We conclude our series on biblical meditation with the meditative practices of the Puritans who not only give us an encouraging example that biblical meditation can be lived out, but also a much needed exhortation of the necessity to prioritize meditation in their daily lives.
John Owen (1616-1683) is emblematic of the Puritan’s devotion to meditation when he writes,
How can we call ourselves Christians if we spend our days hardly ever thinking of Christ? But when you think of Christ, be careful that you are guided by the word of God. It is easy to invent a false Christ.1
This is what Puritan meditation can be boiled down to: A deep love for Christ and His Word that causes the believer to think about all of life in relation to Christ and his Word. Beeke and Jones aptly state the Puritans view on meditation:
For the Puritans, meditation exercised both the mind and the heart; he who meditates approaches a subject with his intellect as well as his affections.2
The Puritans were so devoted to thinking about Christ as much as possible that they proposed two categories of meditation: occasional meditation and deliberate or disciplined meditation.
Occasional meditation is meditation that can occur at any moment of the day where the believer is inspired to fix their gaze upon heaven and consider God’s greatness, glory, and truth.3 For the Puritans, meditation could and should be practiced anywhere and everywhere. As Saxton remarks, though occasional meditation was a spontaneous occurrence without any set study of the Scripture, it was still kept in check the objective Word of God.
The Puritans fought against allowing occasional meditation to degenerate into mysticism. They taught that the written Word of God should always guard one’s thoughts and reasoning. Far from trying to undermine the sufficiency of God’s Word, occasional meditation seeks to better understand God’s written Word by seeing how the entirety of God’s works illustrate biblical truth.4
Likewise, Beeke and Jones write of the Puritan’s meditation being always bound by Scripture,
By anchoring meditation in the living Word, Jesus Christ, and God’s written Word, the Bible, the Puritans distanced themselves from the kind of bogus spirituality or mysticism that stresses contemplation at the expense of action and flights of the imagination at the expense of biblical content.5
This is well reflected in Owen’s exhortation, which stands in stark contrast to the bankrupt meditative practices explored in the previous article.
Many thoughts in the minds of men are vain, useless, and thoroughly unprofitable. These are often looked on as silly rather than sinful. But wherever there are ‘vain thought,’ there is sin (Jer. 4:14). The word implies hoping for good out of something that is nothing. The Israelites sought for happiness from idols which were nothing and could do nothing, much less bring them happiness. So many seek to find happiness from vain thoughts about themselves. Such vain thoughts are indulged in when men fancy themselves to be what they are not; to do what they do not do; and to enjoy what they do not enjoy.6
He goes on to teach about meditating on the realities of heaven, saying, “A false heaven, created by the imaginations of men, will soon evaporate when serious thought is given to them.”7 A person meditating on heaven according to their subjective thoughts about heaven does them no good. They are not truly meditating on heaven at all; they are merely meditating on their own imaginations. Owen goes on to detail what must be central, not just in the discipline of meditation, but in all actions of life:
“And so the whole of our wisdom is said to lie in the ‘fear of the Lord.’ Without this fear, all our duties to God are useless, for they neither glorify God nor do they bring any spiritual strength and growth to our souls.”8
The one who compromises on biblical truth to incorporate the teachings of idols, the one who bucks God’s commands for their own subjective standard, are not meditating. Owen rightly calls such practices useless.
While occasional meditation was encouraged by the Puritans, “The most important kind of meditation [was] daily, deliberate meditation, engaged in at set times.”9 This meditation was linked to the Puritan’s daily Bible study and prayer. The Puritans had a supremely high view of the God’s Word, carving out set periods of time daily to study it, meditate upon it, and pray over it. Just as we saw in our biblical foundations article, the Puritans rightly understood that meditation was more than just the sum of those disciplines.
For the Puritans, meditation was not meditation unless it led to application.10 Saxton shows the Puritan’s hunger to apply the Word directly to their lives as he describes that,
The Puritans further divided deliberate meditation into two categories: direct and reflexive meditation. Direct meditation is used to gain a better scriptural understanding of a topic, whereas reflexive meditation is employed to convict the heart about the application of the newly found understanding.11
Owen again provides a wonderful example of Puritan thinking in regard to meditation and application.
By disciplined meditation I mean the art of thinking of some chosen spiritual subject in an orderly, disciplined way. The purpose of this sort of meditation is to rouse the heart and soul to feel the goodness or badness of the subject being thought of. Disciplined meditation is different from Bible study in which the chief aim is to learn the truth and to declare it to others. It is also different from prayer, for prayer is directed to God. The aim of disciplined meditation is to arouse our hearts to experience a sense of love, delight, and humility.12
On this humility that Owen mentions, Puritan meditation again stands in stark contrast with the Eastern meditative practices discussed above. Even with occasional meditation, the Puritans did not make a show of their meditation. Even though the Eastern meditative practices can be done alone, they all contain external features such as repetitive chanting, specific meditative positions, or group meditation sessions, whereby it can be easily identified by outside observers that the practitioner is meditating. In contrast, as Owen describes of typical Puritan meditation, “Meditation is a duty that is purely spiritual and cannot be seen, and so is never praised by men.”13 While the Puritans did offer some guidance on how a believer could meditate, their instructions were not for show or seeking the praise of men.
The Puritans were not legalistic in their instruction either. They gave helps for how one could meditate, but they didn’t go beyond or add to the Scriptures by commanding something that God did not explicitly command in His Word. As Saxton explains, “Although the Puritans prescribed rules and steps for proper meditation, they also maintained proper biblical balance, flexibility, and dependence on God’s Spirit.”14
Beeke gives a wonderful description of the Puritan’s practical teaching on meditation.
They said to begin by asking the Holy Spirit for assistance. Pray for the power to harness your mind and to focus the eyes of faith on this task… Next, the Puritans said to read the Scriptures, then select a verse or doctrine upon which to meditate… And consider subjects one at a time… Now, memorize the selected verse(s), or some aspect of the subject, to stimulate meditation, to strengthen faith, and to serve as a means of divine guidance… Next, fix your thoughts on the Scripture or a scriptural subject without prying further than what God has revealed. Use your memory to focus on all that Scripture has to say about your subject. Consider past sermons and other edifying books… Next, stir up affections, such as love, desire, hope, courage, gratitude, zeal, and joy, to glorify God. Hold soliloquies with your own soul. Include complaints against yourself because of your inabilities and shortcomings, and spread before God your spiritual longings. Believe that He will help you… Now, following the arousal of your memory, judgment, and affections, apply your meditations to yourself, to arouse your soul to duty and comfort, and to restrain your soul from sin… Next, turn your applications to resolutions… Make your resolutions commitments to fight against your temptations to sin… Conclude with prayer, thanksgiving, and psalm singing.”15
The Puritans wholeheartedly followed the command of Paul to be about the business of being transformed through the renewal of their mind (Rom. 12:2). The Puritans were not content with a mere head knowledge of God and Christ. Their chief desire in their meditation was to fan the flames of their desire for Christ and to look more like him in their thoughts, words, and deeds. Consequently the Puritans have given us a wonderful example of how faithful biblical meditation can lead to a life lived fully for Christ.
Their practices truly embodied the Scripture’s teaching that meditation is the practice of thinking deeply and richly on the Word of God so that the believer’s thoughts, words, and actions are transformed to become more like Christ’s thoughts, words, and actions to the glory of God. I leave you with a final exhortation concerning our meditation from John Owen,
“Make every effort to understand the awesome holiness of God and the heavenly nature of the things you intend to meditate on, that you may approach God with due reverence and fear, and heavenly matters with a holy and healthy respect.”16
NOTES
1John Owen, Spiritual-Mindedness, Abridged and made easy to read by R. J. K. Law (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 2009), 68.
2Beeke and Jones, A Puritan Theology, 890.
3Saxton, God’s Battle Plan for the Mind, 35.
4Saxton, God’s Battle Plan for the Mind, 43.
5Beeke and Jones, A Puritan Theology, 890.
6Owen, Spiritual-Mindedness, 35.
7Owen, Spiritual-Mindedness, 47.
8Owen, Spiritual-Mindedness, 90.
9Beeke and Jones, A Puritan Theology, 892.
10Beeke and Jones, A Puritan Theology, 893.
11Saxton, God’s Battle Plan for the Mind, 47.
12Owen, Spiritual-Mindedness, 107.
13Owen, Spiritual-Mindedness, 110.
14Saxton, God’s Battle Plan for the Mind, 52.
15Beeke and Jones, A Puritan Theology, 897-99.
16Owen, Spiritual-Mindedness, 115.
