A27017:1799
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. V.1
- 1§. 5.
3. I Call it the acting of [All] the powers of the soul, To difference it from the common Meditation of Students, which is usually the mere employment of the Brain. It is not a bare thinking, that I mean, nor the mere use of Invention or Memory; but a business of a higher and more excellent nature: when Truth is apprehended only as Truth, this is but an unsavoury and loose apprehension; but when it is apprehended as Good, as well as True, this is a fast and delightful apprehending: As a man is not so prone to live according to the Truth he knows, except it do deeply affect him, so neither doth his soul enjoy its sweetness, except Speculation do pass to Affection: The Understanding is not the whole soul, and therefore cannot do the whole work; As God hath made several parts in man, to perform their several Offices for his nourishing and life, so hath he ordained the faculties of the soul to perform their several Offices for his spiritual life; the Stomach must chy lisy and prepare for the Liver, the Liver and Spleen must sanguify and prepare for the Heart and Brain, and these must beget the vital and animal spirits &c. so the Understanding must take in Truths, and prepare them for the Will, and it must receive them, and commend them to the Affections: The best digestion is in the ⟨p. 692⟩bottom of the Stomach; the Affections are as it were the bottom of the soul, and therefore the best digestion is there: While Truth is but a speculation swimming in the Brain, the Soul hath not half received it, nor taken fast hold of it; Christ and Heaven hath various Excellencies, and therefore God hath formed the soul with a power of divers ways of apprehending, that so we might be capable of enjoying those divers Excellencies in Christ, even as the creatures having their several uses, God hath given us several senses, that so we might enjoy the delights of them all: What the better had we been for the pleasant odoriferous flowers and perfumes, if we had not possessed the sense of Smelling? or what good would Language or Music have done us, if God had not given us the sense of hearing? or what delight should we have found in meats or drinks, or sweetest things, if we had been deprived of the sense of tasting? Why so, what good could all the glory of Heaven have done us?