SOURCE: Kaufmann, U. Milo “Two Divergent Traditions in Puritan Meditation.” In The Pilgrim's Progress and Traditions in Puritan Meditation, pp. 118-50. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966.

In this essay, Kaufmann examines Hall as a founding father of a significant school of Puritan philosophical thought which advocated using biblical scripture rather than the imagination to initiate the state of mediation.

The reader's first glimpse of Christian finds him in anguished meditation, standing in a field, with a book in his hand. The scene happily dramatizes a notable motif of Puritan discussions of meditation. The two Old Testament texts most often cited in justification of meditation were the first Psalm, with its description of the righteous man who reflects on the law both day and night, and the brief statement in Genesis (24:63) about Isaac's going into the field at evening to meditate. The biblical account presents Isaac's meditation as incidental...