A27017:237
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. VI.
6. Another Rule is,1 That the Difficulty of obtaining shows the Excellency. And surely if you consider but what it cost Christ to purchase it; what it costs the Spirit to bring mens hearts to it; what it costs Ministers to persuade to it; what it costs ⟨image 53⟩Christians,2 after all this, to obtain it; and what it costs many a half-Christian that after all goes without it; You will say that here's Difficulty, and therefore Excellency. Trifles may be had at a Trivial rate: and men may have damnation far more easily: It is but, lie still, and sleep out our days in careless laziness: It is but, take our pleasure, and mind the world, and cast away the thoughts of Sin, and Grace▪ and Christ, and Heaven, and Hell, out of your minds; and do as the most do, and never trouble our selves about these high things, but venture our Souls upon our presumptuous conceits and hopes, and let the vessel swim which way it will; and then stream, and wind, and tide, will all help us apace to the gulf of perdition. You may burn an hundred houses easier then build one: and kill a thousand men easier then make one alive. The descent is easy, the ascent not so.3 To bring diseases, is but to cherish sloth, please the appetite, and take what most delights us: but to cure them will cost bitter pills, loathsome potions, tedious gripings, abstemious accurate living; and perhaps all fall short too. He that made the way, and knows the way better then we, hath told us, it is narrow and strait, and requires striving: And they that have paced it more truly and observantly then we, do tell us, it lies through many tribulations, and is with much ado passed through. Conclude then, it is sure somewhat worth that must cost all this.