A27017:368
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.
However you consider it, sure the habit or disposition is infused, before those Acts are excited: Act. 26.18. Or else what need we assert any habits at all? If the spirit excites those holy acts of faith and repentance in an unholy Soul, without any change of its disposition, at the first, why not ever after as well as then? and so the soul be disposed one way, and act another: and so the Libertines doctrine be true, That it is not we that believe and repent, but the Spirit. Or if these two solitary habits be infused in vocation, why not the rest? And why again in sanctification? Doubtless that internal effectual [Call] of the spirit, metaphorically so called, is properly a real operation: and that work hath the understanding and will for its object; both being the Subject of faith in which the Habit is planted, and faith now generally acknowledged to be an act of both: And surely an unholy understanding and will cannot believe; nor is faith an act of a dead, but of a living soul: Especially considering that a true spiritual knowledge, is requisite, either as a precedent act, or essential part of true faith.
All which doth also warrant, my putting of▪ this Renewing work of the spirit in the first place; and placing Sanctification (in the sense before explained) before justification. The Apostle placeth clearly vocation before justification, Rom. 8.30. Which vocation I have showed, is the same thing in a metaphorical term, with this first Sanctification or Regeneration: Though I know the stream of Interpreters do in explaining that Text, make Sanctification to be included in Glorification; when yet they can show no real difference between it, and effectual vocation before-named. ⟨p. 142⟩Certainly if Sanctification precede faith, and faith precede Justification, then Sanctification must needs precede Justification: But if we may call that work of the spirit which infuseth the principle of life, or holiness, into the soul, [Sanctification;] then sanctification must needs go before faith.