A27017:1174
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 8 › Section 7
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. VII.
6. THE time is near when God will search you:1 And that will be another kind of Trial then this. If it be but in this life by the fiery trial of affliction, it will make you wish again and again, that you had spared God that work and your selves the sorrow; and that you had Tried and Judged your selves,2 that so you might have escaped the Trial and Judgment of God. He will Examine you then as officers do offenders, with a word and a blow: and as they would have done by Paul, 3Examine him by scourging. It was a terrible voice to Adam when God calls to him, Adam, ⟨p. 422⟩where art thou? 4hast thou eaten, &c? and to Cain when God asketh him, Where is thy brother? To have demanded this of himself had been easier. Men think God mindeth their state and ways no more then they do their own. They consider not in their hearts (saith the Lord, Hos. 7.2.) that I remember all their wickedness; now their own doings have beset them about, they are before my face. Oh what a happy preparation would it be to that last and great Trial, if men had but throughly Tried themselves, and made sure work before-hand? When a man doth but soberly and believing think of that day, especially when he shall see the Judgment set, what a Joyful preparation is it, if he can truly say, I know the sentence shall pass on my side; I have Examined my self by the same Law of Christ which now must Judg me, and I have ound that I am quit from all my guilt, and am a Justified person in Law already. Oh, Sirs; if you knew but the comfort of such a preparation, you would fall close to the work of Self-Examining yet before you slept.