A27017:1804
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.
or what pleasure should we have had, even in the goodness and perfection of God himself, if we had been without the affections of Love and Joy, whereby we are capable of being delighted in that Goodness? so also, what benefit of strength or sweetness, canst thou possible receive by thy Meditations on Eternity, while thou dost not exercise those Affections, which are the senses of the soul, by which it must receive this sweetness and strength?
This is it that hath deceived Christians in this business; They have thought that Meditation is nothing but the bare thinking on Truths, and the rolling of them in the Understanding and Memory? when every School-Boy can do this, or persons that hate the things which they think on.
1Therefore this is the great task in hand, and this is the work that I would set thee on; to get these Truths from thy head to thy heart, and that all the Sermons which thou hast heard of Heaven, and all the notions that thou hast conceived of this Rest, may be turned into the blood and spirits of Affection, and thou mayest feel them revive thee, and warm thee at the heart, and mayest so think of heaven as heaven should be thought on.
1Therefore this is the great task in hand, and this is the work that I would set thee on; to get these Truths from thy head to thy heart, and that all the Sermons which thou hast heard of Heaven, and all the notions that thou hast conceived of this Rest, may be turned into the blood and spirits of Affection, and thou maist feel them revive thee, and warm thee at the heart, and maist so think of heaven as heaven should be thought on.