A27017:1702
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.
Answ. For the smaller controversies which have vexed our Times, and caused the doleful divisions among us, I express my mind as that of Graserus, Cum in visitatione aegrotorum, & ad emigrationem ex hac vita beatam praeparatione daeprehendisset, controversias illas Theologicas, quae scientiam quidem inflantem pariunt, conscientias vero fluctuantes non sedant, quaeque hodie magna animorum contention agitantur, & magnos tumultus in rebuspub. excitant, nullum prorsus usum habere, quinimo conscientias simpliciorum non aliter ac olim in Papatu humana figmenta intricare; Caepit ab eis toto ⟨p. 641⟩animo abhorrere, & in publicis concionibus tantum ca proponere, quae ad fidem salvificam in Christum accendendam, & ad pietatem veram juxta verbum Dei exercendam, veramque consolationem in vita & morte praestandam faciebant; When he had found in his visiting the sick, and in his own preparations for well dying, that the Controversies in Divinity (which beget a swelling knowledge, but do not quiet troubled consciences, and which are at this day agitated with such contention of spirits, and raise such tumults in Commonwealths) are indeed utterly useless, yea and moreover, do entangle the consciences of the simple, just as the humane inventions in Popery formerly did; he begun with full bent of mind to shun or abhor them, and in his public Preaching to propound only those things which tended to the kindling a true faith in Jesus Christ, and to the exercise of true godliness according to the Word of God,1 and to the procuring of true consolation, both in life and at death. I can scarce express my own mind more plainly, then in this Historians expressions of the mind of Graserus. While I had some competent measure of health, and looked at death as at a greater distance, there was no man more delighted in the study of controversy; but when I saw dying men have no mind on't, and how unsavoury and uncomfortable such conference was to them, and when I had oft been near to death my self, and found no delight in them, further then they confirmed, or illustrated the Doctrine of eternal Glory, I have minded them ever since the less:
Answ. For the smaller controversies which have vexed our Times, and caused the doleful divisions among us, I express my minde as that of Graserus, Cum in visitatione aegrotorum, & ad emigrationem ex hac vita beatam praeparatione daeprehendisset, controversias illas Theologicas, quae scientiam quidem inflantem pariunt, conscientias vero fluctuantes non sedant, quaeque hodie magna animorum contentione agitantur, & magnos tumultus in rebuspub. excitant, nullum prorsus usum habere, quinimo conscientias simpliciorum non aliter ac olim in Papatu humana figmenta intricare; Caepit ab eis toto