A27017:1049
The Saints' Everlasting Rest
The saints everlasting rest, or, A treatise of the blessed state of the saints in their enjoyment of God in glory wherein is showed its excellency and certainty, the misery of those that lose it, the way to attain it, and assurance of it, and how to live in the continual delightful forecasts of it and now published by Richard Baxter ...The saints everlasting rest, or, A treatise of the blessed state of the saints in their enjoyment of God in glory wherein is shewed its excellency and certainty, the misery of those that lose it, the way to attain it, and assurance of it, and how to live in the continual delightful forecasts of it and now published by Richard Baxter ...
London: printed by Rob. White for Thomas Underhil and Francis Tyton, 1650
THE SAINTS Everlasting REST. PART. III. › Chapter 7 › Section 4
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.
*Here also you must carefully distinguish betwixt the several degrees of Assurance. All Assurance is not of the highest degree. It differs in strength according to the different degrees of Apprehension in all the forementioned Points of Certainty which are necessary thereunto. He that can truly raise the foresaid Conclusion [That he is Justified, &c.] from the Premises, hath some degree of Assurance; though he do it with much weakness, and staggering, and doubting. The weakness of our Assurance in any one point of the premises, will accordingly weaken our Assurance in the Conclusion.
- *Vid. Grego. de Valen. Tom. 2. disp. 8. q. 4. punct. 4.
Some, when they speak of Certainty of Salvation, do mean only such a Certainty as excludeth all doubting, and think nothing else can be called Certainty, but this high degree. Perhaps some Papists mean this, when they deny a Certainty. Some also maintain, That Saint Paul's Plerophory, or full Assurance, is this Highest degree of Assurance; and that some Christians do in this life attain to it. But Paul calls it Full Assurance in comparison of lower degrees, and not because it is perfect. For if Assurance be perfect, then also our Certainty of Knowledge, Faith and Sense in the ••• mises must be perfect: And if some Grace perfect, why not all? and so we turn Novatians, Catharists, Perfectionists. Perhaps in some their Certainty may be so great, that it may overcome all sensible doubting, or sensible stirrings of Unbelief, by reason of the sweet and powerful Acts and Effects of that Certainty: And yet it doth not overcome all Unbelief and Uncertainty so as to expel or nullify them; but a certain measure of them remaineth still. Even as when you would heat cold water by the mixture of hot, you may pour in the hot so long till no coldness is felt; and yet the water may be far from the highest degree of heat. So faith may suppress the sensible stirrings of unbelief, and Certainty prevail against all the trouble of uncertainty, and yet be far from the highest degree.