A27017:324
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.
Object. But is it possible such should be truly Godly? Then what sin will denominate a man ungodly?
Answ. Or else I must believe the doctrine of the Saints Apostasy; or believe there are scarce any godly in the world. O what a wound of dishonour hath this given, not only to the stricter profession of holiness, but even to the very Christian name? Were there a possibility of hiding it, I durst not thus mention it. O Christian, If thou who readest this be guilty, I charge thee before the living God, That thou sadly consider, how far is this unlike thy Copy? Suppose thou hadst seen the Lord Jesus, girded to the service, stooping to the Earth, washing his Disciples dirty feet, and wiping them, and saying to them, This I have done to give ⟨p. 120⟩you an example, That if I your Lord and Master have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's: Would not this make thee ashamed and tremble? Shall the Lord wipe the feet, and the fellow-servant be ready to cut the throat? would not thy proud heart scorn to stoop to thy Masters work? Look to thy self; it is not the name of a professor, nor the zeal for thy opinions, that will prove thee a Christian, or secure thee from the heat of the consuming fire.1 If thou love not thine enemy, much more thy Christian friend, thou canst not be Christs Disciple. It is the common mark whereby his Disciples are known to all men,2 That they love one another. Is it not his last great Legacy, My peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you? Mark the expressions of that command. If it be possible, as much as in you lieth, live peaceably with all men, Rom. 12.18. Follow peace with all men, and holiness, Heb. 12.14. O the deceitfulness of the heart of man! That those same men, who lately in their self-examination could find nothing of Christ so clear within them, as their love to the Brethren, and were confident of this, when they could scarce discover any other grace, should now look so strangely upon them, and be filled with so much bitterness against them! That the same men, who would have travelled through reproaches many miles, to hear an able faithful Minister, and not think the labour ill bestowed, should now become their bitterest enemies, and the most powerful hinderers of the success of their labours, and travel as far to cry them down. It makes me almost ready to say, O sweet, O happy days of persecution! Which drove us together in a closure of Love!