A27017:1961
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.
1SECT. IV.
- 1§. 4.
2. Another step to arise by in our Contemplation, is, from this speaking to our selves to speak to God: Prayer is not such a stranger to this duty, but that ejaculatory requests may be intermixed or added, and that as a very part of the duty it self: How oft doth David intermix these in his Psalms, sometime pleading with his soul, and sometime with God? and that in the same Psalm, and in the next verses? The Apostle bids us speak to our selves in Psalms, and Hymns, and no doubt we may also speak to God in them; this keeps the soul in mind of the Divine Presence; it tends also exceedingly to quicken and raise it; so that as God is the highest Object of our Thoughts, so our viewing of him, and our speaking to him, and pleading with him, doth more elevate the soul, and actuate the Affections then any other part of Meditation can do. Men that are careless of their carriage and speeches among children and Idiots, will be sober and serious with Princes or grave men▪ so, though while we do but plead the case with our selves, we are careless and unaffected yet when we turn our speech to God, it may strike us with awfulness, and the holiness and Majesty of him whom we speak to,1 may cause both the matter and words to pierce the deeper. Isaac went forth to pray, (saith the former Translation) To Meditate (saith the latter;) The Hebrew Verb saith Paraeus, in loc. signifieth both ad Orandum & Meditandum. The men of God, both former and later, who ⟨p. 755⟩have left their Meditations on Record for our view, have thus intermixed Soliloquy and Prayer; sometime speaking to their own hearts, and sometime turning their speech to God: And though this may seem an indifferent thing, yet I conceive it very suitable and necessary, and that it is the highest step that we can advance to in the Work.