2 Corinthians 4

6. The sixth thing in Glory is a blessed rest (Hebrews 4:9). There remains a rest, Foelix transitus a labore ad requiem, here we can have no rest, tossed and turned as a ball on racket (2 Corinthians 4:8). We are [〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉] troubled on every side.

As the wicked have a worm that never dies, so the elect have a crown that never fades. Ever is a short word, but has no ending; in fine erit gaudium sine fine, Bern. (2 Corinthians 4:18). The things which are not seen are eternal.

3. The third lesson is the excellency of things unseen. Christ gives the soul a sight of glory, a prospect of eternity (2 Corinthians 4:18): We look not at things which are seen, but [illegible], things which are not seen. Moses saw him who is invisible (Hebrews 11:27).

Godliness has the promise of this life (1 Timothy 4:8). These are as it were the saints' wages; but besides, the great reward is to come, an eternal weight of glory (2 Corinthians 4:17). Christ makes all his subjects kings (Revelation 2:10): I'll give you a crown of life.

Whom God calls, he crowns. It is a weight of glory (2 Corinthians 4:17). The Hebrew word for glory (Kauod) signifies pondus, a weight: the weight of glory adds to the worth.

So the more the diamond is cut the more it sparkles: And the more God afflicts us, the more our graces cast a sparkling luster. 4. For preparation: To fit and prepare the saints for glory (2 Corinthians 4:17). Those stones which are cut out for a building are first hewn and squa…

2. The bringing Israel out of the house of bondage, was a type of their deliverance from Satan. Thus men naturally are in the house of bondage, they are enslaved to Satan: Satan is called the Prince of this World (John 14:30), and the God of this World (2 Corinthians 4:4), becau…

What angel can span eternity? An eternal weight of glory (2 Corinthians 4:17). The saints shall bathe themselves in the rivers of divine pleasure; and these rivers can never be dried up (Psalm 16:11).

Christ did not rise from the dead as a private person, but as the public head of the church; and the head being raised, the rest of the body shall not always lie in the grave. Christ's rising is a pledge of our resurrection (2 Corinthians 4:14). Knowing that he which raised up t…

When a poor soul has been ready to faint, he has had nothing to comfort him but a Scripture cordial. When he has been sick, the Word has revived him; (2 Corinthians 4:17) Our light affliction which is but for a moment, works for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glor…

Should God convert by the ministry of angels, then we should have been ready to have gloried in angels, and have given that honor to them which is due to God. But when God works by weak tools, makes use of men who are of like passions with ourselves, and by them converts, now th…

Men are willingly slaves to Satan; they will fight and die for him. Therefore Satan is not only called the prince of this world (John 14:30), but the God of this world (2 Corinthians 4:4), to show what power Satan has over men's souls. O let us pray that God will break the scept…

The hope of the kingdom of heaven, says Basil, should sweeten all our troubles; (2 Timothy 2:12) If we suffer we shall reign with him. It is but a short fight, but an eternal triumph; this light suffering produces an eternal weight of glory (2 Corinthians 4:17). 1. A weight of g…

God will let us see that our hearts are nothing but darkness, and that to cause any spiritual comfort is as much as to create light at first. Therefore he says, 'I create the fruit of the lips, peace' (Isaiah 57:19), and that it is he who commands light to shine into our hearts,…

2. Also an innate darkness in our spirits as we are sinful creatures: since the fall, our hearts of themselves are nothing but darkness, and therefore no wonder if, when God draws but the curtains and shuts up the light from us, our hearts should engender and conceive such horri…

Neither yet does he immediately concur to produce such an act of assent in us as God does when he works faith in us, for then God's power and assistance in working good should be no more than Satan's in working evil. And yet the Scripture phrases go far in ascribing to Satan her…

Many interpreters understand these words, of the resurrection at the day of judgment simply; as though the Holy Ghost had said, These Martyrs therefore refused to be delivered from death; because, they looked to receive, at the day of judgment, a greater measure of glory: even f…

2. By suffering affliction for Christ's sake, we are made conformable unto him in his humility; that so we may be made like unto him after this life in glory. So Paul says, Our light affliction causes unto us, an eternal weight of glory, 2 Corinthians 4:17. And again, it is a tr…

And those who should be most ready to die, are generally, most ignorant, most covetous, and their hearts most of all wedded to the earth, and earthly things. Secondly old persons must here learn Saint Paul's lesson: 2 Corinthians 4. That as the outward man perishes, so the inwar…

They believed that these things which the Lord promised, were shadows of better things: and hereon stayed themselves, being well content with that estate to which God had called them. So Paul was contented to bear the afflictions which God had laid upon him, and his reason was,…

Shall we say our sanctification, whereby we are renewed to the image of God in righteousness and true holiness? that also is imperfect and cannot satisfy God's justice required in the law: as Isaiah has said of himself and the people, all our righteousness is as a menstruous clo…

In Ephesians 3:17, we read of being rooted in grace. Grace in the heart is the root of every gracious word in the mouth, and of every holy work in the hand (Psalm 116:10; 2 Corinthians 4:13). It is true, Christ is the root of a Christian; but Christ is the originating root, and…

We shall only add two reasons further, to confirm and some-way to clear why it is that the Lord works, and must work thus distinctly, inwardly, really, powerfully, and immediately in working faith and converting of sinners: The first is drawn from the exceeding great deadness, i…

Since then this is his design in all the chastisements inflicted on his own people, and since he only by his grace can make it infrustrably take effect, let him have our hearty allowance and approbation to carry it on vigorously and successfully, and let us pray more frequently…

It is but tribulation ten days (Revelation 2:10). And which is shorter than all, a moment (2 Corinthians 4:17); and the shortest of all (Isaiah 54:7), a little moment. All the generations of the firstborn, that were in great tribulations, and in the womb and belly of the Red Sea…

Assertion 7. Christ draws by such a power (and this is the last point in the drawing) that it is not in the power of man to resist him. He draws by the pull of that same arm and power by which he commanded light to shine out of darkness (2 Corinthians 4:6), by which he raised th…

Assertion 1. In the first moment of our conversion, called actus primus conversionis, we are mere patients. 1. Because the infusion of the new heart (Ezekiel 36:26), the pouring of the Spirit of Grace and supplication on the family of David (Zechariah 12:10), and of the Spirit o…

And so in all our works, a good tree brings forth good fruit, but a corrupt tree brings forth evil fruit (Matthew 7:18). Wherein he shows you, that as we do no good, so we can do no good, not a good thought, nor a good word, nor a good work comes from such a man all his days; an…

First begin with the sureness of Christian doctrine, that you may lay a good foundation that Christ is the teacher of the Church, who has brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel (2 Timothy 1:10). Then penitently sue out your pardon, in the name of Christ, depend…

Here our days are sorrow and our travail grief, but there is our repose. 3. That our joy and contentment is so infinitely above our sorrow, and trouble (2 Corinthians 4:7), so that in all the troubles and sorrows of this life, we may look beyond them and through them, to the joy…

God permits that men sometimes by indirect means to become great in honor and dignity in this world; all which are done by the instinct of Satan, and his help: and evil men often succeed in their attempts, and from hence Satan is called the prince of this world, (John 12:31) Now…

3. The danger of not hearing this Prophet. 1. For the present to continue to slight and contemn the Gospel, is the mark that you are in a carnal perishing condition (2 Corinthians 4:3) If our Gospel is hid it is hid to them that are lost (John 10:3) My sheep hear my voice, and (…

Did those that read my labors know me, they would be ready to despise my undertakings: this I speak, because my former book has found such good acceptance, and this is so much desired. And that no man think of me, above what he knows to be in me: my heart has been near fainting…

I was as the very filth and [reconstructed: offscouring] of the world. He makes mention of this his infirmity in many places, as in (1 Corinthians 4; 2 Corinthians 4; 6; 11; 12) and in many other. We see then that Paul calls afflictions the infirmities of the flesh which he suff…

As long then as we live in the flesh, which is not without sin, the law often returns and does its office, in one more and in another less, as their faith is strong or weak: and yet not to their destruction, but to their salvation. For this is the exercise of the law in the sain…

The devil desired to sift out all the faith of the Apostles, and to leave in them nothing but the chaff of unbelief (Luke 22). The devil blinds the eyes of men that the light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ may not shine to them (2 Corinthians 4:4). This must teach us, that we mus…

5. On the contrary, they are wretched and miserable that live without the Gospel (Proverbs 29:18; 2 Corinthians 4:3; 2 Timothy 3:7). 6.

And it has three parts. The first is, bondage under Satan, who keeps unrepentant sinners in his snare according to his own will (2 Timothy 2:26), he rules in their hearts like a God (2 Corinthians 4:4), and has power to blind them, and to harden their hearts, till he have brough…

2. Because it does after a peculiar manner belong to us, who are under the New Testament, in the kingdom of grace, seeing that this commandment only is renewed by Christ, as his own proper commandment, many others being abrogated: as also because it is daily written by the Spiri…

And in that he mentions himself in particular, it is that he might give the more authority to his doctrine. For he thereby shows that he spoke from the heart, uttering and testifying by this his confession the fruit of his faith, according to that sentence, I believed, therefore…

And if this were said of the Law, and of the Prophets, what shall we say of the Gospel, by which this light is openly revealed to us? Shall we not affirm with Saint Paul: If the Gospel be yet hidden, it is hidden in them that are lost, whom Satan, the God of this world, has blin…

And however that which is here said, for a moment in my indignation, is properly to be understood, that God in fit season brought his banished home again into Judah: yet from there we may gather a general doctrine, namely, that the afflictions of the Church are but for a short s…

If she is now discontented with her estate, she must cast her eyes toward this day, in which she shall be most happy. And so Saint Paul opposes a weight of glory to the momentary afflictions, which are suddenly gone (2 Corinthians 4:17). The wicked scorn us without measure: for…

But this too was a part of the "emptying of himself," (Philippians 2:6:) not that any part of Christ’s glory should be taken away by it, but that it should lie in concealment for a time. Again, as Paul reminds us, that the gospel is mean according to the flesh, "that our faith s…

Though the Law was concealed, as it were, by a kind of veil, yet the truth of God shone brightly in it, if the eyes of many had not been blinded. With respect to the Gospel, Paul affirms with truth, that it is hidden to none but to the reprobate, and to those who are devoted to…

The substance of this statement is, that Christ intended to assure his followers of the salvation promised to them in the Gospel, that they might expect it as firmly as if he were himself to descend from heaven to bear testimony concerning it; and, on the other hand, to strike d…

The general instruction conveyed is, that the weak and frail condition of the Church ought not to lead us to conclude that it is dying, but rather to expect the immortal glory for which the Lord prepares his people by the cross and by afflictions; for what Paul maintains in refe…

For it is well if our flesh be continually mortified, and we have profited well, when the flesh, being subdued, has yielded to the Holy Spirit. There is another communication of the death of Christ, whereof as the Apostle speaks often elsewhere, so in (2 Corinthians 4), namely,…

True Faith in Christ is never exercised, any further than Persons behold as in a Glass, the Glory of the Lord, and have the Knowledge of the Glory of God in the Face of Jesus Christ; 2 Corinthians 3. 18. and 4. 6. They into whose Minds the Light of the glorious Gospel of Christ,…

I have shown that the immediate Object of it is the supreme Beauty and Excellency of the Nature of divine Things, as they are in themselves. And this is agreeable to the Scripture: The Apostle very plainly teaches that the great Thing discovered by spiritual Light, and understoo…