4. Find a place for meditation that is quiet and free from interruption. Aim for
Puritan writers suggested several ways to prepare for effective meditation, all of which depend "much on the frame of thy heart":
1. Clear your heart from things of this world—its business and enjoyments as well as its internal troubles and agitations. Calamy wrote, "Pray unto God not only to keep out outward company, but inward company; that is, to keep out vain, and worldly, and distracting thoughts."54
2. Have your heart cleansed from the guilt and pollution of sin, and stirred up with fervent love for spiritual things. Treasure up a stock of scriptural texts and spiritual truths.
Seek grace to live out David's confession in Psalm 119:11, "Thy Word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against thee."
3. Approach the task of meditation with utmost seriousness. Be aware of its weightiness, excellence, and potential. If you succeed, you will be admitted into the very presence of God and feel once again the beginning of eternal joy here on earth.55 As Ussher wrote, "This must be the thought of thy heart, I have to doe with a God, before whom all things are naked, and bare, and therefore I must bee careful to not speake foolishly before the wise God, that my thoughts be not wandring. A man may talk with the greatest Prince on earth, his mind otherwise busied; Not so come to talk with God; his eye is on the heart, and therefore thy chief care must be to keep the rudder of thy heart steady. Consider the three persons in the Trinity are present."56
4. Find a place for meditation that is quiet and free from interruption. Aim for "secrecy, silence, rest, whereof the first excludeth company, the second noise, the third motion," wrote Joseph Hall.57 Once a suitable place is found, stick with that place. Some
Puritans recommended keeping the room dark or closing one's eyes to remove all visible