The famous ‘Autobiographical’ third century of the Centuries of Meditations presents itself as Traherne’s own spiritual journey from childhood innocence, through the fall and to eventual redemption. This century begins by introducing the major theme of childhood’s ‘pure and virgin apprehensions’ that will drive the rest of century and crops up through Traherne’s oeuvre.146 What is key for our current discussion is that Traherne’s primary
pedagogical tool to purify the senses in this century will be an appeal to experience; namely, his own experience. Traherne presents himself as one who is much experienced in these apprehensions and therefore has the ability to lead the reader to their own rediscovery of this childlike vision. In linking the third century to Traherne’s other theme of Felicity, Tomohiko
Koshi does well to notice the following:
The story which the “I” recounts as his own has an obviously didactic function. What is important to recognise here is that the narrating of the spiritual development is closely bound up with the “experimental” methodology employed in the Century by which to teach the reader how to achieve the proper enjoyment of Felicity.’147
Koshi is correct in noting the didactic function in Traherne’s experimental methodology. What must be affirmed, however, is that the use of the first person pronoun ‘I’ in the third century is not merely a didactic tool, as if the stories of spiritual development and ‘virgin apprehensions’ are mere poetic conceits. Instead, the authenticity of Traherne’s experience acts as the goal or ‘control group’ whereby the reader is to compare her own experiments in apprehension. In the following century the use of the first person ‘I’ is replaced with the second person ‘He’,148 and with this shift comes the inductive move from specific individual
experience to general ‘principles’,149 but in century three Traherne maintains the immediacy
of his own particular experience. The immediacy of Traherne’s experimental methodology invites the reader to test his findings against their own existential world, moving the reader from the world of abstraction to the immediacy of experience.
Traherne’s emphasis on human experience and experimentation seems to align with the spirit of his age. Experiential evidence derived from human experience is precisely what helps Descartes navigate through his method of doubt, coming to the conclusion that the only thing he could not doubt were his current thoughts of doubt, and to doubt he had to exist, therefore the famous ‘I think therefore I am’.150 Traherne too, shows a radical move to the
human subject as a location for attaining true knowledge, but what grounds his
epistemological certainty begins not with Descartes’ methodology of doubt but with a trust in God’s goodness. In his Seeds of Eternity, Traherne outlines some of his ideas regarding the human person and especially the human soul. He begins this work by stating ‘Humanity, which is the Handmaid of true Divinity, is a noble Part of Learning, opening the best and rarest Cabinet in nature to us, that of our Selvs: Which it doth either by discovering the Excellencies of our Bodies, or the faculties of our Souls.’151 What later thinkers would name
147 Koshi, “The Rhetoric of Instruction, and Manuscript and Print Culture in the Devotional Works of
Thomas Traherne,” 68.
148 Centuries, IV, 2. 149 Centuries, IV, 1.
150 Of course, from the realization of his own ontological reality, Descartes builds a rather optimistic
system, inclusive of God and cosmos.
anthropology or psychology Traherne simply calls ‘Humanity’, or the study of humanity. We see further what he means by calling ‘Humanity’ the ‘Handmaid of true Divinity’ a few paragraphs down. Notice Traherne’s almost naïve trust in the sureness of this epistemological location:
Because the Soul naturaly desires to see the Lineaments of its own face, Humanity is Delightfull which displayeth its features. It is admirable, becaus it unfoldeth Wonders that are incredible; but more because it doth it in a maner so plain and easy, for its Objects are within us; It is therfore the most certain of all Sciences, becaus we feel the Things it declares, and may by Experience, prove all it revealeth.152
Since the ‘Objects’ of inquiry are within, the affirmation or the falsification of the various claims made regarding the nature of the human person are easily displayed, for they can be tested against immediate human ‘Experience’. In our chapter on theological anthropology we will more fully unpack Traherne’s use of the motif ‘the Soul naturaly desires’, but here we must notice his strong belief in the epistemological weight of personal experience. As we have seen, our human experience can be shrouded by a veil that causes us to misapprehend our experiences of the world and ourselves but even these misapprehensions act as a sign that points to a true apprehension.
As Traherne continues the paragraph quoted above he reveals what provides the ontological basis for the human soul, which then acts as the epistemological grounding for human experience. He continues praising the study of ‘Humanity’ by stating,
It is Sublime becaus by it we are allied to heaven, in it all the Glories of the Celestial Kingdom are apparent and by it are made near and familiar. For as in Water, the face of Heaven is represented; so is the Nature of God in the Soul of Man, where the Cause and End of His Creation, together with the Beauty of Religion, the Nature of Blessedness, and the Excellency of Nature in general as well as Mans in particular are unfolded.153
The inward gaze into the soul is instantly a reflected gaze into the very ‘Nature of God’, ‘the Cause and End of His creation’. Not only ‘is the Nature of God in the Soul of Man’ revealed, but so is the ‘Beauty of Religion’ and the ‘Excellency of Nature’ ‘unfolded’. In this system the growing modern solipsism is replaced by a subjectivity that finds its objectivity in the fact that it comes from the hand of God and functions as a mirror or image of the divine. For Traherne a look inward is a look upwards. (In chapter three we will explore further the human soul as a mirror of the divine.)
Though both Traherne and Descartes begin their theological reflections from
epistemological hope and trust, Descartes’ attempt to defeat doubt through a skeptical method
152 Ibid. 153 Ibid.
is contrasted by Traherne’s pedagogical convictions in fore-fronting diving goodness. In the
Centuries, Traherne is driven along in his existential quest in his third century by an ‘implicit
faith in God’s goodness.’154 In his empiricism he is much more akin to Aristotle than his
modern counterparts. Dupré claims that Aristotle was the ‘thorough empiricist, but his empiricism, unlike that of seventeenth-century philosophers, rather than being derived from doubt, is rooted in a total trust of the order of nature.’155 For Traherne, this trust comes from a
firm belief that ‘the invisible things of [God] from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made’.156 Empiricism is no threat to Traherne, for if
Paul’s words to the Roman church are true (and Traherne would affirm their truth), to those who see the world aright they will see God in the internal and external phenomenon of creation. To those whose experience had led them to doubt the existence of a benevolent and loving creator God, Traherne suggests a test.
In chapter five of The Kingdom of God, after a lengthy argument for the necessity of a God to be infinitely good, Traherne concludes,
His Kingdom therfore is Evry way Complete: For else the Soul would meet with causes of Complaint, and be partly Miserable, partly Happy; and as infinitly Miserable, as Infinitly Blessed. God therfore gav it a power, to contemplate, and Examine those things, that having found out the perfection of his Works, it might Admire, and Adore him, with Infinit Complacency, Lov him and delight in him, with Infinit Ardor, and with a desire, that is Evryway Compleat…
Traherne sees in the human soul a God-given power to ‘Examine’ the objects of God’s kingdom so that when perceiving the ‘perfection of his Works’ might properly respond with admiration, adoration, love, desire, and ‘ascribe all the Glory to him, that is due unto his Name.’ 157 Since this ability to ‘Examine’ is of the nobility of humankind and is actually a
capacity given by God, Traherne continues in the next paragraph by saying, ‘Neither is it Boldness in the Soul, to make such Enquiries, but a Modest confidence of his Infinit Excellency, that it will Endure the Test. And the more diligently it is tryed, be the more approved.’ This unwavering trust propels Traherne’s insatiable soul to confidently ‘Test’ the
154 Centuries, III, 53.
155 Louis K. Dupré, Passage to Modernity: An Essay in the Hermeneutics of Nature and Culture (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 27.
156 Romans 1:20.
157 Kingdom, 274. This of course is the exact opposite response to those in Romans 1 who should have
discerned God in creation but instead ‘when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened’. Romans 1:21 Authorized Version.
validity of God’s kingdom and let truth lead where it will. As the above paragraph continues Traherne locates the purpose of his divine testing in the context of love:
It is a Wise, and Profitable Study, to find out those Reasons, wherupon we should Lov him Infinitly, and to inform our selvs of the Truth, and Realitie of his Infinit Beauty. This Propension is the Glory of the Soul; and impartial Inclination, to Admire all that is Good, and to Censure all that is Evil, wherever it find it, being the Similitude of God, which being infinitly secure of his own perfection, he gav unto Man, with such an Illimited power, and Libertie to use it, that we may freely try it, even against himself. He will not be beholding to us, to lie for God…If he be not altogether Lovely, we may out with it freely, and publish it for ever.… He will hav us to Lov him heartily, or not at all…. Our most Secret thoughts are open before him; if we cannot Approv him in our hearts and Souls, All our outward Defences, will be but Hypocriticall, and painted Sepulchres, full of Rottenness at the Core, or in other Words, full of Dead Mens Bones, and all uncleanness.158
Truth must be followed wherever it leads. Any perceived defects found in the nature of God or actual defects found in the soul’s love for God must be exposed for what they are. The soul will not stand for any defect in its most beloved object, and ‘He will hav us Lov him heartily, or not at all.’ In this passage the reader is struck by the ‘Truth, and Realitie of his Infinite Beauty’ who is ‘infinitely secure of his own perfection’ weighed against the ‘Hypocriticall’ soul whose ‘outward Defences’ can not hide the ‘Rottenness at the Core’. This paragraph at once reveals a thinker who is much versed in the contours of the human psyche (even using such psychological terms like ‘secure’ ‘inclination’ and ‘Defences’) while also with a keen eye on the modes of speech that might convince that psyche to, as it were, ‘come into the light’.
These previous two sections have been an exploration into issues of epistemology or what Traherne called in our introductory poem ‘The naked Truth in many faces shewn’. In Chapter 3 we explore more fully Traherne’s epistemology, but we offered a brief word here to more fully substantiate the claim that Traherne’s literary theory was deeply influenced by his desire to affect change in his literary audience. He understood his writing to be mimetic of and a pointer to the dynamics of divine allurement in the beauty of creation. Traherne crafted beautiful literary objects of contemplation for the beatification of his audience:
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.159
(ll. 7-10)
158 Kingdom, 274.