A26917:87
Directions for weak distempered Christians, to grow up to a confirmed state of grace…
Directions for weak distempered Christians, to grow up to a confirmed state of grace with motives opening the lamentable effects of their weaknesses and distempers / by Richard Baxter.
London: printed for Nevil Simmons, 1669
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Directions 1: DIRECTIONS TO THE CONVERTED, For their establishment, growth, and perseverance.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
3. Moreover, we have great reason to conceive of the stare of the glorified, in some congruency with the rest of the workmanship of ⟨p. 45⟩God. But in all the rest there is a difference or imparity: therefore we have reason to think it is so here. On Earth there are Princes and Subjects in the Commonwealth: and Pastors and People in the Churches; and several degrees among the people as to gifts and comforts: Among the Devils there are degrees: and among Angels themselves there are Principalities and Powers and Thrones and Dominions. And why then should we imagine that the Heavenly Jerusalem shall not be so too?
3. Moreover, we have great reason to conceive of the stare of the glorified, in some congruency with the rest of the workmanship of ⟨p. 45⟩God. But in all the rest there is a difference or imparity: therefore we have reason to think it is so here. On Earth there are Princes and Subjects in the Commonwealth: and Pastors and People in the Churches; and several degrees among the people as to gifts and comforts: Among the Devils there are degrees: and among Angels themselves there are Principalities and Powers and Thrones and Dominions. And why then should we imagine that the Heavenly Hierusalem shall not be so too?
4. And Christ plainly intimateth that there is a place on his right hand and his left to give, in that Kingdom, though as the Son of Man he had not the principal disposal of it (And then the Kingdom must be delivered to the Father, and God be all and in all; and therefore the Mediator as such have somewhat less to do, than now.) And when Christ telleth us of Lazarus in Abraham's bosom, and of many from the East and West sitting down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, he intimateth to us, that every place in Heaven is not so high as Abraham's bosom, nor a sitting with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. So that I take it as a plain revealed truth that divers degrees of holiness will have divers degrees of Glory hereafter.