Didascalicon, Book III: the art of study (discipline and method)
Chapter XI. On meditation
Meditation is frequent thought with counsel, which prudently investigates the cause and origin, the manner and use of each thing. Meditation takes its beginning from reading; yet it is bound by no rules or precepts of reading. For it delights to run over a certain fitting space, where it may fix a free gaze on the contemplation of truth; and now to survey these, now those causes of things, now to penetrate all that is deep; leaving nothing doubtful and nothing obscure. The beginning of learning, then, is in reading, its consummation in meditation. If anyone has learned to love it more familiarly and is willing to give himself to it more often, it renders life very pleasant, and affords the greatest consolation in tribulation. For it is that which most separates the soul from the noise of earthly actions and makes it in this life also in a way foretaste the sweetness of eternal rest. And when it has now learned, through the things that are made, to seek and understand him who made all things, then it is filled equally with knowledge and gladness; hence the greatest delight is in meditation. There are three kinds of meditation. One consists in the circumspection of morals, another in the scrutiny of the commandments, the third in the investigation of the divine works. Morals are in vices and virtues. The divine commandment is partly commanding, partly promising, partly threatening. The work of God is both what he creates by power, what he governs by wisdom, and what he cooperates with by grace. How worthy of admiration all these are, each one knows the more, the more attentively he has been accustomed to meditate on the wonders of God.