A27017:1450
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.
ninthly, But the greatest joy will be, when you come to the possession of this, and you shall say, Here am I, and the children thou hast given me; And are not all these comforts enough to persuade you to this duty?
ninthly, But the greatest joy will be, when you come to the possession of this, and you shall say, Here am I, and the children thou hast given me; And are not all these comforts enough to perswade you to this duty?
10. Consider further, That the very welfare of Church and State lieth mainly on this duty, of well educating children; and without this, all other means are like to be far less successful. I seriously profess to you, that I verily think all the sins and miseries of the Land, may acknowledge this sin for their great Nurse and Propagator. O what happy Churches might we have, if Parents did their duties to their children! then we need not exclude so many for ignorance or scandal, nor have our Churches composed of members so rude! then might we spare most of the quarrels about Discipline, Reformation, Toleration, and Separation; any reasonable government would do better with a well-taught people, then the best will do with the ungodly. It is not good Laws and Orders that will reform us, if the men be not good, and Reformation begin not at home; when children go wicked from the hands of their Parents, thence some come such to the Universities, and so we come to have an ungodly Ministry; and in every profession they bring this fruit of their Education with them; when Gentlemen teach their children only to Hunt, and Hawk, and game, and deride the godly, what Magistrates, and what Parliaments, and so what Government, and what a Commonwealth are we like to have? when all must be guided by such as these? some perverse inconsiderate persons, lay the blame of all this on the Ministers, that ⟨p. 533⟩people of all sorts are so ignorant and profane, as if one man can do the work of many hundreds! I beseech you that are Masters and Parents, do your own duties, and free Ministers from these unjust aspersions, and the Church from her reproach and confusion; Have not Ministers work enough of their own to do? O that you knew what it is that lieth on them! And if besides this, you will cast upon them the work of every Master and Parent in the Parish, it is like indeed to be well done: How many sorts of Workmen must there be to the building of an house? and if all of them should cast it upon one, and themselves do nothing, you may judg how much were like to be done! If there be three or four Schoolmasters in a School, amongst three or four hundred Scholars;