A53708:28
Meditations and Discourses on the Glory of Christ
Meditations and discourses on the glory of Christ, in his person, office, and grace with the differences between faith and sight applied unto the use of them that believe / by the late Reverend John Owen, D.D.
London: printed by B.A., 1691
Title page typeset from the transcription.
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. IT will herein, and in the discharge of this Duty, be made evident, how slight and inconsiderable all these things are from whence our Troubles and Distresses do arise. For they all grow on this root of an Over-valuation of Temporal things. And unless we can arrive unto a fixed judgment that all things here below are transitory and perishing, reaching only unto the outward man, or the body (perhaps unto the killing of it) that the best of them have nothing that is truly substantial or abiding in them, that there are other things wherein we have an assured Interest, that are incomparably better than they, and above them, it is impossible but that we must spend our lives in Fears, Sorrows, and Distractions. One real view of the Glory of Christ, and of our own concernment therein, will give us a full relief in this matter. For what are all the things of this Life, what is the good or evil of them, in comparison of an Interest in this transcendent Glory? When we have due Apprehensions hereof, when our minds are possessed with thoughts of it, when our Affections reach out after its enjoyments, let Pain, and Sickness, and Sorrows, and Fears, and Dangers, and Death, say what they will, we shall have in readiness wherewith to Combat with them, and overcome them; and that on this Consideration, that they are all outward, transitory, and passing away; whereas ⟨image 7⟩our minds are fixed on those things which are eternal, and filled with incomprehensible Glory.
2. THE minds of men are apt by their Troubles to be cast into Disorder, to be tossed up and down, and disquieted with various Affections and Passions. So the Psalmist found it in himself, in the time of his Distress: whence he calls himself unto that account: Why art thou cast down, O my Soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? And indeed the mind on all such Occasions, is its own greatest Troubler. It is apt to let loose its Passions of Fear and Sorrow, which act themselves in innumerable perplexing thoughts, until it is carried utterly out of its own Power. But in this state a due Contemplation of the Glory of Christ, will restore and compose the mind, bring it into a sedate quiet frame, wherein Faith will be able to say unto the Winds and Waves of distempered Passions, Peace, be still, and they shall obey it.