HItherto we have considered the Benefits that may be afforded by the practice of Occasional Meditations to the Intellectual Faculties. We will now proceed to the Advantages that may accrue from the same Practice to the Will and Affections. These advantages being not onely the most valuable in themselves, but those upon whose account I have been engag’d in the present Undertaking.
V. The last therefore and greatest Benefit I shall take notice of, in the practice I would invite you to, is, That it awakens good thoughts, and excites good motions, in the Will and Affections. For since we have already manifested, that it is wont to suggest variety of Notions to the Meditator, and such as are usually accompani’d with delight: This friendly property to Devotion, which I now ascribe to our Melecticks, is a very easie and genuine off-spring of the marriage of the two others: The Beams of Knowledge, acquired by such Reflections, having in them, like those of the Sun, not onely Light but Heat. And indeed it were somewhat strange, as well as sad, if a person disposed and accustomed to observe and consider, conversing with such instructive Books as those of God’s Creatures and his Providence, with an intention to take out practical Lessons, should not find them. For amid’st that rich variety of Objects that in differing manners proffer themselves to his consideration, and suggest to him a great diversity of Reflections, it cannot reasonably be imagin’d that he should not find subjects or circumstances, that are proper, either to afford him Examples to imitate, or shew him the Danger, or Unhandsomeness, or Inconvenience of some thing that he should avoid, or raise his thoughts and affections Heaven-wards, or furnish him with some new practical consideration, or shew him some known Truth in a varied and delightful dress, or (at least) recal some Notions his frailty makes him need to be put in mind of, or, in a word, either refresh his memory, or otherwise cherish his Devotion. Let us suppose a person, who being qualifi’d and accustomed to reflect upon various objects that occur to him, mainly designs, in the exercise of that faculty, the warming of his Affections, and the improvement of his Piety, and we shall scarce doubt, but when he looks about him in the world, he will find it, what one of the Fathers loftily styled it, […], (a Schole for Rational Souls to learn the knowledge of God.) There is scarce any thing that Nature has made, or that men do or suffer, though the Theme seem never so low and slight, whence the devout Reflector cannot take an occasion of an aspiring Meditation; as in a hopeful morning the humble Lark can, from the lowest furrow in the field, take a soaring flight towards Heaven, and ascend thitherward with a melody that delights both her self and her hearers. If such a person considers how amongst such an admirable Variety, and such odd Antipathies of the numberless Creatures that compose the Universe, the constant observation of the Laws of their Nature makes them universally, and, as it were, unanimously, to conspire to make the Author of it appear wonderful in it, he cannot but be willingly possess’d with such an awful admiration of the matchless wisdom of their great Disposer, as made the Psalmist cry out, upon a somewhat what like occasion,1 How manifold are thy works, (Ps. 104. 24) O Lord, how wisely hast thou made them all? If he have occasion to consider the merciful Dispensations of Divine Providence to the Godly, or to take notice of the severe Inflictions of Divine Justice on the Wicked, he will find himself powerfully engag’d to relie on the one, and to apprehend provoking the other. If he take notice that the World is but our Store-house, and that multitudes of admirable Creatures seem to have had a being given them, principally for the use of undeserving Man, insomuch that many of the Beasts, and Birds, and Fishes, are but our Caters for one another, he will burst out into Mental, if not Vocal, expressions of Thankfulness and Humiliation to the Father of Mercies, for so unmerited and ill returned a Bounty, and will be apt to say with David, (Ps. 144. 3) What is man that thou takest knowledge of him? or the son of man that thou makest account of him? And if he compare this Munificence of God, in daily giving so many Creatures, that never violate the Laws of their Nature, nor endeavour to disappoint him of his Ends in creating them, for the necessities, nay, for the pleasures, of rebellious and unthankful Man, he will resent an ingenuous shame, and a noble disdain, That that Creature should be of all the least grateful that has received the most Benefits, and that he should of all others prove the most unruly, who alone has been endowed with Reason to rule himself withall. If in a Starry night he looks upon the Firmament, and considers how many fixed Stars there are, and how many thousand times more there might be without wanting room, the least of which Astronomers teach us to be far bigger than the whole Earth, which yet, by the probablest computation, contains above ten thousand millions of Cubick German Leagues, (and consequently above threescore times as many English miles of solid measure) he will find abundant cause to exclaim with David, (Psal. 8. 3, 4) When I consider thy Heavens, the work of thy hands, the Moon and Stars which thou hast ordained, What is man that thou should’st be mindful of him, or the Son of man that thou visitest him?
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Footnotes
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So Junius and Tremelius translate the place, Quàm ampla sunt opera tua, O Jehova, quàm ea omnia sapienter fecisti? and so the Original will bear, if the Hebrew Ma, be made applicable as well to the latter, as to the former part of the words. ↩