A27017:1865
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. II.1
- 1§. 2.
1. The great Instrument that this Work is done by, is Ratiocination, Reasoning the case with your selves, Discourse of mind, Cogitation, or Thinking, or, if you will, call it Consideration. I here suppose you to know the things to be considered, and therefore shall wholly pass over tha• Meditation of Students, which tends only to Speculation or Knowing; They are known Truths that I persuade you to consider; for the grossly ignorant that know not the Doctrine of everlasting Life, are, for the present, uncapable of this duty.
1. THe great Instrument that this Work is done by, is Ratiocination, Reasoning the case with your selves, Discourse of minde, Cogitation, or Thinking, or, if you will, call it Consideration. I here suppose you to know the things to be considered, and therefore shall wholly pass over tha• Meditation of Students, which tends onely to Speculation or Knowing; They are known Truths that I perswade you to consider; for the grossly ignorant that know not the Doctrine of everlasting Life, are, for the present, uncapable of this duty.
Mans soul as it receives and retains the Idea's or Shapes of things, so hath it a power to choose out any of these deposited Idea's, and draw them forth, and act upon them again and again; even as a Sheep can fetch up his meat for rumination; otherwise nothing would affect us, but while the sense is receiving it, and so we should be somewhat below the Bruits. This is the power that here you must use: To this choice of Idea's or subjects for your Cogitation, there must necessarily concur the act of the Will, which indeed must go along in the whole Work; for this must be a voluntary,