Owen - BV4501 O84 1844

12Ó or SPIttITU.AL MINbEDNESS. lievers, and which alone can convey a true and useful sense of these things to our minds. This, therefore, is diligently to be inquired into, and firmly stated in our thoughts and affections. 4. The principal notion which the Scripture gives us of the state of heavenly blessedness, and which the meanest believers are capable of improving in daily practice, is, that faith shall be turned into sight, and grace into glory. We walk now by faith and not by sight, saith the apostle. 2 Cor. iii. 7. Wherefore this is the difference between our present and our fu' ture state, that sight hereafter shall supply the room of faith. 1 John. iii. 2. And if sight come into the place of faith, then the object of that sight must be the same with the present object of our faith. So the apostle informs us, 1 Cor. xiii. 9-12. 'For we know in part, and we prophecy in part ; but when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. For now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face.' Those things which we see now darkly, as in a glass, we shall then have an immediate sight, and full comprehension of; for that which is perfect, must come and do away that which is in part. What then is the principal present object of faith as it is evangelical, into whose room light must succeed t Is it not ' the manifestation of the glory of the infinite wisdom, grace, love, kindness and power of God in Christ, the revelation of the eternal counsels of his will, and the ways of their ac- complishment to the eternal salvation of the church in and by him, with the glorious exaltation of Christ himself 1' Wherefore, in the full, satisfactory repre- sentation of these things to our souls, received by sight, or a direct, immediate intuition, of them, doth

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