A27017:367
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.
33. The first differencing work I affirm to be [Regeneration by the Spirit of Christ;] taking it for granted that this Regeneration is the same with effectual Vocation, with Conversion, with Sanctification, (understanding Conversion and Sanctification, of the first infusion of the principle of Spiritual life into the soul, and not for the addition of degrees, or the sanctifying of the conversation,2 in which last sense its most frequently taken in Scripture.) Its a wonder to me that such a multitude of Learned Divines should so long proceed in that palpable mistake as to divide and mangle so groundlessly, the Spirits work upon the soul; to affirm that 1. precedes the work of vocation, 2. this vocation infuseth faith, (only, say some, but faith and repentance, say others) 3. then must this faith by us be acted. 4. by which act we apprehend Christs person, and by that apprehension we are united to him; 5. from which union proceeds the benefits. 1. Of Justification. 2. Of Sanctification. 6. this Sanctification infuseth all other gracious Habits, and hath two degrees. 1. Regeneration, 2. Renascentiam, or the new birth. What a multifarious division is here of that one single entire work, which is called in Scripture, the giving of the Spirit; of holiness; of the seed of God in us? Which seed or life doth no more enter by piecemeal into the soul, then the soul into the body: And though to salve the Absurdity, they tell us the difference is in nature and not in time; yet that is impossible; ⟨p. 141⟩For there is mans act of believing intervenes, who must have time for all his actions;3 besides the division in order of nature is groundlessly asserted: It much perplexeth them to resolve that doubt, whether in sanctification faith and Repentance be infused over again, which were before infused in vocation? or whether all other graces are infused without them? Dr. Ames seems to resolve it in the Affirmative, that they are infused again, but with this difference. 1. That faith in our vocation is not properly considered as a quality, but in relation to Christ. 2. Nor is Repentance there looked at, as a change of the disposition, but as a change of the purpose and intent of the mind: but in sanctification a real change of qualities and dispositions is looked at. Answer. Strange doctrine for an Anti-Arminian.