I Know, it may be objected against the pleasantness of the Mental Exercise I have been speaking of, That to make Occasional Meditations is a work too difficult to be delightful.
In Answer to this, I might represent, That there are employments wherein their being attended with somewhat of difficulty, is so far from deterring us, that it recommends them: as we see that in Hunting and Hawking, the toil that must be undergone is so much an indearment of the Recreation, of which it makes a great part, that when it happens that we do not meet with difficulties enough, we create new ones, as when Hunts-men give the Hare Law, (as they speak) for fear of killing her before they have almost kill’d their Horses, and perhaps themselves, in following her: Yet I shall rather chuse to make a more direct Answer, by observing, That the difficulties imagin’d in the practice I am treating of, seem to arise, not so much from the nature of the thing it self, as from some prejudices and misapprehensions that are entertain’d about it, especially the following two.
The first is a needless Scruple, which makes some fancy themselves obliged to confine their thoughts to the subject that set them on work. And this dwelling long upon one Theme is to many men a thing uneasie and tedious enough. But for my part, I see no necessity of such a strictness; and I have often observ’d the thoughts successfully to follow objects of a quite differing nature from those that were first started, from which, perhaps, though more obstinately persued, very little instruction or advantage would have been obtain’d, and it not unfrequently happens, that men trouble themselves in vain to make any profitable use of the considerations of those first objects, where the thoughts being licens’d to expatiate themselves, they do often at length pitch upon somewhat or other that is instructive, and at which, perhaps, they aim’d at the very first, though they attain’d it but by degrees, and persu’d it by winding and untrac’d ways. As when we let a Grey-hound loose in a Warren, we confine him not to the first Rabbet he makes after, since we see it frequently happens, that one sets him a running, and another proves his Quarry. Nor do I conceive such a practice disagreeable to the nature of Occasional Meditations, nor to be excluded by their name, for that appellation may well enough be appli’d to those emergent thoughts which fortuitous Occasions did awaken or suggest to us, nor is it necessary that our thoughts be always calculated for the subject that excited them, provided we thence took occasion to think: So that in some cases, the Occasion is not so much the Theme of the Meditation, as the Rise. For my part, I am so little scrupulous in this matter, that I would not confine Occasional Meditations to Divinity it self, though that be a very comprehensive Subject, but am ready to allow mens thoughts to expatiate much further, and to make of the Objects they contemplate not onely a Theological and a Moral, but also a Political, an Oeconomical, or even a Physical use. And I doubt whether the groundless Imagination, that Occasional Reflections ought to be confined to matters of Devotion, or, at furthest, of Morality, have not much helped to keep our Meleteticks so little cultivated as hitherto they have been. And indeed there is so perfect an harmony, and so near a kindred, betwixt Truths, that, in many cases, the one does either find out, or fairly hint, or else illustrate or confirm, the other. And ‘tis no wonder that divers of them should belong to the same Object, and be deduc’d from it. And if men were sollicitous to apply the things they take notice of in Occasional Objects, to the discovery or illustration of Oeconomical, Political, or Physical matters, it would probably bring such kind of thoughts more into request with several sorts of men, and possibly conduce to the improvement of those parts of Knowledge themselves.
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