of becoming omnia, like God.

Because the Soul is directed toward all truth and all

good, and because in thinking and willing it attains

some unity with its objects, it (the Soul) strives to

become absolutely all, as God is all from all time.
Ficino says that

the entire effort of our Soul is to become God.

This effort is as natural to man as that of flying

is to birds. For it is inherent in all men, every-

where and always.11
In his emphasis on God as a Being who is Act, on God as
both Potency and Act, in his postulation of Love and
Knowledge as methods by which the soul mounts up to God,
in his delineation of the ascent in terms of current
psychology, in his classification of matter as devoid of
Being except as it expresses Form, and in his devotion to
Hermes, Ficino is the supreme example of the Renaissance

Platonism which determines the course of Traherne's

philosophy.

 

9The Philosophy g£_Marsilio Ficino, trans.
Virginia Conant (Gloucester, Mass., 1964 [orig. New York,
1943]), p. 51.

 

 

10Kristeller, pp. 117-118.

llOpera Omnia, p. 305 quoted in Kristeller,
p. 337.

 

55

Platonic-Christian philOSOphy found its champions
in seventeenth-century England in the group of thinkers
known as the Cambridge Platonists. Traherne's debt to
these men has been considered many times.12 The latest
and most authoritative study is by Carol Marks in "Thomas
Traherne and Cambridge Platonism" (PMLA, LXXXI, 521-534).
Marks finds Traherne most like Peter Sterry, among the
Platonists, and notes that Sterry, Henry More, Nathaniel
Culverwel and Traherne all make statements concerning the
infinite capacity of the human soul (p. 529), though Marks
does not feel Traherne was indebted to any of his con-
temporary Platonists for this idea. In the same line,
Thompson, in his article on Traherne's philosophy, points
to the Cambridge Platonist John Smith as one who, like
Traherne, believes "the human mind by imitating God may
gain 'the freedom of a true Eternity.'"13

Because Traherne did not attend Cambridge, Carol

Marks labels him an "Oxford Platonist" (p. 524). If we

 

12Some of these considerations are: T. 0. Beach-
croft, "Traherne and the Cambridge Platonists," Dublin
Review, CLXXXVI (1930), 278-290; Gertrude R. Sherer, "More
and Traherne," Modern Language Notes, XXXIV (1919), 49-50;
Francis L. Colby, "Traherne and the Cambridge Platonists:
An Analytical Comparison," (diss. Johns Hopkins, 1947)
as well as "Thomas Traherne and Henry More," Modern
Language Notes, LXII (1947), 490-492; and Elbert N. S.
Thompson, ”The Philosophy of Thomas Traherne," 22! VIII,
97-112.

13P. 105. The quotation of Smith is taken from
E. T. Campagnac, The Cambridge Platonists (Oxford, 1901),
p. 123.

56

wanted to make a "school" of philosophy on this basis, we
might begin by including Theophilus Gale and Robert South.
Gale's system of reformed Platonism, which is developed

primarily in the last part of Court pf the Gentiles, does

 

have its differences from Traherne's: on the nature of
eternity and time, Gale adopts a position more truly

Platonic than Traherne, maintaining, so far as I can tell

from Gale's garrulous prose, that there is an eternal now

which is not like time but which, being one and the same
thing with the Divine Being, may "comprehend" and "coexiste"
with time though still not partaking in itself of the nature
of succession (IV, 279-286). But in its assertions that the
soul is of infinite capacity, Gale's philosophy is very
congenial to Traherne's:

From the spiritalitie of the Soul results its
infinite Capacitie, of which Plato philosophiseth in
his Phaedrus, pag. 245,246. where he assimilates the
Soul to a Winged Chariot, which flies throughout the
whole Universe. And what is the wing of the Soul,
according to Plato's conception, but its innate and
active capacitie of contemplating the supreme Truth,
and persuing the last Good? . . . This infinite capac-
itie of the Soul ariseth from its immaterialitie: For
by how much the lesse any subject partakes of mater and
passive power, by so much the more Ample, Universal and
Active is its capacitie. Things inanimate, yea Brutes,
are therefore confined in their capacities, because
they are wholly immersed in mater: God the supreme
Being is most infinite; because a pure Act, altogether
void of mater, yea a1 passive power. The human Soul,
although it have an obediential passive power, as they
phrase it, yet being not bound up by the Laws of Mater,
it is invested with a capacitie of knowing and loving
the most infinite Being. It's true, this capacitie of
the human Soul is not supjectively and actuall in-
finite, yet objectively and potentially It is. For
such is the Benignite of God towards man, that he has
implanted in his finite Nature an infinite capacitie,
to take in and enjoy the first infinite Being.

(II, 386-387)

 

 

 

57

And this is taken from that part of Gale's work we know
Traherne read.

Robert South, not really a philosopher and a
Platonist only incidentally, in his sermon, "The Ways of
Wisdom are Ways of Pleasantness," speaks of the infinite
power of the mind. The mind is seen by him, as it is by
Traherne, as a function of the soul. It is, he says,

a substance of a boundless comprehension. The mind
of man is an image, not only of God's spirituality,
but of his infinity. It is not like any of the senses,
limited to this or that kind of object; as the sight
intermeddles not with that which affects the smell;
but, with a universal superintendence, it arbitrates
upon and takes them all in. It is, as I may so say,
an ocean, into which all the little rivulets of
sensation, both external and internal, discharge
themselves. It is framed by God to receive all, and
more than nature can afford it; and so to be its own
motive to seek for something above nature.l4
South develops the theme of the infinite soul in his ser-
mon, "Of the Creation of Man in the Image of God," preached
at St. Paul's in 1662. Here he finds God's image to rest
in the faculties of the soul of man, in the understanding,
the will, and the passions or affections. South is not
above including the body as showing evidence of God's
imprint as well, it being "a fit tabernacle for an im-
mortal soul, not only to dwell in, but to contemplate
upon" (I. 32).

Included in the "all" which can be contained in

the soul is eternity-time; and most of Traherne's

 

l4§§£flggg_££g§ghgd Upon Several Occasions,

 

I, 9.

58

statements about the soul's ability are concerned with

this and, to a lesser extent, with the perception of im-

mensity and space. The Theologia Germanica says that,

 

like the soul of Christ,

the created soul of man has also two eyes. The one
is the power of seeing into eternity, the other of
seeing into time and the creatures. . . . But these
two eyes of the soul of man cannot perform their
work at once. . . . Therefore whosoever will have
the one must let the other 90.15

But this would have been impossible for Traherne, for

whom the soul had but one eye, at times pictured as the

"Infant-Ey," which sees the simultaneous existence of

eternity-time.

So strangely glorious
Hast thou made my Soul:
That even Yesterday is present
To mine inward eye,
nfancy,
The days of my Childhood,
Old Age.
We have
An endless Liberty.
Being able to see, walk, be present there,
Where neither the Eagles eye, nor the Lions thought
can at all approach.
The deeds of our Progenitors,
Their Lives and Persons;
~Thy ways among the Ancients,
The services of the Sun in all Generations,
The Sun of Righteousness in his Rising and Eclipse;
The Creation of the World,
And the Government of Kingdoms,
Can we behold;
The day of Judgment,
The Delights of Ages,
The Sphere of time.
Nor will that contain us.
An infinite liberty we find beyond them;

 

15Trans. Susanna Winkworth (New York, 1949),

124.

59

Can walk in thine Eternity,
All at large;
In every moment see it wholly,
Know every where,
That from everlasting to everlasting thou art God;
Whose everlasting Glory is the Treasure of my Soul,
And thine eternal continuance a permanent
NOW;
With all It; Contents
For ever enjoyed. ("Thanksgivings for the Soul,"
114-148)

This is, of course, how the soul exists in potential; in
this world it is often otherwise:
Men do mightily wrong themselvs: when they refuse
to be present in all Ages: and Neglect to see the
Beauty of all Kingdoms, and Despise the Resentments
of evry Soul, and Busie them selvs only with Pots
and cups and things at home, or shops and Trades
and things in the street But do not 1iv to God
Manifesting Himself in all the World. nor care
to see, (and be present with Him, in) all the Glory
of his Eternal Kingdom. By seeing the Saints of all
Ages we are present with Them. By being present with
them becom too Great for our own Age, and near to our
Savior. (C, I, 85).
By knowing all things in time, the soul learns to extend
itself so that it may go beyond the borders of time to
all the eternity of which time is a part.

Having seen the general philosophical background,
we may go on, then, to examine the religious and psycho-
logical grounds on which Traherne bases this theory of
the Soul's ability to perceive eternity-time, concluding
with a consideration of some special problems in this
vein brought up by others who have discussed Traherne.

In Christian Ethicks Traherne deals at length with

the problem of knowing the past and the future; and in the

chapters "Of Faith" and "Of Hope," he presents the

60

groundwork of his method for raising the soul to its
natural height of perception. Traherne compares the soul

to Janus, a comparison which, as the editors of Christian

 

Ethicks note, is found in Ficino and Pico; though, really,
the idea of the two faces of the soul, according to
Kristeller, goes back to Avicenna and Algazali.16 Where
Ficino's Janus looked with one face at eternity and the
other at time, and the Janus of Pico symbolized the soul
joining mind and body, Traherne carries the figure back
to its earlier temporal significance and pictures it with
one face directed toward the past, one toward the future.
That face of the soul which sees the past Traherne calls
"Faith," and the ability to see the future is named "Hope."
With his characteristic and sometimes disconcerting ability
to use an important term in more than one sense, Traherne
also uses "Faith" to indicate the comprehensive nature of
the soul which can include past, present and future within
it; but in these chapters, at least, Traherne states
clearly that the word can have these two different mean-
ings.

In incorporating these Christian virtues into his
Platonic philosophy, Traherne makes it very clear that he

finds in these concepts no measure of blind belief.

 

16P. 197, n. Kristeller refers the reader to
Marian Heitzman, "L'agostinismo avicennizzante e il punto
di partenza della filosofia di Marsilio Ficino," Giornale
Critico Della Filosofia Italiana, XVI (1935), 298, 321.

61

Indeed, he says that Faith is the result of the perception
of something tangible outside of the individual soul, not
the uncovering of something innate within: "Objects of
Faith are those Things which cannot be discovered but by
the Testimony of others" (p. 107). The senses and reason
may bring present things into the soul, but we know every-
thing we do about the past because we have read it or been
told about it. For knowledge of the past, Faith, we there-
fore turn to history; and the summary Traherne gives of
the history of the world in "Of Faith" makes it clear that
the history which really matters to him is that contained
in the Bible and in the later documents of the Christian
church. Though Traherne admits the possibility of false
testimony in this history, he believes in the infallible
ability of the reason, once it has sufficient information,
to test and distinguish the true from the false. He lists
a set of criteria by which the reason judges the testimony
of history, including in it: compatability with what we
already know to be true, intrinsic consistency, lack of
conflicting testimony, open publication, the existence of
corroborating accounts, a long history of acceptance,
references to other extant artifacts, prophecies and types
anticipating the events recorded, purity of the doctrine
contained within, and the ability of the knowledge gained
to remove guilt and lead to felicity. "Now of all the

Things that the World doth afford, the Christian Religion

62

is that alone wherein all these Causes of Faith perfectly
concur" (CE, p. 110). Even enemies of the religion accept
as true its historical testimony.

It is partly because of this function of history
in opening the past to the soul that the Bible plays such
an important part in Traherne's system. Even the most
casual reader of Traherne remembers his recounting of an
early desire for a book from heaven, a book which he found
to be already available to him as the Bible:

When the Bible was read my Spirit was present in other
Ages. I saw the Light and Splendor of them: the Land
of Canaan, the Israelites entering into it, the ancient
Glory of the Amorites, their Peace and Riches, their
Cities Houses Vines and Fig trees, the long Prosperity
of their Kings, their Milk and Honie, their slaughter
and Destruction, with the Joys and Triumphs of GODs
People all which Entered into me, and GOD among them.
I saw all and felt all in such a lively maner, as if
there had been no other Way to those Places, but in
Spirit only. This shewd me the Liveliness of interior
presence, and that all Ages were for most Glorious
Ends, Accessible to my Understanding, yea with it,

yea within it. for without changing Place in my self
I could behold and Enjoy all those. Any thing when

it was proposed, tho it was 10000 Ages agoe, being
always before me. (C, III, 24)

Obviously most modern readers would be reluctant
to consider knowledge of the history of the Christian
religion, primarily as contained in the Bible, as "all
things" in past time. But it must be remembered that
Traherne presents this merely as a starting point. The
Bible for him as for Augustine is seen as the most reli-
able history available. Given the age in which he lived,

Traherne had little other choice or even a cause to look

63

elsewhere. We should remember Gale's Court pf the Gentiles,

 

for instance, which tries to trace all language and phi-
1osophy back to Hebraic, Biblical sources. Traherne's

mind was by no means uncritical; in Roman Forgeries

 

(London, 1673), for instance, he laboriously attempts to
demonstrate falsifications that have been made in documents
of the church. In Traherne's system, as the soul begins

to gain knowledge of reliable parts of history, this
knowledge combines to form a whole which can eventually
become all of past time. "Where all these Things meet
together, they make a Foundation like that of the Great
Mountains which can never be moved" (CE, p. 110). And

once all time is seen, it will be seen to be glorious:

Since all Time may be Objected to the Eye of Knowledge
altogether, and Faith is prepared in the Soul on pur-
pose, that all the Things in Time may be admitted into
the Eye of the Soul, it is very Displeasing to Humane
Reason, that Time should be horrid, and Dark, and
empty, or that he that has expressed so much Love in
the Creation of the World, should be Unmindful of our
Concerns in the Dispensations of his Providence.
Especially Since the World, how Glorious soever it

is, is but the Theatre of more Glorious Actions, and
the Capacity of Time as Great and Large as that of

the Universe, Ages are as long and as Wide as
Kingdoms. (CE, p. 111).

 

But the purpose of knowing the past is not merely
to have the knowledge for its own sake; by expanding the
soul's vision into the past we learn to direct the course
of the future and even to know what that future contains.
In our individual human lives, we can appraise our present

situation best through knowledge of our past life: “All

64

a mans Life put together contributes a perfection to every
part of it, and the Memory of things past is the most
advantagious light of our present Condition" (CE, p. 212).
And as to the Faith that "looks back upon Ages past: it
takes in the Influences of all these, that it may bring
forth fruit, in our Lives for the time to come" (CE,
p. 115). Through Hope we know what will come. "Hope pre-
supposes a Belief of the Certainty of what we desire"
(CE, p. 117). The fact that prophecies have in the past
been made and fulfilled assures us that prophecies still
to find their fulfillment will do so. Here is where hope,
in its more conventional sense, enters in; for there is in
man a desire for all good things, for the "all" that God
created good. This abundance of hope in the soul is the
gift of prophecy, available to all men, for we could not
possess these future things in our souls were they not
already in being for us in some manner. Because we possess
them in our souls, they are ours.
Hope is for its Extent and Dimensions vast and wonder-
ful. All the Honour, Advancement, Exaltation, Glory,
Treasure, and Delight, that is concievable in Time or
Eternity, may be hoped for: all that the Length, and
Breadth, and Depth, and Height, of the Love of GOD,
which passeth Knowledge, is able to perform; All that
Ambition or Avarice can desire, all that Appetite and
Self-Love can pursue, all that Fancy can imagine
Possible and Delightful, Nay more than 33 are able to
ask or think; we are able to desire, and aspire after
(if it be promised to us) the very throne of GOD, and

all the Joys of his Eternal Kingdom. (CE, pp. 121-
122).

 

 

65

These things, again, are certain. Traherne admits the
possibility of "vicious" hopes; but presumably, since he
believes in a hell where the suffering will be primarily
mental, those whose hopes are evil will receive their
vicious reward along with the burning knowledge of what
they have lost.

The causes of Hope, like those of Faith, come
originally to the soul from without, from reason and fancy
acting upon sensory data. But as the soul begins its
expansion in time, it stores up data; and gradually the
process becomes tied less and less to the external senses
and more to the "eye," the perceptive power, of the soul,
until the soul becomes the prophetic spirit described by
Ficino:

Such a Soul by its nature is almost everywhere and
always. It is not obliged to go outside itself in
order to look at many and distant places and to recall
the whole past and to anticipate the future. Its
achievements are won by leaving the body behind and
by returning into itself, either because its nature
is everywhere and always, as the Egyptians believe,
or because when retiring into its own nature it is
at once united with the divinity which includes all
limits of places and times.17
Through Hope we can taste this future glory, but its
fulfillment, according to Traherne, is only possible after

death when the body is finally abandoned.18

 

17QE§£2,QE2£§: p. 288 quoted in Kristeller,
p. 312.

18See the discussion of Glory in the next chapter.

66

As by the Seed we conjecture what Plant will arise,
and know by the Acorn what Tree will Grow forth, or
by the Eagles Egge what Kind of Bird; so do we by the
Powers of the Soul upon Earth, Know what kind of Being,
Person, and Glory it will be in the Heavens. Its
Blind and latent Powers shall be turned into Act, its
Inclinations shall be completed, and its Capacities
filled, for by this Means is it made Perfect. A
Spiritual King is an Eternal Spirit. Lov in the Ab-
stract is a Soul Exerted. Neither do you esteem
yourself to be any other then LOV alone. GOD is Lov.
And you are never like Him, till you are so: Lov unto
all Objects in like maner. (C: IV: 70)

Love is the driving force of Faith and Hope; know-
ing and loving are almost one and the same and cannot, at
least, exist in their true natures one without the other.
Traherne constantly exhorts us to enjoy the world, to
enjoy all, for joy is the fruit of love directed toward
God's creation. Love is the concept which links all of
Traherne's philoSOphy together. It is, as Sears Jayne
says of love in Ficino's philosophy, the "key" to his
system: "Ficino states it as a syllogism: everything is
in God; God loves Himself; therefore, everything loves
God. The motive force of the whole universe, then, is
love."19

Readers of Traherne are affected more by the
psychological development of an infinite soul as he
describes it in terms of his own childhood than by his

philosophical justification for the concept, and under-

standably so. His descriptions of an infant's soul which

 

19Marsilio Ficino's Commentary on Plato's Symposium
(Columbia, Missouri, 1944), p. 24.

67

knew no bounds are vivid, romantic, and strike a responsive
chord, especially since modern psychology seems to have
found a similar freedom from boundaries in the young
child's psyche. Robert Ellrodt tries to trace the psycho-
logical genesis of Traherne's "obsession" for the infinite
in Egg Poétes Métaphysiques Anglais; but even he must ask

of a part of Traherne's account, "Souvenir d'enfance

 

authentique?" (I, ii, 341). Ellrodt does not seem to con-
sider the answer too important, but I think we must take
precautions against assuming Traherne's account of his
childhood experience to be ig_tg£g autobiographical
memories. If we, as readers, accept his theory of memory,
we can say that Traherne has improved his soul's per-
ception to the point where he is really able to remember
the day he found himself "within / A House I knew not,
newly clothd with Skin" ("The Preparative," 9-10). (This
"House," I believe, is the womb.) But even if this were
so, Traherne, we must remember, is still using these child-
hood experiences in association with his philosophical
position about the soul's infinity. These accounts, like
all of his art, have a didactic purpose; and such a pur-
pose must have its effect on how material is presented.

The real "message" of Traherne is not to return to
the perception of childhood, or even to seek a mystic
Opening to eternity and immensity, but rather to improve
the human faculties to the point where they become infinite

and divine. As Robert Ellrodt says:

68

La plus grande hardiesse de Traherne n'est pas de
mettre en l'ame humaine l'intuition de l'infini, ce
que Descartes efit approuvé ou seulement "l'image" de
l'infinité divine, ce que la théologie traditionnelle
efit accordé. C'est de préter a l'homme des facultés
infinies; mieux encore, d'en faire le centre et la
circonférence de l'infinité, de cette infinité méme
qui serait l'essence éternelle de la Divinité.

(I, ii, 343)

Traherne's treatment of the soul's faculties is
rather typical of Renaissance psychology. Though the
number and names of the "faculties" the soul can have
depends on whom you are reading in this period, and any
one author is liable to be internally inconsistent, Edward
Dowden, in "Elizabethan Psychology," summarizes the typical
position:

It was generally agreed that the inner senses of the
sensible soul are three-~reason, imagination or
phantasy, and memory. The brain consists of three
cells, or ventricles, or wombs,--each of these names
was in common use,--and in each of these one of the
three faculties had its residence; each can, however,
pass on ideas to its neighbor faculty.20
One should be aware that sometimes "faculties" refers to
the senses as well as to the more interior processes of
perception and sometimes not. The identification of three
inner faculties was popular because this made the soul a
trinity, the image of God. "Understanding," could be
substituted for "reason" by some writers with no differ-

ence in meaning; but in Crollius, for instance, the place

of memory is taken by "mind," and mind is seen as

 

20Atlantic Monthly, c (1907), 394.

69

something which encompasses the other two faculties.21

This is reminiscent of Ficino who "lists among the parts
of the soul the mens, the ratio, the idolum, and even the

body."22

Traherne at one point uses a division that was
popular and had been used by Augustine: "Understanding,
Will, and Memory, which in the Soul are one, having thus

23 And in the same

an Impress of the Trinity within it."
work Traherne also speaks of the heart, understanding and
memory in conjunction so that "Will" might possibly be
associated with "Hope" in the heart, aligning it with
imagination. The same sort of thing occurs in Pierre

Charron's Q: Wisdome, which Traherne made use of in

Christian Ethicks. Charron identifies "three ventricles

 

before, wherein the reasonable soule doth exercise its

faculties, which are three, Understanding, Memory, Imagi-
24

 

 

nation." But he later talks of the will as a function
of the soul with a power somewhat like that of imagination:
"By the will . . . the soule goeth foorth of it selfe, and

lodgeth and liveth elsewhere in the thing, beloved, into

 

21A'Treatisegf Oswaldus Crollius of Signatures of
Internal Things (London, 1669), f. B3V.

 

 

 

22Sears R. Jayne, John Colet and Marsilio Ficino
(Oxford, 1963), P. 57.

 

23Meditations on the Six Days of the Creation,

 

 

 

p. 83.

24Qf’Wisdome Three Bookes, trans. Samson Lennard
(London, 1606), p. 46.

 

70

which it transformeth it selfe" (pp. 69-70). Edward Rey-

nolds, whose Treatise of the Passions and Faculties of the

 

S2213 of M32 Traherne had read, identifies this same power
of going beyond all bounds with the imagination: "For Rea-
son, and all other powers, have their fixed and determined
limits in Nature. . . . But the Imagination is a Facultie
boundlesse, and impatient of any imposed limits, save those
which it self maketh."25
The mind is the active power of the soul (CE, 231-
232); and, for all practical purposes, the two terms are
synonymous in Traherne. The presence of objects (eternity-
time, immensity, created beings) in the mind or soul occurs
through a process which Traherne calls "In-being," or "In-
dwelling." "For by the Indwelling of GOD all Objects are
infused, and contained within" (SE, p. 73). The mind of a
child is, according to Traherne, "a Rasa Tabula prepared in
Him for the Drawing afterward of all the pictures in Gods
kingdom" ("Select Meditations," IV, 2). That all, as we
have said, must come from without; and the process by which
this "In-being" takes place is explained in Century I, 100.
I quote it in full because the passage is a difficult one
and has never been adequately explained:
Christ Dwelling in our Hearts by Faith is an infinit
Mystery. which may thus be understood. An Object

Seen, is in the Faculty seeing it, and by that in the
Soul of the Seer, after the Best of Maners. Wheras

 

25(London, 1640), p. 24. See Marks, "Traherne's
Early Studies," PBSA, LXII (1968), 511-536.

71

there are eight maners of In-being, the In-being of an
Object in a Faculty is the Best of all. Dead Things
are in a Room containing them in a vain maner; unless
they are Objectively in the Soul of a Seer. The Pleas-
ure of an Enjoyer, is the very End why Things placed
are in any Place. The Place and the Thing Placed in
it, being both in the Understanding of a Spectator of
them. Things Dead in Dead Place Effect nothing. But
in a Living Soul, that seeth their Excellencies, they
Excite a Pleasure answerable to their value, a Wisdom
to Embrace them, a Courage not to Forsake them, a Lov
of their Donor, Praises and Thanksgivings; and a
Greatness and a Joy Equal to their Goodness. And thus
all Ages are present in my Soul, and all Kingdoms, and
GOD Blessed forever. And thus Jesus Christ is seen in
me and dwelleth in me, when I believ upon Him. And
thus all Saints are in me, and I in them. And thus all
Angels and the Eternity and Infinity of GOD are in me
for evermore. I being the Living TEMPLE and Compre-
hensor of them. Since therfore all other ways of In-
being would be utterly vain, were it not for this:

And the Kingdom of God (as our Savior saith, this

Way) is within you; let us ever think and Meditat on
Him, that His conception Nativity Life and Death may
be always within us. Let Heaven and Earth Men and
Angels, God and his Creatures be always within us.
that is in our Sight, in our Sence, in our Lov and
Esteem: that in the Light of the Holy Ghost we may
see the Glory of His Eternal Kingdom, and Sing the
Song of Moses, and the Song of the Lamb saying, Great
and Marvellous are thy Works Lord GOD Almighty, Just
and true are thy Ways Thou King of Saints.

The "eight maners of In-being" created a problem

for H. M. Margoliouth, editor of the Centuries. In the

 

first printing of his edition, he was forced to include a
note reading, "This has defeated me" (p. 253). In the
1965 reprint "from corrected sheets of the first edition"
this note is changed and directs the reader to Aristotle's
Physics, IV, iii. Here we find Aristotle defining eight
ways in which the word "in" may be used including: the
part "in" the whole, the whole "in" the part, the species

in" the genus, etc.; but I fail to see how this has

72

anything to do with Traherne's statement. Traherne is
not talking about the definitions of "in," but about how
an object may come to dwell in a soul. According to this

passage, the object (any real entity) is perceived ("seen");

this perception takes place in the faculty appropriate to
the nature of the object (objects of the past in the memory,
etc.); and by being "in" a faculty, that object is auto-
matically "in" the soul. The "eight maners of In-being"
include,we read, "the In-being of an Object in a Faculty."
Assuming Traherne to be speaking of the three faculties of
the reasonable soul, this can happen in all three of them,
thus leaving five other methods of "In-being" to identify.

Now since the object must be "seen, perceived, in order
to be in a faculty, as Traherne says, those five methods
must then be the five senses. We end up with a picture of

the soul much like Spenser's Castle of Alma in the second

book of the Faerie Queene.

 

The inbeing of the faculties themselves in the
soul does not qualify as a ninth form because these facul-
ties are part of and one with the soul in a way that the
senses, in relationship to the faculties, are not. Tra-
herne's passage goes on to show that even the indwelling
of Christ comes originally from sensory data, though
knowledge of Christ has value not as it is to the sense
perception but as it exists once it is in the soul. Could

indwelling in the faculties of the soul not take place,

73

"all other ways of In-being," and I think here again he
is referring to the five senses, "would be utterly vain."
Though Traherne is not always content to divide the soul
into only three parts, here at least he seems to be using
that system of the faculties. The soul's objects stand in
regard to the soul just as matter does in regard to act,
for the soul, like God, is act; and things have value only
as they exist in an act. Because of the infinite capacity
of the three faculties of the soul, all things in time
are open, as acts, to them.
Throughout his work Traherne talks not only of
the infinite capacity of the soul in general, but he also
dwells especially on the infinity of one particular
faculty, the understanding or reason:
[Man's] Understanding is an endless Light, and can
infinitly be present in all Places, and see and Examine
all Beings, survey the reasons, surmount the Greatness,
exceed the Strength, contemplat the Beauty, Enjoy the
Benefit, and reign over all it sees and Enjoys like
the Eternal GODhead. (E, II, 23)
"The true exemplar of GODs infinity is that of your Under-
standing, which is a lively Patern and Idea of it. It
excludeth Nothing, and containeth all Things" (9, II, 24).
The understanding is of such importance because it is by
knowledge of present objects that we know the past and
anticipate the future. The soul is "by its Understanding
a Temple of Eternity, and GODs Omnipresence" (E, II, 70).

The operations, the acts of the understanding and

of the other faculties are termed "thoughts" by Traherne.

74

"GOD hath made it Easy to convert our Soul into a Thought
containing Heaven and Earth" (9, II, 87). One starts with
"things," but as he grows in spirit he finds the thoughts
created of much greater importance. When Traherne asks:

Did I grow, or did I stay?
Did I prosper or decay?
When I so

From Thin s to Thoughts did go?
Did I flourish or diminish,
When I so in Thou hts did finish
What I had in Things begun;
When from God's Works to think upon
The Thoughts of Men my Soul did com? ("The Review I,"

1‘9):

the answer is no surprise. "Compar'd to them,/I Things as
Shades esteem" (18-19). The same view is expressed in the
poem, "Dreams":
Thought! Surely Thou hts are tru;
They pleas as much as Things can do:
Nay Things are dead,
And in themselvs are severed
From Souls; nor can they fill the Head
Without our Thoughts. Thoughts are the Reall things
From whence all Joy, from whence all Sorrow springs.
(50-56)
The reader must beware of pausing too long at the end of
the second to last line, taking the play on words too
seriously. Traherne is in no way impinging the reality of
"Things" but merely showing, as he does so often, that
things without participation in act are utterly without
value. It is in the poems entitled "Thoughts" that the

power of these mental operations to enter all space and

time is perhaps best portrayed:

75

The Ey's confind, the Body pent
In narrow Room: Lims are of small Extent.
But Thoughts are always free.
And as they're best,
So can they even in the Brest,
Rove ore the World with Libertie:
Can Enter Ages, Present be
In any Kingdom, into Bosoms see.
Thoughts, Thoughts can come to Things, and view,
What Bodies cant approach unto.
They know no Bar, Denial, Limit, Wall:
But have a Liberty to look on all.
("Thoughts. I," 61-72)

Thoughts are the Wings on which the Soul doth flie,

The Messengers which soar abov the Skie,

Elijahs firey Charet, that conveys

The Soul, even here, to those Eternal Joys.

Thoughts are the privileged Posts that Soar

Unto his Throne, and there appear before

Our selvs approach. These may at any time

Abov the Clouds, abov the Stars may clime.

The Soul is present by a Thought; and sees

The New Jerusalem, the Palaces,

The Thrones and feasts, the Regions of the Skie,

The Joys and Treasures of the DEITIE.

His Wisdom makes all things so Bright and pure,

That they are worthy ever to endure.

His Glorious Works his Laws and Counsels are,

When seen, all like himself, beyond compare.

All Ages with his Love and Glory Shine,

As they are his all Kingdoms are Divine.
("Thoughts. IV," 1-18)

Thus the soul or mind is at birth an empty vessel
infinite in capacity. It exists without temporal or
Spatial limits or bounds. Through the senses, however,
the soul begins to take in the world around it; and im-
Enalses from the senses come to be lodged in the faculties
<3f the soul where they exist as thoughts. The ignorant
S(Jul places more emphasis on sense perception than on
thoughts and comes to believe itself limited, bound in
Space and time. But as he learns more, as his thoughts

develop, he sees the value of things really to lie in

76

their presence in his mind. As he turns from things to
thoughts, the soul discovers that with these he is able to
transcend the limits of space and time and to be present
everywhere always. Though the full realization of this
power is possible only after death, the soul on this earth,
through the study of history and of the eternal things in
the present (the body's form, the services of the world to
you, etc.), expands its vision toward the infinite per-
ception of God of whom it is the image.

Frances Yates, in her work on the Renaissance art
of memory, has shown the belief in the unlimited power of
thought to be a primary Hermetic concept on which occult
memory magic rested.26 Though it would be presumptuous to
call this occult art a "corruption" of the Neo-Platonic
concept, it should at least be noted that Traherne, unlike
Ficino and Henry More, did not, so far as we know, allow
his metaphysics to lead him to magic. The systematic
study of history discussed in this chapter and the medi-
tative practice which I outline in my next chapter are
not at all occult. They depend not on physical objects of
'association but are, after the initial sensory learning
Errocess, intellectual operations. The operation of the
Inind in these exercises is explained by Traherne on as

lsational grounds as he is able to find; and there is no

‘

26Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition
“Chicago, 1964); The Art of Memory (London, 1966); Theatre
SEE the World (London, 1969).

77

leap, unless it might be the leap of death, with which one
suddenly knows all. The only thing to make this appear
"supernatural" to us is the degree to which Traherne be-
lieved the learning process could be carried, but this in
itself does not make the process an occult or magic one.
The objects we are to contemplate are not important only
as symbols but are the very things of memory. If Traherne
sees the world in his mind, he sees it not as a reference
system into which to fit daily experience in order to
remember it, but as the world, God's creation, a thing to
be known and loved in itself.27
Traherne's philosophy of the operation of the mind
as it perceives past, present and future has been compared

to that of St. Augustine by Louis Martz in The Paradise

Within (New Haven, 1964). Martz begins by giving an

 

27It is ironic that one of the few bits of bio-
graphical information we have about Traherne records two
"psychic" experiences though hardly spectacular ones:
"Mr. Traherne, B.D. (chaplain to Sir Orlando Bridgman,
Lord Keeper), a learned and sober person, was son of
a shoemaker in Hereford; one night as he lay in bed,
the moon shining very bright, he saw the phantom of
one of the apprentices sitting in a chair in red
waistcoat and headband about his head, and strap upon
his knee, which apprentice was really in bed and
asleep with another fellow-apprentice, in the same
chamber, and saw him. The fellow was living, 1671.
Another time, as he was in bed, he saw a basket sail-
ing in the air, along by the valence of his bed; I
think there was fruit in the basket; it was a phantom.
From himself." (Aubrey's "Miscellanies" [1696],
quoted in Margoliouth, I, xxviii-xxix.)
But concern with this sort of supernatural occurrence is
far from characteristic of the Traherne we know through
his own poetry and prose.

78

account of Augustine's concept of time-perception which,
though not specifically applied to Traherne, is more true
of Traherne than it is of Augustine. Augustine, according
to Martz, believes that "the mind can in some measure
transcend the oppressive transience of time, and act as

an image of God's timeless mind, in which all things have
their simultaneous existence" thus "enabling the mind to
act as a mirror of eternity" (p. 52). Martz quotes from
Book 11 (Chapters 9, 20 and 28) of the Confessions,
apparently to support his contention; but the whole point

of these quoted passages and of the entire discussion of

 

time in the Confessions is to show that the human mind
cannot perceive the past and the future because these
things do not even exist so far as the mind is concerned.
Nearly all commentators on Augustine agree in this inter-
pretation of the discussion. Augustine, according to
Ronald Suter:

contends that just because facts are related about the

past, this does not mean that we must now discern

things which are past. For instance, the image of

an adult's childhood can be present in the adult's

memory without his childhood itself being present at

the time he recalls it. Thus the fact that we can

talk about the past in no way proves its existence.28

Martz quotes this from Augustine:
Clear now it is and plain, that neither things to

come, nor things past, are. Nor do we properly say,
there be three times, past, present, and to come; but

 

28"Augustine on Time with Some Criticisms from
Wittgenstein," Revue Internationale d2 Philosophie, XVI

79

perchance it might be properly said, there be three
times: a present time of past things; a present time
of present things; and a present time of future things.
For indeed three such as these in our soul there be.
(Confessions, XI, 20; quoted p. 53)

 

But what Augustine is saying is, as John J. Callahan
points out, "not only that whatever exists is present,
though it may appear to be past, but also that what exists
is not the past event itself but only an image of it."29
And as to the future, it, according to Augustine, is
utterly unknowable to the ordinary human soul though it
may, nevertheless, be anticipated from things in the
present:
Future things then are not yet and if they be not
yet, they are not: and if they are not, they cannot
be seen; yet foretold they may be from things present,
which are already and are seen.
And though Augustine has much to say of the great capacity
of the memory, he nevertheless maintains that
when past facts are related, there are drawn out of
the memory, not the things themselves which are past,
but words which, conceived by the images of things,
they, in passing, have through the senses left traces
in the mind. (p. 257)
These "traces in the mind" are a long way from the

timeless perception of the Deity. Augustine's system is

fundamentally different from Traherne's in that Traherne

 

29Four Views 2: Time in Ancient Philosophy
(Cambridge, Mass., 1948), p. 156.

 

 

3o$23Confessions 9: Saint Augustine, [Modern
Library edition], trans. Edward Pusey (New York, 1949),
p. 258.

 

80

believes the past or future act perceived by the soul to
be that act itself as it endures in eternity; Augustine
firmly denies this, saying man can see only the present,

a present which cannot include past or future. As a

 

result of his comparison, Martz finds Traherne's Centuries
stressing primarily the present, though still employing
memory and expectation as devices. Martz fails to see

how the Centuries use past, present and future to re-

 

create the timeless all of Eternity. In Traherne, all
three of these parts of time are equally important, equally
perceptible, and equally real; for, in essence, they are
one.

Before concluding these marks on Traherne's
philosophy of perception, I should like to comment on the
soul's vision of "infinite space," if only because this
has been of so much previous critical interest. Important
treatments of the subject are by Marjorie Hope Nicolson in
Thngreaking gf‘thg Circle (New York, 1960), by Rosalie L.

Colie in Paradoxia Epidemica (Princeton, 1966) and in an
31

 

earlier article, and by Carol Marks in "Thomas Traherne
and Cambridge Platonism." Nicolson and especially Colie
attribute Traherne's "passion g3 l'infini" to the "New

Science"; but, as Ellrodt points out:

 

31"Thomas Traherne and the Infinite: The Ethical
Compromise," HLQ, XXI, 69-82.

81

Sans doute 1e sens de l'infini se serait-il affirmé
de maniere moins concrete, moins cosmique, dans le
cadre rigide de l'univers ptolémaique. Mais rien
n'assure que la passion éut été moins forte.

(I, ii, 335)

Traherne accepted the idea of the possibility of
infinite extension, infinite space; but he did not see it
as identical with the infinite presence of God, a fact
Carol Marks places beyond doubt in her article, quoting
from Traherne's attack in his Commonplace Book upon Henry
More's theory of the identity of infinite space and divine
omnipresence (PMLA, LXXI, $29-30). Traherne did, however,
find "infinite space" within the human soul; and it was
there that the omnipresence of God was imaged. We should
beware of confusing these extensions. The infinity within
is larger than the infinity without and can include, can
"comprehend" it (g, V, 2).

One would think that beside infinit Space there could
be no more Room for any Treasure. yet to shew that
God is infinitly infinit, there is Infinit Room be-
sides, and perhaps a more Wonderfull Region making
this to be infinitly infinit. No man will believ
that besides the Space from the Centre of the Earth
to the utmost bounds of the Everlasting Hills, there
should be any more. Beyond those Bounds perhaps
there may, but besides all that Space that is illimited
and present before us, and absolutly endles evry Way,
where can there be any Room for more? (9, V, 6)
Where is the place that can hold infinite space? Traherne
goes on to tell: "This is the Space that is at this
Moment only present before our By, the only Space that was,
or that will be, from Everlasting to Everlasting." Only

the interior, the perceived infinity is eternal. Traherne

concludes this section of the fifth Century with a

82

transition to the subject of eternity, a shift which pro-

vides another example of his use of spatial analogy to

explain that concept:
This Moment Exhibits infinit Space, but there is a
Space also wherein all Moments are infinitly Exhibited,
and the Everlasting Duration of infinit Space is
another Region and Room of Joys. Wherein all Ages
appear together, all Occurrences stand up at once,
and the innumerable and Endless Myriads of yeers that
were before the Creation, and will be after the World
is ended are Objected as a Clear and Stable Object,
whose several Parts extended out at length, giv an

inward Infinity to this Moment, and compose an
Eternitie that is seen by all Comprehensors and

Enjoyers.
Thus, for Traherne, space was no more infinite than time.
If space is infinite, it is not as infinite as the omni-
presence of God which has an interior presence within the
soul, a "place" where not only infinite space may be per-
ceived but much, much more. The justification of this
inclusion of an infinite within an infinite is the nature
of the human mind which may conceive of infinite space and
yet may conceive of something in addition to it, above it,
and greater than it. That of which no greater can be
conceived is God.32 The "space" important to Traherne
‘was seen without a telescope, just as time in his phi-
,losophy did not depend upon the invention of the clock.
laternity-time is the existence of the world in the divine

(eternity; infinite space, of the creation in spiritual

immensity.

32See Traherne's poem, "Misapprehension," 27.

83

The Renaissance was the age of the rediscovery of
history. The modern age, which dawned in the seventeenth
century, is a discovery of the nature of the present
moment, of the universe as it is to the senses and to our
mechanical extensions of the senses. Modern eyes have
become directed much more toward the empty vacuity beyond
our atmosphere than they have been backward along the line
of human history or forward to the future results of
present actions. Though modern critics have found Tra-
herne's ideas about infinite space of interest, the
infinity really important to Traherne was a spiritual one.
Traherne was not a "modern" man. And while surely he
would have made no distinction between the importance of
God's eternity and His immensity, for humanity in his
philosophy the important continuum is nonetheless that of
eternity-time. It is in time that our actions both take
place and are forever preserved, actions for which we

eternally pay the consequences.

CHAPTER IV

TYPES AND SHADOWS

Together with his stress on the study of history,
Traherne presents a meditative practice which functions
through an ordered contemplation upon the similarities of
historical events. Again, these events are drawn from the
most reliable of histories, the Bible, as well as from
that other reliable source of information about things in
eternity-time, personal experience. Along the lines of
traditional exegetical practice, persons and events in
history are seen by Traherne as "types" or "shadows" of
parallel persons and events following them in time. They
are also seen as representatives of spiritual states or
conditions. The purpose of this mode of thinking is the
same as that of the study of history: to make the human
soul more like the divine Being. For, just as events in
the Old Testament foreshadowed and promised the coming of
the Messiah, so His life, death and resurrection speak to
us of our own return to the divine nature, a return which

is brought about through the imitation of Christ.

84

85

The major events of history form a pattern which
is repeated in the life of Christ and in individual human
lives. Thus Adam in Eden, the world after the Fall, Christ
Incarnate and Christ Glorified become figures for the
stages of human experience in the march toward God as
Traherne identifies them: Innocence, Misery, Grace and
Glory. In Traherne's system there is thus a means to
reconcile the classical view of time as cyclical with the
Christian idea of a linear time progression leading to
the Last Judgment. Traherne's universe is a universe of
mirrors. Time in eternity shares the stable nature of
eternity for two reasons: (1) because, as I have said in
my second chapter, it is all in existence at once and thus
cannot change, and (2) because many of its parts are alike:
what follows any of the major points of division on the
line is a repetition, with variations, of what precedes
that point. To avoid over-simplification, however, it
should be noted that there is a increasing superiority of
value as events lead toward the end of time.

Traherne's major parallels were those already well
established in the body of knowledge known as "typology."
”Typology," says Jean Daniélou, "is the study of corres-
pondences between the Old and the New Testaments."1 Were

it only as simple as that statement makes it seem. For

 

1The Lord 2: History: Reflections 93 the Inner
Meanin of History, trans. Nigel Abercrombie (London,
1958)

 

, p. 214.

86

hundreds of years, Christian writers have argued about
what "parallels" are and are not types. For three hundred
years, at least, theologians have attempted to make a
distinction between true types and those which are the
product of allegorizing.

In the seventeenth century, Benjamin Keach
attempted to define rigid distinctions between types and
allegories. The main distinction he made was that types
deal with two historical persons or "facts," while alle-
gories are doctrinal, illustrating some moral content.

But when he comes to list those things he regards as
types, Keach ignores his distinctions, so much that he
is able to deal, for instance, with the circumcision as
a type of "the cutting off the Lusts of the Heart and
Life."2

Nineteenth and twentieth-century commentators have
stressed the points that typological comparisons teach a
higher truth than either half could have communicated
alone, that they deal with real circumstances rather than
with fictional ones, and that they were intended by God to
be parallel and are not merely the product of human in-

genuity (revelation being the necessary proof for this).3

2Tropes, and Figures (London, 1682), pt. 1, p.
433.

3See Patrick Fairburn, The Typology gf Scripture
(Eflinburgh, 1854), I; and also G. W. H. Lampe and K. J.
“Foolcombe, Essa s gg'T olo [Studies i3 Biblical The-
C>1ogy, No. 22i(NaperVille, Illinois, 1957).

 

 

87

In addition, typology, now as in the past, is carried
beyond simple Old Testament-New Testament comparisons to
include applications of Biblical types to antitypes in the
history of the church and to "the life of each individual

soul, as alter Christus."4

 

All of this makes "typology" a very uncertain
term. Faced with this problem of definition, William G.

Madsen, in his book, From Shadowerypes E2_Truth: Studies

 

i2 Milton's Symbolism (New Haven, 1968), makes the point

 

that Milton was not specifically involved in determining
typological relationships; but rather, "The relevance of
the theory of typology to Milton's poetry lies in the fact
that Milton employed typology not as a dictionary of ready-
made symbols but as a mode of discourse" (p. 6). The same
thing might be said of Traherne, who himself is not
directly concerned in the theological exegesis of types,
but who has, rather, a habit of thought which makes con-
stant use of spiritual parallels. Madsen, however, feels
a need for a means of differentiating typology from alle-
gory, metaphor, etc.; and he sets down a list of criteria
he believes Milton's contemporaries used in determining
types. Study of seventeenth-century works on figures and

types, however, reveals exceptions to nearly every one.5

‘

4Daniélou, p. 215.

5I find exceptions to Madsen's criteria in Keach
(n. 2 above); in William Guild, Moses Unvailed (London,
JL620); and in Hermann Witsius, 2g Oeconomis Foederum Dei
CZum Hominius (Leeuwarden, 1677).

88

Considering, then, the vagueness of typology as a
term and as a method of exegesis, and taking into account
the limits of our purpose here, I think it wiser not to
proceed to a statement of some definition of my own. In-
stead, for the purposes of this study, let us say that in
Traherne's works there are expressed and implied compari-
sons of important persons, places and events, comparisons
which have historically been called "typological." In
these comparisons, the type has the function of fore-
shadowing the antitype. These typologies include the
relationships of Adam to Christ, David to Christ, and Eden
to the New Jerusalem. Beyond this, it can be said that
Traherne employed a method of thought which was constantly
finding parallels between the Old and New Testament, be-
tween the history of the world and the history of the indi-
vidual, and between God and man, call that method "typology"
or what you will.

Traherne speaks of "types" several times in
Christian Ethicks. In the chapter, "Of Repentance,"
occurs what Marks and Guffey call "an exercise in typology"
(p. 342n.). Here Traherne finds his subject "fitly Typi-
fied in the old Law, by the Laver that was set at the Door
of the Tabernacle for the Priests to wash in, before they
entred into the Sanctuary" (p. 129); and the comparison of
the temple is developed at length. This passage does

<:ontain some comparisons of which both parts are tangible

89

objects such as those of the altar which "answers our

Saviors Cross" and the veil "of Rams-skins died Red, to

 

signifie the Blood of Christ" (p. 129). But most of the
things mentioned have a moral or spiritual antitype and
are what today might be called "figures." Traherne would
not have accepted the modern judgment that both halves of
a "typological" comparison must be historical.

For an understanding of the use Traherne makes of
Adam, David and Christ in his writing, we must View these
individuals within the typological framework that had
developed around them. Both Adam and David were taken as
types of Christ. The Adam-Christ typology, however it may
have originated, goes back for most Christians to two
statements by Paul, one in I. Cor. 15:

45. And so it is written: The first man Adam was
made a living soule, the last Adam was made a
quickening spirit.

46. Howbeit that was not first which is spirituall:
but that which is naturall, and afterward that
which is spirituall.

47. The first man is of the earth, earthy: The
second man is the Lord from heaven.

48. As is the earthy, such are they that are earthy,
and as is the heavenly, such are they also that
are heavenly.

49. As we have borne the image of the earthy, wee
shall also beare the image of the heavenly.6

The other passage referring to Adam as a type is Rom. 5:14:

"Nevertheles, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over

 

6The Authorised Version 2: the English Bible 1611,
ed. William Aldis Wright (Cambridge, 1909), V [The New
Testament]. Subsequent quotations are from this edition.

9O

them that had not sinned after the Similitude of Adams

transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come."

These became primary issi for the study of the typology

in spite of the fact that in the comparison, to quote

R. M. Grant, "the correspondence is not as important as

the difference."7
Chief credit for the propagation and development

of this typology after Paul belongs to St. Irenaeus and

his work Against Heresies, a book with which Traherne was

 

familiar, as evidenced by the "Advertisement to the Reader"

in Roman Forgeries where Traherne refers to Irenaeus as

 

"one of the most Ancient Fathers" and quotes approvingly
three passages from the first book of his work.8 Both

Paul and Irenaeus extend the typology to what Daniélou
would call its "mystical" interpretation, its application
to the individual Christian. That all mankind is included
in Adam was a Rabbinic doctrine that had become traditional
by the time Paul wrote.9 Irenaeus extends this to main-
tain that Christ, by saving man in general, also saved

the first Adam:

 

7The Letter and the Spirit (London, 1957), p. 50.

8Irenaeus and the Adam-Christ typology is dis-
cussed by Jean Daniélou in From Shadows Es Realit , trans.
Dom Wulstan Hibberd (Westminster, Maryland, 1960), pp.
30-47.

 

9W. D. Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism (London,
1965), p. 57.

 

91

Adam [is] the first formed man, of whom the Scripture
says that the Lord spake, "Let Us make man after Our
own image and likeness;" and we are all from him: and
as we are from him, therefore have we all inherited
his title. But inasmuch as man is saved, it is fitting
that he who was created the original man should be
saved.10
The David-Christ comparison had received signifi-
cant consideration by Augustine:
We have, in fact, found Jesus Christ explicitly called
David by the Prophet Ezeckiel. . . . The Prophet Osee,
too, when he foretold the state of the Jews in which
they now are, prophesied also that afterwards they
would believe in Christ, that same Christ under the
name of David.1
The important points for comparison between Adam and Christ
were that both came directly from God without another
father, that Adam was God's image as Christ was his son,
and that Christ regained what Adam had lost, Paradise.
The important comparison between David and Christ is that
both were God's chosen kings. And just as Adam's Paradise
foreshadowed the Paradise to come after the Redemption, so,
according to Augustine, "In the progress of the city of
God through the ages, therefore, David first reigned in

the earthly Jerusalem as a shadow of that which was to

come." Even the songs that David sang, his Psalms, have

 

10The Ante-Nicene Fathers, trans. Alexander
Roberts and James Donaldson (Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1950
[American Reprintl), I, 456.

11"The Eight Questions of Dulcitus" in Saint
Auggstine: Treatises gs Various Subjects, trans. Sister
Mary Sarah Muldowney et si. in Fathers gs the Church, ed.
Roy Joseph Deferrari (New York, 1952), XIV, 464. In
addition Augustine also refers to Acts 13:21-23.

 

92

a place in the comparison: "For the rational and well-
ordered concord of diverse sounds in harmonious variety
suggests the compact unity of the well-ordered city."12
Adam was a type of Christ Incarnate; the Fall was a type,
though in reverse, of Christ Crucified, David was a type
of Christ Glorified, of Christ the King.
In addition to this tradition of Old Testament-

New Testament typology, there was another important tra-
dition related to it that we must take note of: that one

indicated in the title of Thomas A'Kempis' great work,

The Imitation 2i Christ. Bertram Dobell, in his edition

 

of Centuries si.Meditations (London, 1927), recognized a

 

parallel purpose in these two works, in each of which

"the writer . . . declares his object to be the setting

up of a Light whereby the life of man may be guided and
rules in accordance with the will of God" (p. fii” Dobell
finds Traherne to be writing in the tradition of the imif
tation and does an admirable job of comparing and contrast-
ing the qualities of the two works. The two books are
certainly very different in many respects, and one could
imagine that the apparent anti-intellectualism of the
Imitation would have grated on a man of such learning as
Traherne. But as to the major point of similarity, the

idea that the Christian imitates in his own life the life

 

12222 Sigy.2£ Egg, trans. Marcus Dods (New York,
1948) I II, 199.

93

of Christ seems inseparable from the whole of the Christian
religion and not something, like a particular typology,
that can be traced along a line of development apart from
the total history of Christian doctrine.

One final, traditional comparison must necessarily
be treated in order to follow Traherne's delineation of the
progress of the soul; that is the analogy between the his-
tory of the world and the growth of the individual. Tra-
herne, as I have said, accepted the Christian idea of
history, that it is a linear progression leading the world
toward the Last Judgment and thus back to the perfection
from which it fell. He must also have been aware of the
tradition of regarding this growth of the world as a
progress from infancy to maturity. Ronald Crane treats
the background of this idea in his article, "Anglican
Apologetics and The Idea of Progress, 1699-1745," and
points out that:

Tertullian, as early as the beginning of the third
century, had likened the history of religion to a
gradual process of education, with stages of growth
comparable to those of an individual's life from
infancy to maturity; just as everything in nature,

he declared, reaches its perfection by successive
steps, so the divine truth, though in itself one and
unchanging, is communicated to men progressively in
time and is adapted in each stage to their capacities
and needs.13

Crane finds examples of the same comparison in Augustine,

in Vincent of Lerins and in Thomas Aquinas.

 

13Modern Philology, xxxx (1934), 274-275.

 

94

In Traherne's system, as the mind takes in the
history of the world, it sees that this history parallels
its own individual growth; indeed, the soul can actually
experience past and future time because of the nature of
this correspondence. The history of the world, the life
of Christ, the progress of the soul: these three parallel
movements are what the soul comes to see as its vision is
expanded. And because of the similarities, it comes to
know the first two movements not simply intellectually;
but in its own experience of growth, the soul experiences
all growth. In the soul, past and future acts may exist
with the same degree of reality as immediate experience.
To see the innocence of childhood is to see Adam in Para-
dise; to see yourself growing daily in the spirit of God
is to see the movement of history itself. Things are
many; acts, operations abstracted from their causes, are
few. Acts are what abide forever in eternity-time.

Traherne divides the act of growth into four

14

stages, which he terms "estates." These states of

existence he names Innocence, Misery, Grace and Glory.

 

14As I was writing this chapter, Arthur Leo
Clements' The Mystical Poetry si Thomas Traherne was
published (Cambridge, Mass., 1969). (I had not read his
previous dissertation.) Clements' title perhaps suf-
ficiently indicates the difference in our respective
points of view. Clements does, though, see a progressive
development taking place in the poems of the Dobell MS.,
a progress which he sees as a three-part one from inno-
cence to redemption. Clements does not, except in one
footnote, deal with this growth in terms of Traherne's
estates.

 

95

Marks and Guffey remark that, "The classification occurs

in other writers of the period" (SE! p. 307n.) citing John

 

Bartlet's The Practical Christian, which briefly proposes
a similar, though not identical, four-part system for medi-
tation. The editors go on to say, "The usual arrangement
was tripartite." Though Marks and Guffey take no note of
it, it would seem that Traherne himself at times regards
the division as one into three parts, combining Misery and

Grace into one estate. In the passage from Christian

 

Ethicks to which the above note is appended, Traherne says
that among the things he will speak of in this work are

"What Vertues belong to the Estate of Innocency, what to

 

the Estate of Misery and Gisss, and what to the Estate of
Gigsy? (p. 4); and the two are grouped together again in a
discussion of virtue in "Select Meditations" III, 53
(quoted Es, p. 317n.). In one treatment, Misery is left
out altogether (SE! pp. 29-30); and in several places the
estate of "Trial" appears to have been substituted for
Misery and Grace (SE! pp. 112-113, 167-168, 184).

The two estates of Misery and Grace tend to com-
bine, I believe, because in the world they represent a
transitional state and are themselves usually found in
combination. In the history of the individual soul, of
Christ and of the world, there is never a period so misera-
ble as to be devoid of all grace, nor so full of grace as

not to have something to hold it to its earthly condition

96

--otherwise, it would enter glory. All four estates have
areas in which they overlap, but none so much as Misery
and Grace. This is best illustrated in Century, III, 43,
the key passage for any discussion of Traherne's estates,
where Traherne catalogs the things he associates with each
one:

In the Estate of Innocency we are to Contemplate the
Nature and Maner of [man's] Happiness, the Laws under
which He was governed, the Joys of Paradice, and the
Immaculat Powers of His Immortal Soul. In the Estate
of Misery we hav his Fall the Nature of Sin Original
and Actual, His Manifold Punishments Calamity Sickness
Death &c. In the Estate of Grace; the Tenor of the
New Covenant, the maner of its Exhibition under various
Dispensations of the Old and New Testament, the Media-
tor of the Covenant, the Conditions of it Faith and
Repentance, the Sacraments or Seals of it, the
Scriptures Ministers and Sabbaths, the Nature and
Government of the Church, its Histories and Succes-
sions from the Beginning to the End of the World. &c.
In the State of Glory; the Nature of Seperat Souls,15
their Advantages Excellencies and Privileges, the
Resurrection of the Body, the Day of Judgment and Life
Everlasting.

From this it can be seen that many of the things listed
under Misery and Grace occur intermingled all along the
time line of history, while those things associated with
Innocence and Glory are either purely spiritual (as opposed
to historical) or occupy a definite place at the beginning
or end of universal and individual history.

Innocence, as the above passage from the Centuries

 

shows, is a state associated with a pre-Fall world, with

man's ideal condition of happiness and spiritual power.

 

15"Seperat Souls" means souls separated from
their bodies.

97

In the life of the individual, it is the state of child-
hood, before the infant is tainted by the world, a
condition which we so often find sung about with joy in
Traherne. The child comes into the world like Adam and
Christ:

Long time before
I in my Mothers Womb was born,
A GOD preparing did this Glorious Store,
The World for me adorne.
Into this Eden so Divine and fair,
So Wide and Bright, I com his Son and Heir.
("The Salutation," 31-36)

The world of the child is a paradise not solely because
of what is in it, but also because of what the child does
not see:

Harsh ragged Objects were conceald,
Oppressions Tears and Cries,
Sins, Griefs, Complaints, Dissentions, Weeping Eys,
Were hid: and only Things reveald,
Which Heav'nly Spirits, and the Angels prize.
The State of Innocence
And Bliss, not Trades and Poverties,
Did fill my Sence. ("Wonder," 25-32)

Only what Adam in his first Estate,
Did I behold. ("Eden," 29-30)

We meditate on Adam and the state of childhood in
order to find the true, original nature of man and the
world. Infancy teaches the adult:

All Bliss
Consists in this,
To do as Adam did;
And not to know those superficial Joys
Which were from him in Eden hid.
("The Apostacy," 37-41)

98

To Infancy, O Lord, again I com,
That I my Manhood may improv:
My early Tutor is the Womb;

I still my Cradle lov. ("The Return," 1-4)

The infant has a sense, sometimes imaged as an
"Ey," which is dimmed considerably if not blotted out as
he grows older, but which can in its pure state perceive
eternity and infinity:

But Wantonness and Avarice got in. . . .
And all my Pleasure was in Sin:
Who had at first with simple Infant-Eys
Beheld as mine ev'n all Eternities.
("An Infant-By," 37, 46-48)
. . . but I
Forgot the rest, and was all Sight, or By.
Unbodied and Devoid of Care,
Just as in Heavn the Holy Angels are.
For Simple Sence
Is Lord of all Created Excellence.
("The Preparative," 35-40)
This "Simple Sence" is an interior presence, the tabula
rasa on which ideas are later written.

Two topics concerning Traherne and childhood,
though treated often before, must be taken into account.
These are original sin and pre-existence (i.e., existence
of the soul before birth). As to whether or not Traherne
believes the child partakes of original sin, it seems
obvious to me that he does. What makes the child's
experience parallel to Adam's is that the sin he falls

into after birth is worse than that with which he was

born:

99

And that our Misery proceedeth ten thousand times more
from the outward Bondage of Opinion and Custom, then
from any inward corruption or Depravation of Nature:
And that it is not our Parents Loyns, so much as our
Parents lives, that Enthrals and Blinds us. Yet is
all our Corruption Derived from Adam: inasmuch as all
the Evil Examples and inclinations of the World arise
from His Sin. (9, III, 8)16
In regard to Traherne and the idea of pre-existence,
it seems to me that the problem can only arise when
eternity-time's characteristics of simultaneity and suc-
cession are confused. On the line of time there is a point
at which each man is created; he does not exist before that
point. The particular time of this creation for Traherne
is, I believe, that of conception in the womb:
From Dust I rise,
And out of Nothing now awake,
These Brighter Regions which salute mine Eys,
A Gift from GOD I take.
The Earth, the Seas, the Light, the Day, the Skies,
The Sun and Stars are mine; if those I prize.
Long time before
I in my Mothers Womb was born,
A GOD preparing did this Glorious Store,
The World for me adorne. ("The Salutation," 25-34)
Though he was "Nothing" throughout all the previous
succession of eternity-time, his being is now established
in that eternity subsequent to his creation. Since the
whole line of time is always existent in all of its parts,

this human soul has, from a different point of view, al-

ways existed; but then so has everything else.

 

16For a good defense of this interpretation of

Traherne's view on original sin see George R. Guffey,
"Thomas Traherne on Original Sin," Notes s Queries, XIV
(1967), 98-100. '“_‘—-‘

100

From Innocence, man, in Adam, fell to Misery. This
came about through sin, both his own and that of another.
In individual human lives it is the sins of ourselves and
those we love that bring us to Misery, and even Christ was
made a man of sorrows through the sins which he took upon
himself, though they were not his own. Misery, however,
is not a static condition, not a resting place. It is
always coupled with some measure of Grace by which we are
enabled to climb back up. These two concurrent conditions
form our estate of trial in this world through which we
work out our own salvation:

For this purpose we are to remember, that our

present Estate is not that of Reward, but Labour:
It is an Estate of Trial, not of Fruition: A
Condition wherein we are to Toyl, and Sweat, and
travail hard, for the promised Wages; an Appointed
Seed Time, for a future Harvest; a real Warfare,
in order to a Glorious Victory. (EEJ p. 19).

This upward struggle is an attempt to relearn
man's own true nature as the image of God. "Being vilely
corrupted, you have lost the sence of all these Realities,
and are ignorant of the Excellences of your own Estate
and Nature" (gs, p. 37). Adam and Eve had their trial
too, which they failed; but with the coming of Grace in
the form of Christ, man has been "restored to a as! Estate
2£.E££El' and endued with Power to do new Duties, as pleas-
ing to him, as those which he required us in Eden" (gs,

p. 105). Thus, as the Second Adam went through Misery and

by the Grace of God achieved Glory, so each of us go up-

ward by imitating Him:

101

0 only begotten Son of God, Redeemer of the World,

seeing thou didst Create and Redeem me _that I might

Obey and Imitate thee, make EE.E2 Obe and Imitate

thee £2.2ll.EEX imitable Perfection. ("Thanksgivings
for the Body, 530-533)

 

 

 

 

 

This work is a mental, spiritual expansion of the soul's
perception, the work which we saw begun by knowledge in
the understanding. Traherne specifically applies the
effect of Christ's work to individual perception:

My understanding . . . is like Jesus Christ, my Elder
Brother, by whom it is Restored to its first power,
and again Called to be a Son of God, by Him who
Bringeth into His Eternal Glory. ("Select Medi-
tations," I, 91)

Christ's work of redemption made the estate of
Glory possible, an estate like Innocence in many ways, as
Eden was like the Paradise which will come, but far
superior to it. Glory is something experienced fully
only after death, but we learn of it and prepare for it
here on earth by means of our love for God. And this love
of God is the activity we have been treating throughout
this study:

It is to see and desire, to Esteem and delight in his
omnipresence and Eternity, and in every Thing by which
he manifesteth himself in either of these, so that all
Enlargement, and Greatness, and Light, and Perfection,
and Beauty, and Pleasure, are founded in it, and to
Love him to Perfection implies all Learning and Attain-
ment, because we must necessarily be acquainted with
all Things in all Worlds, before we can thorowly and
compleatly do it. Which here upon Earth to do by
Inclination and Endeavour to the utmost of our Power,
is all that is required of us; And if we do it to our
utmost, it shall be rewarded in the Beatifick Vision,
with a full and Blessed Perfection, with an actual
Love exactly resembling his, and fully answerable to
it in the Highest Heavens. (gs, p. 140)

102

Knowledge is the means of foreseeing and eventually
coming to Glory. Traherne sees knowledge as a stream
which flows through all of the estates:

The Original of our Knowledge is his Godhead, His
Essence and his will are the Fountain of it; and the
stream so excellent, that in all Estates it is for
ever to be continued, as the Light and Glory of the
whole Creation. . . . If we would be perfect, as our
Father which is in Heaven is perfect, our Power —of
Knowing must be transformed (into Act, ) and all
Objects appear in the interior Light _of our own under-
standing. . . . For not to ss, and not to appear, are
the same thing to the understanding. (gs, pp. 36-37)

Knowledge itself is not its own end. We learn and
expand the mind's vision of eternity-time in order that we
may eventually find our true nature as the image of God in

all respects, may come to express all of the divine attri-

butes:

To be Partaker of the Divine nature, to be filled
with all the Fulness of GOD, to enter into his King-
dom and Glory, to be transformed into his Image, and
made an Heir of GOD, and a joynt Heir with Christ, to
live in Union and Communion with GOD, and to be made
a Temple of the Holy Ghost; these are Divine and
transcendent things that accompany our Souls in the
Perfection of their Bliss and Happiness: the Hope and
Belief of all which is justified, and made apparent
by the explanation of the very nature of the Soul, its
Inclinations and Capacities, the reality, and great-
ness of those Vertues of which we are capable, and
all those objects which the Univers affordeth to our
Contemplation. (gs, p. 22)

And it is here finally that ”Eternity in all its Beauties
and Treasures," will be "seen, desired, esteemed, enjoyed"
(gs, p. 35). "Where all Regions, and Ages, and Spaces,
and Times, and Eternities, shall be before our Eys, and
all Objects in all Worlds at once Visible, and infinitely

Rich, and Beautiful, and Ours!" (gs, p. 123).

103

This will be the condition of the soul in Glory.
The soul will not exist simply as a static reflection of
the divine attributes but will fulfill its being by partici-
pation in action, specifically, according to Traherne, in
the act of giving praise and thanks. For man's gratitude
is the reflection of God's love: "Thus when I see my self
infinitely beloved, I conceive a Gratitude as infinite in
me" (gs, p. 265).

Here upon Earth there are disquiets, and desires, and
expectations, and Complaints, and defects, and im-
perfections, fears and interests to be still secured,
that lame and darken our Contentment and Gratitude.
But in Heaven all these admixtures of alloy are
remov'd. The glory of the light in Which our Grati-
tude appeareth, adds lustre and beauty to the increase
of its Perfection. In the utmost height of our Satis-
faction there is such an infinite and eternal force,
that our Gratitude breaks out in exulting and triumph-
ing Effusions; all our Capacities, Inclinations, and
Desires being fully satisfied, we have nothing else

to do, but to Love and be Grateful. (EEJ p. 273)

If the resentmentl7 be wholly Spiritual, the Soul
perhaps may be transformed to Gratitude, as Gratitude
is to Contentment, and Praise, and Thanksgiving. But
it will have no Body, no frail and corruptible Flesh,
no bones or members to look after. All its operations
are of one kind, all its works and concernments are the
same. (gs, p. 275)

Traherne's own "Thanksgivings" and those other
sections of his work devoted solely to praise are his
earthly attempt to fulfill the divine function of the
soul. Like Augustine, Traherne sees David's Psalms as

a type of what will come in the New Jerusalem. The Psalms

were to Augustine symbols of the harmony and unity of the

 

l7"Resentment" here, as often in the seventeenth
century, means "feeling."

104

City. To Traherne they are like the praises of a soul
which has been transformed into an act of gratitude. "O
that I were as EEXEQI the sweet Singer of Israeli/In meeter
Psalms to set forth thy Praises./Thy Raptures ravish me,
and turn my soul all into melody" ("Thanksgivings for the
Body," 341-343). But praise is not something confined to
the soul anticipating Glory or actually existing in it.

Of this world, also, Traherne asks, "Are not Praises the
very End for which the World was created?" (g, III, 82).
The Psalms of David exhibit this twofold nature of praise:

When I saw those Objects celebrated in His Psalmes
which GOD and Nature had proposed to me, and which I
thought chance only presented to my View: you cannot
imagine how unspeakably I was delighted, to see so
Glorious a Person, so Great a Prince, so Divine a
Sage, that was a Man after Gods own Heart by the
testimony of God Himself, rejoycing in the same
things, meditating on the same and Praising GOD for
the same. For by this I perceived we were led by one
Spirit: and that following the clew of Nature into
this Labyrinth I was brought into the midst of
Celestial Joys: and that to be retired from Earthly
Cares and fears and Distractions that we might in
sweet and heavenly Peace contemplat all the Works of
GOD, was to live in Heaven and the only way to becom
what David was a Man after Gods own Heart. (g, III, 70)

Traherne's view of thanksgiving is like that of
Isaac Barrow. In his "Commonplace Book," Traherne copied

extensively from Barrow's sermon, 92 the Duty and Reward

 

2E Bounty £2 the Poor.18 But Barrow had earlier preached
two sermons on "The Duty of Thanksgiving," sermons which

show not only an attitude toward thanksgiving like

 

18See Carol L. Marks, "Thomas Traherne's Common-
place Book," PBSA, LVIII, 458-465.

105

Traherne's but also a marked similarity in temperament.
Barrow says that Thanksgiving
implies a right Apprehension of, and consequently a
considerate Attention unto Benefits conferred. For
he that is either wholly ignorant of his obligations,
or mistakes them, or passes them over with a slight
and superficial view, can no-wise be gratefull. . . .
This Duty requires a faithfull Retention of Benefits
in memory, and consequently frequent Reflexions upon
them.19
Barrow refers the reader to "that great pattern of Grati-
tude, the Royal Prophet David" (p. 93). Thanksgiving for
Barrow is no mere state of passive gratitude for benefits
received. "Yea, 'tis our duty, not to be contented onely,
but to be delighted, to be transported, to be ravished
with the emanations of his love" (p. 96). The road of
gratitude for Barrow, as for Traherne, seems to lead to
God himself,
to be sensible of whose Beneficence, to meditate on
whose Goodness, to admire whose Excellency, to cele-
brate whose Praise, is Heaven it self and Paradise,
the life of Angels, the quintessence of joy, the
supreme degree of Felicity. (p. 103)

Innocence, Misery, Grace, Glory: this, then, is
the progress which plays such an important part in Tra-
herne's work. It is the pattern of universal and indi-
vidual history:

By fall into sin I revolted from His Love &

Defaced His Glory. Neither could I by any other
means be Redeemd from Hell but by the Incarnation of

His Son, by whose Death I am restored to Glory.
("Select Meditations," II, 6)

 

19The Works of the Learned Isaac Barrow, D.D.

(London, 1683). p. 95':

106

It is also a pattern reflected in the structure of

Traherne's Centuries. The Centuries are about the journey

 

 

of the soul through these estates, teaching the reader how
to expand his thought to include all. They are also a
personal exercise on the part of their author in the use
of this system of meditation. Having shown in general
terms what Traherne associated with each of these estates,

I will go on to deal with the structure of the Centuries

 

and with the function of eternity-time and of these estates

in that work.

CHAPTER V

THE JOURNEY OUTWARD

Traherne's Centuries teach the soul by precept

 

and example how to expand to "all things" and thus how to
gain the perception and knowledge of everything in eternity
and time. But this "all" is not something learned in a
flash of insight. It is a process of learning with which
Traherne was concerned, and learning is completed in parts;

by degrees we come to truth. Within the Centuries, the

 

"all" is divided for consideration into three main parts:

"GOD, THE WORLD, YOUR SELF. All Things in Time and Eter-

 

nity being the Objects of your Felicity GOD the Giver, and
you the Receiver" (g, II, l00). In his structuring of the
Centuries, Traherne treats these parts in an ascending
order according to their importance. The world is the
primary topic of Century I and of Century II through
section 69; the individual soul, the topic of meditation
from II, 70 through Century IV; and God is the subject of
the Fifth Century.

The consideration of any one of these topics does

not exclude the other two, just as the things themselves

107

108

do not exclude each other. But the direction of each of
these main meditations and their purpose remains con-
sistent. The typological habit of thought discussed in
the last chapter plays an important part throughout these
meditations, and of especial significance is the progres-
sive development from the estate of Innocence through
Misery and Grace to Glory, a development traced through
once at length in both the discussion of the world and in
that of the individual soul. But in each case this journey
is described in terms appropriate to the main subject then
under consideration. The broad line of movement of each

of the three main sections and of the entire Centuries is

 

one of advancement into the presence of God, where the
individual, mirror-like soul participates in the divine
image in act as well as in potential, becomes omniscient
and eternal.

Other readers of the Centuries have attempted to
plot out an order for "what sometimes appears to be the
chaotic disarray of Traherne's paragraphs."1 Allan H.

Gilbert, for one, deals with "The Structure of Centuries

 

p£_Meditations” in his article, "Thomas Traherne as

 

Artist."2 There he attempts to group the meditations

 

lIsabel G. Maccaffrey, "The Meditative Paradigm,"
ELH, XXXII (1965), 395.

2
435-447.

Modern Language gparterly, VIII (1947), 319-341,

 

 

109

according to their subject matter and according to their
closeness to, or distance from, "conventional religion and
normal theology" (p. 323). Gilbert's treatment is largely
descriptive in nature, and his divisions somewhat arbi-
trarily chosen. Of the whole, he concludes:
The effect is as though each one of the groups of
kindred Meditations was written independently and the
groups were then combined with little thought of their
relation to each other, except perhaps as a matter of

contrast or compensation. (p. 326)

In his edition of the Centuries, H. M. Margoliouth

 

gives a descriptive account of the Centuries by means of

 

the summaries which proceed his notes on each Century.
Here such things as his phrasing, the ideas he emphasizes,
as well as the direct indication of groups, show those
units which he feels belong together.

A general structural principle for the whole of

the Centuries was proposed by Louis Martz in The Paradise

 

 

Within (New Haven, 1964). Martz treats the Centuries in

 

terms of an Augustinian meditation and finds them "Augus-

tinian, in theme, in style, in method of meditation"

(p. 54). In an Augustinian meditation
The mind in "cogitation" draws together, re-collects,
the fragmentary hints of truth scattered about in the
things that are made, and in this way moves toward an
apprenhension of the essential Idea that lives within
the eternal mind of God. (pp. 47-48)

This is related to the Platonic notion of innate ideas, a

belief Traherne did not hold, though this philosophical

difference would not necessarily have precluded his use

110

of a similar method of structuring thought in terms

of external things. Martz sees the Centuries as

 

particularly like Bonaventure's Itinerarium Mentis is
Deum, which is Augustinian in method and is part struc-
tured around a journey the stages of which are those

three used by Traherne:

The first stage . . . consists in finding God by his
traces in the external world; the second consists in
finding God within the self, through discovering his
image in man; and the third consists in contemplation
of the essential attributes of God and the Trinity.
(p. 56)

Martz's account, however, differs from mine in
that he does not see the First Century as part of this
ternary structure but solely as a preparation, equivalent

to the Prologue of Bonaventure's Itinerarium. In addition,

 

Martz does not see the Fifth Century as the third stage

of this development but as a state of "repose" which
Bonaventure and Augustine placed "beyond the division of
[the] basic threefold arrangement" (p. 57). Martz sees
the entire Second Century as dealing with "the Creatures
of the external world" (p. 57) and treats the Fourth Cen-
tury rather than the Fifth as the last part of the three-
fold journey. He thus sees this Fourth Century as con-
cerned with God and his essence, while I find it a
consideration of man and the principles by which he should

live and advance.3

 

3According to Joan Webber, an M.A. thesis that
touched on the structure of the Centuries was presented at

 

lll

Joan Webber has said that, "Like other Anglican

works, the Centuries reflect different aspects of them-

 

selves to different readers, or even to the same reader."4

My account of the Centuries differs from accounts of a
purely descriptive nature because, while I do identify
specific ideas and groupings, I see them working together
in a more important whole, a whole with a definite pattern
and direction. If I differ from Martz, it is because I

am treating the Centuries according to a method of medi-

 

tation that Traherne himself has outlined in his other

works as well as in the Centuries, a method based upon

 

his all-inclusive estates and his philosophy of the re-
lationship of man and eternity-time. By not attempting
to find parallels for all the parts of someone else's
book or system, and by not believing that Traherne goes
beyond the bounds of human knowledge as he saw them to an
ultimate "repose" in those empty pages after the Fifth
Century, I find the three-part division of being (the
world, man and God) sufficient for the major structure of
Traherne's work. Whatever the sources of this division
(and perhaps it was too much of a commonplace in the
Renaissance to attribute to Augustine with any great

degree of relevance), I am more concerned with how,

 

Ohio State University by Victor Rowley in 1967. The Ohio
State library has reported this thesis to me as lost.

4The Eloquent "s" (Madison, 1968), p. 267.

 

112

according to Traherne, the soul or mind by knowledge and
love may come to know all things in all three of these
areas of what exists.
The beginning of the First Century makes plain the
purpose of the whole work.
An Empty Book is like an Infants Soul, in which any
Thing may be Written. It is Capable of all Things,
but containeth Nothing. I hav a Mind to fill this
with Profitable Wonders. (1)
The analogy between the growth of knowledge in the soul
and what Traherne will do in this work is not a fortuitous
one. This organic growth is as much a part of his method
as it is of his philosophy.
Traherne goes on to say that he will speak of
"those Truths you Love, without Knowing them" (1). Readers

have asked how the very religious Mrs. Hopton, to whom the

Centuries are addressed, could be said not to know these

 

truths. But Traherne is not attributing ignorance to his
friend; or at least if it is ignorance, he himself shares
in it. There is "in us a World of Lov to somewhat, tho

we know not what in the World that should be" (2). This
"Great Thing" which is unknown, Traherne goes on to ex-
plain, is "that you should be Heir of the World" (3). Your
true relationship, your "Fellowship" with the world, has
always been; but it has become, even for Traherne, hidden
in its full aspect. The total vision of all things, as

we have seen already, is impossible in this mortal life.

What is possible is an improved vision achieved through

113

study and meditation. Such an improved vision gives an
insight into the nature of this unknown relationship of
man to the world and gives a promise of what the soul will
be in Glory.

The path to a fuller vision of the world and of
your relationship to it is the subject of the First Century
and the first sixty-nine sections of the Second Century.
"It is my Design therfore in such a Plain maner to unfold
it, that my Friendship may appear, in making you Possessor
of the Whole World" (3). The path is not one of contention
and argument; but "I after [God's] Similitide will lead you
into Paths Plain and Familiar" where nothing will appear
but "Contentment and Thanksgiving" (4). The end of the
journey toward God is not simply salvation; more impor-
tantly, it is "A Communion with Him in all His Glory" (5).
Though salvation is wonderful, this communion, says Tra-
herne, is really the end for which Jesus suffered. Such
communion begins by means of the world, God's gift of love
communicated to us as its rightful heirs.

The First Century gives the basic reasons for
making a mental quest in search of the whole world (7-13),
demonstrates the accessibility of such knowledge (lo-24),
and indicates by what signs you will know you have attained
it (25-39). The remainder of the Century is a meditation
on "wants," on the necessity of the world's being and of

its being as it is. Within the meditation and culminating

114

it (52-100) is a meditation on the most necessary thing in
the world, love, that one thing which fulfills all wants.
With the demonstrations of the First Century as its ground-
work, the Second Century (through 69) is a meditation on
the whole world in terms of Traherne's estates.

Let us return now to the First Century and follow
this development more closely. In section 6 Traherne
explains that his gift of the world is an act of love by
which his friend may be "Advanced to the Throne of God,
and may see His Lov." The end of this section forms a
transition to that group giving reasons for seeking such
an advancement. The gift of the world "will enable you
also, to contemn the World, and to overflow with Praises."
In explaining this, Traherne makes the important dis-
tinction that there are two worlds, that which God created
and that of man. The world Traherne is giving through his
meditations is that of God, and you must "Leav the one
that you may enjoy the other" (7). That the method of
doing so is meditation, Traherne makes clear in the follow-
ing three sections. "What is more Easy and Sweet then
Meditation? yet in this hath God commended his Lov, that
by Meditation it is Enjoyed" (8). "Is it not Easy to
conceiv the World in your Mind?" (9). But merely thinking
of the world is not enough; knowledge of its "Use and
Value" must be constantly retained in mind. Note that

here again it is value and process that is more important

115

for Traherne than things themselves. To think well is not

simply to hold material things in mind.
To think well is to serv God in the Interior Court:
To hav a Mind composed of Divine Thoughts, and set
in frame, to be Like Him within. To Conceiv aright
and to Enjoy the World, is to Conceiv the Holy
Ghost, and to see His Lov; Which is the Mind of the
Father. (10)

Such meditation, the remaining sections of this group

(ll-l3) continue, makes the soul holy by making it the

image of God.
For then we Pleas God when we are most like Him. we
are like Him when our Minds are in Frame. our Minds
are in Frame when our Thoughts are like his. And
our Thoughts are then like his when we hav such
Conceptions of all objects as God hath, and Prize
all Things according to their value. (13)

Having stated the purpose of meditation on the
world, to "conceiv the World in your Mind" as God does in
his, Traherne is aware of the immediate problem this
brings up: how can the whole world be said to be accessi-
ble to any one man? The following sections (14-24) attempt
to answer this unstated question. Traherne demonstrates
the accessibility of the whole world to one man on the
bases of the nature of creation, the nature of God, and
the nature of the human soul.

Rightly seen, every thing has a "Proper Place" in
the creation and "serves us in its Place" (14), has its
use and value only when in its proper relationship to

the world and man. The creation of Adam without companions

at first was meant to indicate typologically (if I may

116

use that word) that all things in the world were made for

5 And the

the individual man as well as for all men (14).
creation of other men increased the number of things avail-
able to any one man, "Angels and Men being all mine" (15).
Secondly, God in his nature of father and benefactor has
given the whole world to us as a gift (16). Traherne goes
on to speak of the nature of this gift. "The WORLD," he
reminds the reader, "is not this little Cottage of Heaven
and Earth. Tho this be fair, it is too small a Gift"

(18); it is not compatible with the nature of God. The
world includes "the Heavens and the Heavens of Heavens,

and the Angels and the Celestial Powers" (18). The world
includes not only what exists in eternity-time but all
things in the eternity outside of time as well, "all those
infinit and Eternal Treasures that are to abide for ever,
after the Day of Judgment" (18).

Traherne concludes his demonstration of the avail-
ability of the whole world with a discussion of the nature
of man and his soul in their relationship to the world
(19-24). The soul is greater than the world and can easily

encompass it.

 

5Martz says that this section "introduces the pri-
mary symbol of his Centuries: Adam in Paradise becomes
the symbol of all the possibilities still resident within
redeemed mankind" (p. 60). This application is too broad.
Adam in Paradise is primary only in the parts treating the
estate of Innocence, and is superceded both in the work
and in Traherne's thought by that for which it itself is
a symbol or type, Christ.

 

117

Alass the WORLD is but a little Centre in Comparison
of you. . . . Your Understanding comprehends the World
like the Dust of a Ballance, measures Heaven with a
Span and esteems a thousand yeers but as one Day. So
that Great Endless Eternal Delights are only fit to
be its Enjoyments. (19)
Besides the God-like nature of the understanding, the
divine laws under which man is governed have made the
world accessible because, in requiring us to love God,
they require us to love His works. Seeing the world as
the work of God makes it "the Beautifull Frontispiece of
Eternitie. the Temple of God" (20). Divine law also
established the world as something to serve us, and the
consequent love of creation to us makes our love of all
creation possible.

Man's senses, furthermore, make the world avail-
able to him. Though they cannot perceive everything at
once, their use in the correct enjoyment of seen things
will lead eventually to those things which are as yet
unseen:

Prize these first: and you shall Enjoy the Residue.
Glory, Dominion, Power, Wisdom, Honor, Angels, Souls,

Kingdoms, Ages. s3 faithfull $2.2 little, and you
shall be Master over much. (21)

 

Even the inclinations of the soul (its desires) prove the
world ours. Covetousness and ambition as they usually
appear in the world of man are simply misdirections of
noble inclinations which, if rightly directed, would en-
able us to possess everything (22-24). The world, then,

is naturally available to the knowledge of man; and it is

118

a knowledge which readily becomes love as the nature of its
object is clearly seen.

With the availability of the whole world to an
individual man now established, the next question Traherne
chooses to answer might be put this way: Since it is
possible for me to know the world and thus love it, how
will I know when my vision is correct? How, in other words,
will I know I have succeeded? Traherne treats the signs
of success (as well as the marks of the unsuccessful) from
section 25 through 39. In his description of what it is
to know the world correctly, Traherne has created some of

the most beautiful prose of the Centuries.

 

Your Enjoyment of the World is never right, till
you so Esteem it, that evry thing in it, is more
your Treasure, then a Kings Exchequer full of Gold
and Silver. . . . I remember the Time, when the
Dust of the Streets were as precious as Gold to
my Infant Eys, and now they are more precious to
the By of Reason. (25)

You never Enjoy the World aright, till you see
how a Sand Exhibiteth the Wisdom and Power of God:
And Prize in evry Thing the Service which they

do you, by Manifesting His Glory and Goodness to
your Soul. (27)

Your Enjoyment of the World is never right, till
evry Morning you awake in Heaven: see your self in
your fathers Palace: and look upon the Skies and the
Earth and the Air, as the Celestial Joys: having such a
Reverend Esteem of all, as if you were among the
Angels. (28)
But yet some men despise God's works and world for their
own and thus lose everything. In the presence of glories,
they will not open their eyes; and thus "the World is both

a Paradice and a Prison to different Persons" (36). But

119

loving all things rightly, Traherne sums up, makes us to

 

"£EXE.EE.HiS Image. 2E§.EQ g9 s2, is to live in Heaven"
(39).

With the accessibility of the whole world and the
signs that one is esteeming it correctly now set forth,
Traherne begins a meditation on the world as an infinite
gift that was infinitely necessary, a meditation on "wants"
(40-100). In treating God's gifts, this meditation is
unavoidably involved in the treatment of Grace; for the
greatest and most necessary gift was, of course, Jesus
Christ in His work of Redemption. The First Century cli-
maxes in a meditation on the cross; and this meditation
is in line with what Traherne had said about Christ's pur-
pose in the world at the beginning of this Century: the
cross is a sign of God's gift of communion with him through
love. But since this Century is about the world rather
than about God directly, most of this meditation on the
cross deals with the communion of love as it occurs among
men in the world, Christ's gift of love being the prime
example for our love of others.

The world consists of wants and supplies, of
necessities and that which meets those necessities. Every
want must have its supply or God's creation would not be
perfect. As a picture must be made up of areas of light
and areas of shadow, says Traherne, so our fulfillment,

our "Felicitie," requires the recognition of wants and

120

supplies (41). This dual nature exists in us, in the
world, and in the relationship of man to the world, for
we were made to want everything. "He made us to Want
like GODS, that like GODS we might be satisfied" (41).
God himself "from all Eternity Wanted like a GOD" (41).
We can accept that God is supplied with all things possible,
that all things are before him; and since we are His image,
we can see the possibility of this becoming true for us.
But how, then, can God, who never fell, be said to want
what he always has? Traherne finds an answer for this
question in the nature of eternity and time:
He is infinitly Glorious, becaus all His Wants and
Supplies are at the same time in his Nature from
Eternity. He had, and from Eternity He was without
all His Treasures. From Eternity He needed them,
and from Eternity He enjoyed them. For all Eternity
is at once in Him. both the Empty Durations before
the World was made, and the full ones after. His
Wants are as Lively as His Enjoyments: And always
present with Him. For His Life is Perfect, and He
feels them both. (44)

The only way to understand a passage like this is
to see the world in terms of eternity-time, an infinite
succession permanent in all its parts. Wants come before
their supplies in the succession of eternity-time, since
they were in being before the world was created. But from
the point of view of eternity, seeing the infinite, eternal
extension as a whole, all wants and all supplies have al-
ways been.

It is not enough to perceive the world in your

mind or soul. Value is more important than being. You

121

must see how everything in the world meets a particular
need. In that eternity before your creation, though
temporally non-existent, you were eternally in need of
being; indeed, you were in need of everything.
What you wanted from all Eternity, be sensible of to
all Eternity. Let your Wants be present from Ever-
lasting. Is not this a Strange Life to which I call
you? Wherin you are to be present with Things that
were before the World was made? And at once present
even like GOD with infinit Wants and infinit Treasures:
Be present with your Want of a Diety, and you shall be
present with the Dietie. (45)
Though neither we nor the world existed before that point
in eternity-time when we were created, we can see into the
eternity before the creation by knowing our wants.
Sections 46-50 contain those remarks by Traherne
on the nature of hell which some readers have found un-
characteristic and unpleasant. Traherne says that men who
do not esteem their blessings, their wants and supplies,
while here on earth where they have them shall see them
throughout eternity from hell where they will not have
them. And hell, says Traherne, "is fitly mentioned in the
Enjoyment of the World: And is it self by the Happy En-
joyed, as a Part of the world" (48). Of course, every-
thing in creation is to be enjoyed by the happy, who see
all things working together for good; but this mental hell
of Traherne's has a rather permanent nature to it which
makes it something a little different from the vicissitudes

of earthly life. The only justification I would offer is

that this is a logical result of Traherne's philosophy of

122

human development. The progress from Innocence to Glory
that takes place in history and in individual lives is an
organic one; and if one refuses to participate in it, if
one does not grow toward his divine nature as the image of
God, how may he in the moment at which he should be ad-
mitted to Glory suddenly make up for the time and the
growth he has lost? Since no part of the succession of
time can ever be erased, the result seems inevitable and,
though perhaps not kind, at least natural. If one refuses
to grow, he may not expect to be part of the harvest.

The subject now becomes man's wants as a means of
communion. Joan Webber has treated communion in Traherne

in her book, The Eloquent is" (Madison, 1968), where she

 

sees it as informing the purpose of the entire Centuries.

 

In this last part of the First Century, I see the sort of
communion being primarily treated to be that between man
and other men in the world, an image of the communion be-
tween man and God and the reflection of the communion of
love between the pefect man, Christ, and those He came to
redeem.

But before dealing directly with love among men
in the world, Traherne draws the divine pattern. It is
because of our communion with God, says Traherne, that
our lives and the whole world are ours; for "In Him you
feel, in Him you 1iv, and mov and hav your Being. in
Him you are Blessed. Whatsoever therfore serveth Him

serveth you and in Him you inherit all Things" (52). When

123

you correctly will the presence of God's world into your
Inind, you are communing with God in the very act of
:creation (53), an act which is more important than its
:results. Though Traherne talks of God and man in these
:sections, he always speaks of them in terms of his main
subject, knowing the world.

When one is "all; Or in all, and with all" (53),
£111 particular things within eternity are known to him:

All the Joys and all the Treasures, all the Counsels
and all the Perfections all the Angels and all the
Saints of GOD are with Him. All the Kingdoms of the
World and the Glory of them are continualy in his

By: The Patriarchs Prophets and Apostles are always
before Him. The Counsels and the fathers, the Bishops
and the Doctors minister unto Him. All Temples are
Open before Him, The Melodie of all Quires reviveth
Him, the Learning of all Universities doth employ him,
the Riches of all Palaces Delight him, The Joys of
Eden Ravish Him, The Revelations of S. John Transport
Him, The Creation and the Day of Judgment pleas Him,
The Hosannas of the Church Militant, and the Halle-
lujahs of the Saints Triumphant fill Him, The Splendor
of all Coronations entertain Him, the Joys of Heaven
surround Him, And our Saviors Cross like the Centre
of Eternity is in Him, It taketh up his Thoughts, and
exerciseth all the Powers of his soul, with Wonder
Admiration Joy and Thanksgiving. The Omnipotence of
God is His Hous, and Eternity his Habitation. (54)

Throughout this Century recognition of the impor-
‘tance of man's knowledge and vision of eternity has been
‘growing. The purpose of the soul's expansion to the omni-
sscience and all-lovingness of God is for Traherne not so
Dnuch that it may be present with the world in the current
Inoment of time and space, but that it may be present with
Eill creation at all times and, especially, that it may be

IPresent with the important events of our history. Of all

124

those events, Christ's gift from the cross is the most
important. In the following sections, dealing with the
cross, Traherne illustrates that power of the soul in
regard to the world which he has described in the passage
just quoted above. Although it is at times not considered
directly, the center of eternity, the cross, is the vantage
point from which the remaining sections of the Century
(55-100) are written.

"The Contemplation of Eternity maketh the Soul
Immortal" begins section 55. Such contemplation is not of
a memory or a recollection of forgotten things hidden in
the soul of man; the soul can actually

see before and after its Existence into Endless
Spaces. Its Sight is its Presence. And therfore is
the Presence of the understanding endless, because
its Sight is so. 0 what Glorious Creatures should
we be, could we be present in Spirit with all
Eternity! (55)
Traherne then traces Biblical history, speaking of the
soul's power to be present in Eden, present with Enoch
and Moses, in Aaron's tabernacle and in Canaan, and
present with Solomon. "But abov all these our Saviors
Cross is the Throne of Delights. That Centre of Eternity,
That Tree of Life in the midst of the Paradice of GOD!"
(55).

"There are we Entertained with the Wonder of all

Ages. There we enter into the Heart of the Univers" (56).

It is because of Christ's demonstration of the communion

between God and man that we are able to see all things in

125

eternity and time with our souls, that we are able to
become in a more glorious way the image of God in which
we were originally created.
When I am lifted up saith the Son of man I will draw
all Men unto me. . . . so shall we be Drawn by that
Sight from Ignorance and Sin and Earthly vanities,
idle sports Companions Feasts and Pleasures, to the
Joyful Contemplation of that Eternal Object. But
by what Cords? The Cords of a Man, and the Cords of
Lov. (56)
The cross is the "Gate of Heaven" (58), the symbol of the
Grace by which we are able to perceive our Glory, our
existence in the nature of God, while here on earth and,
after death, participate in it. It is that place from
which we may see eternity (59). It is the burning tree
"In the light of which we see how to possess all the
Things in Heaven and Earth after His Similitud" (60).
We learn many things from the cross, but most importantly
"we learn to imitat Jesus in his Lov unto all" (61).6
What follows is a prayer to Christ desiring to be
more like Him, especially in His love toward man in giving
His gift, a gift which enables us to be aware of how all
our wants are met (knowledge requisite, we recall, for
entrance into Glory). Traherne desires to see better how

he is loved in order that he might love others better (63).

The proofs of God's love to him are the gift of the world

 

6Martz has noted the shift in the position of the
cross from "there" to "here" in this section (see p. 64).
I see this shift as an indication of the continuing growth
of the soul's vision of, and presence with, things in
eternity-time.

126

(64-65); of more importance, the gift of his body (66);
and, greatest of all, the gift of a soul in God's image
(67). Seeing these things, through the Grace of Christ,
he is able to love all men in the world better, to see how
much more glorious the world is because of the creation of
other men. The love that circulates between God and man,

this "communion,' is reproduced in the love between a man
and men. "In evry Soul whom Thou hast Created, Thou hast
given me the Similitude of thy self, to Enjoy!" (69). The
laws of God require that you love as He does. To meet this
requirement you were given "a Comprehension infinit to see
all Ages" (72). "Yea by Loving Thou Expandest and En-
largest thy self" (73).

Throughout this Traherne has occasionally placed
himself theoretically "in Adams steed" (65) or used the
pronoun "I" to mean man in general.7 It is in.both these
manners that the "I" is used in section 75:

Being to lead this Life within I was placed in Paradice
without with som Advantages which the Angels hav not.
And being Designed to Immortality and an Endless Life,
was to Abide with GOD from everlasting to everlasting
in all His Ways. But I was Deceived by my Appetite,
and fell into Sin. Ingratefully I despised Him that
gave me my Being. I offended in an Apple against Him
that gave me the whole World: But Thou O Savior art

here upon the Cross suffering for my Sins. What shall
I render unto Thee for so Great a Mercy!

 

7See Joan Webber's book, cited above, for a
thorough discussion of Traherne's use of this pronoun.

127

But the "I" still remains the individual Traherne enabled
through Grace to see these things, a perception which is
also, because of the communion of love, a participation.
Traherne says that it is because of the gift of Christ's
love that man is again able to enjoy the world, though now
in an even better way than Adam could (76). Traherne him-
self has not come to the total vision of Glory, but he
longs for it and will come to it through love of those
other men who are in this world (78-79).

None of this Century has been digressive. Tra-
herne's method of treating the possession of the world by
the soul has been one of a logical, organic development
of his case. Topics have been treated in their order of
importance. These topics were the world's accessibility,
the signs of possession, and the nature of the world as
want and supply. The main grouping, this latter one, has
developed from a general consideration of wants and
supplies to a treatment of the very greatest necessity,
love, primarily (for the subject of this Century is the
‘world) the love of others. Traherne now turns again to
address directly the "Excellent friend" for whom the ggs-
'turies were written. The transition is a natural one,
'the prayer to love others better and to "make all them
‘that are round about me Wise and Holy as Thou art" (79)
lDeing part of a natural progression which began with the

‘treatment of the love of God to man and becomes more and

128

more specific in its application of this love to human
relationships until Traherne turns to his friend.
Traherne and his friend, again because of the blood
of Christ, are united in communion and can "see and Lov
and Enjoy each other at 100 Miles Distance" (80). He tells
her that man is incapable of directing any goodness toward
God; goodness should rather be turned toward His "Saints,"
"the Excellent in the Earth in whom is all my Delight.
To Delight in the Saints of God is the Way to Heaven" (81).
These saints are not just those who live in goodness to-
day, but "All the Saints of all Ages and all Kingdoms"
(81). There are, however, certain saints, most worthy of
your love, who are living today but are perhaps the hard-
est of all to discover because of the general corruption
of the rest of mankind (82). But they must be sought out;
for, though they will have human infirmities, they will
still be able to "Exchange Souls with you. . . . And half
a Dozen such as these wisely chosen will represent unto us
the New Jerusalem" (83). Participation in such a group
of communicants allows each member to see the Saviour
(and all that this means) with the eyes of all participants.
'This communion with others through Christ
will Enlarge your Soul and make you to Dwell in all
Kingdoms and Ages. . . . By seeing the Saints of all
Ages we are present with Them. By being present with

them becom too Great for our own Age, and near to our
Savior. (85)

129

Sections 86-98 are again addressed directly to the
Saviour in thanksgiving for the communion of love which
enables a man to be present in others and to enjoy Christ's
Glory (86). Again Traherne prays for greater ability:

Remov the vail of thy flesh that I may see thy Glory.
. . . let us see thy Understanding with our Under-
standings, and read thy Lov with our own. Let our
Souls hav Communion with thy Soul, and let the By of
our Mind enter into thine. (88)

Section 89 is an awful vision of Christ's suffering on the
cross, a horrifying experience which can yet be enjoyed by
us because we ourselves can go through this experience for
others in our ascent to Glory (90). Traherne asks for the
spirit of Christ that it might bring him to eternity.

O the Glory of that Endless Life, that can at once
extend to all Eternity! Had the Cross been 20
Millions of Ages further, it had still been equaly
near, nor is it possible to remov it, for it is with
all Distances in my Understanding, and tho it be
removed many thousand Millions of Ages more is as
clearly seen and Apprehended. This Soul for which
Thou diedst, I desire to Know more perfectly, O my
Savior. (92)

Traherne desires that his soul be in act what it is in
potential. The way is through "Union and Communion" (96).
It is possible because of Christ's act of love.

The final two sections of the First Century sum
up the message of the whole: the soul can know and love
the whole world.

He made us the sons of GOD in Capacity by giving us
a Power, to see Eternity, to Survey His Treasures,

to love his children, to know and to lov as He doth,
to becom Righteous and Holy as He is; that we might

be Blessed and Glorious as He is. . . . When we prize
all the Things in Heaven and Earth, as He Prizeth

130

Him, and make a Conscience of doing it as He doth after
His Similitude; then are we actually present with them,
and Blessed in them. (99)
The First Century began by comparing the soul of a child
to an empty book; it ends, in section 100 (quoted in full
in Chapter II, above), with a description of how objects,
saints, ages and Christ, come into the soul.
And the Kingdom of God (as our Savior saith, this Way)
is within you; let us ever think and Meditat on Him,
that His conception Nativity Life and Death may be

always within us. Let Heaven and Earth Men and Angels,
God and his Creatures be always within us. (100)

The Second Century, through 69, is a meditation on
the world in terms of Traherne's estates. It logically
follows what we have just seen developing in the First
Century. While that Century was concerned primarily with
demonstrating the possibility of knowing and loving all
things in the world, Traherne's Second Century begins by
saying it will now give "Directions how to enjoy [the
world]" (2). These directions are an exercise in that
power treated in the previous Century, an exercise that
is designed to expand progressively the soul to a vision
of the world in eternity and time. This exercise works
by means of a simultaneous application of the universal
and individual meanings of each of Traherne's four estates.
The remarkable consistency of this simultaneous vision,
both here and elsewhere in Traherne's work, seems to be
a direct result of his concept of eternity-time, a concept

which, we recall, maintains the actual presence and

131

interrelatedness of all things pertinent to universal and
particular being.

After summing up "The Services which the World
doth you" (1), Traherne begins his directions for medi-
tation upon these services, upon the use and value of the
world; and these directions are themselves an exercise in
the sort of meditation they describe. The first step,
says Traherne, is to place yourself mentally in the estate
of Innocence, and this estate is the subject of section 2
through section 27. In this estate you must, in effect,
imitate Adam. You do not become Adam; but rather, you
participate in his experience, "commune" with the events
of his condition. "Place yourself in [the world] as if
no one were Created besides your self. And consider all
the services it doth, even to you alone" (2). The world
is "the Beginning of Gifts" (2) and the birthright of every
child that comes into it. Thus we see Adam, childhood, and
the mind as it sees its original condition, all working
together as one in this part of the Second Century.

Though Grace was first necessary that we might see
Innocence (as was explained in the First Century), the
dependency is reciprocal. "Till you see that the World
is yours, you cannot weigh the Greatness of Sin, nor the
Misery of your fall, nor Prize your Redeemers Lov" (3).
True understanding comes about from an organic growth

through the estates. Innocence must be fully understood

132

before Misery because "The Misery of your fall . . .
cannot be seen, till the Glory of the Estate from which
we are faln is Discerned" (4). And this is what our Saviour

meant when He counseled, "Remember from whence thou art

 

faln, and Rgpent. Which intimates our Duty of Remember-

 

 

ing our Happiness in the Estate of Innocence" (5).
Knowing the world made for you, who are the Adam-man,
and knowing yourself made, like Adam, in God's image con-
firms your faith in the Redemption (6).8
Innocence, then, is the necessary starting point;
and, with this established, Traherne says again, "Place
yourself therfore in the midst of the World as if you were
alone: and Meditat upon all the Services which it doth
unto you" (7). What follows now is a consideration of
the sun, first as if it were absent, then as it really is,
the necessity, wisdom and perfection of its creation to
serve you (7-11). Though Traherne, his method demon-

strated, decides to "say less of the rest" of creation

(12), he notes that the air, the earth, the sea and all

 

8Martz remarks that in his discussion of the cross
in the First Century Traherne says of Christ's wounds,
"These Bloody Characters are too Dim to let me read [the
Glory of thy Soul]" (I, 64) and then, because of this
incapacity, "turns away from the Cross to consider the
Creation" (p. 64). What Traherne means in this turning
away is that we see Christ's Glory more through his gift
than through his body. I believe that the dual dependency
of the estates of Innocence and Grace discussed in the
Second Century also accounts for any apparent incomplete-
ness in the treatment of Grace in the First Century. The
Second Century supplies what was lacking.

133

things in them were created in the same perfection and to
the same end. "Why should you not render Thanks to God for
them all? You are the Adam, or the Eve that Enjoy them"
(12). Time in this meditation has been from the first

the eternal "now." The world serves you, Adam, alone and
it serves all men everywhere in time, if they would but see
this.

In addition to those immediate and visible ele-
ments of the world whose services Traherne has just con-
sidered, there are also "Sublime and Celestial Services
which the World doth do" (17); and thus through contem-
plation of the visible world we are led to the invisible
one. God himself (the pattern for invisible as well as
visible things) is necessarily invisible in order that all
other possible things might have being (19). The only
sort of body He might assume is that of the whole world
(20). And indeed, this is so: "This visible World is
the Body of GOD" (21); though, to be sure, it is a body He
has taken on, not His natural form. Though Traherne does
not draw the analogy, it would seem that the presence of
God in the world is a concept like that of the Incarnation
of Christ. For most men of Traherne's period, it was a
paradox and a "mystery" that the infinite and omnipresent
God had taken on a body. The event of the Incarnation was
seen as eternity bending down and, for a short period,
touching time. For Traherne there was no paradox. The

Incarnation is a reflection of the eternal fact of God's

134

being. God is always in the world, and time is always

in eternity. Because He has taken this world as His body,
it is possible to come to the knowledge of the invisible,
knowledge of things of the spirit, through a study of the
perfections of the visible world. Like God, the world is
infinite in being round. (Whether space is infinite "we
cannot tell" [21].) It has seemed to some to be eternal;
and it expresses God's attributes of beauty, wisdom, good-
ness, power, etc.

But recall now that for Traherne, God and the
things of the spirit, of eternity-time, consist of "act,"
of motion and operation rather than of matter. The visi-
ble world, then, could never have been equated in value
with God by Traherne. But Traherne says that we may see
God's power operating in the world. "How shall His Life
appear in that which is Dead?" Traherne asks for us (22).
And the answer is, through motion. "Life is the Root of
Activity and Motion. . . . Motion being a far greater
Evidence of Life, then all Lineaments whatsoever" (22).
When Traherne asks us to contemplate the created world as
Adam saw it, he is not particularly asking us to contem-
plate "things" such a flower, a tree, or even the sun.
What we are to meditate upon are the services, the oper-
ations, the processes, the invisible qualities that are
part of the nature of the object yet produce an effect

outside of that object. Not nature herself but the

135

actions of nature are that which is worthy of our knowledge
and love, "Beasts Fowls and Fishes teaching and evidencing
the Glory of their Creator. . . . All which are subservient
unto Man" (22).
As with the rest of creation, the invisible things

that are part of the nature of man evidence God. As he
was created the last but most important of all the creation,
so he is treated by Traherne here (though elsewhere Tra-
herne disagreed with the Bible's account of the order of
creation). Man has yet what was given to him at his
creation,

a Dominion over all the rest and GOD over Him. . . .

Man is made in the Image of GOD, and therfore is a

Mirror and Representativ of Him. And Therfore in

Himself He may see GOD, which is His Glory and

Felicitie. His Thoughts and Desires can run out to

Everlasting, His Lov can extend to all Objects, His

Understanding is an endless Light, and can infinitly

be present in all Places, and see and Examine all

Beings, survey the reasons, surmount the Greatness,

exceed the Strength, contemplat the Beauty, Enjoy

the Benefit, and reign over all it sees and Enjoys

like the Eternal GODhead. (23)
By contemplating the whole world you are not only able to
know God better, but you gain a better understanding of
yourself as well (26). The "Prospect even of this World,"
then, is "a Gate“ through which we can "see into GODs
Kingdom" (27), that kingdom made up of man, God and the
created world.

In seeing the nature of the love of God evident in

the creation, we can also see "the Nature of all Righteous-

ness opened and unfolded: with the Ground and foundations

136

of Rewards and Punishments" (27). Traherne is not one to
dwell long on unpleasant subjects; and his treatment of

the loss of God's world (i.e., man's fall) and its subse-
quent estate of Misery lasts through only four sections
(28-31). It is man's duty, Traherne says, to esteem the
world correctly, "Which to do, is certainly the most
Blessed Thing in all Worlds, as not to do it is most

Wicked and most Miserable" (28). God is so righteous and
this duty so blessed that "GOD cannot therfore but be in-
finitly provoked, when we break His Laws" (29). It is a
mighty sin to despise the world, a sin of infinite pro-
portion. "Yea one Act only of Despite done to the smallest
Creature made you infinitly deformed. . . . Verily you are
in Danger of Perishing Eternaly" (30). Each man sins as
Adam did in mis-valuing something in the creation; but God
in his infinite wisdom knows a way "wherby to Sever the Sin
from the Sinner. . . . And thus we com again by the Works
of God to our Lord JESUS CHRIST" (31). We come again to
the estate of Grace.

As in his treatment of the sun at the first of this
Century, Traherne treats the perfect nature of his subject,
how the appearance of Grace in the world could not possibly
have come about in any better manner. No angel would have
been more suitable than Christ for the task, since an
angel is a creature and man can only be saved through the

eternal Godhead (37). Thus mankind in general and we in

137

particular can be saved through Christ, the Son (38). But,
to re-emphasize, salvation is something more than release
from sin. It is the renewal of divine communion. The
following sections, like the discussion of Grace in the
First Century, treat the communion of love. Love is like
the Trinity. Indeed, it is God and has a threefold aspect.
"In all Lov there is a Lov begetting, a Lov begotten, and

a Lov Proceeding" (40). God begets love; His Son is that
begotten love, and through Him we may receive it as the
Holy Ghost. Though in three parts, it is an unbroken
stream of love, a stream whose waters are eternally present
all along its course and of equal purity and value every-
where. "Love in the Fountain, and Lov in the Stream are
both the same. And therfore are they both Equal in Time
and Glory. For Lov communicateth it self" (41). But this
love is a stream which flows perpetually back upon itself,
for it is "the Means also by which we see and Lov the
Father" through Christ (44).

What follows now (45-69) I see as pertaining to
the estate of Glory, though necessarily, a Glory seen from
the estate of Grace. The subject is still love, but it is
treated in a somewhat different way. The opening of
section 45 indicates the nature of that difference.

How Wonderfull is it, that GOD by being Lov should
prepare a Redeemer to Die for us? But how much more

Wonderfull, that by this means Himself should be:
and be GOD by being LOV! (45)

138

Perhaps because of the length of its treatment in the First
Century, love as it appears in the estate of Grace, typi-
fied by the love of Christ, has been treated only briefly;
and the discussion now turns to "Love in the Fountain."
Love in the estate of Innocence is primarily love for the
created world as if you were created alone in it; love in
the estate of Grace is an added love for your fellow men.
Love in the estate of Glory is love for and from God when
he is known directly; it is the love existent in all
objects both created and increate, love of the world from
the widest and clearest point of view.
And by being Lov GOD is the fountain of all Worlds.
To receiv all and to be the End of all is Equally
Delightfull, and by Being Lov GOD receiveth, and is
the End of all. For all the Benefits that are don
unto all, by Loving all, Himself receiveth. (46)
God, love, is His own end. The communion of love between
God and the world is the means by which God has His being
as love. Love communicated is God as Act. The same is
just as true for God's image, the human soul.
By Loving a Soul does PrOpagat and beget it self.
By loving it does Dilate and Magnify it self. By
loving it does Enlarge and Delight it self. By Loving
also it Delighteth others, as by Loving it doth Honor
and Enrich it self. But abov all by Loving it does
attain it self. Lov also being the End of Souls,
Which are never Pefect, till they are in Act, what
they are in Power. . . . Till we becom therefore all
Act as GOD is, we can never rest, nor ever be
satisfied. (48)
This is the reason we must know and love the world.

Through love we are not only able to see but also to exist

sensibly in all parts of eternity and thus of time. We

139

are, through this communion of love, especially able to
exist in other souls and be "The Brother of Christ Jesus,
and One Spirit with the Holy Ghost" (50).

Adam, too, wanted to be like God; but he went
about it in the wrong way, and thus "He lost all" (52).
The correct way to be like God is "by Loving all as He
doth" (52). When we come to love God directly, we shall
not only reflect him but be in actual communion with him,
experience things through him. (Though I should repeat
here that one does not become God through this communion,
any more than Christ could be said to become us when we
partake of the Eucharist.) Though the two processes of
reflection and communion can be discussed in separation,
they are both necessary to each other in the completion
of our enjoyment of the world. By these methods we are
enabled to live in all; and by living in all we live in
God. "The more we 1iv in all the more we 1iv in one"
(61) .

Sections 62-69 conclude and climax the progressive
development that has been taking place. The love of all,
the communion of the soul with everything, is the end
toward which all this has been directed; it is a vision
of Glory in the world.

Lov is the true Means by which the World is Enjoyed.
Our Lov to others, and Others Lov to us. . . . Love
is the Soul of Life and Crown of Rewards. If we
cannot be satisfied in the Nature of Lov we can
never be satisfied at all. The very End for which

GOD made the World was that He might Manifest His
Lov. (62)

140

"You are as Prone to lov, as the Sun is to shine. It
being the most Delightfull and Natural Employment of the
Soul of man" (65). Love for one person is "but a little
spark" of true love (66). We must beware of loving any
one thing too much. We can never come right until we
love all things and love them in their true relationship
to us. "What a World would this be, were evry thing Be-
loved as it ought to be!" (67).

Traherne concludes this progress with another
direct address to his friend and a final characterization
of the sort of love for the world he has been talking
about:

A Regulated well orderd Lov Upon Clear Causes, and
with a Rational Affection, guided to Divine and
Celestial Ends. Which is to lov with a Divine and
Holy Lov, Glorious and Blessed. We are all Prone to
Love, but the Art lies in Managing our Love: to make
it truly Amiable and Proportionable. To lov for GODs
sake, and to this End, that we may be Wel Pleasing
unto Him: to lov with a Design to imitate Him, and
to satisfy the Principles of Intelligent Nature and
to becom Honorable: is to lov in a Blessed and Holy
maner. (69)
Traherne's design for this imitation is the path we have
just followed, a reflexion and communion in the human soul
based on the nature of all things as they exist in terms
of the progression of estates of being, a progression that
can be known and loved because it is a successive line of
development permanent in all its parts. Knowing the world

in terms of these estates removes the first veil from the

temple of Glory.

CHAPTER VI

THE JOURNEY INWARD

The Centuries are about the soul's journey to

 

Glory, to a knowledge and love of all things in eternity

and time. But the Centuries themselves also are that

 

journey, for form and content become one in this work.
What we have followed so far has been the journey in terms
of the outer world; Traherne now turns to deal with the
same development in terms of the inner world, that world
within the soul of each man. Though the directions of

the journey outward and the journey inward are different,
the means and ends are the same. These twin journeys are
treated by Traherne in the particular order they are both
because the inner world is the more important of the two
(and Traherne always develops his ideas climactically), and
because this order reflects Traherne's theory of learning:
the soul can be filled with ideas only by internal assimi-
lation of things first found outside of itself. Because
the two journeys are through parallel areas of being to
the same end, we can expect Traherne's method of develop-

ment in treating this second one to be similar to that

141

142

used with the first; and, indeed, this is true. Many of
the previously developed ideas and forms (i.e., the journey
through the four estates) are repeated here but with
variety in their presentation and in terms more suited
to the treatment of the individual soul.

Brooding over this part and, indeed, over all of

the Centuries is Traherne's concept of eternity-time: a

 

successive development of which all parts are always in
existence. It could be said that Traherne, in the ggs-
turies, is always talking about everything. The journey
outward and the journey inward are the same journey, one
that covers all the ground there is. Nothing can be
treated in isolation, because any one major part of being,
the world for instance, includes both of the others, man
and God. Each of these three is by presence or reflection
included in the others. But the simultaneous aspect of
all this does not lead to a confused presentation of it
by Traherne precisely because of the successive nature he
saw in the development of things in eternity-time. There
exists a pattern, a pattern which, however, can be seen
from different points of View and which is a growth that
does not leave the old behind but expands to include more
and more until it has all.

In Century II, 70 the point of View shifts from a
contemplation of the outer world and its many souls to one

of the inner world of one soul:

143

In the Soul of Man there are innumerable Infinities.
One Soul in the Immensity of its Intelligence, is
Greater and more Excellent then the whole World The
Ocean is but the Drop of a Bucket to it, the Heavens
but a Centre, the Sun Obscurity, and all Ages but as
one Day. It being by its Understanding a Temple of
Eternity, and GODs Omnipresence. between which and
the whole World there is no Proportion. (70)
Traherne reaffirms his belief that we need others, but
this is now presented as a need to see the reflection of
ourselves in those others and thus "1iv again in other
Persons" (70). He goes on to speak of the power of the
individual soul to be present not only with other people
but with all the rest of the creation as well (71), an
achievement impossible on this earth, "but in Heaven where
the Soul is all Act it is necessary" (73).

Traherne quotes Revelation to demonstrate the multi-
tude of things that will be available to the soul in Glory
(74-75). He stresses the inward nature of this experience,
What the soul will see in Glory could never be seen, as
most things of this world could, "with your Bodily Eys"
(76). Of the objects perceived in Glory,

You shall be present with them in your Understanding.
You shall be In them to the very centre and they in
you. As Light is in a Piece of Chrystal, so shall you
be with every Part and Excellency of them. An Act of
the Understanding is the presence of the Soul, which
being no Body but a Living Act, is a Pure Spirit, and
Mysteriously fathomless in its true Dimensions. (76)
Here on earth we work toward this by holding all the

created things among which we live in our understanding.

And we must not be lazy in this but should actively seek

144

out our "Riches" in all places in order that we might add
them to our understanding.

Traherne shows the inner world to be like the
outer one. He illustrates one aspect of this with the
example of rays of light which, unless they strike an
object, have no means of showing their existence; just so
the soul, if it lacked the objects toward which its under-
standing is directed, would have no demonstrable being
(78). Thus we can see how inimical any mystic "negative

way, clearing the mind of its particular objects, would
have been to this hoarder of knowledge.
Because of the nature of our souls, each of us can
have all things for our own (79), for each soul's love can
fill eternity and immensity by its presence with the ob-
jects there; and yet each soul does this completely within
itself (80). This inner infinity of the soul is the first
thing a child knows; this feeling, at least, may be innate:
That things are finit therfore we learn by our Sences.
but Infinity we know and feel by our Souls: and feel
it so Naturaly, as if it were the very Essence and
Being of the Soul. The truth of it is, It is indi-
vidualy in the Soul: for GOD is there, and more near
to us then we are to our selvs. So that we cannot
feel our Souls, but we must feel Him, in that first
of Properties infinit Space. (81)

The infinite space Traherne is talking about is, of course,

"inner" space: "What shall we render unto God for this

infinit Space in our Understandings!" (82).

Thus God's treasures are not only infinite in

extent (the outer world),

145

but in Depth also they are evry where infinit being
infinit in Excellency. And the Soul is a Miraculous
Abyss of infinit Abysses, an Undrainable Ocean, an
inexhausted fountain of Endles Oceans. (83)
Given this infinite capacity of the soul, we are to fill
it with ideas until it becomes the image of the all-knowing
God; "For then shall we be Mentes as He is sgss. We being
of the same Mind, with him who is an infinit Eternal mind"
(84). This growth in knowledge makes our love more
acceptable to God because it makes us more worthy to be
loved; and such love eventually enables us to "appear
before GOD in Sion: and as GOD convers with GOD for ever-
more" (86). In our love as in our knowledge, we are to
make our souls like God. By maintaining the presence of
all the world in our understandings, we imitate Him in His
constant care for the world (87). In Glory it will be
impossible not to do this (89).

In dealing with the outer world, Traherne had
stressed the idea that the services of things were of far
greater importance than the things themselves. Traherne
now shows "that the Idea of Heaven and Earth in the Soul
of Man, is more Precious with GOD then the Things them
selvs" (90), the primary reason for this being that ideas
are

Spiritual and Nearer unto GOD. The Material World is
Dead and feeleth Nothing. But this Spiritual World
tho it be Invisible hath all Dimensions, and is a

Divine and Living Being, the Voluntary Act of an
Obedient Soul. (90)

146

Building the world in your mind and holding it there: this

is what the Centuries are all about; this act is "to see

 

Eternity, to fill His Omnipresence . . . and to live in
His Image" (92). This is a vision which flowers, as we
noted before, in praises and thanksgivings, "For Praises
are Transformed and returning Benefits" (94). The greatest
benefit for which we return praise is "the Lov of Jesus
Christ" in restoring man to this vision of the world (95).
The world, then, is not only the outer creation:
"The World is a Pomgranat indeed, which GOD hath put into
mans Heart, as Solomon observeth in the Ecclesiastes,
becaus it containeth the Seeds of Grace and the Seeds of
Glory" (96). All the things philosophers ever proposed
as the source of happiness meet together here in this
knowledge of all things in the inner and outer worlds.
Only the negative way cannot be accommodated. Traherne
is contemptuous of those who would teach others to find
happiness through restraints. Felicity comes from the
proper direction of activity, not from the hindering of
it. (And how, indeed, could a philosopher like Traherne
who saw the soul so literally as act and life as motion
be expected to accept a philosophy of repression?) The
end vision, eternity, may be stable; but its stability is
that of the ocean, a body of constant form filled with

motion.

147

Traherne sums up his method for achieving felicity:

So that whosoever will Profit in the Mystery of

Felicity, must see the Objects of His Happiness; and

the Maner how they are to be Enjoyed, and discern

also the Powers of His Soul by which He is to enjoy

them, and perhaps the Rules that shall Guid Him in

the Way of Enjoyment. (100)
Traherne has dealt with the object and the means, he is
now dealing with the powers of the soul and will deal with
some rules in the Fourth Century; but he goes on in the
Third Century to retrace the "Maner how they are to be
Enjoyed" that he had sketched in the Second Century, 1-69,
this time in terms of one individual soul in its develop-
ment through the estates, seeing in inner history what the

"you of the Second Century had seen in outer history and
the external world.

The Third Century is an exercise in holding the
internal world in the understanding, as Traherne calls
back to mind the history of his intellectual development.
The concern here is not with the objects that filled
Traherne's world or even their services to the world as
a whole; what is important here is the effect objects had
on a growing mind. The line of development in this Cen-
tury is chronological, but seen from a fixed point of
view; the past is viewed in terms of knowledge the adult
Traherne has gained since the time of the events he
describes.

Most of the vision of this Century is simul-

taneously personal and universal. Traherne begins with

148

infancy and childhood, but the infancy he recounts is that
of human history as well as his own. "Certainly Adam in
Paradice had not more sweet and Curious Apprehensions of
the World, then when I was a child" (1).
All appeared New, and Strange at the first, in-
expressibly rare, and Delightfull, and Beautifull.
I was a little Stranger which at my Entrance into
the World was Saluted and Surrounded with innumerable
Joys. My Knowledg was Divine. I knew by Intuition
those things which since my Apostasie, I Collected
again, by the Highest Reason. My very Ignorance was
Advantageous. I seemed as one Brought into the Estate
of Innocence. (2)
He "knew by Intuition" infinity and eternity, not thoughts
and ideas, which were to come from things.

References to Adam and Eden recur throughout this
treatment of the estate of Innocence, a period when "All
Time was Eternity" (2). As a child, Traherne lived "in the
Peace of Eden; Heaven and Earth did sing my Creators
Praises and could not make more Melody to Adam, then to
me" (2). "The Citie seemed to stand in Eden, or to be
Built in Heaven" (3). These descriptions he gives of the
world the child saw are among the most popular of Tra-
herne's prose writings. Here again he stresses the
importance of meditation on the estate of Innocence as a
starting point, for "He must be Born again and becom a
little Child that will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven"
(5). We do this by putting the corruptions of the world
so far out of mind that "only those Things appear, which

did to Adam in Paradice, in the same Light, and in the same

Colors" (5).

149

But man falls away from his childlike vision and
must work to return to it. Tracing that return is the
purpose of this Century, "And by what Steps and Degrees
I proceeded to that Enjoyment of all Eternity which now I
possess I will likewise shew you" (6). Sections 7-14
deal almost exclusively with what Traherne elsewhere calls
the estate of Misery, the soul after the fall from its
childhood innocence. It is notable that these sections
are almost empty of references to the larger vision we
have been talking about, that vision which sees the past
and future in and through the present. Traherne does see
the corruption he is dealing with as deriving from Adam's
fall (8), and what he says of himself does apply to every
man; but the Biblical-historical applications and point of
view are largely missing. Here again we see the form re-
flecting the content, for in the estate of Misery the
vision of eternity-time is lost. While it would have been
possible for Traherne, writing from the point of view of
one who knows what is at the end of the journey, to in-
clude historical parallels in his usual manner, it is more
effective and illustrative that he does not do so. He
speaks of what the soul in Misery is confined to, present
things: "Tinsild Ware upon a Hobby hors" (9), the
"Barbarous Inventions" of the modern world which "put
Grubs and Worms in Mens Heads" (13) and to which he con-
trasts the lack of possessions among the innocent "Bar-

barous Indians" (12).

150

Because many of the specific ideas presented in
this Century have already been noted and discussed in con-
nection with earlier Centuries (though they are now being
applied to the individual soul), the survey of this Century
can deal in broader terms with the general movement and
development that takes place here. Two things are of
especial note in this development: (1) how the Bible gains
in importance as the soul's vision expands, and (2) how
the treatment of topics becomes less personal and more
universal.

Traherne makes it clear the fall into Misery is
a forgetting and a failure of the understanding: "I had
utterly forgotten all Goodness Bounty Comfort and Glory:
for lack of which therfore He was unknown" (14). But
into the dark existence of Misery came Grace. It came
first through dreams (15) and intuitions (16), but his
thoughts were still confined. "I knew not then my Soul,
or Body: nor did I think of the Heavens and the Earth,
the Rivers and the Stars, the Sun or the Seas: all those
were lost, and Absent from me" (16). Questions started
to form in his mind now, questions about those things
which he knew to be in the world, but did not have immedi-
ate knowledge of through his senses. As he learned to
think about unseen things, his soul's vision began to grow:

Som times I should Soar abov the Stars and Enquire
how the Heavens Ended, and what was beyond them?
concerning which by no means could I receiv satis-

faction. som times my Thoughts would carry me to the
Creation, for I had heard now, that the World which

151

at first I thought was Eternal, had a Beginning: how
therfore that Beginning was, and Why it was; Why it
was no sooner, and what was before; I mightily de-
sired to Know. By all which I easily perceiv that
my Soul was made to live in Communion with GOD, in
all Places of his Dominion, and to be satisfied with
the Highest Reason in all Things. (18)
As he learned of the extent of his soul, Traherne also
discovered the necessity for limits in the material world,
finally finding "That infinit Worth shut up in the Limits
of a Material Being, is the only way to a Real Infinity"
(20). But this vision of the soul only began to form now
and was "not atchieved till a long time afterwards" (22).
In the meantime he had experiences which, though
also not fully understood until much later, prepared his
soul for the truth it was to receive. One such experience
was of seeing a room prepared for a feast, a fascinating
sight which very soon, however, the child ceased to be
interested in. But when later he saw it filled with men
and women, the place that had become dull for him was
transformed and there was "nothing of Tediousness but
pleasure in it" (22). From thinking of this experience
later he learned the necessity of other people to true
happiness and the value of motion above static forms.
Another of these experiences was of being overcome by
loneliness in an empty field, an experience which he felt
to have come about through a forgetting of his involvement
in all the universe (23).

But what opened the way for the growing Traherne

more than anything else was his curiosity to learn new

152

things, and the ability he found to create these things,

though he had never seen them, in his imagination.
When I heard of any New Kingdom beyond the seas, the
Light and Glory of it pleased me immediatly, entered
into me, it rose up within me and I was Enlarged
Wonderfully. I entered into it, I saw its Commodi-
ties, Rarities, Springs, Meadows, Riches, Inhabitan[t]s,
and became Possessor of that New Room, as if it had
been prepared for me, so much was I Magnified and
Delighted in it. (24)

It was the love of news that led Traherne to the
good news of the Bible. "When the Bible was read my
Spirit was present in other Ages. . . . This shewd me the
Liveliness of interior presence, and that all Ages were
for most Glorious Ends, Accessible to my Understanding"
(24). He wanted to learn of new things so much that he
developed a desire for a book from heaven (perhaps as a
result of reading Revelation). But the book, he found
(like other readers of Revelation) was already before him;
it was the Bible. Traherne discusses this gift of the
Bible as he did that of Christ and of creation in previous
Centuries: by showing that a book from heaven could not
have come to him in any better way than in did. God's
method of giving him this gift made it as universal as
was possible.

But the Bible was not the only book from which
Traherne learned. At the university he studied many
subjects, which studies showed him how much there was in

the world; but they did not show him how all of these

things pertained to his happiness. "There was never a

153

Tutor that did professely Teach Felicity" (37) says
Traherne, making a seventeenth-century plea for relevance
in the curriculum. In our studies we must see both how
the things we learn apply to ourselves and also what they
have to do with the nature of God. Eventually, according
to Traherne, these two considerations become one, when we
see that man's happiness and God's Glory are the same.
Traherne treats those specific areas of learning
which he has found to be of most importance, defining them
in terms of the knowledge they led him to rather than
according to their usual limits. These include Humanity,
the study of the nature of the soul; Divinity, the study
of the essence of God and of man "in his fourfold Estate"
(43); Natural Philosophy, the inquiry into the nature of
all things; and Ethics, the study "of Moralitie, and the
Nature of Affections Virtues and Maners" (45). All of
these fields of study in their final stages become the
same field, for all lead to the God-like soul's knowledge
and love of all things.
From the university, Traherne went to live in the

country;

and being seated among silent Trees, had all my Time

in mine own Hands, I resolved to Spend it all, what-

ever it cost me, in Search of Happiness, and to

Satiat that burning Thirst which Nature had Enkindled,

in me from my Youth. (46)

His search was successful, and, speaking from the present,

Traherne says he now finds himself living "a free and a

154

Kingly Life, as if the World were turned again into Eden,
or much more, as it is at this day" (46).
After first making a strong rejection of sin, such
a rejection being the prerequisite for a holy life, Tra-
herne sketches the method of contemplation he employed
while in the country. With so many objects for thought
possible, he determined he must choose only the best. The
best things, he found, were "the most Obvious and Common
Things" (53). These include "Air, Light, Heaven and
Earth, Water, the Sun, Trees, Men and Women, Cities
Temples &c." (53) as well as invisible things such as
"The Laws of God, the Soul of Man, Jesus Christ and His
Passion on the Crosse, with the Ways of GOD in all Ages"
(54). But after he had begun studying these obvious
things
to my unspeakable Wonder, they brought me to all the
Things in Heaven and in Earth, in Time and Eternity,
Possible and Impossible, Great and Little, Common and
Scarce, and Discovered them all to be infinit
Treasures. (54)
His method was to find the relationship the object
of his thought had to eternity:
That any thing may be found to be an infinit Treasure,
its Place must be found in Eternity, and in Gods
Esteem. For as there is a Time, so there is a Place
for all Things. Evry thing in its Place is Admirable
Deep and Glorious: out of its Place like a Wandering
Bird, is Desolat and Good for Nothing. How therfore
it relateth to God and all Creatures must be seen
before it can be Enjoyed. (55)
He found the ability to come to such knowledge through

remembering that he had been created in the image of God.

155

Traherne thus comes back to the condition he experienced
in infancy, infinity, a condition characteristic of all

of God's creatures since they are "Almightnyower wholy

 

exerted" (62), eternal act. Not only are all things
infinite, they are eternal.
All Things being now to be seen and Contemplated in
His Bosom: and Advanced therfore into a Diviner
Light, being infinitly Older and more Precious then
we were aware. Time itself being in GOD Eternaly.
(65)

This vision of things under the aspect of eternity
is a vision of Glory, a communion with God, though Traherne
says he was not aware of this when he first began to see
things in this manner (66). What led him to discover that
this was "the Way of Communion with God in all Saints"
was "the Person of David" (66) as evidenced in the Psalms.
As he read them, Traherne says, a light emanated from the
Psalms which eventually threw light upon the entire Bible.
He learned to look on the objects of his contemplations
with eyes like David's, seeing them all as benefits to be
returned to God through praise and thanksgiving.

The remainder of the Third Centure is largely
filled with quotations from the Psalms: they being, we
recall, a type of the music of the New Jerusalem and
praises being, according to Traherne, "the very End for
which the World was created" (82) and the activity of
the soul in Glory. David was able to praise as he did,

to commune with God, "in the Light of Prophesie, not of

History. Much more therfore should we rejoyce, who see

156

these Prophesies fulfilled" (96). Through the study of
God's working in time, in history, we can come to the

vision of Glory. From personal loss of vision Traherne
has advanced through this Century to a glimpse, by the

light of the Bible, into eternity and Glory.

The purpose of the Fourth Century is stated clearly
at its opening:

Having spoken so much concerning his Entrance and
Progress in Felicity, I will in this Centurie speak

of the Principles with which your friend endued Him-
self to enjoy it! for besides Contemplativ, there is

an Activ Happiness; which consisteth in Blessed
Operations. And as som things fit a man for Contem-

plation, so there are others fitting him for Action:
which as they are infinitly necessary to Practical

Happiness, so are they likewise infinitly conduciv to

Contemplativ it self. (1)
From contemplation of the journey through the estates,
Traherne is turning to those principles which, when
followed actively, make life happier and the fruition of
contemplation possible. In keeping with the nature of
the general subject, the soul, these are principles which
apply to the activities of the individual. The Fourth
Century might be said to mirror in a very general way the
First Century. Both Centuries are primarily concerned
with principles and ideas related to the road to Glory
but do not present a detailed tracing of that road; and
both culminate in a discussion of love, the First Century

ending with a discussion of love for others as typified

by the love of Jesus Christ, the concluding portions of

157

the Fourth Century dealing largely with self-love and with
God's love for the individual soul.l
In this Century Traherne speaks of the author of
the previous Centuries in the third person, saying that
this person taught the present speaker the things he is
relating. Traherne does use the pronoun "I" in this Cen-
tury, but it is not a lapse in his established point of
view; that "I" is the present speaker as representative
of man in general learning and having learned these things.
The reason for this shift in point of view is not modesty,
for Traherne says specifically that there is no immodesty
involved in declaring one's principles:
I speak not His Practices but His Principles. I
should too much Prais your friend did I speak his
Practices, but it is no shame for any man to declare
his Principles, tho they are the most Glorious in the
world. (30)
Traherne adds, wittily, that his friend did, however, ask
him, because of modesty, to say of his practices that they
were never willingly in violation of these principles.

This shift in point of View does, however, have a

marked effect on the style, an effect which contributes

 

lLouis Martz sees this Century concerned with "the
third stage of Bonaventure's journey," that in which "the
mind is able to seek God by inquiring into the 'essential
attributes' of God and into the 'properties' of the Trinity
(The Paradise Within [New Haven, 1964], p. 100). Martz
bases his argument largely on the discussion of love at
the end of the Fourth Century. But the principles Tra-
herne discusses, and the points of view from which love
is treated (self-love, love of others, the love of God for
the soul) are concerned, as my discussion in this chapter
should make clear, with the individual soul, not with God
directly.

 

158

greatly to the maintenance of Traherne's direction, purpose
and unity. This change allows him to present the "I" of
the Third Century somewhat as an idealized human being who
has been advanced into the vision of Glory and thus deal
with these principles always in terms of his success. By
speaking of "his" principles, Traherne keeps our vision
fixed on the end of the journey we are to make and empha-
sizes that the "I" of the last Century was not just Tra-
herne but every man. Though these principles are things
to be learned during the course of the journey to Glory,
Traherne's use of the third person sustains this Century
at the level on which the Third Century concluded.2

Of the principles with which Traherne deals, we

have considered several of them before in other contexts.

 

2Joan Webber explains this shift in terms of a
link to the figure of David in the Third Century:
"In the third century, Traherne's identification with
David, whom he still continues to speak of as 'he,'
eases the transition to a separation of himself into
a 'he' and an 'I' who play the same roles that 'David'
and 'Traherne' do. The 'he,' or 'your Friend' of the
fourth century is a rarified being who has achieved
felicity at least partly through the Psalms, and who
now through the mediation of the 'I' sends down
principles to the reader, somewhat as God did through
Moses to the children of the Hebrews." (The Eloquent
"sf [Madison, 1968], pp. 231-232.)
I do not believe there is an "identification" with David
in the Third Century, other than the same sympathetic
identification and communion felt with Adam and with
Christ in the estates to which they belong. The role
the "he" plays is not just that of David, but of Adam, of
Christ, and of every human soul advanced to the vision of
Glory. The separation is not that of God and Moses, but
of Christ and the human soul which imitates and contains
him.

 

159

Treated at length here is the principle that "evry man
ought to spend his time, in studying diligently Divine
Philosophy" (3), the study of which involves the contem-
plation of happiness and of universal things in a life of
practiced virtue. Traherne stresses that felicity is to be
sought here not hereafter. Some other principles are that

"£2 is 3 Good Thing 32 23 Happy alone" (14), that the

 

 

inner value of an object is more important than its being,
and that one should communicate with the wisest and best
of men. The principles of charity and of free will receive
significant consideration also.
Several principles important in terms of our
present study of Traherne's vision of eternity-time are
to be found in this Century. For instance, Traherne says
that the principle of charity is developed in the soul
through the contemplation of Paradise:
He generaly held, that Whosoever would enjoy the
Happiness of Paradice must put on the Charity of
Paradice. . . . He called his Hous the Hous of Para-
dice: not only because it was the Place wherin he
enjoyed the whole World, but because it was evry ones
hous in the whole world. for observing the Methods,
and studying the Nature of Charity in Paradice, he
found that all men would be Brothers and Sisters
throughout the whole World. and evermore love one
another as their own selvs, tho they had never seen
each other before. (22)

"He thought the Stars as fair now, as they were in Eden,

the sun as Bright, the Sea as Pure" (24); only man has

fallen, but he may return. The same timeless vision is

to be found in the principle "that he was to treat evry

man in the Person of Christ. That is both as if Himself

160

were Christ in the Greatnes of his Lov, and also as if the
Man were Christ" (28).

Traherne deals with the estates in this Century
also, listing principles he associates with them. He
speaks of the innate goodness of creation and the dominion
given man, man's ability to "receiv all the Things in
Heaven and Earth" (50).

If you ask, what is becom of us since the Fall? becaus
all these things now lately named seem to pertain to
the Estate of Innocency; Truly Now we have superadded
Treasures: Jesus Christ. And are restored to the
Exercise of the same Principles, upon higher Obli-
gations. (53)
Life according to its original principles can be brought
about through self-love; for when we see, know and love
ourselves as we truly are, created in God's image, capable
of infinity and eternity, and loved so much by God that
He "made the World and gav his Son" (58), we cannot help
but see how others are made in the same image and equally
worthy of love. Traherne says he spent "ten yeers studying
before he could satisfy his Self Lov. And now finds
nothing more easy then to lov others better than oneself"
(55). This love of others is characteristic of the estate
of Grace. We are to love all men as Christ did. "Is it
unnatural to do what Jesus Christ hath don?" (59).3

But Traherne never allows us to forget the result

of his methods and principles, Glory. We are reminded that

 

3The background of Traherne's concept of self-love
is discussed in Webber, pp. 221-226.

161

the heaven we seek is internal: "Tis not Change of Place,
but Glorious Principles well Practiced that establish
Heaven in the Life and Soul" (37). And he calls up the
picture of the "I" of the last Century for whom "Having
these Principles nothing was more easy then to enjoy the
world. which being enjoyed, he had nothing more to do,
then to spend his Life in Praises and Thanksgiving" (41).
The full realization of Glory occurs after death, but we
dare not put off the journey. "And remember that this and
the other life are made of a Piece: but this is the time
of Trial, that of Rewards" (60).
In section 61 Traherne, though he has been treat-
ing love before this point, decides to speak of it in a
more direct way. "Since Lov will thrust in it self as
the Greatest of all Principles, let us at last willingly
allow it Room" (61). Love is identified as itself filled
with principles "that would make me fit for all Ages"
(66). This can come about because of the nature of love:
It is present with all Objects, and Tasts all Excel-
lencies, and meeteth the Infinitness of GOD in evry
Thing. So that in Length it is infinit as well as
in Bredth. . . . Thence also it can see into further
Spaces, Things present and Things to come Hight and
Depth being open before it, and all things in Heaven
Eternity and Time equaly near. (66)
This is, of course, the same thing Traherne has been say-
ing about the nature of man and God; and Traherne explains
that love, too, is “His Image" (67) and indeed "this Lov

is your tru Self when you are in Act what you are in

Power" (67). The soul in Glory is an act of love expressed

162

in praise and thanksgiving for all things. The soul thus
can Lov Adam in Eden, Moses in the Wilderness, Aaron
in the Tabernacle, David before the Ark, S. Paul among
the Nations, and Jesus either in the Manger or on the
crosse All these it can love with violence., And when
it is restored from all that is Terrene and Sensual,
to its thru Spiritual Being, it can lov these and any
of these as violently as any Person in the Living Age.
(67)
To lov all Persons in all Ages, All Angels, all Worlds
is Divine and Heavenly. To lov all Cities and all
Kingdoms, all Kings and all Peasants, and evry Person
in all Worlds with a natural intimat familiar Lov, as
if Him alone, is Blessed. This makes a Man Effectualy
Blessed in all Worlds, a Delightfull Lord of all
Things, a Glorious friend to all Persons, a concerned
Person in all Transactions, and ever present with all
Affairs. (69)

The Omnipresence therfore and the Eternity of GOD are
our Throne, wherin we are to reign for evermore. (72)

Many similar quotations could be drawn out of the remainder
of this Century. Traherne develops the idea of the soul's
power to love infinity and eternity by means of a dis-
cussion of the mind's ability to accommodate itself to the
size of any object it chooses to contemplate, by quotations
from Pico and others, and by analogy to the powers of
things in the physical universe such as the sun or a
mirror. He stresses the necessity for the constant exer-
cise of this power in order to develop it to its fullest
capacity.

In the last section of this Century, Traherne
lists the benefits which will derive from this expansion
of the soul to its infinite capacity. As the last and

most important one Traherne gives: "A Perfect Indwelling

163

of the Soul in GOD, and GOD in the Soul" (100). With
methods and principles fully covered, it is now time to
treat the end as it is in itself; it is time to consider

directly the nature of God.

CHAPTER VII

THE ONE

The Fifth Century consists of ten sections followed
in the manuscript by the numeral "11" and forty-eight
blank pages. Though several of Traherne's recent critics

maintain that the Centuries are complete, all of the non-

 

emotional evidence seems to indicate otherwise. H. M.
Margoliouth says of the last section of this Century:

"I cannot but look on V. 10 as a triumphant and perfect
conclusion. How could Traherne have gone beyond it? The

1

Centuries are not unfinished." But he himself admits

 

that the "11" following this section indicates "that
Traherne, at one time at any rate, thought of going on"

(I, xi). So that Traherne's decision never to continue
could not have been made until after g, V, 10 was finished.
Lacking external evidence, there is no sure proof that
Traherne ever determined that he had finished the Fifth

Century.

 

1In his edition of Traherne's Centuries, Poems
and Thanksgivings, I, 297n.

 

164

165

There is, of course, the presentation quatrain:
This book unto the friend of my best friend
As of the Wisest Love a Mark I send
That she may write my Makers prais therin
And make her self therby a Cherubin.
But this has problems of its own. This is the sort of
inscription one expects to be made in a blank gift book,

not in a book already nearly two-thirds full. This quatrain

is not followed immediately by the Centuries in the manu-

 

script but by what Margoliouth describes as "Notes by
Traherne on Blessedness, a series of headings with no
special connexion with the Centuries" (I, x). After this
is a page on which is written, not in Traherne's hand, the
title, "Centuries of Meditations," followed by five blank

pages. Then Traherne's Centuries begin. Thus the quatrain

 

may have had nothing to do with the Centuries. Several

 

speculations about what happened are possible, but I will
refrain from making them; the study of Traherne's biography
is a subject already well supplied with speculations.

The strongest evidence that Traherne's intentions
for the Fifth Century were never completed is the opening
of that Century itself, where Traherne clearly states his
purpose:

The objects of Felicitie, and the Way of enjoying
them, are two Material Themes; wherin to be instructed
is infinitly desirable, becaus as Necessary, as
Profitable. Whether of the Two, the Object, or the
Way be more Glorious; it is difficult to determine.
God is the Object, and God is the Way of Enjoying.

God in all his Excellencies, Laws and Works, in all
his Ways and Councels is the Soveraign Object of all
Felicitie. Eternity and Time, Heaven and Earth,

166

Kingdoms and Ages, Angels and Men, are in him to be
enjoyed. In him, the fountain, in him the End; in
him the Light, the Life, the Way, in him the Glory
and Crown of all. Yet for Distinction sake, we will
speak of several eminent Particulars. Beginning with
his Attributes. (1)

All things come together in God. Things do not
lose their identity, they keep their "place"; but the end
of the journey we have been tracing is the soul's vision
of all things included in God, who is still greater than
all things. Traherne seems about to speak of many of the
subjects he has touched on before; but here, once again,
his direction of approach to these subjects will be
different. He will speak of these things not so much in
terms of the world or of the human soul, but as they exist
in and from God.

I trust by now I have shown that Traherne wrote

the Centuries not haphazardly but with certain organi-

 

zational principles in mind. From what we have seen be-
fore, we can take him at his word that he intends this
Century to be a discussion of the several things included
under the concept of God, "Beginning with his Attributes."
The nine sections remaining treat only three attributes:
infinity, eternity and omnipresence. I think it is safe
to assume that Traherne could not have intentionally
finished a treatment of God's attributes without a dis-
cussion of love. Love of others had a crowning place in
his meditation on the external world; self-love played a

major role in his meditation on the soul. The Fifth

167

Century is missing a consideration of love as an attribute
of God as well as considerations of whatever other "eminent
Particulars" Traherne had in mind.
Of the attributes he does consider, Traherne says
that God's infinity is to be enjoyed because it "compre-
hends infinit Space" (2) where all our treasures are to
be found, because by means of it we are capable of en-
larging our thoughts without bounds, and because it not
only surrounds us but fills us as well and is thus more
easily known than anything physical. Because of God's
infinity, His goodness and all of His other characteris-
tics are infinite. Infinite space "is like a Painters
Table" (5) filled with everything that could possibly be
painted on it. But there is an infinity which surrounds
this picture, one present to the inner "Ey" which sees
infinity in its eternal aspect.
And thus we are brought to the attribute of
eternity.
Eternity is a Mysterious Absence of Times and Ages:
an Endless Length of Ages always present, and for
ever Perfect. For as there is an immovable Space
wherin all finit Spaces are enclosed, and all Motions
carried on, and performed: so is there an Immovable
Duration, that contains and measures all moving Dur-
ations. Without which first the last could not be.
(7)

All beginnings and endings, all thoughts and acts, all

souls are before God and in His eternity.

Finally, God's omnipresence makes His present with

us everywhere and we with Him. Being present with the

168

omnipresent God places us in the company of everything
that is. God's presence and consequently our participation
in it has nothing of a static nature. We have seen the
importance of movement in Traherne before, and this im-
portance arises because God is "a Pure and simple Act"
and thus His being

is present in its Operations, and by those Acts which

it eternaly exerteth, is wholly Busied in all Parts

and places of his Dominion, perfecting and compleating

our Bliss and Happiness. (10)

After this comes the numeral "11" and those blank

pages that one reader, at least, has taken to symbolize
the height of a mystic state of repose. Some of Traherne's
"Thanksgivings" may indicate where the Fifth Century would
have gone. Certainly the "Thanksgivings for God's Attri-
butes" must, at any rate, be taken into account. These
"Thanksgivings" of Traherne's are prayers of petition and,
mainly, of praise. They are in form similar to contem-

porary Psalm translations and are especially like the

Private Devotions of Lancelot Andrewes.2 They deal with

 

many of the subjects mentioned in g, V, l as well as with
the body and the soul; there is also "A Thanksgiving and
Prayer for the NATION."

In the "Thanksgivings for God's Attributes,"

Traherne, after praises of the God who

 

2The parallel to Andrewes' work was pointed out
by Carol Marks in "Traherne's Church's Year-Book," PBSA,
LX (1966), 57n.

169

. . . hath made my Soul
In the Image of himself,
An understanding eye,
That like an open day,
Shall at once be present in all places (9-13),
speaks of the many attributes of God now visible to him.
He deals especially with wisdom, goodness and power, and
then goes on to treat the three we saw discussed in the
Fifth Century, "Thine infinity, thine eternity, the
exquisite perfection of thine Omnipresence" (86-87).
Eternity plays the greatest part of the three, for it opens
to vision the presence of God's love to all possible things
in all ages. Traherne desires while here on earth to re-
turn in some measure the love that has been given him.
The "Thanksgivings for the Wisdom of his WORD" are
also of especial interest to us. It is God's word that
both shows us the right way back to our true nature and
provides us with proof that we have reached our goal.
God's word is
A Book which thou hast sent
To me from Heaven,
etect the vanities of this wicked World,
To Guide my feet into the way of peace,
Shew me the Treasures of eternal Happiness.
To Elevate my thoughts, Purifie my heart,
Enlighten my eyes, Refine my Soul,
Direct my Desires, Quicken my Affections,
Set my Mind in frame, Restore me to thine Image,
Call me again to Communion with Thee,
In all thy Goods and Treasures. (135-145)
The "word" is specifically the Bible, of course; but the

meaning goes beyond application to that book.

170

Other of the "Thanksgivings" deal with God's provi-
dence, his laws, and his works and ways. All are like the
Fifth Century in dealing with their subject in terms of
God; though, as always, applications to man and the world
are also present. The progress Traherne has been treating
is a cumulative one and its end is clear; as he says in

the Meditations pg the Six Days 2E the Creation, "We can

 

 

 

never rest till we see all things from God to God, pro-
ceeding from him, and ending in him" (p. 82).

In spite of his variety in methods of presentation,
Traherne's message is usually the same one. I have been

dealing primarily with Christian Ethicks and the Centuries

 

 

in this study, but the concepts and methods of these works
and even many of their images occur in Traherne's poetry,

in the "Select Meditations" and in the Meditations ps the

 

Six Days ps the Creation. Traherne is certainly not the

 

only author who had one thing to say and said it in volumes,
nor is this any real criticism of him.

Louis Marz has commented on repetition in the 9227
turies, showing its function in establishing the contents
of a meditation in the mind of the meditator.3 But
repetition in Traherne is as much related to his phi-

losophy as it is to his method of meditation. Traherne

was striving for a vision of the One; but the One, for

 

3The Paradise Within (New Haven, 1964), pp. 43-54.

 

171

Traherne, included the many. The One is a statue of flaw-
less marble, around which Traherne leads his reader,
pointing out its details and beauties from one aspect,
then another; and at last he asks that we stand back and
see the work as a whole. The parts are of the same
material as the whole, though they differ in form. Every
part reflects the qualities characteristic of the whole
in a relationship that is mutual, for the qualities of
the whole exist because of their presence in the parts.
But, of course, the One is not completely like this statue;
for the One is infinite and eternal, and thus all its
attributes are infinite and eternal. Form for it is not
a physical property but a spiritual state of being.
Traherne chose to present his message in the
variety of ways he did in order to make it as clear as
possible. The purpose of his art, as I have said, was to
teach. It also served as a matter of record; for, as
Martz notes, by recording those thoughts he felt to be
essential to the understanding of the One, he was helping
to engrave them in his mind. The One must be seen from
all possible points of view. That statement is as true of
his art as it is of his philosophy. Traherne's life-
problem was to find the possible ways of approaching
truth. He is not to be condemned for re-employing those
methods he found to be successful in one context in his
work in another. There may perhaps be for some a sameness

in much of what Traherne says that, on a first reading,

172

obscures distinctions; but the differences are there and
worth being sought out and analyzed.

In this study I have examined a specific charac-
teristic of the One, eternity, and the presence of that
eternity in all which the One contains, the condition I
call eternity-time. I have intended to show the degree to
which Traherne worked out the concept and the tremendous
influence it had on all of his thought and art. There are
many objections that could be drawn against Traherne's
system, and I think he realized and dealt with many of
them. We have, for instance, seen him handling the ob-
jection that recorded history might be inaccurate or wrong.

That physical things cease to be, Traherne never
denied. His philosophy is a philOSOphy of the mind and
the soul, not particularly of matter. Perhaps this
philosophy is irrelevant today. But perhaps it is becom-
ing less so. Time, we know now, is relative; and we find
that we are able to perceive events in the distant past
of another solar system. We are discovering that knowl-
edge and love of all people and all things, past, present
and future, though a very ancient goal, may be necessary
for our very survival on this earth. As the scale of
priorities shifts slightly away from a materialistic
science (though perhaps science was never truly material-

istic, only those who lived in her wake) toward the

173

"humanities," we are becoming increasingly concerned with
the inner value of human lives and with inner methods of
developing those values. We are coming to find that
prejudice can only be countered with understanding of and
empathy with the lives and feelings of others, "communion."
We may even be beginning to learn from history, as we see
more clearly that events do not simply cease to be but are
contained in all future events coming from them.

Certainly there is no need to accept personally
Traherne's philosophy in order to find it interesting and
possibly relevant to modern life. And one need not even
find it relevant to life in order to see its relevance to
art. For Traherne has successfully allowed his content,
his "message," to shape, mold and, indeed, become his
form. Traherne's works are an attempt at the organic art
toward which literature has always seemed to be growing.
And, in one sense at least, Traherne's idea about eternity-
time is true; for so long as he is read and understood,

Traherne's mind and its ideas live in the eternal now.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Traherne Criticism (excluding brief mentions,
editions of Traherne's works, literary
histories and most reviews).

Ames, Kenneth J. "The Religious Language of Thomas
Traherne's Centuries" (diss. University of Southern
California, 1967). Abstracted in Dissertation
Abstracts, XXVIII (1967), 3173A.

 

Barnstone, W. "Two Poets of Felicity: Thomas Traherne
and Gorge Guillén," Books Abroad, XLII (1968),
14-19.

Beachcroft, T. O. "Traherne and the Cambridge Platonists,"
Dublin Review, CLXXXVI (1930), 278-290.

. "Traherne and the Doctrine of Felicity," The
Criterion, IX (1930), 291-307.

 

Bennett, J. A. W. "Traherne and Brasenose," Notes and
Queries, CLXXXIX (1945), 84.

Bethell, S. L. The Cultural Revolution Q; the Seventeenth
Century. New York, 1951.

Bicket, Zenos Johan. "An Imagery Study in Thomas Traherne's
Centuries of Meditations" (diss. University of
Arkansas, 1966). Abstracted in Dissertation
Abstracts, XXVI (1966), 4624.

Bodleian Library. "The Manuscripts of Thomas Traherne,"
Bodleian Library Record, III (1951), 179-180.

Botrall, Margaret. "Traherne's Praise of Creation,"
Critical Quarterly, I (1959), 126-133.

Bury, R. G. "A Passage in Traherne," letter to London
Times Literary Supplement, June 8, 1940, p. 279.

174

175

Cappuzzo, Marcello. "Thomas Traherne ('Poems' e'Centuries
of Meditation')," Rendiconti, XCVIII (1964), 69-88.

 

Christ, Ernst. Studien E2 Thomas Traherne. Tfibingen,
1932.

Clements, Arthur Leo. The Mystical Poetryps Thomas
Traherne. Cambridge, Mass., 1969.

 

. [Same Title], (diss. Syracuse, 1964). Abstracted
in Dissertation Abstracts, XXV (1964), 1189.

 

. "On the Mode and Meaning of Traherne's Mystical
Poetry: 'The Preparative,'" Studies is Philology,
LXI (1964), 500-521.

 

Colby, Frances L. "Thomas Traherne and Henry More,"
Modern Language Notes, LXII (1947), 490-492.

 

. "Traherne and the Cambridge Platonists: An
Analytical Comparison," (diss. Johns Hopkins,
1947).

Colie, Rosalie L. Paradoxia Epidemica. Princeton, 1966.

 

"Thomas Traherne and the Infinite: The
Ethical Compromise," Huntington Libraryguarterly,
XXI (1957), 69-82.

 

Connoly, Brian W. "Knowledge and Love: Steps Toward
Felicity in Thomas Traherne," (diss. Pittsburg,
1966). Abstracted in Dissertation Abstracts,
XXVIII (1967), 1047.

Daniells, Roy. "The Mannerist Element in English Liter-
ature," Universityps Toronto Quarterly, XXXVI
(1966), 1-11.

Dawson, M. L. "Thomas Treherne" [sic], letter to London
Times Literary Supplement, September 29, 1927,
p. 667.

Day, Malcom MacEwen. "Thomas Traherne and the Perennial
Philosophy," (diss. Western Reserve, 1964).

. "Traherne and the Doctrine of Pre-existence,"
Studies is Philology: LXV (1968), 81-98.

 

Denonain, Jean-Jaques. Themes et Formes de la Poesie

"Metaphysiques." Paris, 1956.

176

Diehm, Arnold. "Studien zu Mystik und Weltwirklich Keit
in der Dichtung Andrew Marvells, Henry Vaughans,
und Thomas Trahernes," (diss. Tfibingen, 1957).

Dobell, Bertram. "An Unknown Seventeenth Century Poet,"
The Athenaeum (April 7, 1900), pp. 433-435.

Doughty, W. L. Studies is Religious Poetry gs the Seven-
teenth Century. London, 1946.

 

 

Ellrodt, Robert. Les Poétes Métaphysiques Anglais. Pt. I,
vol. II. Paris, 1960.

 

 

. "Le Message de Thomas Traherne," Cahiers gs
Sud, no. 301 (1950), 434-450.

Fleming, William Kaye. Mysticism is Christianity. London,
1913.

 

 

Gilbert, Allan H. "Thomas Traherne as Artist," Modern
Language Quarterly, VIII (1947), 319-341, 435-447.

Goldknopf, David. "The Disintegration of Symbol in a
Meditative Poet," College English, XXX (1968),
48-59.

Grandvoinet, Renee. "Thomas Traherne and the Doctrine of
Felicity," Etudes g3 Lettres, XIII (1939), 164-177.

Grigson, Geoffrey. "The Transports of Thomas Traherne,"
Bookman, LXXXII (1932), 250.

Guffey, George R. "Thomas Traherne on Original Sin,"
Notes and Queries, XIV (1967), 98-100.

. "Margoliouth's Emendation of a Line in Traherne's
'For Man to Act,'" American Notes and Queries, V}
(1967), 162-163.

 

Hall, Rev. William C. "Poetical Works of Thomas Traherne,"
The Manchester Quarterly, XXIII (1940), 376-382.

Harrison, Thomas P. "Seneca and Traherne," Arion, VI
(1967), 403-405.

Hepburn, Ronald W. "Thomas Traherne: The Nature and
Dignity of the Imagination," The Cambridge Journal,
VI (1953), 725-734.

 

Herman, E. The Meaning and Value 2£ Mysticism. London,
1915.

 

177

Hobhouse, S. "A Poet's Resurrection," Spectator, CLVII
(1936), 804.

 

Hodgson, Geraldine E. English Mystics. London, 1922.

Hopkinson, Arthur W. "Thomas Traherne," letter to London
Times Literary Supplement, October 6, 1927, p.
694.

 

Howarth, P. G. "Felicity in Traherne," Notes and Queries,
CXCIII (1948), 249-250.

 

Iredale, Queenie. Thomas Traherne. Oxford, 1935.

 

Itrat-Husain. The Mystical Element is the Metaphysical
Poets ps the Seventeenth Century. Edinburgh, 1948.

 

 

 

Jennings, Elizabeth. "The Accessible Art. A Study of
Thomas Traherne's Centuries of Meditations,"
Twentieth Century, CLXVIII (1960), 140-151.

 

Jones, Rufus M. Spiritual Reformers is the 16th s 17th
Centuries. London, 1914.

 

 

Jones, W. Lewis. "Thomas Traherne and the Religious
Poetry of the Seventeenth Century," The Quarteriy
Review, CC (1904), 437-464.

 

Korte, Donald M. "Thomas Traherne's 'The Estate,'"
Thoth, VI (1965), 13-19.

Leishman, James Blair. The Metaphysical Poets: Donne,
Herbert, Vaughan, Traherne. Oxford, 1934.

 

 

 

Lock, Walter. "An English Mystic," The Constructive
Quarterly, I (1913), 826-836.

 

Lohrer, Frieda. Die Mystic und ihre Quellen is Thomas
Traherne. Au, 1930.

 

McAdoo, Henry Robert. The Spirit pi Anglicanism. London,
1965.

MacCaffrey, Isabel G. "The Meditative Paradigm," ELH,

Macaulay, Rose. Some Religious Elements is English
Literature. London, 1931.

 

 

Mahood, M. M. Poetry and Humanism. London, 1950.

 

Margoliouth, H. M. "The Date of Traherne's Ordination,"
Notes and Queries, CXCIX (1954), 408.

178

Marks, Carol Louise. "Thomas Traherne and Hermes Tris-
megistus," Renaissance News, XIX (1966), 118-131.

. "Thomas Traherne's Commonplace Book," Papers
of the Bibliographical Society pi America, LVIII
7'1'964) , 458-465. " "

. "Thomas Traherne's Early Studies," Papers pi
the Bibliographical Society pi America, LXII
(1968), 511-536.

. "Traherne's Church's Year-Book," Pa ers of the
Bibliographical Society pi America, LX (1966),
31-720

 

"Thomas Traherne and Cambridge Platonism,"
PMLA, LXXXI (1966), 521-534.

. See also Sicherman, Carol Marks.

Marshall, William H. "Thomas Traherne and the Doctrine
of Original Sin," Modern Language Notes, LXXIII
(1958), 161-165.

Martz, Louis L. The Paradise Within. New Haven, 1964.

Massingham, Harold. "A Note on Thomas Traherne," New
Statesman, IV (1914), 271-272.

 

More, Paul Elmer. "Thomas Traherne," The Nation, LXXXVIII
(1909), 160-162.

Naylor, E. W. "Three Seventeenth Century Poet-Parsons
and Music," Proceedin 3 ps the Musical Association,
55th session 9 -1928), 93-113.

Nicolson, Marjorie Hope. The Breaking ps the Circle.
New York, 1960.

Osborn, James M. "A New Traherne Manuscript," London
Times Literarnyupplement, October 8, 1964, p. 928.

Owen, Catherine A. "The Authorship of 'Meditations on
the Six Days of Creation' and the 'Meditations and
Devotions on the Life of Christ,'" Modern Languagp
Review, LVI (1961), l-12.

Parker, S. T. H. "A Devout Hedonist: The Riches of Thomas
Traherne," Living Age, CCCXIV (1922), 223-225.

179

Payne, Arthur. -"A Prose Poet: Thomas Traherne," Edu-
cational Times, LXXIV (1922), 223-225,

 

Price, C. "Thomas Traherne," a letter to the London Times
Literary Supplement, October 27, 1927, p. 767.

 

Proud, J. W. "Thomas Traherne: A Divine Philosopher,"
Friends' strter y Examiner, no. 201 (1917), 65-82.

Quiller-Couch, Sr. A. T. From 3 Cornish Window. Cam-
bridge, 1906.

. Studies is Literature, I. Cambridge, 1918.

Ridler, A. "Traherne: Some Wrong Attributions," Review
ps English Studies, XVIII (1967), 48-49.

Ridlon, Harold G. "The Function of the 'Infant-ey' in
the Traherne's Poetry," Studies is Philology,
LXI (1964), 627-639.

 

R¢stvig, Maren-Sofie. The Happy Man, vol. I. Oslo, 1962.

Rowley, Victor. "Thomas Traherne's Centuries and

Aristotle's Theory of Change," (M.A. thesis, Ohio
State University, 1967).

Russell, Angela. "The Life of Thomas Traherne," Review
ps Esglish Studies, VI (1955), 34-43.

. "A Study of Thomas Traherne's Christian
Ethicks," (B.Litt. thesis, Oxford, 1952).

Salter, K. W. "The Date of Traherne's Ordination," Notes
and Queries, CXIX (1954), 282.

. "The Nature of Traherne's Mysticism," (Master's
thesis, Bristol, 1954).

. Thomas Traherne: Mystic and Poet. New York,
1964.

"Traherne and a Romantic Heresy," Notes and
Queries, CC (1955), 153-156.

Sandbank, S. "Thomas Traherne on the Place of Man in
the Universe," Studies is English Language and
Literature, ed. Alice Shalvi and A. A. Mendilow.
Jerusalem, 1966.

 

180

Sauls, Lynn. "The Careless Compositor for Christian
Ethicks." Papers of the Bibliographical Society
93 America, LXIII T1969), 123-126.

Sayers, Dorothy L. "The Beatrician Vision in Dante and
Other Poets," Nottingham Mediaeval Studies, II
(1958), 3-23.

Seetaraman, M. W. "The Way of Felicity in Thomas
Traherne's 'Centuries' and 'The Poems'" in Critical
Essays ps English Literature, ed. V. S. Seturaman.
Madras, 1965.

 

Sherer, Gertrude R. "More and Traherne," Modern Language
Notes, XXXIV (1919), 49-50.

Sicherman, Carol Marks. "Traherne's Ficino Notebook,"
Papers p£_the sibliographical Society pi_America,
LXIII (1969), 73-81.

. See also Marks, Carol Louise.

Spurgeon, C. F. E. Mysticism is English Literature.
Cambridge, 1913.

Staley, Thomas F. "The Theocentric Vision of Thomas
Traherne," Cithara, IV (1964), 43-47.

Stranks, Charles James. Anglican Devotions. London,
1961.

Tanner, Lawrence Milvin. "Thomas Traherne's Centuries
ps Meditations: A Critical Introduction with
Annotations for the First and Second Centuries"
(diss. New York University, 1959). Abstracted in
Dissertation Abstracts, XX (1960), 3310-3311.

 

Thompson, Elbert N. S. "The Philosophy of Thomas
Traherne,W Philological Quarterly, VIII (1929),
97-112.

Towers, Frances. "Thomas Traherne: His Outlook on Life,"
The Nineteenth Century, LXXVII (1920), 1024-1030.

 

Uphaus, Robert. "Thomas Traherne: Perception as Process,
University p£_Windsor Review, II (1968), 19-21.

 

Wade, Gladys I. "The Manuscripts of the Poems of Thomas
Traherne," Modern Language Review, XXVI (1921),
401-407.

181

Wade, Gladys I. "Mrs. Susanna Hopton," The English Review,
LXII (1936), 41-47.

. "St. Thomas Aquinas and Thomas Traherne,"
Blackfriars, XII (1931), 666-673.

. Thomas Traherne: A Critical Biography.
Princeton, 1944.

. "Thomas Traherne as 'Divine Philosopher,'"
The Hibbert Journal, XXXII (1934), 400-408.

. "Traherne and the Spiritual Value of Nature
Study," The London Quarterly and Holbern Review,
CLIX (1934), 243-245.

Wahl, Jean. "Thomas Traherne: Poémes," Mesures, April 15,
1936. pp. 59-82.

. "Thomas Traherne,“ Etudes Anglaises, XIV (1961),
116-126.

 

Wallace, John Malcom. "Thomas Traherne and the Structure
of Meditation," ELH, XXV (1958), 79-89.

Watkins, Alfred. "Thomas Traherne," letter to London
simes Literary Supplement, October 20, 1927, p.
742.

Webbe, William. "Thomas Traherne's Poem 'Silence,'" Notes
and Queries, X (1964), 96.

Webber, Joan. The Eloquent "I": Style and Self is
Seventeenth-Century Prose. Madison, 1968.

"'I' and 'Thou' in the Prose of Thomas
Traherne," Papers is Language and Literature, II
(1966), 258-264.
White, Helen C. The Metaphysical Poets. New York, 1936.

Wilde, Hans 0. Thomas Traherne. Breslau, 1932.

Willcox, Louise Collier. "A Joyous Mystic," North American
Review, CXIII (1911), 893-904.

Willett, Gladys E. "Traherne," Spectator, CXXIV (1920),
84-85.

. Traherne (ss Essay). Cambridge, 1919.

182

Williams, Melvin G. "Thomas Traherne: Center of God's
Wealth," Cithara, III (1963), 32-40.

Willson, Cecil H. S. "Traherne and Wordsworth," London
Quarterly and Holborn Review, July, 1939, pp. 355-
358.

 

Willy, Margaret. Life Was Their Cry. Evans, 1950.

 

. "Thomas Traherne: 'Felicity's Perfect Lover,'"
English, XII (1959), 210-215.

. Three Metaphysical Poets. London, 1961.

 

Wilson, A. Doris L. "A Neglected Mystic: Thomas
Traherne," Poetry Review, XVI (1925), 11-22.

Winterbottom, K. M. "Certain Affinities to Wordsworth

in the Poetry of Vaughan and Traherne," (diss.
Pittsburg, 1933).

II. Works Cited (other than those
included above)

A. Traherne's Works

Centuries pi Meditations, ed. Bertram Dobell. London,
1927.

 

 

Centuries, Poems, and Thanksgivings, ed. H. M. Margoliouth.
2 Vol. Oxford, 1958 [1965 reprint].

 

 

Christian Ethicks, ed. Carol L. Marks and George Robert
Guffey. Ithaca, New York, 1968.

 

"Ficino Notebook." British Museum MS. Burney 126.

 

 

Meditations ps the Six Days pi the Creation, ed. George
Robert Guffey. Los Angeles, 1966.

Roman Forgeries. London, 1673.

 

"Select Meditations." MS. in the Osborn Collection, Yale
University Library.

183

B. Other

Anselm. Saint Anselm: Basic Writings, trans. S. N. Deane.
LaSalle, Illinois, 1962 [orig. 1903].

 

. "Proslogion" in s_Scholastic Miscellany_: Anselm
to Ockham, ed. and trans. Eugene R. Fairweather in

The Library of Christian Classics, ed. John Baille

pi si., X. London, 1956.

Aquinas, Thomas. St. Thomas Aguinas: Philosophical Texts,
ed. and trans. Thomas Gilby. London, 1951.

Augustine. The City pi God, trans. Marcus Dods, II.
New York, 1948.

. The Confessions of Saint Augustine, [Modern
Library ed. ] trans. E. B. Pusey. New York, 1949.

 

. "The Eight Questions of Dulcitus," in Saint
Augustine: Treatises on Various Subjects, trans.
Sister Mary Sarah Muldowney et al., in The Fathers
of the Church, ed. Roy Joseph Deferrari, XIV.

New York, 1952.

 

 

The Authorised Version pi the English Bible 1611, ed.
William Aldis Wright, V. Cambridge, 1909.

 

Barrow, Isaac. The Works pi the Learned Isaac Barrow,
D.D. London, 1683.

Bartlet, John. The Practical Christian. London, [1670].
Boethius. Boethius, The Theological Tractates, [Loeb ed.],

trans. H. F. Stewart and E. K. Rand. Cambridge,
Mass., 1962.

 

. Consolation of Philosophy, trans. "I.T.," ed.
William Anderson. Carbondale, Illinois, 1963.

 

 

Bramhall, John. The Catching of Leviathan in The Works
pi . . . John Bramhall. Dublin, 1676.

 

 

Bréhier, Emile. The History of Philosophy: The Seven-

teenth Century, transT—Wade Baskin. Chicago,
1936.

Callahan, John J. Four Views pi Time is Ancient
Philosophy. Cambridge, Mass., 1948.

 

 

184

Charron, Pierre. pi_Wisdome Three Bookes, trans. Samson
Lennard. London, 1666.

Crane, Ronald. "Anglican Apologetics and The Idea of
Progress, 1699-1745," Modern Philology, XXXI
(1934), 273-306, 349-382.

Crollius, Oswald. A Treatise pi Oswaldus Crollius pi
Signatures pi Internal Things. London, 1669.

 

 

Cudworth, Ralph. True Intellectual System pi the Universe,
II. London, 1845.

 

 

Daniélou, Jean. From Shadows ip_Rea1ity, trans. Dom
Wulstan Hibberd. Westminster, Maryland, 1960.

 

. The Lord pi History, trans. Nigel Abercrombie.
London, 1958.

Davies, W. D. Paul and Rabbinic Judaism. London, 1965.

Dowden, Edward. "Elizabethan Psychology," Atlantic
Monthly, C (1907), 388-399.

Fairburn, Patrick. The Typology pi Scripture, II.
Edinburgh, 1854.

Gale, Theophilus. Court pi the Gentiles. Four Parts.
London, 1669-1678.

Grant, R. M. The Letter and The Spirit. London, 1957.

 

Gregory of Nyssa. Against Eunomius, in Nicene and Post-
Nicene Fathers, ed. Philip Schall and Henry Wace,
V. Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1954 [American Re-
print].

 

Guild, William. Moses Unvailed. London, 1620.

Hallet, H. F. Benedict pp Spinoza: The Elements pi His
Philosgphy. London, 1957.

 

 

Hobbes. Leviathan, [Everyman ed.], intro. A. D. Lindsay.
New York, 1950.

 

Irenaeus. The Ante-Nicene Fathers, trans. Aelxander
Roberts and James Donaldson, I. Grand Rapids,
Michigan, 1950. [ American Reprint].

 

Jayne, Sears. John Colet and Marsilio Ficino. Oxford,
1963.

185
Jayne, Sears. Marsilio Ficino' 3 Commentary Ln Plato's
Symposium. Columbia, Missouri, 1944.

Jackson, Thomas. Treatise Lf the Divine Essence and
Attributes. London, 1628.

 

 

Keach, Benjamin. Tropes and Figures. London, 1682.

Kristeller, Paul Oskar. The Philosophy Lf Marsilio Ficino,
trans. Virginia Conant. Gloucester, Mass., 1964.

 

Lampe, G. W. H. and K. J. Woolcombe. Essays on Typology
[Studies in Biblical Theology, No. 22T—3.
Naperville, Illinois, 1957.

Lewis, Wyndham. Time and Western Man. New York, 1928.

[Mackenzie, George]. Religio Stoici. Edinburgh, 1665.

Madsen, William G. From Shadopy Types ip Truth. New
Haven, 1968.

Meyerhoff, Hans. Time ip_Literature. Berkeley, 1955.

 

More, Henry. An Explanation Lf the Grand Mystery_ of
Godliness. London, 1660.

 

. Antimonopsychia, Lr That all Souls are not one,
in Psychodia Platonica. Cambridge, 1642.

 

. Divine Dialogues, I. London, 1668.
. Psychozoia. Cambridge, 1642.

Parmenides. Parmenidep, trans. and ed. Leonardo Taran.
Princeton, 1965.

Plato. The Dialogues pi Plato, trans. B. Jowett.
New York, 1937.

Plotinus. Enneads, trans. Stephen MacKenna. New York,

[195 56].

Reynolds, Edward. Treatise pi the Passions and Faculties
pi the Soule pi Man. Lothn, I640.

Seneca. Seneca' 3 Letters to Lucilius, trans. E. Phillips
Barker. Oxford, 1932.

South, Robert. Sermons Preached gpon Several Occasions,
1. Philadelphia, 1850.

186

Spinoza. Spinoza's Ethics, [Everyman ed.], trans. Andrew
Boyle. London, 1910.

 

Staudenbaur, C. A. "Galileo, Ficino and Henry More's
Psychathanasia," Journal pi the History Lf Ideas,
XXIX (1968), 565-578.

 

Stern, Madeline B. "Counter-clockwise: Flux of Time in
Literature," Sewanee Review, XLIV (1936), 338-365.

Suter, Ronald. "Augustine on Time, With Some Criticisms
from Wittgenstein," Revue Internationale de
Philosophie, XVI (1962), 378- 394.

Theologia Germanica, trans. Susanne Winkworth. New York,
1949.

Vaughan, Henry. The Works Lf Henr Vau han, ed. L. C.
Martin. Oxford, 1957 iorig. 1914i.

Witsius, Hermann. pp Oeconomis Foederum Dei Cum Hominus.
Leeuwarden, 1677.

 

Yates, Frances. The Art pi Memory. London, 1966.

. Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition.
Chicago, 1964.

 

. Theatre pi the World. London, 1969.

 

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