John Owen:
Eye the Father as love; look not on him as an always lowering father, but as one most kind and tender.
Let us look on him by faith, as one that has had thoughts of kindness toward us from everlasting.
It is misapprehension of God that makes any [to] run from him, who have the least breathing wrought in them after him. “They that know you will put their trust in you” [Ps. 9:10].
Men cannot abide with God in spiritual meditations. He loses soul’s company by their want [=lack] of this insight into his love.
They fix their thoughts only on his terrible majesty, severity, and greatness; and so their spirits are not endeared.
Would a soul continually eye his everlasting tenderness and compassion, his thoughts of kindness that have been from of old, his present gracious acceptance, [then] it could not bear an hour’s absence from him; whereas now, perhaps, it cannot watch with him one hour.
—John Owen, Communion with the Triune God, ed. Kapic and Taylor (Wheaton: Crossway, 2007), p. 124.
