ABSTRACT
The previous chapters have discussed the boundlessness of Traherne’s innocence, aspects of which permeate each estate of the soul from before creation to the final end in glory. Not a narrow ideal of perfection based only on paradisal archetypes, innocence in Traherne’s works is also a quality of the regenerate Christian life which is an object of celebration and lament, duty and desire, memory and imagination. Boundless innocence is also evident in the desire embodied in the optative phrase ‘Were all Men Innocent’. 1 This expresses the impulse behind the Nyssan progress of epektasis or excess, leading further into God.
