A53707:413
Meditations and discourses concerning the glory of Christ applied unto unconverted sinners, and saints…Meditations and discourses concerning the glory of Christ applyed unto unconverted sinners, and saints…
Meditations and discourses concerning the glory of Christ applied unto unconverted sinners, and saints under spiritual decays : in two chapters, from John XVII, xxiv / by the late Reverend John Owen ...Meditations and discourses concerning the glory of Christ applyed unto unconverted sinners, and saints under spiritual decayes : in two chapters, from John XVII, xxiv / by the late Reverend John Owen ...
London: printed by J.A. for William Marshall, 1691
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.
1. THE View which we have of the glory of Christ by Faith in this World, is obscure, dark, inevident, reflexive. So the Apostle declares, 1 Cor. 13. 12. Now we see through a Glass darkly [Greek or Hebrew]. Through or by a Glass in a Riddle, a Parable, a dark Saying. There is a double figurative Limitation put upon our View of the glory of Christ, taken from the two ways of our Perception of what we apprehend, namely, the Sight of things, and the hearing of Words.
1. THE View which we have of the glory of Christ by Faith in this World, is obscure, dark, inevident, reflexive. So the Apostle declares, 1 Cor. 13. 12. Now we see through a Glass darkly 〈non-Latin alphabet〉. Through or by a Glass in a Riddle, a Parable, a dark Saying. There is a double figurative Limitation put upon our View of the glory of Christ, taken from the two ways of our Perception of what we apprehend, namely, the Sight of things, and the hearing of Words.
THE first is, that we have this View not directly, but reflexively, and by way of a Representation, as in a Glass. For I take the Glass here, not to be Optical, or a Prospective which helps the Sight, but a Speculum, or a Glass which reflects an Image of what we do behold. It is a Sight like that which we have of a Man in a Glass, when we see not his Person or Substance, but an Image or Representation of them only, which is imperfect.
The Shadow or Image of this glory of Christ is drawn in the Gospel, and therein we behold it as the Likeness of a Man represented unto us in a Glass; and although it be obscure and imperfect in comparison of his own real, substantial glory, which is the Object of Vision in Heaven; yet is it the only Image and Representation of himself, which he hath left, and given unto us in this World. That woeful cursed Invention of framing Images of him out of Stocks and Stones however adorned, or Representations of him by the Art of painting, are so far from presenting unto the Minds of Men any thing of his real glory, that nothing can be more effectual to divert their Thoughts and Apprehensions from it. But by this figurative Expression of seeing in a Glass, the Apostle declares the comparative Imperfection of our present View of the glory of Christ.