A27017:2082
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.
Rather let me turn back again, and look, and find, and chide this lazy loitering heart, that turneth off from such a pleasant work as this: Where hast thou been, unworthy heart, while I was opening to thee the everlasting Treasures? Didst thou sleep? or wast thou minding something else? or dost thou think that all this is but a Dream or Fable? or as uncertain as the predictions of a presumptuous Astrologer? Or hast thou lost thy life and rejoicing power? Art thou not ashamed to complain so much of an uncomfortable life, and to murmur at God for filling thee with sorrows, when he offereth thee in vain the delights of Angels, and when thou treadest under foot these transcendent pleasures? Thou wilfully pinest away in grief, and art ready to charge thy Father with unkindness for making thee only a vessel of displeasure, a sink of sadness, a skinful of groans, a snow ball of tears, a channel for the waters of affliction to run in, the fuel of fears, and the carcass which cares do consume and prey upon, when in the mean time thou mightest live a life of Joy; Hadst thou now but followed me close, and believingly applied thy self to that which I have spoken, and drunk in but half the comfort that those words hold forth, it would have made thee revive and leap for joy, and forget thy sorrows and diseases and pains of the flesh: but seeing thou judgest thy self unworthy of comfort, it is just that comfort should be taken from thee.
Rather let me turn back again, and look, and finde, and chide this lazy loytering heart, that turneth off from such a pleasant work as this: Where hast thou been, unworthy heart, while I was opening to thee the everlasting Treasures? Didst thou sleep? or wast thou minding something else? or dost thou think that all this is but a Dream or Fable? or as uncertain as the predictions of a presumptu•ous Astrologer? Or hast thou lost thy life and rejoycing power? Art thou not ashamed to complain so much of an uncomfortable life, and to murmur at God for filling thee with sorrows, when he offereth thee in vain the delights of Angels, and when thou treadest under foot these transcendent pleasures? Thou wilfully pinest away in grief, and art ready to charge thy Father with unkindness for making thee onely a vessel of displeasure, a sink of sadness, a skinful of groans, a snow ball of tears, a channel for the waters of affliction to run in, the fuell of fears, and the carcass which cares do consume and prey upon, when in the mean time thou mightest live a life of Joy; Hadst thou now but followed me close, and believingly applyed thy self to that which I have spoken, and drunk in but half the comfort that those words hold forth, it would have made thee revive and leap for joy, and forget thy sorrows and diseases and pains of the flesh: but seeing thou judgest thy self unworthy of comfort, it is just that comfort should be taken from thee.