A27017:239
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. VII.
17. Another Rule is this, That is Best, which not only supplieth necessity, but affordeth abundance. By necessity is meant here, that which we cannot live without; and by abundance, is meant, a more perfect supply, a comfortable, not a useless abundance. Indeed it is suitable to a Christians state and use, to be scanted here, and to have only from hand to mouth: And that not only in his corporal, but in his spiritual comforts; Here we must not be filled full, that so our emptiness may cause hungering and our hungering cause seeking and craving, and our craving testify our dependence, and occasion receiving, and our receiving occasion thanks-returning, and all advance the Glory of the Giver. But when we shall be brought to the Well-head, and united close to the overflowing ⟨p. 74⟩Fountain, we shall then thirst no more, because we shall be empty no more. Surely if those Blessed Souls did not abound in their Blessedness, they would never so abound in praises. Such Blessing, and Honour, and Glory, and Praise to God, would never accompany common mercies: All those Alleluia's are not sure the language of needy men.2 Now, we are poor, we speak supplications: And our Beggars tone discovers our low condition: All our Language almost is complaining and craving; our breath sighing, and our life a labouring. But sure where all this is turned into eternal praising and rejoicing, the case must needs be altered, and all wants supplied and forgotten. I think their Hearts full of Joy, and their mouths full of thanks, proves their estate abounding full of Blessedness.