A27017:1126
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 15
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.
SECT. XV.
16. Again, many a Soul lies long in trouble, by taking up their Comforts in the beginning upon unsound or uncertain grounds. This may be the case of a gracious Soul, who hath better grounds, and doth not see them: And then when they grow to more ripeness of Understanding, and come to find out the insufficiency of their former grounds of Comfort, they cast away their Comfort wholly, when they should only cast away their rotten props of it, and search for better to support it with. As if their Comfort and their Safety were both of a nature, and both built on the same Foundation, they conclude against their Safety, because they have discovered the mistake of their former Comforts. And there are many much applauded Books and Teachers of late who further the delusion of poor Souls in this point, and make them believe, that because their former Comforts were too Legal, and their persuasions of their good estate were ill grounded, therefore themselves were under the Covenant of Works only, and their spiritual condition as unsound as their Comforts: These men observe not, That while they deny us the use of Marks to know our own state, yet they make use of them themselves to know the states of others: Yea and of false and insufficient Marks too. For to argue from the Motive of our persuasion of a good estate, to the goodness or ⟨p. 409⟩badness of that estate, is no sound arguing: It followeth not that a man is unregenerate, because he judged himself regenerate upon wrong grounds. For perhaps he might have better grounds, and not know it; or else not know which were good and which bad. Safety and Comfort stand not always on the same bottom. Bad grounds do prove the Assurance bad which was built upon them, but not always the Estate bad. These Teachers do but toss poor Souls up and down as the waves of the Sea, making them believe that their Estate is altered as oft as their conceits of it alter. Alas, few Christians do come to know either what are solid grounds of Comfort, or whether they have any such grounds themselves in the infancy of Christianity. But as an Infant hath life before he knoweth it, and as he hath misapprehensions of himself and most other things for certain years together, and yet it will not follow that therefore he hath no life or reason: So is it in the case in hand.