Meditations and Discourses on the Glory of Christ

I shall not therefore use any Apology for the publishing of the ensuing Meditations, intended first for the exercise of my own mind, and then for the Edification of a private Congregation, which is like to be the last Service I shall do them in that kind. Some may by the consideration of them be called to attend unto the same Duty with more diligence than formerly, and receive Directions for the discharge of it; And some may be provoked to communicate their greater Light and Knowledge unto the good of many. And that which I design farther in the present Discourse, is to give a brief account of the Necessity and Use, in Life and Death, of the Duty exhorted unto.

PARTICULAR motives unto the diligent discharge of this Duty, will be pressed in the Discourse it self. Here some things more general only shall be promised. For all persons not immersed in sensual pleasures, not overdrencht in the love of this World, and present things, who have any generous or noble Thoughts about their own Nature, Being and End, are under the highest Obligation to betake themselves unto this Contemplation of Christ and his Glory. Without this they shall never attain true Rest or Satisfaction in their own minds. He it is alone in whom the Race of mankind may boast and glory, on whom all its felicities do depend. For,

1. HE it is in whom our Nature, which was debased as low as Hell by Apostasy from God, is exalted above the whole Creation. Our Nature in the Original Constitution of it, in the persons of our first Parents, was crowned with Honour and Dignity. The Image of God wherein it was made, and the Dominion over the lower World wherewith it was entrusted, made it the Seat of excellency, of Beauty and of Glory. But of them all it was at once devested and made naked by sin, and laid grovelling in the Dust from whence it was taken. Dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return, was its righteous Doom. And all its internal faculties were invaded by deformed Lusts; every thing that might render the whole unlike unto God, whose Image it had lost. Hence it became the contempt of Angels, the Dominion of Satan, who being the enemy of the whole Creation, never had any thing or place to reign in, but the debased nature of Man. Nothing was now more vile and base, its Glory was utterly departed. It had both lost its peculiar nearness unto God, which was its Honour, and was fallen into the greatest Distance from him of all Creatures, the Devils only excepted, which was its Ignominy and Shame. And in this state, as unto any thing in it self, it was left to perish eternally.