ON THE GLORY OF CHRIST. perfect view of the glory of Christ to be our duty, and do we abide in the performance of it? If it be otherwise with any of us, it is a signal evidence that our profes- sion is hypocritical. IfChrist be in us, he is the hope ofglory in us: and where that hope is, it will be active in desires of the things hoped for. Many love the world too well and have their minds too much filled with the things of it, to entertain desires of speeding through it unto a state wherein they may behold the glory of Christ. They are at home, and are unwilling to be absent from the body, though tobe present with the Lord. They hope it may be that such a season will come at one time or another, and then it will be the best they can look for when they can be here no more. But they have but a little sight of the glory of Christ in this world by faith, if any at all, who so lit- tle, so faintly desire to have the immediatesight of it above. I cannot understand how any man can walk with God as he ought, or bath that love for Jesus Christ which true faith will produce, or doth place his refreshments and joy in spiritual things, in things a- bove, that Both not on all just occasions, so meditate on the glory of Christ in heaven, as to long for an ad- mittance into the immediate sight of it. Our Lord Jesus Christ alone perfectly understood wherein the eternal blessedness of them that believe in him doth consist. And this is the sum of what he prays for with respect unto that end; namely, that we may be -.where he is, to behold hisglwy. And is it not our duty to live in a continual desire of that which he prayed so earnestly that we might attain? if in ourselves we as 85 yet apprehend but little of the glory, the excellency, the blessedness of it, yet ought we to repose that confi- dence in the wisdom and love of Christ, thatit is our best, infinitely better than any thing we can enjoy here below. Unto those who are inured unto these contempla- tions, they are the salt of their lives, whereby every thing is condited and made savoury unto them, as we shall shew afterwards. And the want of spiritual dili- gence herein, is that which bath brought forth a negli- gent, careless, worldly profession of religion, which contenting itself with some outward duties, bath lost out of it the power of faith and love in their principal. operations. Hereby many deceive their own souls. Goods, lands, possessions, relations, trades, with secu- lar interests in them, are the things whose image is drawn on their minds, and whose characters are writ- ten on their foreheads, as the titles whereby they may be known. As believers beholding the glory of Christ in the blessed glass of the gospel, are ,changed into the same image and likeness by the Spirit of the Lord; so these persons beholding the beauty of the world, and the things that are in it, in the cursed glass of self -love, they are in their minds changed into the same image. Hence perplexing fears, vain hopes, empty embraces of perishing things, fruitlessdesires, earthly, carnal de- signs, cursed self -pleasing imaginations, feeding on and being fed by the love of the world and self, do a- bide and prevail in them. But we have not so learned Christ Jesus. CHAPTER XIII. THE SECOND DIFFERENCE BETWEENOUR BEHOLDING THE GLORY OF CHRIST BY FAITH IN T BY SIGHT IN HEAVEN. FAITH is the light wherein we behold the glory of Christ in this world, And this, in its own nature, as unto this great end, is weak and imperfect, like weak eyes, that cannot behold the sun in its beauty. Hence our sight of it differs greatly from what we shall enjoy in glory, as bath been declared. But this is not all : it is frequently hindered and interrupted in its opera tions, or it loseth the view of its object by one means R IS WORLD, AND or other. As he who sees any thing at a great distance sees it imperfectly, and the least interposition or mo- tion takes it quite out of his sight, so is it with our faith in this matter; whence sometimes we can have little, sometimes no sight at all, of the glory ofChrist by it. And this gives us, as we shall see, another difference be- tweenfaith and sight. Now, although the consideration hereof may seem a 12
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=