A53708:35
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.
HOW is it like to be after the few moments, which under the pangs of Death we have to continue in this World? Is it an Annihilation that lies at the door; is Death the Destruction of our whole Being, so as that after it we shall be no more? So some would have the state of things to be. Is it a state of subsistence in a wandering condition, up and down the World, under the Influence of other more powerful Spirits that rule in the Air, visiting Tombs and Solitary places, and sometimes making appearances of themselves by the Impressions of those more powerful Spirits, as some imagine from the story concerning Samuel and the Witch of Endor, and as it is commonly received in the Papacy, out of a compliance with their Imagination of Purgatory? Or is it a state of universal misery and woe? a state incapable of comfort or joy? Let them pretend what they please, who can understand no comfort or joy in this Life, but what they receive by their Senses, they can look for nothing else. And whatever be the state of this Invisible World, the Soul can undertake nothing of its own conduct after its departure from the Body. It knows that it must be absolutely at the disposal of another.
HOW is it like to be after the few moments, which under the pangs of Death we have to continue in this World? Is it an Annihilation that lies at the door; is Death the Destruction of our whole Being, so as that after it we shall be no more? So some would have the state of things to be. Is it a state of subsistence in a wandring condition, up and down the World, under the Influence of other more powerful Spirits that rule in the Air, visiting Tombs and Solitary places, and sometimes making appearances of themselves by the Impressions of those more powerful Spirits, as some imagine from the story concerning Samuel and the Witch of Endor, and as it is commonly received in the Papacy, out of a compliance with their Imagination of Purgatory? Or is it a state of universal misery and wo? a state incapable of comfort or joy? Let them pretend what they please, who can understand no comfort or joy in this Life, but what they receive by their Sences, they can look for nothing else. And whatever be the state of this Invisible World, the Soul can undertake nothing of its own conduct after its departure from the Body. It knows that it must be absolutely at the disposal of another.