Josh Philpot

“Labour to remember what you read [cf. Matt. 13:4, 19]. . . . The memory should be like the chest in the ark, where the Law was put. . . . Some can better remember an item of news than a line of Scripture; their memories are like these ponds, where frogs live, but the fish die. . . . In meditation there must be a fixing of the thoughts upon the object. . . . Meditation is the concoction of Scripture: reading brings a truth into our head, meditation brings it into our heart: reading and meditation must, like Castor and Pollux, appear together. Meditation without reading is erroneous; reading with meditation is barren. The bee sucks the flower, then works it in the hive, and so turns it to honey: by reading we suck the flower of the Word, by meditation we work it in the hive of our mind, and so it turns to profit. Meditation is the bellows of the affection: ‘while I was musing the fire burned’ (Ps. 39:3). The reason we come away so cold from reading the Word is because we do not warm ourselves at the fire of meditation.” 

Thomas Watson, Puritan Sermons, vol. 2, 61-62