A27017:1717
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. II.
- 1§. 2.
2. A Second hinderance carefully to be avoided, is, An Earthly mind: For you may easily conceive, that this cannot stand with an Heavenly mind. God and Mammon Earth and Heaven, cannot both have the delight of thy heart. This makes thee like Anselm's Bird, with a stone tied to the foot, which as oft as she took flight, did pluck her to the Earth again.1 If thou be a man that hast fancied to thy self, some content or happiness to be found on Earth, and beginnest to taste a sweetness in gain, and to aspire after a fuller and a higher estate, and hast hatched some thriving projects in thy brain, and art driving on thy rising design; Believe it, thou art marching with thy back upon Christ, and art posting apace from this Heavenly life. Why, hath not the World that from thee, which God hath from the Heavenly? When he is blessing himself in his God, and rejoicing in hope of the glory to come; then thou art blessing thy self in thy prosperity, and rejoicing in hope of thy thriving here: When he is solacing his soul in the views of Christ, of the Angels and Saints, that he shall live with for ever; then art thou comforting thy self with thy wealth, in looking over thy Bills and Bonds, in viewing thy Money, thy Goods, thy Cattle, thy Buildings, or large Possession; and art recreating thy mind in thinking of thy hopes; of the favour of some great ones, on whom thou dependest; of the pleasantness of a plentiful and commanding state; of thy larger provision for thy children after thee; of the rising of thy house, or the obeisance of thine inferiors: Are not these thy morning and evening thoughts, when a gracious soul is above with Christ? Dost thou not delight, and please thy self with the daily rolling these thoughts in thy mind, when a gracious soul should have higher delights? If he were a fool by the sentence of Christ, that said, Soul take thy rest, thou hast enough laid up for many years: What a fool of fools art thou, that knowing this, yet takest not warning, but in thy heart speakest the same words? Look them over seriously, and tell me, what difference between this fools expressions, and thy affections? I doubt not, but thou hast more wit then to speak thy mind just in his language;