The Puritans on Biblical Meditation
If you’ve ever read more than one Puritan book, you may have noticed a common trend, the overwhelming emphasis on meditation. Listen to what Thomas Brooks writes in Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices: “It is not he that reads most, but he that meditates most, that will prove the choicest, sweetest, wisest, and strongest Christian.” Unfortunately, this topic continues to be either misunderstood or completely neglected by most 21st Century churches. When was the last time a brother or sister in Christ asked, “how’s your meditation been?” Yet, the Puritans taught that meditation is the bridge from the mind to the heart, thereby the most crucial of the 3x “means of grace” (reading scripture and prayer being the other two).
Amid a modern high-speed culture that is averse to this discipline, Read the Puritans prays that this book list will help introduce, re-energize, and cultivate this necessary “palate of the soul whereby we taste the goodness of God” (Brooks).
Holy Meditation
by Thomas Manton
Unlike the pagan use of the word, Biblical meditation is not done by emptying the mind, but by filling it. It’s done by feasting on the banquet of God’s word and allowing it to transform our affections. Manton writes that “the thoughts are the noblest offspring of the soul, and their solemn consecration is fit for God.”
God’s Battle Plan for the Mind: the Puritan Practice of Biblical Meditation
by David Saxton
This short read is the best book out there that summarizes what the Puritans wrote about meditation. The compilation of Puritan quotes alone is worth the purchase. Saxton thesis is that "many Christians are discouraged because they believe the depressing lies of their fallen hearts rather than actively engaging and controlling their minds with the uplifting truths of God and His great redemption.” He writes that conversely, “meditation transforms feathery Christians into oak tree believers of mature discernment."
Solitude Improved by Divine Meditation
by Nathanael Ranew
While not a well-known Puritan, Nathanael Ranew’s book on meditation was widely popular during his day. In our modern digital age, Ranew encourages us to stop wasting time when we’re alone, put down our cell phones, and take some time meditating upon God; the most delightful object of the mind.
A Treatise of Divine Meditation
by John Ball
This book is soul stirring and extremely practical. John Ball wrote that “No Christian can exempt himself from this duty of meditation unless he intends to live unprofitably to others, uncomfortably to himself, and disobedient against God.”
The Art of Divine Meditation
by Edmund Calamy
Despite the modern resurgence in expository preaching, there continues to be a decline in meditation, which Calamy argues is the means by which the Holy Spirit uses the word of God to transform the heart. Yet, beyond spiritual means, Calamy also argues that a godly man is able to meditate on God through the natural world: “Herein lies the excellency of a Christian, that he is able to spiritualize natural things.”
Spiritual Mindedness
by John Owen
Like any John Owen book, your mind will be launched into the stratosphere of God’s unending goodness and sheer immensity. Owen’s exhortation is that we ought to continually focus our minds on things above. Distilled for easier reading and very practical, Read the Puritans argues that in addition to meditation, you need some John Owen in your life. What better way to start than here.
A Christian On the Mount: A Treatise Concerning Meditation
by Thomas Watson
Saving the best for last, this short book written by the ‘easiest to read Puritan’ Thomas Watson, is an absolute must for your library. Watson describes meditation as “the chewing upon the truths we have heard. The beasts in the old law which did not chew the cud were unclean; the professing Christian who does not by meditation chew the cud, is to be accounted unclean. Meditation is like the watering of the seed; it makes the fruits of grace to flourish.”