A27017:1653
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.
Secondly, A heavenly mind is the freest from sin, because it is of clearest understanding in spiritual matters of greatest concernment. A man that is much in conversing above, hath truer and livelier apprehensions of things concerning God and his soul, then any reading or learning can beget: Though perhaps he may be ignorant ⟨p. 612⟩in divers controversies, and matters that less concern salvation, yet those truths which must stablish his soul, and preserve him from temptation, he knows far better then the greatest Scholars; he hath so deep an insight into the evil of sin, the vanity of the creature, the brutishness of fleshly sensual delights, that temptations have little power on him, for these earthly vanities are Satan's baits, which though they may take much with the undiscerning world, yet with the clear-sighted, they have lost their force. In vain, saith Solomon, the net is spread in the sight of any bird, Pro. 1.17. And usually in vain doth Satan lay his snares to entrap the soul that plainly sees them; when a man is on high, he may see the further; we use to set our discovering Sentinels on the highest place that's near unto us, that he may discern all the motions of the Enemy; In vain doth the Enemy lay his Ambuscado's when we stand over him on some high Mountain, and clearly discover all he doth: When the heavenly-mind is above with God, he may far easier from thence discern every danger that lies below, and the whole method of the devil in deceiving; Nay, if he did not discover the snare, yet were he likelier far to escape it then any others that converse below: A net or bait that's laid on the ground, is unlikely to catch the bird that flies in the Air: while she keeps above, she's out […] of the danger, and the higher the safer; so is it with us; Satan's temptations are laid on the earth, earth is the place, and earth the ordinary bait: How shall these ensnare the Christian, who hath left the earth, and walks with God? But alas, we keep not long so high, but down we must to the earth again, and then we are taken.
Secondly, A heavenly minde is the freest from sin, because it is of clearest understanding in spiritual matters of greatest concernment. A man that is much in conversing above, hath truer and livelyer apprehensions of things concerning God and his soul, then any reading or learning can beget: Though perhaps he may be ignorant ⟨p. 612⟩