The Glories of Christ

John Flavel, a preacher who preceded the great American preacher Jonathan Edwards by about fifty years wrote a series of sermons entitled The Fountain of Life Opened Up in 1671. In the opening letter, he writes:

My dear and hounoured friends

If my pen were both able, and at leisure, to get glory in paper, it would be but a paper glory when I had gotten it; but if by displaying the transcendent excellency of Jesus Christ, I may win glory to Him from you, to whom I humbly offer them, or from any other into whose hands providence shall cast them, that will be glory indeed, and an occasion of glorifying God for all eternity...

Alas! I write His praises but by moon light; I cannot praise Him so much as by halves. Indeed, no tongue but His own (as Nazianzen said of Basil) is sufficient to undertake that task. What shall I say of Christ? The excelling glory of that object dazzles all apprehension, swallows up all expression. When we have borrowed metaphors from every creature that has any excellencey or lovely property in it, till we have stript the whole creation bare of all its ornaments, and clothed Christi with all that glory; when we have even worn out our tongues, in ascribing praises to Him, alas! we have done nothing, when all is done.