A27017:1989
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. IX.1
- 1§. 9.
7. Compare also the Mercies which thou shalt have above,1 with those particular Providences which thou hast enjoyed thy self, and those observable Mercies which thou hast recorded through thy life. If thou be a Christian indeed, I know thou hast, if not in thy Book, yet certainly in thy Heart, a great many precious ⟨p. 768⟩favours upon record. The very remembrance and rehearsal of them is sweet: How much more sweet was the actual enjoyment? But all these are nothing to the Mercies which are above. Look over the excellent Mercies of thy Youth and Education; the mercies of thy riper years or age; the mercies of thy prosperity, and of thy adversity; the mercies of thy several places and relations; are they not excellent, and innumerable? Canst not thou think on the several places thou hast lived in, and remember that they have each had their several mercies? the mercies of such a place, and such a place; and all of them very rich and engaging Mercies? O how sweet was it to thee, when God resolved thy last doubts? when he overcame and silenced thy fears and unbelief? when he prevented the inconveniences of thy life, which thy own counsel would have cast thee into? when he eased thy pains? when he healed thy sickness, and raised thee up as from the very grave and death? when thou prayedst, and weptest, as Hezekiah, and saidst, My days are cut off, I shall go to the gates of the grave, I am deprived of the residue of my years: I said I shall not see the Lord, even the Lord in the Land of the Living, I shall behold man no more with the Inhabitants of the World. Mine age is departed and removed from me as a Shepherds Tent: I have cut off like a Weaver my life; he will cut me off with pining sickness; from day to day wilt thou make an end of me, &c. Yet did he in love to thy soul deliver it from the pit of corruption, and cast thy sins behind his back; and set thee among the living, to praise him as thou dost this day: That the fathers to the children might make known his Truth: The Lord was ready to save thee, that thou mightest sing the songs of praise to him in his house all the days of thy life,