A53708:571
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 14: Other Differences between our Beholding the Glory of Christ by Faith in this World, and…
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.
WITH wicked Men it is not so. Death unto them is a Curse; and the Curse is the Means of the Conveyance of all Evil, and not Deliverance from any. Wherein they have been warmed and refreshed by the Influences of the Flesh, they shall be deprived of it. But their Souls in their separate State, are perpetually harassed with the disquieting Passions which have been impressed on their Minds by their corrupt fleshly Lusts. In vain do such Persons look for Relief by Death. If there be any thing remaining of present good and usefulness to them, they shall be deprived of it. And their Freedom for a Season from bodily pains, will no way lie in the Balance against that Confluence of Evils which Death will let in upon them.
WITH wicked Men it is not so. Death unto them is a Curse; and the Curse is the Means of the Conveyance of all Evil, and not Deliverance from any. Wherein they have been warmed and refreshed by the Influences of the Flesh, they shall be deprived of it. But their Souls in their separate State, are perpetually harrased with the disquieting Passions which have been impressed on their Minds by their corrupt fleshly Lusts. In vain do such Persons look for Relief by Death. If there be any thing remaining of present good and usefulness to them, they shall be deprived of it. And their Freedom for a Season from bodily pains, will no way lie in the Ballance against that Confluence of Evils which Death will let in upon them.
2. THE Spirits of just Men being freed by Death from the Clog of the Flesh, not yet refined; all the Faculties of their Souls, and all the Graces in them, as Faith, Love and Delight, are immediately set at Liberty, enabled constantly to exercise themselves on God in Christ. The end for which they were created, for which our Nature was endowed with them, was, that we might adhere unto God by them, and come unto the Enjoyment of him. Being now freed wholly from all that Impotency, perverseness, and Disability unto this End, with all the Effects of them, which came upon them by the Fall; they are carried with a full Stream towards God, cleaving unto him with the most intense Embraces. And all their Actings towards God, shall be natural, with Facility, Joy, Delight and Complacency. We know not yet the Excellency of the Operations of our Souls in divine things, when disburdened of their present Weight of their Flesh. And this is a second step towards the Consummation of Glory. For,