A27017:1324
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 15
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. XV.
12. Yet is it not enough that you seek after Teachers, but especially you must seek after such as are fittest for the work. An ignorant Empiric that killeth more then he cureth, doth not so much differ from an able Physician, as an unskilful Minister from one that is able. Alas, this is the great defect among us: Men that are fitted for the work indeed are almost wonders: One or two, or three, or four in a County is much. *How few that have dived into the Mysteries of Divinity? or have throughly studied the most needful controversies? or are able to explain or maintain the Truth? But only they store their Memories with the Opinions and Phrases of those Teachers that are in most credit, in common cases; and then they think they are Divines: And every man that steps out of their common rode, they can say he is Erroneous or Heretical; but how to confute him they cannot tell. Alas, whence cometh this misery to the Church? The late Prelates discountenancing the godly learned, is one main cause; and their filling the Ministry with the vilest that did best fit their ends: And so great a Corruption of the Ministry cannot suddenly be cured. And another great cause is this: There is not a choice made of the most excellentest wits, and those youths that are ripest in learning and Religion: but some of them are so rich, that the Ministry is too mean for them; and some so poor, that they have no maintenance to subsist on at the Universities. And so every one that is best furnished to make a trade of the Ministry, or whose parents have best affection to it, how unfit soever the Child is, must be a Minister: and those few, very few, choice wits that would be fittest, are diverted.