A27017:291
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.
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.2 As they were not Redeemed with so low a price, so neither are they endued with so low a nature. These might be a portion for lower spirits, and fit those whose natures they suit with; but so they cannot a Saint-like nature. As God will have from them a Spiritual Worship, suitable to his own Spiritual Being; so will he provide them a spiritual Rest, suitable to his peoples spiritual nature. As Spirits have not fleshly substances, so neither delight they in fleshly pleasures: These are too gross and vile for them. When carnal persons think of Heaven, their conceivings of it are also carnal; and their notions answerable to their own natures: And were it possible for such to enjoy it, it would sure be their trouble, and not their Rest, because so contrary to their dispositions. A Heaven of good-fellowship, of wine and wantonness, of gluttony and all voluptuousness, would far better please them, as being more agreeing to their natures.