Traherne’s understanding of humanity’s reception, and enjoyment of the world as a divine gift bears an illuminating resemblance to Augustine’s famous ‘usus-fruitio’ distinction in Book I of his De Doctrina Christiana. For Augustine there are objects to be used (usus) and objects to be enjoyed (fruitio) (De Doctr. 4.3), ‘to enjoy (Frui) a thing is to hold fast to it in love for its own sake (propter se ipsam)’ whereas ‘to use something is to apply whatever it may be to the purpose of obtaining what you love’ (4.4). Thus the proper and sole object of enjoyment is God for God is our summum bonun, or ultimate good and end, and proper termination of our enjoyment (5.5), whereas all other objects are to be used for the sake of this final enjoyment. For Augustine, all created objects are to be used for they are
ontologically inferior to God and thus cannot be loved propter se ipsam (‘for its own sake’), and are thus to be used as instruments to bear us to our eschatological home. At first blush, Augustine’s use-enjoyment distinction, found in the early parts of his De Doctrina
Christiana, seems antithetical to Traherne’s constant refrain to enjoy the world. So how, as I
said above, does Traherne’s understanding of enjoyment show signs of resemblance with Augustine’s ‘usus-fruitio’ distinction?
80 Seeds, 234.
The first location of continuity between Traherne and Augustine is the debt they both have to a form of Christian Neoplatonism that sees created goods as things to aid the soul on its eschatological journey back to God. Augustine calls this use, while Traherne calls this enjoyment, but as we will see in a later section, Traherne also positively speaks of using the creation, which he opposes to the abuse of creation. Later in Book I of De Doctrina,
Augustine clarifies further what he means when speaking of the use of creation, more specifically the use or enjoyment of the human creature. For Augustine, even the image bearer is unworthy to be enjoyed or loved for its own sake (propter se ipsam), ‘For if something is to be loved on its own account, it is made to constitute the happy life’ (20.40) instead the love and self and neighbor is to be subsumed within a singular love for God: ‘any other object of love that enters the mind should be swept towards the same goal as that to which the whole flood of our love is directed’ (22.43). These sentiments are echoed in the
Centuries where the singular love for ‘a curious and fair woman’ is not excessive but anemic,
for it fails to love her as related to God – as ‘a child of God’ – and fails to love God more as a result of loving her: meditation ends with the admonition ‘no man can be in danger of loving others too much, that loveth God as he ought.’81 For both Augustine and Traherne, proper (or
ordered) love and enjoyment of created things occurs when that enjoyment is constituted within our love for God, or as Augustine state we enjoy them ‘in God’. Later in the Book I Augustine explains ‘When you enjoy a human being in God, you are enjoying God rather than that human being. For you enjoy the one by whom you are made happy’ (37.79). Augustine admits that ‘the idea of enjoying someone or something is very close to that of using someone or something together with love,’ for existentially ‘when the object of love is present, it inevitably brings with it pleasure as well’, but ‘if you go beyond this pleasure and relate it to your permanent goal,’ per the definition given above, ‘you are using it’. For Augustine the temporal objects of love, pleasure and enjoyment are to only to be enjoyed ‘in God’ and per the terms set forth can only be objects of use, but in his definition of ‘use’ there is a great deal of space to properly enjoy the created.
For Traherne, the world is to be unashamedly enjoyed, but like Augustine it is to be enjoyed with reference to God (as a divine gift and harbinger of God’s love). In chapter 39 of the Kingdom of God Traherne echoes Augustine ontological hierarchy when he differentiates the gifts of God and God in God-self:
What are Worlds in Comparison of God? Nothing and less then Nothing altogether
Vanitie! All the presents that Love can bestow are Nothing in Comparison of the Beauty of that Lov from which they proceed; But Gods Lov is Infinitly Greater then all, Loves more Wise, more Ardent, more Constant, and therfore far greater then the Pledges which it Communicates to us.
However, Traherne spurns any kind of distinction between the enjoyment of God and the enjoyment of God’s gifts when he says:
But to Enjoy God is Infinitly Greater then all this Were not Enjoyment of all Worlds, and the Enjoyment of God one. It doth not lessen the Enjoyment of God, but Enhance it, for being So perfect, that in the Enjoyment of God, all Enjoyment is included; the Enjoyment of ones self and of all being therin alone Sincere, and clear.
Traherne’s unashamed celebration of the enjoyment of the creation and its creator strikes a different tone than Augustine’s, and acts as a corrective to Augustine’s core argument that creation is to be used and only God is to be enjoyed. For Traherne ‘all worlds are far better then themselvs As they are Tokens, and Pledges of Gods Lov, it is Impossible to Enjoy them without Enjoying him’ and ‘On the other side it is Impossible to Enjoy God without Enjoying them: For God being an Infinit, and Eternal Act, cannot in Idleness, and Vacuitie be Enjoyed, but in his Elections and operations.’ These two modes of enjoyment are inextricably linked for Traherne, but with his typical exuberance agrees with Augustine’s claim that only God is to be enjoyed for God’s sake own sake. Traherne explains:
To Enjoy God is to take Complacency, and delight in him, for being what he is, and doing what he does Loving what he Loves, requiring what he requires: It is to rest in him, as the compleat and Satisfactory Object of all our Desires. Which Since our Soul is So insatiably Ambitious and Coveteous, implies a transcendent, and Invincible Perfection in our last Object; and no less a Perfection in the Manner of our
Enjoyment. For it were Impossible to rest in him as the compleat and Satisfactory Object of all our Desires, could our Thoughts Extend any further then he, either to better Objects, or better Powers, then he hath prepared and proposed. The Manner of our Enjoyment is Compleat, the Condition, the Means, and the End of our Enjoyment is compleat and perfect.82
For both Traherne and Augustine, God is our final object of enjoyment, and resting place for the satisfaction of all our desires. Created objects are given as manifestations and signs of divine love and are to be enjoyed as harbingers of divine love. Since for Augustine all things are both signs and things, and for Traherne these things are signs of God’s infinite love for humankind, creation is to be received and possessed as a gift of God’s love, a gift that receives infinite signification through its relation to its inexhaustible source. For Traherne,
82 Kingdom, 476.
this richly textured way of receiving and enjoying the world is exemplified most clearly in the pure vision of the infant.
We conclude the above discussion with the following summary: the contemplative gaze of the child’s innocent apprehensions sees by immediate intuition the beauty of creation, and discerns its infinite excellency in God; this pure vision of the substantial and real
awakens a desire to possess and enjoy this beauty – which for Traherne is the infant’s birthright – and this collection of desire and affection functions as the vivifying spring to the movements of the soul. These pure apprehensions mirror the purity of soul, and in this estate of pure sight the world is enjoyed in God and affects an ascent toward God.