A27017:226
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.
12. IN order of Good the last is still the Best: For all good tends to perfection: The end is still the last enjoyed, though first intended. Now this Rest is the Saints last estate: Their beginning was as a Grain of Mustard-seed, but their perfection will be an estate high and flourishing. They were taken with David from the sheep-fold, to reign as Kings for ever. Their first Day was a day of small things; but their last will be an everlasting perfection: They sowed in tears,2 but they reap in Joy. If their prosperity here, their res secundae, were desirable; much more their res ultimae, their final Blessedness. Rondeletius saw a Priest at Rome, who would fall down in an Ecstasy when ever he heard those words of Christ,3 Consummatum est, It is finished: but observing him careful in his fall ever to lay his head in a soft place, he suspected the dissimulation, and by the threats of a cudgel quickly recovered him. But methinks the fore-thoughts of that Consummation, and last estate we speak of, should bring a considering Christian into such an unfeigned Ecstasy, that he should even forget the things of the flesh, and no care or fear should raise him out of it. Surely that is well, which ends well; and that's Good, which is Good at last; and therefore Heaven must needs be Good.
12. IN order of Good the last is still the Best: For all good tends to perfection: The end is still the last enjoyed, though first intended. Now this Rest is the Saints last estate: Their beginning was as a Grain of Mustard-seed, but their perfection will be an estate high and flourishing. They were taken with David from the sheep-fold, to reign as Kings for ever. Their first Day was a day of small things; but their last will be an everlasting perfection: They sowed in tears,