SOURCE: Cox, Gerald H. III. “Traherne's Centuries: A Platonic Devotion of ‘Divine Philosophy.’” Modern Philology 69, no. 1 (August 1971): 10-24.

In the following essay, Cox provides a thorough examination of Traherne's Centuries in terms of the author's intentions and concludes that the success of the meditations is questionable.

Since Bertram Dobell attributed and published its manuscript in 1908, the Centuries has interested scholars more as a source for the reconstruction of Thomas Traherne's mysticism than as a prose devotion in its own right.¹ The only critic to suggest that the Centuries is more than a haphazard collection of unrelated meditations has been Louis Martz. Basing his analysis on a medieval synthesis of Saint Augustine, the Itinerarium Mentis ad Deum by Saint Bonaventura, Martz has concluded that “Century I” accords with Preparation; “Centuries II-IV” accord with the Threefold Way of the Creatures, the Image of God, and the Principles of Being and...