Chapter 3: The Nature of Blessedness — Vision of God's Face, Assimilation, and Satisfaction

The nature of this Blessedness propounded to consideration, in the three ingredients (here mentioned) of which it consists. 1. Vision of God's Face. 2. Assimilation to him. 3. The satisfaction resulting from there. These propounded to be considered 1. Absolutely and singly each by itself. 2. Relatively in their mutual respects to each other. The first of these, Vision of God's Face discoursed of. 1. The Object. 2. The Act.

Now for the nature of this Blessedness; or the inquiry wherein it lies, so far as the text gives us any account of it, we are invited to turn our thoughts and discourse to it. And we have it here represented to us in all the particulars that can be supposed to have any nearer interest in the business of Blessedness, or to be more intimate and intrinsic to it.

For (the beatific object supposed) what more can be necessary to actual, complete, formal blessedness, than the sight of it, and adaptation or assimilation to it (which is nothing else but its being actually communicated and imparted to the soul, its being united and made as it were one with it) and the complacential fruition the soul has of it so communicated, or having so transformed it into itself?

And these three are manifestly contained in the text (the beatific object being involved with them): the first in the former clause, I shall behold your face; the second and third in the latter, I shall be satisfied with your likeness — where, being made like to God has been discovered to be supposed, and the satisfaction, the pleasant, contentful relishes consequent to it, plainly expressed.

We shall therefore have stated the entire nature of this Blessedness in the handling of these three things.

- Vision of the Face of God. - Participation of his likeness. - Satisfaction therein.

And I shall choose to consider them 1. Absolutely, and singly, each by itself. 2. Relatively, in the mutual respects (by way of influence and dependence) they may be found to have towards each other.

Therefore first, in the absolute consideration of them severally, we begin with

First the Vision of God's Face, where

The Object, the Face of God, and the act of seeing and beholding it are distinctly to be spoken to.

1. The Face of God (the Object of this Vision) which is his glory represented, offered to view. And this objected or exhibited glory is twofold.

1. Sensible, such as shall incur and gratify (after the resurrection) the bodily eye.

2. Intellectual, or intelligible: that spiritual glory that only comes under the view and contemplation of the glorified mind.

1. A sensible glory, (to begin with what is lower) is fittingly in our way to be taken notice of; and may well be comprehended (as its less-principal intent) within the significance of the expression the Face of God. So indeed it does evidently signify (Exodus 33:11). And if we look to the notation of the word, and its frequent use as applied to God, it may commodiously enough and will often be found to signify, in a larger and more extended sense, any aspect or appearance of God. And though it may be understood in verse 23 of that chapter to signify an overcoming spiritual glory, as the principal thing there intended, such as no soul dwelling in flesh could behold without rending the veil and breaking all to pieces; yet, even there also, may such a degree of sensible glory be secondarily intended, as it was not consistent with a state of mortality to be able to bear.

And supposing the other expression [Your likeness] to signify, in any part, the objective glory saints are to behold, it is very capable of being extended so far, as to take in a sensible appearance of glory also, which it does in these words, The similitude of the Lord shall he behold (yet even that glory also was transformative and impressive of itself: Moses so long conversed with it, till he became incapable, for the present, of converse with men, as you know the story relates) (Numbers 12:8; Ezekiel 1:28; Exodus 34:35).

Such a glory as this, though it belongs not to the being of God, yet it may be some umbrage of him, a more shadowy representation, as a man's garments are of the man, which is the allusion in that of the Psalmist, "You are clothed with Majesty and Honor, you cover yourself with light as with a garment" ([reconstructed: Psalm 104:1-2]).

And inasmuch as that spiritual body (the house not made with hands) with which the blessed are to be clothed, must then be understood to have its proper sensitive powers and organs, refined to that degree as may be agreeable to a state of glory; so must these have their suitable objects to converse with. A faculty without an object is not possible in nature; and is altogether inconsistent with a state of Blessedness. The bodies of saints will be raised in glory — fashioned like Christ's glorious body; must bear the image of the heavenly; and this will connaturalize them to a region of glory, render a surrounding sensible glory necessary and natural to them, their own element: they will as it were not be able to live but amidst such a glory. Place is conservative of the body placed in it, by its suitableness to it. Indeed every created being (inasmuch as it is not self-sufficient, and is obliged to fetch in continual refreshings from without) must always have something suitable to itself to converse with, or it presently languishes. By such a harmony of actives and passives the world consists and holds together. The least defect thereof, then, is least of all supposable in the state of Blessedness.

The rays of such a glory have often shone down into this lower world. Such a glory we know showed itself upon Mount Sinai; afterwards often about the Tabernacle, and in the Temple. Such a glory appeared at our Savior's birth, baptism, and transfiguration; and will do at his expected appearance, which leaves it no unimaginable thing to us; and shows how facile it is to God to (do that which will then be, in some sort, necessary) create a glory fit for the entertainment and gratification of any such faculty as he shall then continue in being. But,

2. The intellectual glory — that which perfected spirits shall eternally please themselves to behold — calls for our more special consideration. This is the glory that excels all hyperbolic glory (as that expression imports) such, as in comparison of which, the other is said to be no glory: as the Apostle speaks, comparing the glory of the legal, with that of the evangelical dispensation, where the former was, we must remember, chiefly a sensible glory, the glory that shone upon Mount Sinai, the latter a purely spiritual glory; and surely if the mere preludes of this glory — the primordia, the beginnings of it, the glory — yet shining but through a glass (as he there also speaks of this glory) were so hyperbolically glorious, what will it be in its highest exaltation in its perfected state? The Apostle cannot speak of that, but with hyperbole upon hyperbole in the next chapter, as though he would heap up words as high as heaven to reach it, and give a just account of it (2 Corinthians 3:10; 2 Corinthians 4:17).

Things are as their next originals. This glory more immediately rays forth from God, and more nearly represents him. It is [reconstructed: his] more genuine production. He is styled the Father of Glory: every thing that is glorious is some way like him, and bears his image. But he is as well the Father of Spirits as the Father of Glory; and that glory, which is purely spiritual, has most in it of his nature and image: as beams but in the next descent from the body of the Sun. This is his unveiled face, and emphatically, the divine likeness.

Again, things are as the faculties which they are to exercise and satisfy; this glory must exercise and satisfy the noblest faculty of the most noble and excellent creature. Intellectual nature in the highest improvement it is capable of in a creature must here be gratified to the uttermost; the most enlarged contemplative power of an immortal spirit finds that wherein it terminates there, with a most contentful acquiescence.

It is true it must be understood not totally to exceed the capacity of a creature, but it must fully come up to it. Should it quite transcend the sphere of created nature, and surpass the model of a human understanding (as the divine glory undoubtedly would, did not God consider us in the manner of exhibiting it to our view) it would confound, not satisfy. A creature even in glory is still a creature, and must be treated as such. After the blessed God has elevated it to the highest pitch, he must infinitely condescend; it cannot otherwise know or converse with him. He must accommodate this glory to the weaker eye, the fainter and more languid apprehensions of a poor finite thing. I had almost said, nothing — for what is any creature, indeed the whole creation in its best state compared with the I AM, the being (as he justly appropriates to himself that name) the All in All. We must be careful then to settle in our own thoughts such a state of this glory (in forming that indeterminate notion we have now of it) as may render it (though confessedly above the measure of our present understandings as to a distinct knowledge of it) not manifestly incompetent to any created understanding whatever, and as may speak us duly shy of ascribing a deity to a worm, of affixing anything to the creature, which shall be found agreeing to the blessed God himself alone. Their expressions therefore, who over-magnify (even deify) the creature assumed into glory, must be heard and read with caution and abhorrence, as the high swelling words of blasphemous vanity. Is it not enough that perishing wretches, that were within one hand's breadth of Hell, are saved — except they be also deified too? That they become happy unless they also become Gods? The distance even of a glorified creature from the glorious God is still infinitely greater, than between it and the silliest worm. The minutest atom of dust.

And by how much more we shall then know of his glory, so much more shall we understand that distance. Yet as he shall then enlarge the capacity of the soul he glorifies to a very vast comprehension, so shall the exhibition of his glory to it be fully adequate to its most enlarged capacity. They are as yet but obscure glimmerings, we can have of this glory; but so far as, without too bold curiosity, we may, and wherein Scripture light will give us any preapprehension of it, let us consider a while,

The Nature and Excellency of it.

We cannot indeed consider these separately, for we can no sooner understand it to be glory, than we conceive it excellent; glory, in the proper notion of it, being nothing else but resplendent excellency, the lustre of excellency or real worth made conspicuous. Yet as there is an excellency conceivable in the nature of it, that excellency of which it is the splendor and brightness; so we must conceive a peculiar excellency of that very radiation, that splendor itself, with which it shines to blessed souls. In its very nature it is the brightness of divine excellencies: in its present appearance, it shines in the highest excellency of that brightness; in its nature it excels all things else: in its present exhibition, compared with all its former radiations, it excels itself.

As to the nature of this glory, it is nothing else but the conspicuous lustre of divine perfections. We can only guide our present conceptions of it, by the discovery God has already given us of himself, in those several excellencies of his being, the great attributes that are convertible and one with him. When Moses besought him for a sight of his glory, he answers him with this, I will proclaim my name before you. His name, we know, is the collection of his attributes.

The notion therefore we can form of this glory is only such as we may have of a large volume by a brief synopsis or table; of a magnificent fabric, by a small model or platform, a spacious country by a little landscape. He has here given us a true representation of himself, not a full one: such as will secure our apprehensions, being guided thereby, from error not from ignorance. So as they swerve not in apprehending this glory, though they still fall short. We can now apply our minds to contemplate the several perfections which the blessed God assumes to himself; and whereby he describes to us his own being: and can in our thoughts attribute them all to him, though we have still but low defective conceptions of each one. As if we could at a distance, distinguish the streets and houses of a great city; but every one appears to us much less than it is; we can apprehend somewhat of whatever he reveals to be in himself, yet when all is done how little a portion do we take up of him! Our thoughts are empty and languid, strait and narrow — such as diminish and limit the Holy One: yet so far as our apprehensions can correspond to the discovery he affords us of his several excellencies, we have a present view of the divine glory. Do but strictly and distinctly survey the many perfections comprehended in his name, then gather them up and consider how glorious he is! Conceive one glory resulting from substantial wisdom, goodness, power, truth, justice, holiness; that is, beaming forth from him who is all these by his very essence, necessarily, originally, infinitely, eternally; with whatever else is truly a perfection. This is the glory blessed souls shall behold forever.

For the excellency of it, it is called by way of discrimination, the excellent glory. There was glory put upon Christ in the transfiguration; of which, when the Apostle speaks, having occasion to mention, withal, the glory of heaven itself, from where the voice came, he adds to this latter, the distinguishing note of the excellent: He himself was eye-witness of the honor, and majesty, and glory which the Lord Jesus then received; but beyond all this, the glory from where the voice came, was the excellent or stately glory, as the word imports.

It is a great intimation how excellent a glory this is, that it is said to be a glory yet to be revealed, as if it had been said, Whatever appearances of the divine glory are now offered to your view, there is still somewhat undiscovered, somewhat behind the curtain that will outshine all. You have not seen so much, but you are still to expect unspeakably more.

Glory is then to shine in its noon-day strength and vigor: it is then in its meridian. Here, the riches of glory are to be displayed, certain treasures of glory, the plenitude and magnificence of glory. We are here, to see him as he is, to know him as we are known of him. Certainly, the display of himself, the rays of his discovered excellency must hold proportion with that vision, and be therefore exceedingly glorious. It is the glory Christ had with the Father before the foundations of the world were laid; into the vision and communion of which, holy souls shall now be taken, according as their capacities can admit; that with which his great achievements, and high merits shall be rewarded eternally; that with which he is to be glorified in heaven, in compensation of having glorified his Father on earth, and finished the work to which he was appointed. This cannot but be a most transcendent glory. It is in sum, and in the language of the text, the glory of God's own face, his most conspicuous glory. Whose transforming beams are productive of the glory impressed; the next ingredient into this blessedness, which will presently come to be spoken of, after we have given you some short account of

2. The act of beholding: the vision or intuition itself, by which, intervening, the impression is made.

Glory seems to carry in it a peculiar respect to the visual power (whether corporal, or mental; as it is itself of the one kind or the other) — it is something to be contemplated, to be looked upon. And being to transmit an impression, and consequent pleasure to another subject, it must necessarily be so, it can neither transform, nor satisfy but as it is beheld.

And here the sensitive intuition, I shall not insist on, as being less intended in the text, and the discourse of it less suitable to such, as with a spiritual mind and design, set themselves to inquire into the nature of the saints' blessedness. Yet, as this is the most noble, comprehensive, quick, and sprightly sense, so is the act of it more considerable, in the matter of blessedness, than any other of the outward man, and the most perfect imitation of the act of the mind, from where also this so often borrows the name of the other, and is called seeing. It is an act indeed very proper and pertinent to a state of glory. By how much more any sensible object is glorious (supposing the sensorium to be duly disposed and fortified, as must be here supposed) so much is it the fitter object of sight; hence when we would express a glorious object, we call it conspicuous, and the less glorious, or more obscure any thing is, the less visible, and approaches the nearer to invisibility, from where that saying in the common philosophy, 'To see blackness is to see nothing.'

Whatever a glorified eye, replenished with a heavenly vitality and vigor, can fetch in from the many glorified objects that encompass it, we must suppose to concur to this blessedness. Now is the eye satisfied with seeing, which before never could.

But, it is intellectual sight we are chiefly to consider here, that whereby we see him that is invisible, and approach the inaccessible light. The word here used, some critics tell us, more usually signifies the sight of the mind. And then, not a casual, superficial glancing at a thing, but contemplation, a studious, designed viewing of a thing, when we solemnly compose and apply ourselves thereto, or the vision of prophets or such as have things discovered to them by divine revelation (from there called Chozim, Seers) which imports (though not a previous design, yet) no less intention of mind in the act itself.

And so it more fitly expresses that knowledge which we have, not by discourse and reasoning out of one thing from another, but by immediate intuition of what is nakedly, and at once offered to our view, which is the more proper knowledge of the blessed in heaven. They shall have the glory of God so presented, and their minds so enlarged, as to comprehend much at one view, in which respect they may be said, in a great degree, to know as they are known, in as much as the blessed God comprehends all things at once, in one simple act of knowing. Yet that is not to be understood as if the state of glory should exclude all ratiocination, more than our present state does all intuition (for first and indemonstrable principles we see by their own light, without illation or argument) nor can it be inconvenient to admit, that while the knowledge the blessed have of God is not [reconstructed: infinite], there may be use of their discursive faculty with great fruit and pleasure. Pure intuition of God, without any mixture of reasoning, is acknowledged (by such as are apt enough to be over-ascribing to the creature) peculiar to God alone. But as the blessed God shall continually afford (if we may speak of continuity in eternity, which yet we cannot otherwise apprehend) a clear discovery of himself, so shall the principal exercise, and felicity of the blessed soul consist in that less laboring and more pleasant way of knowing: a mere admitting or entertaining of those free beams of voluntary light, by a grateful intuition, which way of knowing the expression of sight, or beholding does most incline to, and that is, we are sure, the ordinary language of Scripture about this matter.