Thomas Vincent

This is one of the most poignant books ever to come from a Puritan pen. Vincent wrote this priceless devotional based on 1 Peter 1:8, "Jesus Christ, whom having not seen, you love..." There is, of course, nothing more basic in Christianity than love to Christ. It is difficult to describe the passionate love for Christ that flows from every page of this treatment of the beauty of Christ. Here is a warm bath and spiritual encouragement for weary souls. "Our Savior sent an epistle from heaven to the church of Ephesus, wherein He reproved her because she had left her first love, and threatened the removal of her candlestick. He would take away her light--if she did not recover her love. By the same hand, at the same time, He sent another epistle to the church of Laodicea, wherein He reproved her lukewarmness, and threatened, because she was neither hot nor cold--that He would spew her out of His mouth, Revelation 2:45 and 3:15-16. And are professors in Britain under no such sin, in no such danger--when some scoff at the flames of love to Christ, like dogs that bark at the moon so far above them; when the most nominal professors are wholly strangers to this love? "The former looking upon it as but a fancy, the latter having it only in the theory and when, among those Christians who love Christ in sincerity, there are so few that know what it is to love Christ with fervor and ardency, when there is so general a decay of love to Christ in the land, Lord, what is likely to become of Britain! Have we not provoked the Lord to take away our candlestick? Have we not provoked the Lord to suffer worse than Egyptian darkness to overspread us again, and cover our light because it shines with such cold beams, because the light of knowledge in the head, is accompanied with so little warmth of love to Christ in the hearts of most Christians? Everyone will fetch water to quench fire in a general conflagration, and surely there is need in a day of such general decay of love to Christ, that some such fetch fire from heaven, and use bellows too; arguments, I mean, to enkindle and blow up the spark of love to Christ which seems so ready to expire. "Reader, the following discourse of the true Christian's love to the unseen Christ, is not finely spun and woven with neatness of wit and language. It is not flourished and set off with a variety of metaphors, hyperboles, rhetorical elegancies, or poetical fancies and fragments. It is not adorned and fringed with the specious show of many marginal quotations, excerpted out of divers authors. The discourse is plain--but the author has endeavored that it might be warm; his design being more to advance his Master, than himself, in your esteem; and if he has less of your praise, so that his Lord may have more of your love--his great end is attained."

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