A27017:1636
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.
SECT. IIII.1
- 1§. 4.
2. Consider, A heart in Heaven is the highest excellency of your spirits here, and the noblest part of your Christian disposition: As there is not only a difference between men and beasts, but also among men, between the Noble and the Base: so there is not only a common excellency, whereby a Christian differs from the world, but also a peculiar nobleness of spirit, whereby the more excellent differ from the rest: And this lies especially in a higher and more heavenly frame of spirit.1 Only man of all inferior creatures, is made with a face directed heaven-ward: but other creatures have their faces to the earth. As the Noblest of Creatures, so the Noblest of Christians, are they that are set most direct for Heaven. As Saul is called a choice and goodly man,2 higher by the head then all the company: so is he the most choice and goodly Christian, whose head and heart is thus the highest. Men of noble birth and spirits, do mind high and great affairs, and not the smaller things of low poverty: Their discourse is, of the counsels and matters of State, of the Government of the Common-wealth, and public things; and not of the Country-mans petty employments. O, to hear such an heavenly Saint, who hath fetched a journey into heaven by faith, and hath been wrapped up to God in his contemplations, and is newly come down from the views of Christ, what discoveries he will make of those Superior regions! What ravishing expressions drop from his lips! How high and sacred is his discourse! Enough to ⟨p. 604⟩