A53708:459
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.
Chapter 12: Differences between our beholding the Glory of Christ by Faith in this World, and by si…
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.
2. IT will be so from that Visive Power or faculty of beholding the Glory of Christ, which we shall then receive. Without this we cannot see him as he is. When he was transfigured in the Mount, and had on his Human Nature some reflections of his Divine Glory, his Disciples that were with him, were rather amazed, than refreshed by it. Mat. 17. 4. They saw his glory, but spake thereon they knew not what, Luk. 9. 30, 33. And the reason hereof was because no man in this life can have a Visive Power, either spiritual, or corporeal, directly and immediately to behold the real Glory of Christ.
SHOULD the Lord Jesus appear now to any of us in his Majesty and Glory, it would not be unto our edification nor consolation. For we are not meet nor able, by the Power of any Light or Grace that we have received, or can receive, to bear the immediate appearance and representation of them. His beloved Apostle John had leaned on his bosom probably many a time in this life, in the intimate familiarities of love: But when he afterwards appeared unto him in his Glory, he fell at his feet as dead, Rev. 1. 17. And when he appeared unto Paul, all the account he could give thereof, was, that he saw a light from Heaven above the brightness of the Sun, whereon he and all that were with him, fell to the ground, Act. 26. 13, 14.
AND this was one Reason why in the days of his Ministry here on earth, his Glory was veiled with the infirmities of the flesh, and all sorts of sufferings, as we have before related. The Church in this life is no way meet, by the Grace which it can be made partaker of, to converse with him in the immediate manifestations of his Glory.