A27017:1943
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. I.1
- 1§. 1.
Fourthly; The fourth part of this Directory is, To show you how and by what Acts you should advance on to the height of this work.
FOurthly; The fourth part of this Directory is, To shew you how and by what Acts you should advance on to the height of this work.
The first and main Instrument of this work, is that Cogitation, or consideration which I before have opened, and which is to go along with us through the whole. But because mere Cogitation if it be not pressed home, will not so pierce and affect the heart, Therefore we must here proceed to a second step, which is called Soliloquy, which is nothing but a pleading the case with our own souls. As in preaching to others, the bare propounding and opening of truths and duties, doth seldom find that success as the lively application: so it is also in meditating and propounding Truths to our selves. The moving, pathetical pleadings with a sinner, will make him deeply affected with a common Truth, which before, though he knew it, yet it never stirred him: What heart-meltings do we see under powerful application, when the naked explication did little move them? If any where there be a tender-hearted, affectionate people, it is likely under such a moving, close-applying, Ministry. Why thus must thou do in thy Meditation to quicken thy own heart: Enter into a serious debate with it: Plead with it in the