A27017:1258
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 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.
16. Lastly Consider, God doth seldom give his people so sweet a fore-taste of their Future Rest, as in their deep Afflictions. He keepeth his most precious cordials for the time of our greatest faintings and dangers. To give such to men that are well and need them not, is but to cast them away: They are not capable of discerning their working on their worth. A few drops of Divine Consolation in the midst of a world of pleasure and contents, will be but lost and neglected; as some precious spirits cast into a vessel or river of common waters. The Joys of Heaven are of unspeakable sweetness: But a man that overflows with earthly delights, is scarce capable of tasting their sweetness: They ⟨p. 451⟩may easilier comfort the most dejected Soul, then him that feeleth not any need of comfort, as being full of other comforts already. Even the best of Saints do seldom-taste of the delights of God, and pure, spiritual, unmixed Joys, in the time of their prosperity, as they do in their deepest troubles and distress. God is not so lavish of his choice favours, as to bestow them unseasonably: Even to his own will he give them at so fit a time, when he knoweth that they are needful, and will be valued; and when he is sure to be thanked for them, and his people rejoiced by them. Especially when our sufferings are more directly for his cause, then doth he seldom fail of sweetening the bitter cup. Therefore have the Martyrs been possessors of the highest Joys, and therefore were they in former times so ambitious of Martyrdom. I do not think that Paul and Silas did ever sing more Joyfully, then when they were sore with scourgings, and were fast in the inner prison, with their feet in the stocks,