A64995:207
The true Christians love of the unseen Christ, or, A discourse chiefly tending to…
The true Christians love of the unseen Christ, or, A discourse chiefly tending to excite and promote the decaying love of Christ in the hearts of Christians with an appendix concerning Christs manifestation of himself to them that love him / by Thomas Vincent.
London: printed by J.R. for Samuel Sprint, 1677
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.
Section I.
1. What it is for Christ to manifest Himself?
1. WHat it is for Christ to manifest Himself?
1. Christ doth manifest himself when he maketh a clearer discovery unto His Disciples of the excellency of His Person, when he doth further unveil himself, and lets forth some beams and rays, with greater lustre and brightness, to discover more of the oriency and transcendency of his soul-ravishing beauty unto them, which they had but a dimme• sight and darker apprehensions of before; and this is done when Christ doth more fully impart of the spirit of wisdom and revelation unto them. Upon this account the Apostle did pray in the behalf of the believing Ephesians, that the Lord would give them the spirit of wisdom and revelation to enlighten their understandings in the knowledge of him, Eph. 1. 16, 17, 18. they had the spirit before and some knowledge of Christ before, but he prays that God would give them fuller measures of the spirit, to make a clearer discovery of Christ, that the eyes of their understandings might be more and more ⟨p. 174⟩enlightened unto a more spiritual discerning of the surpassing Beauty and Excellency in Christ's person, in the knowledge of whom the most enlightened Christians are capable of further growth unto the end of their life, hence that Exhortation of the Apostle Peter, 2 Pet. 3. 18. But grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.