A27017:130
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
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. II.
2.1 This Rest containeth a perfect freedom from all the Evils that accompanied us through our course, and which necessarily ⟨p. 22⟩follow our absence from the chief good. Besides our freedom from those eternal flames, and restless miseries, which the neglecters of Christ and Grace must remedilessly endure; an inheritance which both by birth and actual merit, was due to us, as well as to them. As God will not know the wicked,1 so as to own them; so neither will Heaven know iniquity to receive it: for there entereth nothing that defileth, or is unclean;3 all that Remains without. And doubtless there is not such a thing as Grief and Sorrow known there:2 Nor is there such a thing, as a pale face, a languid body, feeble joints, unable infancy, decrepit age, peccant humours, dolorous sickness, griping fears, consuming cares, nor whatsoever deserves the name of evil. Indeed a gale of Groans and Sighs, a stream of Tears, accompanied us to the very Gates, and there bid us, farewell, for ever: We did weep and lament, when the world did rejoice;5 but our Sorrow is turned into Joy, and our Joy shall no man take from us. God were not the chief and perfect good, if the full fruition of him did not free us from all Evil. But we shall have occasion to speak more fully of this in that which follows.