A27017:228
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. III.
13. Another Rule is this, That whose absence or loss is the worst or th• greatest evil; must needs it self be best, or the greatest Good. And is there a greater loss, then to lose this Rest? If you could ask the Restless Souls that are shut out of it, they would ⟨p. 71⟩tell you more sensibly then I can. For as none know the sweetness like those who enjoy it, so none know the loss like those that are deprived of it. Wicked men are here senseless of the loss, because they know not what they lose, and have the delights of flesh and sense to take them up, and make them forget it: But when they shall know it to their Torment, as the Saints do to their Joy, and when they shall see men from the East and West sit down with Abraham, 2Isaac, and Jacob in the Kingdom of God, and themselves shut out; when they shall know both what they have lost, and for what, and why they lost it, surely there will be weeping, and gnashing of teeth. He that loseth Riches may have more; and he that loseth honour, may repair it; or if not, yet he is not undone: He that loseth life,3 may save it: But what becomes of him that loseth God? and who or what shall repair his loss? We can bear the loss of any thing below: if we have it not, we can either live without it, or dye, and live eternally without it: But can we do so without God in Christ?4 As God gives us outward things, as auctuaries, as over-plus, or above measure, into our bargain; so, when he takes them from us, he takes away our superfluities rather then our necessaries; and pareth but our nails, and toucheth not the quick: But can we so spare our part in Glory? You know whose Question it is,