A44344:1217
A comment upon Christ's last prayer in the seventeenth of John wherein is opened…
A comment upon Christ's last prayer in the seventeenth of John wherein is opened the union believers have with God and Christ, and the glorious privileges thereof ... / by that faithful and known servant of Christ, Mr. Thomas Hooker ... ; printed from the authors own papers written with his own hand, and attested to be such in an epistle by Thomas Goodwin and Philip Nigh.A comment upon Christ's last prayer in the seventeenth of John wherein is opened the union beleevers have with God and Christ, and the glorious priviledges thereof ... / by that faithful and known servant of Christ, Mr. Thomas Hooker ... ; printed from the authors own papers written with his own hand, and attested to be such in an epistle by Thomas Goodwin and Philip Nye.
London: printed by Peter Cole, 1656
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
For as the Spirit of Christ, by his Special presence in the Soul, and work upon it, is the only Author of all Grace and Holiness, which we do here, or shall hereafter possess, 2 Cor. 3.18. We are transformed into one degree of glorious Grace from another, by the same Spirit. So the Spirit of God, useth first to enlighten our minds, a• the first means, whereby he comes to make way for himself into the heart, and to communicate ⟨p. 373⟩all that glorious Grace to those, upon whom he is pleased to bestow it. And hence our Saviour, when he would difference his Servants from the wicked in the World to whom he never intends any saving good, nor do they partake thereof, he gives this as a ground, John 14.17. The Father will send his Spirit of Truth, whom the World cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him; but ye know him. No Spirit, no Grace. But the World hath no Spirit, because they cannot receive him; and that because they do not see not know: But they see, therefore receive, and therefore have the Spirit, and therefore have Grace: and therefore the Apostle concludes, 1 John 3.6. Whoever sinneth, hath not seen him, nor known him. True, it is possible the wicked may have a glimmering of the Truth, and hear tell of a Christ, by the common brute of the World, as they read such things writ: But this is a false Light, the Star-light of some common apprehensions of Reason, Arguments which are presented to us in Speech and Discourse. But the Apostle ads, Eph. 4.20. If ye have heard and learned Christ, and been taught by him as the Truth is in Jesus. Ye have heard of the Truth and Christ, as then are in words which report him, as Arguments and Reasons which discourse and dispute about him; but the Truth as it is in Jesus, as it issues from a Jesus, from a Saviour, and from that saving, enlightening, over-pouring work; when it's set on by the hand of a Jesus, not by Man, Education, or Disputation, then it will make men to put off the old man, and be renewed in the spirit of their minds. This the eyeing of Jesus in a right manner in this Life, will do. But when we come to see Christ as he is in his Glory, all those impediments which either stopped, or lessened the work of the Spirit from conveying that fullness of Grace, which otherwise it would, and by which we might have been perfectly like him, are then taken away.