A27017:289
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.1
- 1§ 7.
Seventhly.7 A further excellency of this Rest is this; As it will be a seasonable, so a suitable Rest: Suited, 1. To the Natures. 2. To the desires. 3. To the necessities of the Saints.
SEventhly.7 A further excellency of this Rest is this; As it will be a seasonable, so a suitable Rest: Suited, 1. To the Natures. 2. To the desires. 3. To the necessities of the Saints.
- 7It will be a Rest suitable.
1. To their Natures.1 If suitableness concur not with excellency, the best things may be bad to us: For it is that which makes things good in themselves to be good to us. In our choice of friends we oft pass by the more excellent, to choose the more ⟨p. 98⟩suitable. Every good agrees not with every nature. To live in a free and open air, under the warming Rays of the Sun, is excellent to man, because suitable: But the flesh which is of another nature, doth rather choose another element; and that which is to us so excellent, would quickly be to it destructive. The choicest dainties which we feed upon our selves, would be to our Beast, as an unpleasing, so an insufficient sustenance. The Iron which the Ostrich well digests, would be but hard food for man: Even among men, contrary appetites delight in contrary objects. You know the Proverb, One mans meat, is another mans poison. Now here is suitableness and excellency conjoined. The new nature of the Saints, doth suit their Spirits to this Rest: And indeed their holiness is nothing else, but a spark taken from this Element, and by the Spirit of Christ kindled in their hearts, the flame whereof as mindful of its own Divine original, doth ever mount the soul aloft, and tend to the place from whence it comes: It worketh towards its own Centre, and makes us Restless, till there we Rest. Gold and earthly Glory, temporal Crowns and Kingdoms could not make a rest for Saints.