A53713:521
Of Communion with God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
Of communion with God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, each person distinctly in love, grace, and consolation, or, The saints fellowship with the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, unfolded by John Owen ...Of communion with God the Father, Sonne, and Holy Ghost, each person distinctly in love, grace, and consolation, or, The saints fellowship with the Father, Sonne, and Holy Ghost, unfolded by John Owen ...
Oxford: printed by A. Lichfield for Tho. Robinson, 1657
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. As to Consolation; this is the second great end for which §. 24 Christ gives and sends his Spirit to us, who from thence by the way of eminency is called the Comforter: to this end he seals us, anoints us, establishes us, and gives us peace and joy: of all which ⟨p. 169⟩I shall afterwards speak at large. Now there be two ways, whereby he may be grieved as to this end of his mission, and our chastity to Jesus Christ thereby violated.
2. As to Consolation; this is the second great end for which §. 24 Christ gives and sends his Spirit to us, who from thence by the way of eminency is called the Comforter: to this end he seales us, anoynts us, establishes us, and gives us peace and joy: of all which ⟨p. 169⟩I shall afterwards speake at large. Now there be two ways, whereby he may be grieved as to this end of his mission, and our chastity to Jesus Christ thereby violated.
1. By placing our comforts & joys in other things, and not being filled with joy in the holy Ghost. When we make creatures or §. 25 creature comforts, any thing whatever, but what we receive by the Spirit of Christ, to be our joy & our delight, we are false with Christ. So was it with Demas who loved the present world. When the ways of the Spirit of God are grievous and burdensome to us, when 1we say when will the Sabbath be past that we may exact all our labours? when our delight and refreshment lies in earthly things, we are unsuitable to Christ. May not his Spirit say, why do I still abide with these poor souls? I provide them joys unspeakable and glorious, but they refuse them for perishing things; I provide them spiritual, eternal, abiding consolations, and it is all rejected for a thing of nought. This Christ cannot bear! wherefore Believers are exceeding careful in this, not to place their joy and Consolation in any thing but what is administered by the Spirit. Their daily work is to get their hearts crucified to the world and the things of it; and the world to their hearts, that they may not have living affections to dying things; they would fain look on the world as a crucified dead thing, that hath neither form nor beauty; & if at any times they have been entangled with creatures and inferior contentments, and have lost their better joys, they cry out to Christ, O restore to us the joys of thy Spirit!