A53708:478
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.
ALAS! we cannot here think of Christ, but we are quickly ashamed of, and troubled at our own thoughts: So confused are they, so unsteady, so imperfect. Commonly they issue in a groan or a sigh; Oh when shall we come unto him? when shall we be ever with him? when shall we see him as he is? And if at any time he begins to give more than ordinary evidences and intimations of his Glory and Love unto our Souls, we are not able to bear ⟨p. 155⟩them, so as to give them any abiding residence in our Minds. But ordinarily this trouble and groaning is amongst our best attainments in this World, a trouble which, I pray God, I may never be delivered from, until deliverance do come at once from this state of mortality. Yea the good Lord increase this trouble more and more in all that believe.
ALAS! we cannot here think of Christ, but we are quickly ashamed of, and troubled at our own thoughts: So confused are they, so unsteady, so imperfect. Commonly they issue in a groan or a sigh; Oh when shall we come unto him? when shall we be ever with him? when shall we see him as he is? And if at any time he begins to give more than ordinary evidences and intimations of his Glory and Love unto our Souls, we are not able to bear ⟨p. 155⟩them, so as to give them any abiding residence in our Minds. But ordinarily this trouble and groaning is amongst our best attainments in this World, a trouble which, I pray God, I may never be delivered from, until deliverance do come at once from this state of mortality. Yea the good Lord encrease this trouble more and more in all that believe.
THE heart of a believer affected with the Glory of Christ, is like the Needle touched with the Lodestone. It can no longer be quiet, no longer be satisfied in a distance from him. It is put into a continual motion towards him. The motion indeed is weak and tremulous. Pantings, breathings, sighings, groanings, in prayer, in meditations, in the secret recesses of our Minds, are the life of it. However it is continually pressing towards him. But it obtains not its point, it comes not to its centre and rest in this World.