A27017:1323
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 11 › Section 14
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. XIV.
Besides the duty of private admonition,1 you must do your utmost endeavours to help men to profit by the public Ordinances. ⟨p. 476⟩And to that end you must do these things. 1. Do your endeavours for the procuring of Faithful Ministers where they are wanting. This is Gods ordinary means of converting and saving.2 How shall they hear without a Preacher? Not only for your own sakes therefore but for the poor miserable ones about you, do all you can to bring this to pass.3 If the Gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost. 4Where vision faileth, the people perish. Improve therefore all your Interest and Diligence to this end. Ride, and go, and seek, and make friends, till you do prevail: If means be wanting, to maintain a Minister, extend your purses to the utmost, rather then the means of mens Salvation should be wanting. Who knoweth how many Souls may bless you, who have been converted and saved by the Ministry which you have procured? It is a higher and nobler work of charity, then if you gave all that you have to relieve their Bodies: (Though both must be regarded, yet the Soul in the first place.) What abundance of good might great men do in this, if they were faithful improvers of their interests and estates, as men that believe God hath the chief interest, and will shortly call them to an account for their Stewardships? What unhappy Reformers hath the Church still met withal, that in stead of taking away the corruptions in the Church, do diminish that maintenance which should further the work? If our Ignorant Forefathers gave it for the service of the Church, and their more knowing posterity do take it away, without the least pretence of right to it, I doubt not but the pious intent of Progenitors will more extenuate the fault of their Ignorance, then the Knowledge of their Posterity will excuse their Sacrilege. Alas, that the sad example of King Henry the eighth's Reformation, and the almost