A27017:1517
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.
The Introduction.
IN the former Part, I have chiefly pressed those Duties, which must be used for the attainment of this Everlasting Rest. In this, I shall chiefly handle those, which are necessary to raise the heart to God, and to our Heavenly and comfortable life on Earth. It is a Truth too evident, which an inconsiderate Zealot reprehended in Master CULVERWELL as an Error, That many of Gods Children do not enjoy that sweet Life, and blessed Estate in this World, which God their Father hath provided for them: That is, Which he offereth them in his Promises, and chargeth ⟨p. 556⟩upon them as their duty in his Precepts, and bringeth even to their hands in all his Means and Mercies. God hath set open Heaven to us in his Word, and told every humble sincere Christian, That they shall shortly there live with himself, in unconceivable Glory; and yet where is the person that is affected with this Promise? whose heart leaps for joy, at the hearing of the news? or that is willing, in hopes of Heaven, to leave this World? But even the godly have as strange unsavoury thoughts of it, as if God did but delude us, and there were no such Glory? and are almost as loath to die, as men without hope. The consideration of this strange disagreement, between our Professions and Affections, caused me to suspect, that there was some secret lurking unbelief in all our hearts; and therefore I wrote those Arguments in the second Part, for the Divine Authority of the Scripture. And because I find another cause to be the carelessness, forgetfulness, and idleness of the Soul, and not keeping in action that Faith which we have: I have here attempted the removal of that cause, by prescribing a course for the daily acting of those Graces, which must fetch in the Celestial Delights into the heart. O the Princely, joyful, blessed Life, that the godly lose through mere idleness? As the Papists have wronged the merits of Christ, by their ascribing too much to our own Works; so it is almost incredible, how much they on the other extreme, have wronged the safety and consolation of mens Souls, by telling them, that their own endeavours are only for Obedience and Gratitude, but are not so much as Conditions of their Salvation, or Means of their increased Sanctification or Consolation.