A27017:257
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.
2. The Second Pearl in the Saints Diadem, is that, It's Free. This seemeth as Pharaohs second Kine, 2to devour the former; and as the Angel to Balaam, To meet it with a drawn sword of a full opposition. But the seeming discord, is but a pleasing diversity composed into that harmony which constitutes the Melody. These two Attributes Purchased and Free, are the two chains of Gold which by their pleasant twisting, do make up that wreath for the heads of the Pillars in the Temple of God.2 It was dear to Christ, but free to us. When Christ was to buy, silver and gold was nothing worth; Prayers and Tears could not suffice; nor any thing below his Blood: But when we come to buy, the price is fallen to just nothing; Our buying, is but receiving: we have it freely without money, and without price. Nor do the Gospel-conditions make it less Free; or the Covenant tenor before mentioned, contradict any of this. If the Gospel-conditions had been such as are the Laws; or payment of the debt required at our hands; the freeness then were more questionable. Yea, if God had said to us; [Sinners, if you will satisfy my Justice but for one of your sins, I will forgive you all the rest,] it would have been a hard condition on our part, and the Grace of the Covenant not so Free, as our disability doth necessarily require. But if all the Condition be our cordial acceptation, surely we deserve not the name of Purchasers. Thankful accepting of a free acquittance, is no paying of the Debt. If life be offered to a condemned man, upon condition that he shall not refuse the offer, I think the favour is never the less free. Nay, though the condition were, that he should beg, and wait before he have his pardon, and take him for his Lord who hath thus redeemed him: All this is no satisfying of the justice of the Law: Especially when the condition is also given, as it is by God to all his chosen; surely then here's all free: If the Father freely give the Son, and the Son freely pay the debt, and if God do freely accept that way of payment, when he might have required it of the principal; and if both Father and Son do freely offer us the purchased life upon those fair conditions; and if they also freely send the Spirit to enable us to perform those conditions, then what is here that is not free? Is not every