The Saints' Everlasting Rest

Davids Enemy was his familiar friend, with whom he had taken sweet counsel, and they had gone up together to the House of God. And know also, that thy own nature is as bad as theirs; and thou art as likely thy self to be a grief to others. Can such ulcerous, leprous sinners, as the best are, live together, and not infest and molest each other with the smell of their sores? Why if thou be a Christian, thou art a daily trouble to thy self; and art molested more with thy own corruptions, then with any mans else: And dost thou take it so heinously to be molested with the frailties of others, when thou canst not forbear doing more against thy self? For my part, (for all our Graces) I rather admire at that wisdom and goodness of God, that maintaineth that order and union amongst us, as is: and that he suffereth us not to be still one another's executioners, and to lay violent hands on our selves, and each other. I dare not think that there is no one gracious, that hath laboured to destroy others that were so, in these late dissentions. Sirs, you do not half know yet the mortal wickedness of depraved Nature. If the best were not more beholden to the ⟨p. 456⟩Grace of God without them, then to the habitual Grace within them, you should soon see, That men of low degree are vanity, and men of high degree are a lye; to be put in the balance, they are lighter then vanity it self, Psal. 62.7, 8, 9. For what is man that he should be clean? and he that is born of a woman, that he should be righteous? Behold he putteth no trust in his Saints, and the Heavens are not clean in his sight: How much more abominable and filthy is man, that drinketh up iniquity like water? Job 15.14, 15, 16.

Davids Enemy was his familiar friend, with whom he had taken sweet counsel, and they had gone up together to the House of God. And know also, that thy own nature is as bad as theirs; and thou art as likely thy self to be a grief to others. Can such ulcerous, leprous sinners, as the best are, live together, and not infest and molest each other with the smell of their sores? Why if thou be a Christian, thou art a dayly trouble to thy self; and art molested more with thy own corruptions, then with any mans else: And dost thou take it so hainously to be molested with the frailties of others, when thou canst not forbear doing more against thy self? For my part, (for all our Graces) I rather admire at that wisdom and goodness of God, that maintaineth that order and union amongst us, as is: and that he suffereth us not to be still one anothers executioners, and to lay violent hands on our selves, and each other. I dare not think that there is no one gracious, that hath labored to destroy others that were so, in these late dissentions. Sirs, you do not half know yet the mortal wickedness of depraved Nature. If the best were not more beholden to the