A27017:1250
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 10 › Section 5
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. V.
14. Consider also, That Afflictions are Gods most effectual Means, to make us mend our pace in the way to our Rest. They are his Rod, and his Spur: What sluggard will not awake and stir when he feeleth them? It were well if mere Love would prevail with us, and that we were rather drawn to Heaven, then driven: But seeing our hearts so are bad, that Mercy will not do it; it is better be put on with the sharpest scourge, then loiter out our time till the doors are shut: Matthew the 25. Chap. and the 3, 5, & 10, Verses. ⟨p. 445⟩Oh what a difference is there betwixt our prayers in health, and in sickness! betwixt our prosperity and our adversity-repentings! He that before had not a tear to shed, nor a groan to utter; now can sob, and sigh, and weep his fill: He that was wont to lie like a block in prayer, and scarce minded what he said to God; Now when affliction presseth him down, how earnestly can he beg? how doth he mingle his prayers and his tears? how doth he purpose and promise reformation? and cry out, what a person he will be, if God will but hear him, and deliver him! Alas, if we did not sometime feel the spur, what a slow pace would most of us hold toward Heaven? and if we did not sometimes smart by Affliction, how dead and blockish would be the best mens hearts? Even innocent Adam is liker to forget GOD in a Paradise, then Joseph in a prison, or Job upon a dunghill. Even a Solomon is like enough to fall in the midst of pleasure and prosperity, when the most wicked Manasseh in his Irons may be recovered. As Doctor Stoughton saith, We are like to children's tops, that will go but little longer then they are whipped. Seeing then that our own vile natures do thus require it, why should we be unwilling, that GOD should do us good, by so sharp a means? Sure that is the best dealing for us, which surest and soonest doth further us for Heaven. I leave thee, Christian, to judg by thy own experience, whether thou dost not go more watchfully, and lively, and speedily in thy way to Rest, in thy sufferings, then thou dost in thy more pleasing and prosperous state? If you go to the vilest sinner on his dying bed, and ask him, Will you now drink, and whore, and scorn at the godly as you were wont to do? you shall find him quite in another mind. Much more then will Affliction work on a gracious Soul.