A27017:373
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. III.1
- 1§ 3.
Thus far the Soul is passive.1 Let us next see by what acts this new Life doth discover it self, and this Divine Spark doth break forth; and how the soul touched with this Lodestone of the Spirit,1 doth presently move toward God. The first work I call Conviction,2 which indeed comprehends several Acts. 1. Knowledge. 2. Assent. It comprehends the knowledge of what the Scripture speaks against sin, and sinners; and that this Scripture which so speaks, is the Word of God himself. Whosoever knows not both these, is not yet thus convinced, (though it is a very great ⟨p. 144⟩[…] ⟨p. 145⟩[…] ⟨p. 146⟩Question, Whether this last be an act of Knowledge, or of Faith? I think of both.4) It comprehends a sincere Assent to the verity of this Scripture; as also some knowledge of our selves, and our own guilt, and an acknowledgement of the verity of those Consequences, which from the premises of sin in us, and threats in Scripture,5 do conclude us miserable. It hath been a great Question, and disputed in whole Volumes, which Grace is the first in the Soul; where Faith and Repentance are usually the only competitors. I have showed you before, that in regard of the principle, the power or habit (whichsoever it be that is infused) they are all at once, being indeed all one; and only called several Graces, from the diversity of their subject, as residing in the several faculties of the soul; the life and rectitude of which several faculties and affections, are in the same sense several Graces, as the Germane, French, British Seas, are several Seas. And for the Acts, it is most apparent, that neither Repentance, nor Faith (in the ordinary strict sense) is first, but Knowledge. There is no act of the Rational Soul about any object preceding Knowledge. Their evasion is too gross, who tell us, That Knowledge is no Grace, or but a common act: When a dead Soul is by the Spirit enlivened, its first act is to know: and why should it not exert a sincere act of Knowing, as well as Believing, and the sincerity of Knowledge be requisite as well as of Faith, especially, when Faith in the Gospel-sense, is sometime taken largely, containing many acts, whereof Knowledge is one? in which large sense, indeed Faith is the first Grace.