Meditations and Discourses on the Glory of Christ

THIS beholding of the Glory of Christ given him by his Father, is indeed subordinate unto the ultimate vision of the essence of God. What that is we cannot well conceive; only we know that the pure in heart shall see God. ⟨p. 156⟩But it hath such an immediate connection with it, and subordination unto it, as that without it we can never behold the face of God, as the objective blessedness of our Souls. For he is and shall be to eternity, the only means of Communication between God and the Church.

THIS beholding of the Glory of Christ given him by his Father, is indeed subordinate unto the ultimate vision of the essence of God. What that is we cannot well conceive; only we know that the pure in heart shall see God. ⟨p. 156⟩But it hath such an immediate connexion with it, and subordination unto it, as that without it we can never behold the face of God, as the objective blessedness of our Souls. For he is and shall be to eternity, the only means of Communication between God and the Church.

AND we may take some Direction in our looking into and longing after this perfect view of the Glory of Christ, from the example of the Saints under the Old Testament. The sight which they had of the Glory of Christ, for they also saw his Glory through the obscurity of its Revelation, and its being veiled with types and shadows, was weak and imperfect in the most illuminated believers, much inferior unto what we now have by faith, through the Gospel. Yet such it was, as encouraged them to enquire and search diligently into what was revealed, 1 Pet. 1. 10, 11. Howbeit their discoveries were but dark and confused, such as Men have of things at a great distance, or in a Land that is very far off, as the Prophet speaks, Isa. 33. 16. And the continuance of this Veil on the Revelation of the Glory of Christ, whilst a Veil of Ignorance and Blindness was upon their Hearts and Minds, proved the ruin of that Church in its Apostasy, as the Apostle declares,