A27017:1526
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.
1SECT. II.
- 1§. 2.
1. IT is gross Idolatry to make any Creature or Means, our Rest. To •ettle the Soul upon it, and say, Now I am well, upon the bare enjoyment of the Creature; what is this, but to make it our god? Certainly, to be the Souls Rest, is Gods own Prerogative. ⟨p. 561⟩And as it is palpable Idolatry to place our Rest in Riches and Honours; so it is but a more spiritual and refined Idolatry, to take up our Rest in excellent Means, in the Churches prosperity, and in its Reformation. When we would have all that out of God, which is to be had only in God; what is this but to turn away from him to the Creature, and in our hearts to deny him? when we fetch more of our comfort, and delight from the thoughts of prosperity, and those mercies which here we have at a distance from God, then from the fore-thoughts of our everlasting Blessedness in him. Nay, when the thoughts of that day, when we must come to God, is our greatest trouble, and we would do any thing in the world to escape it; but our enjoyment of Creatures, though absent from him, is the very thing our souls desire. When we had rather talk of him, then come to enjoy him; and had rather go many miles to hear a powerful Sermon of Christ and Heaven, then to enter and possess it. O, what vile Idolatry is this? when we dispute against Epicures, Academics, and all Pagans, how earnestly do we contend; That God is the chief Good, and the fruition of him our chief Happiness? what clear Arguments do we bring to evince it? but do we believe our selves? or are we Christians in judgment, and Pagans in affection? or do we give our senses leave to be the choosers of our Happiness, while Reason and Faith stand by? O Christians, how ill must our dear Lord needs take it, when we give him cause to complain, as sometime he did of our fellow Idolaters.