- Jun 26, 2004
- 17,358
- 3,626
- Country
- Canada
- Faith
- Protestant
- Marital Status
- Married
- Politics
- CA-Others
Quote:
A DEFINITION
On the topic of Puritan meditation, James Packer writes, “Knowing themselves to be creatures of thought, affection, and will, and knowing that God’s way to the human heart (the will) is via the human head (the mind), the Puritans practiced meditation, discursive and systematic, on the whole range of biblical truth as they saw it applying to themselves.” In a similar vein, Horton Davies describes Puritan meditation as “moving from intellectual issues to exciting the heart’s affections in order to free the will for conformity to God.”
This approach to meditation stems from the Puritans’ conviction that the will is a “blind” faculty. According to Edward Reynolds (1599-1676), the will “cannot see the right good it ought to affect without the assistance of an informing power” nor “can it see the right way it ought to take for procuring that good without the direction of a conducting power.” This “informing” and “conducting” power is the understanding-the leading faculty of the soul. When this “noblest faculty,” as Stephen Charnock (1628-1680) calls it, is “employed about the most excellent object,” it informs and conducts the will via the affections to choose the “right good.”
With this paradigm firmly in place, George Swinnock (1627-1673) defines meditation as “a serious applying the mind to some sacred subject, till the affections be warmed and quickened, and the resolution heightened and strengthened thereby, against what is evil, and for that which is good.” (source)
The Practice of Puritan Meditation
The Puritan Practice of Meditation
The Puritan Practice of Meditation and Pondering God: Thinking Rightly Through Godly Meditation | Reformed Theology at A Puritan's Mind
The Practice of Meditation - Tim Challies
The Puritan Ladder of Meditation by Greg Daniel (Reformed Baptist)
A DEFINITION
On the topic of Puritan meditation, James Packer writes, “Knowing themselves to be creatures of thought, affection, and will, and knowing that God’s way to the human heart (the will) is via the human head (the mind), the Puritans practiced meditation, discursive and systematic, on the whole range of biblical truth as they saw it applying to themselves.” In a similar vein, Horton Davies describes Puritan meditation as “moving from intellectual issues to exciting the heart’s affections in order to free the will for conformity to God.”
This approach to meditation stems from the Puritans’ conviction that the will is a “blind” faculty. According to Edward Reynolds (1599-1676), the will “cannot see the right good it ought to affect without the assistance of an informing power” nor “can it see the right way it ought to take for procuring that good without the direction of a conducting power.” This “informing” and “conducting” power is the understanding-the leading faculty of the soul. When this “noblest faculty,” as Stephen Charnock (1628-1680) calls it, is “employed about the most excellent object,” it informs and conducts the will via the affections to choose the “right good.”
With this paradigm firmly in place, George Swinnock (1627-1673) defines meditation as “a serious applying the mind to some sacred subject, till the affections be warmed and quickened, and the resolution heightened and strengthened thereby, against what is evil, and for that which is good.” (source)
The Practice of Puritan Meditation
The Puritan Practice of Meditation
The Puritan Practice of Meditation and Pondering God: Thinking Rightly Through Godly Meditation | Reformed Theology at A Puritan's Mind
The Practice of Meditation - Tim Challies
The Puritan Ladder of Meditation by Greg Daniel (Reformed Baptist)
