A27017:135
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. IV.
4. This Rest containeth,1 as the principal part, our nearest fruition of God the Chiefest Good. And here, Reader, wonder not If I be at a loss; and if my apprehensions receive but little of that which is in my expressions. If to the beloved Disciple that durst speak and enquire into Christs secrets, and was filled with his Revelations, and saw the new Jerusalem in her Glory, and had seen Christ,2 Moses and Elijah in part of theirs; If it did not appear to him what we shall be, but only in general, that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, no wonder if I know little. When I know so little of God, I cannot know much what it is to enjoy him. When it is so little I know of mine own soul, either it's quiddity, or quality, while it's here in this Tabernacle; how little must I needs know of the Infinite Majesty, or the state of this soul, when it's advanced to that enjoyment? If I know so little of Spirits and Spirituals, how little of the Father of Spirits? Nay, if I never saw that creature, which contains not something unsearchable; nor the worm so small, which afforded not matter for Questions to puzzle the greatest Philosopher that ever I met with, no wonder then if mine eye fail when I would look at God, my tongue fail me in speaking of him, and my heart in conceiving. As long as the Athenian Superscription doth so too well suite with my sacrifices, [To the unknown God,] and while I cannot contain the smallest rivulet; ⟨p. 24⟩It's little I can contain of this immense Ocean. We shall never be capable of clearly knowing, till we are capable of fully enjoying, nay nor till we do actually enjoy him. What strange conceivings, hath a man born blind, of the Sun, and its light? or man born deaf, of the nature of sounds and music? So do we yet want that sense, by which God must be clearly known. I stand and look upon a heap of Ants, and see them all with one view, very busy to little purpose; They know not me, my being, nature, or thoughts, though I am their fellow creature: How little then must we know of the great Creator, though he with one view continually beholds us all. Yet a knowledge we have, though imperfect, and such as must be done away: A Glimpse the Saints behold, though but in a glass; Which makes us capable of some poor, general, dark apprehensions of what we shall behold in Glory.