A27017:163
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.
Surely Love is both work and wages.
And if this were all, what a high favour, that God will give us leave to love him! That he will vouchsafe to be embraced by such Arms, that have embraced Lust and Sin before him! But this is not all: He returneth Love for Love; nay, a thousand times more: As perfect as we shall be, we cannot reach his measure of Love. Christian, thou wilt be then brim full of Love; yet love as much as thou canst, thou shalt be ten thousand times more beloved. Dost thou think thou canst overlove him? What! love more then Love it self? Were the Arms of the Son of God open upon the Cross, and an open passage made to his Heart by the Spear, and will not Arms and Heart be open to thee in Glory? Did he begin to love before thou lovedst, and will he not continue now? Did he love thee an enemy? thee a sinner? thee who even loathedst thy self? and own thee when thou didst disclaim thy self? And will he not now unmeasurably love thee a Son? thee a perfect Saint? thee who returnest some love for Love? Thou wast wont injuriously to Question his Love: Doubt of it now if thou canst. As the pains of Hell will convince the rebellious sinner of Gods wrath, who would never before believe it: So the Joys of Heaven will convince thee throughly of that Love, which thou wouldst so hardly be persuaded of. He that in love wept over the old Jerusalem near her Ruins; with what love will he rejoice over the new Jerusalem ⟨p. 37⟩in her Glory? O methinks I see him groaning and weeping over dead Lazarus, till he force the Jews that stood by to say, Behold how he loved him: Will he not then much more by rejoicing over us,1 and blessing us, make all (even the damned, if they see it) to say, Behold how he loveth them? Is his Spouse while black, yet comely? Is she his Love, his Dove, his undefiled? Doth she ravish his heart with one of her eyes? Is her Love better then wine? O believing soul, study a little, and tell me, What is the Harvest which these first fruits foretell? and the Love which these are but the earnest of? Here, O here, is the Heaven of Heaven! This is the Saints fruition of God! In these sweet, mutual, constant actings and embracements of Love, doth it consist? To Love, and be beloved: These are the Everlasting Arms that are underneath,