A27017:254
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.
And those eyes, through which folly and lust hath so often stole into our hearts, shall now be the Casements to let in the Love of our dearest Lord for ever. Now, though we should (as some do) travel to Jerusalem, and view the Mount of Olives where he prayed and wept; and see the Dolorous way by which he bare his Cross, and enter the Temple of the Holy Grave; yea, if we should with Peter have stooped down and seen the place where he lay, and behold his Relicts; yet these Bolted doors of sin and flesh would have kept out the feeling of all that Love. But, ⟨image 56⟩(Oh!1 that's the Joy,) we shall then leave these hearts of stone and Rock behind us▪ and the sin that here so close besets us, and the sottish unkindness that followed us so long, shall not be able to follow us into that Glory. But we shall behold, as it were, the wounds of Love, with eyes and hearts of Love for ever. Suppose (a little to help our apprehensions) that a Saint, who hath partook of the Joys of Heaven, had been translated from as long an abode in Hell, and after the experience of such a change, should have stood with Mary and the rest by the Cross of Christ, and have seen the Blood, and heard the Groans of his Redeemer: What think you? Would love have stirred in his Brest or no? Would the voice of his dying Lord have melted his heart, or no? Oh that I were sensible of what I speak! With what astonishing apprehensions then, will Redeemed Saints everlastingly behold their Blessed Redeemer? I will not meddle with their vain audacious Question, who must needs know, whether the glorified body of Christ do yet retain either the wounds or scars. But this is most certain, that the memory of it will be as fresh, and the impressions of Love as deep, and its workings as strong, as if his wounds were still in our eyes, and his complaints still in our ears, and his blood still streaming afresh. Now his heart is open to us, and ours shut to him: But when his heart shall be open, and our Hearts open, Oh the Blessed Congress that there will then be! What a passionate meeting was there between our new-risen Lord, and the first sinful silly woman that he appears to? How doth Love struggle for expressions? and the straitened fire shut up in the breast, strive to break forth? *Mary! saith Christ: Master! saith Mary: and presently she clasps about his feet: