A27017:1847
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.
3. Another fit Season for this heavenly duty is, When the Messengers of God do summon us to die; when either our grey hairs, or our languishing bodies, or some such like forerunners of death, do tell us that our change cannot be far off; when should we most frequently sweeten our souls, with the believing thoughts of another life, then when we find that this is almost ended? and ⟨p. 708⟩when Flesh is raising fears and terrors? Surely no men have greater need of supporting joys, then dying men; and those joys must be fetched from our eternal joy. Men that have earthly pleasures in their hands, may think they are well, though they taste no more, but when a man is dying and parting with all other pleasures, he must then fetch his pleasure from Heaven, or have none; when health is gone, and friends lye weeping about our beds, when houses, and lands, and goods, and wealth cannot afford us the least relief, but we are taking our leave of earth for ever, except a hole for our bodies to rot in; when we are daily expecting our final day, its now time to look to heaven, and to fetch in comfort and support from thence; and as heavenly delights are sweetest, when they are unmixed and pure, and have no earthly delights conjoined with them, so therefore the delights of dying Christians are ofttimes the sweetest that ever they had: Therefore have the Saints been generally observed to be then most Heavenly when they were nearest dying; what a Prophetical blessing hath Jacob for his sons, when he lay a dying? And so Isaac? what a heavenly Song! what a Divine Benediction doth Moses conclude his life withal, Deut. 32. & 33. Nay, as our Saviour increased in Wisdom and Knowledge, so did he also in their blessed expressions, and still the last, the sweetest, what a heavenly prayer? what heavenly advice doth he leave his Disciples when he is about to leave them? when he saw he must leave the world and go to the Father, how doth he wean them from worldly expectations? How doth he mind them of the Mansions in his Fathers House? and remember them of his coming again to fetch them thither? and open the union they shall have with him, and with each other? and promise them to be with him to behold his Glory? There's more worth in those four Chapters, John 14.15.16.17. then in all the Books in the world beside;