Meditations and Discourses on the Glory of Christ

THE former Instance of the Representations of the Glory of Christ in their Institutions of outward Worship with this Record of the inward communion they had with Christ in Grace, Faith, and Love, gives us the Substance of that view which they had of his Glory. What holy strains of Delight and Admiration, what Raptures of Joy, what solemn and divine Complacency, what ardency of Affection, and Diligence in Attendance unto the means of enjoying communion with him, this discovery of the Glory of Christ wrought in the souls of them that did believe, is Emphatically expressed in that discourse. A few days, a few hours spent in the frame characterised in it, is a Blessedness excelling all the treasures of the Earth; and if we, whose Revelations of the same Glory do far exceed theirs, should be found to come short of them in Ardency of Affection unto Christ, and continual holy Admiration of his excellencies, we shall one day be judged unworthy to have received them.

3. IT was so represented and made known under the Old Testament in his personal Appearances on various occasions unto several Eminent Persons, Leaders of the Church in their Generations. This he did as a Praeludium to his Incarnation. He was as yet God only; but appeared in the assumed shape of a man, to signify what he would be. He did not create an Human Nature, and unite it unto himself for such a Season; only by his Divine Power he acted the Shape of a Man composed of what Ethereal Substance he pleased, immediately to be dissolved. So he appeared to Abraham, to Jacob, to Moses, to Joshua, and others, as I have at large elsewhere proved and confirmed. And hereon also, because he was the Divine Person who dwelt in, and dealt with the Church, under the Old Testament from first to last, in so doing he constantly assumes unto himself Human Affections, to intimate that a season would come when he would immediately ⟨p. 101⟩act in that Nature. And indeed after the fall there is nothing spoken of God in the Old Testament, nothing of his Institutions, nothing of the way and manner of dealing with the Church, but what hath respect unto the future Incarnation of Christ. And it had been absurd to bring in God under perpetual Anthropopathies, as grieving, repenting, being angry, well-pleased, and the like, were it not but that the Divine Person intended, was to take on him the Nature wherein such Affections do dwell.