Study and Meditation
1. There is a great difference between speculative study, and spiritual meditation. This observation is of the greatest importance to direct us what we are to aim at, when we are striving to perform this duty. But yet it is needful to say a few words to make this distinction clear; for though there be in appearance a near affinity between study and meditation, yet in reality they are as different from one another, as the sun shining in the heavens, and a sign of the sun painted. It is to be feared, that many persons are apt to imagine, that meditation is nothing else but thinking over, looking and inquiring into the doctrines and duties of the word of God. But it is plain, a person may employ himself much in this way, and yet be a stranger to true meditation. The difference lies here: study is the looking into divine things in order to understand them; but meditation is the ruminating upon them in order to apply them to your cases and consciences, and to rise our affections to...