A27017:1448
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 12 › Section 11
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.
8. Consider also what a world of sorrows do you prepare for your selves by the neglect of your children: First, You can expect no other but that they should be thorns in your very eyes, and you may thank your selves if they prove so, seeing they are thorns of your own planting. Secondly, If you should repent of this your negligence, and be saved your selves, yet is it nothing to you to think of the damnation of your children? You know, God hath said, That except they be born again they shall not enter into the Kingdom of God. Methinks then it should be a heart-breaking to all you that have unregenerate children; Methinks you should weep over them every time you look them in the face, to remember that they are in the way to eternal fire! Some people would lament the fate of their children, if but a Wizard should foretell them some ill fortune to befall them; and do you not regard it, when the Living God shall tell you, That the wicked shall be turned into hell, and all they that forget God? Psal. 9.17. Thirdly, Yet all this ⟨p. 531⟩were not so doleful to you, if it were a thing that you had no hand in, or could do nothing to help; but to think that all this is much long of you! that ever your negligence should bring your child to these everlasting torments, which the very damned man (Luke 16.) would have had his brethren been warned to escape; if this seem light to thee, thou hast the heart of a hellish Fiend in thee, and not of a man. Fourthly, But yet worse then all this will it prove to you, if you die in this sin; for then you shall be miserable as well as they; and O what a greeting will there be then between ungodly Parents and children! what a hearing will it be to your tormented souls, to hear your children cry out against you, All this that we suffer was long of you, you should have taught us better, and did not; you should have restrained us from sin, and corrected us, but you did not; what an addition will such out-cries be to your misery?
8. Consider also what a world of sorrows do you prepare for your selves by the neglect of your children: First, You can expect no other but that they should be thorns in your very eyes, and you may thank your selves if they prove so, seeing they are thorns of your own planting. Secondly, If you should repent of this your negligence, and be saved your selves, yet is it nothing to you to think of the damnation of your children? You know, God hath said, That except they be born again they shall not enter into the Kingdom of God. Methinks then it should be a heart-breaking to all you that have unregenerate children; Methinks you should weep over them every time you look them in the face, to remember that they are in the way to eternal fire! Some people would lament the fate of their children, if but a Wizard should foretel them some ill fortune to befall them; and do you not regard it, when the Living God shall tell you, That the wicked shall be turned into hell, and all they that forget God?