Thomas Manton

I read Joel Beeke’s essay, The Puritan Practice of Meditation yesterday morning and found it quite insightful, helpful, and edifying. I have personally had the consistent discipline of reading the Scriptures every morning for about three years now, though with more structure and benefit with a reading plan for a little over a year now. While reading the Bible is an essential aspect of the Christian life, it is through meditating, mulling over, and deeply dwelling on the splendor of God’s word that we find life – “I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways. I will delight in your statutes; I will not forget your word” Psalm 119:15,16. It is through this meditation that God answers our prayers that he would open our eyes the “wondrous things out of [His] law” (Psalm 119: 18).

In the essay, Beeke provides a helpful definition of meditation from the Purtian, Edmund Calamy:

A true meditation is when a man doth so meditate of Christ as to get his heart inflamed with the love of Christ; so meditate of the Truths of God, as to be transformed into them; and so meditate of sin as to get his heart to hate sin.

Meditation is not the emptying of the mind, but rather, it is diligent and intentional attention of the soul to mold itself (by the power of the Spirit) around and into the things of God.

There are seven reasons that Beeke lists the Puritans giving for the practice of meditation.

1. God commands us to meditate on his word – which is reason enough. “Take to heart all the words by which I am warning you today, that you may command them to your children, that they may be careful to do all the words of this law” (Deuteronomy 32:46).
2. We should meditate on the Word of God as a letter God has written to us. How gracious of God to so love and care for us as to give us a word, a picture of his wisdom in written form.
3. One cannot be a solid Christian without meditation. He quotes Thomas Watson as saying, “A Christian without meditation is like a soldier without arms, or a workman without tools. Without meditation the truths of God will not stay with us; the heart is hard, and the memory slippery, and without meditation all is lost.”
4. Without meditation, the preached Word will fail to profit us.
5. Without meditation, our prayers will be less effective. Thomas Manton notes that “Meditation is a middle sort of duty between the word and prayer, and hath respect to
   both. The word feedeth meditation , and meditation feedeth prayer; we must hear that we
   be not erroneous, and meditate that we be not barren. These duties must always go hand
   in hand; meditation must follow hearing and precede prayer.”
6. Christians who fail to meditate are unable to defend truth. The idea here – and how many examples are there of this sad reality in our day! – is that without a diligent application of oneself to be molded to the Scripture, they cannot know God properly, know themselves truly, or defend His truth rightly.
7. Much like number 4, meditation is an essential part to preparing to hear sermons.

What I found most interesting about this list is how private medatation has public implications. When one is saved by Jesus and birthed by the Holy Spirit, they are born into a family. That family is the Church, manifested in the local church body. There they regularly hear the preached word as the means of their public diet and guidance as a congregation. What is interesting here is that an essential aspect of benefiting from the pastor’s labors to present God’s word to us is that we are daily – through the week – immersed in that same Word. To benefit from public offerings we must be mulling over them ourselves. It is interesting here to see how the Puritans saw our private life and public life intimately connected. And we might deduce here that personal declension in these areas will inevitably contribute to the public declension of our congregations if unrepented of.

The essay goes on in detail to discuss various other aspects of Purtain meditation which I recommend reading. What I want to do is just note a few other aspects that might help us meditate more, producing hearts filled with a “joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory” (1 Peter 1:8).

In beginning the practice of meditation, the Puritans advised that we first simply begin by asking the Holy Spirit for assistance. Just simply pray that God would meet us in our attempts to know him more. God really is out to meet our prayers; his posture towards us is eager graciousness. Next, in picking up what subjects to meditate upon, one should simply read the Scriptures and select a verse or doctrine to meditate on. In the beginning, pick basic doctrines like the attributes of God that have profound depths, while not necessarily being overly complex subjects (i.e. “God is love” is easier to understand than say “the righteousness of God”). Also, they recommended meditation on those subjects which were more applicable to one’s present circumstances. There is more from here, but this should give a taste of the thought line they followed – no different than teachers today, but always helpful to see. Also, Beeke provides a helpful (and extensive!) list of “subjects of meditation”. Should one be struggling for subjects to meditate upon, struggle no more!

Another aspect of interest for the subject of meditation that the Puritans bring to the fore is the reality that meditation prepares us for benefiting from the grace of the Lord’s Supper. Puritan Thomas White says,

“Meditate upon your preparatory, concomitant and subsequent duties: Meditate upon the love of God the Father, upon the love of God the Son, Jesus Christ, consider the excellency of his person, the greatness of his sufferings, and how valid they be to the satisfaction of Gods Justice, and so likewise to consider of the excellency, nature, and use of the Sacrament.”

The Lord Jesus gave us the Lord’s Supper as a particular grace to be received as a picture and blessing of the Gospel until his return. It is a picture of the Gospel. Proper meditation on the depths of the Gospel in the sacrifice and atonement of Christ will serve our souls to benefit most fully from the grace of the sacrament.

Meditation is, at it’s core, about communion with, and enjoyment of, God himself. God has “brought near by the blood of Christ” (Ephesians 2:13). If we are near, we are to know. If we are to know, we are to enjoy. It is to our own detriment if we do not enjoy God in meditating on and mulling over his Word, spending time thinking and feeling deeply about God. Dr. Beeke closes with an exhortation from Thomas Watson, that I’ll leave us with here:

If you have formerly neglected it, bewail your neglect, and now begin to make conscience of it: lock up yourselves with God (at least once a day) by holy meditation. Ascend this hill, and when you are gotten to the top of it, you shall see a fair prospect, Christ and heaven before you. Let me put you in mind of that saying of Bernard, “O saint, knowest thou not that thy husband Christ is bashful, and will not be familiar in company, retire thyself by meditation into the closet, or the field, and there thou shalt have Christ’s embraces.”

(All quotes taken from Joel’s Beeke’s essay linked above.)