A27017:381
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.
22. The Soul in this great work is convinced and sensible, as of the evil of sin, so of its own misery by reason of sin. They who before read the threats of Gods Law, as men do the old stories of foreign wars, or as they behold the wounds and blood in a picture or piece of Arras, which never makes them smart or fear; Why now they find its their own story, and they perceive they read their own doom, as if they found their names written in the curse, or heard the Law say as Nathan, Thou are the man. The wrath of God seemed to him before, but as a storm to a man in the dry house; or as the pains of the sick to the healthful stander-by; or as the Torments of Hell to a child, that sees the story of Dives and Lazarus upon the wall: But now he finds the disease is his own, and feels the pain in his own bowels, and the smart of ⟨p. 149⟩the wounds in his own soul. In a word, he finds himself a condemned man, and that he is dead and damned in point of Law, and that nothing was wanting but mere execution to make him most absolutely and irrecoverably miserable.2 Whether you will call this a work of the Law or Gospel (as in several senses it is of both, the Law expressing, and the Gospel intimating and implying our former condemnation.3) Sure I am it is a work of the Spirit, wrought in some measure in all the regenerate: And though some do judg it an unnecessary bondage, yet it is beyond my conceiving, how he should come to Christ for pardon that first found not himself guilty and condemned; or for life, that never found himself dead. The whole need not the Physician, 4but they that are sick. Yet I deny not, but the discovery of the Remedy as soon as the misery, must needs prevent a great part of the trouble, and make the distinct effects on the soul, to be with much more difficulty discerned: Nay, the actings of the soul are so quick, and oft so confused, that the distinct order of these workings, may not be apprehended or remembered at all: And perhaps the joyful apprehensions of mercy may make the sense of misery the sooner forgotten.