A27017:1573
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. IX.
- 1§. 9.
8. IT evidently discovers that we have been careless loiterers, that we have spent much time to little purpose,1 and that we have neglected and lost a great many of warnings. Have we not had all our life time to prepare to die? So many years to make ready for one hour? and are we so unready and unwilling yet? What have we done? why have we lived? that the business of our ⟨p. 583⟩lives is so much undone? Had we any greater matters to mind? Have we not foolishly wronged our souls in this? would we have wished more frequent warnings? How oft hath death entered the habitations of our neighbours? how oft hath it knocked at our own doors? we have first heard that such a one is dead, and then such a one, and such a one, till our Towns have changed most of their Inhabitants; And was not all this a sufficient warning, to tell us that we were also Mortals, and our own turn would shortly come? Nay, we have seen death raging in Towns and Fields, so many hundred a day dead of the Pestilence, so many thousands slam of the Sword and did we not know it would reach to us at last? How many distempers have vexed our bodies? frequent Languishings, consuming Weaknesses, wasting Fevers, here pain, and there trouble, that we have been forced to receive the sentence of death; and what were all these but so many Messengers, sent from God to tell us we must shortly dye, as if we had heard a lively voice, bidding us, Delay no more, but make you ready: And are we unready and unwilling after all this? O careless dead hearted Sinners! unworthy neglecters of Gods Warnings! faithless betrayers of our own souls.
8. IT evidently discovers that we have been careless loyterers, that we have spent much time to little purpose,