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…

SOME suppose that by Chopping and Painting, and Gilding, they can make an Image of Christ that shall perfectly represent him to their Senses and carnal Affections from head to foot, But they feed on ashes, and have a lie in their right hand, Jesus Christ is evidently crucified before our eyes in the Scripture, Gal. 3. 1. So also is he evidently exalted, and glorified therein. And it is the Wisdom of Faith to gather into one, these parcelled Descriptions that are given of him, that they may be the Object of its View and Contemplation.

SOME suppose that by Chopping and Painting, and Gilding, they can make an Image of Christ that shall perfectly represent him to their Sences and carnal Affections from head to foot, But they feed on ashes, and have a lie in their right hand, Jesus Christ is evidently crucified before our eyes in the Scripture, Gal. 3. 1. So also is he evidently exalted, and glorified therein. And it is the Wisdom of Faith to gather into one, these parcelled Descriptions that are given of him, that they may be the Object of its View and Contemplation.

IN the Vision which we shall have above, the whole Glory of Christ will be at once and always represented unto us; and we shall be enabled in one act of the Light of Glory to comprehend it. Here indeed we are at a loss; our minds and understandings fail us in their Contemplations. It will not yet enter into our hearts to conceive what is the beauty, what is the Glory of this complete Representation of Christ unto us. To have at once all the Glory of what he is, what he was in his outward State and Condition, what he did and suffered, what he is Exalted unto, his Love and Condescension, his Mystical Union with the Church, and the Communication of himself unto it, with the Recapitulation of all things in Him ⟨p. 193⟩and the Glory of God, even the Father, in his Wisdom, Righteousness, Grace, Love, Goodness, Power, Shining forth eternally in him, in what he is, hath done, and doth, all presented unto us in one view, all comprehended by us at once, is that which at present we cannot conceive. We can long for it, pant after it, and have some foretasts of it; namely of that State and Season, wherein our whole Souls in all their powers and faculties, shall constantly, inseparably, eternally cleave by Love unto whole Christ in the fight of the Glory of his Person and Grace, until they are watered, dissolved and inebriated in the Waters of Life, and the Rivers of Pleasure that are above for evermore. So must we speak of the things which we admire, which we adore, which we love, which we long for, which we have some foretasts of in sweetness ineffable, which yet we cannot comprehend.