A27017:382
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.
3. So doth the spirit also convince the soul,3 of the creatures vanity and insufficiency. Every man naturally is a flat Idolater: our hearts turned from God, in our first fall; and ever since the Creature hath been our God: This is the grand sin of Nature: when we set up to our selves a wrong end, we must needs err in all the means.2 The Creature is to every unregenerate man his God and his Christ. He ascribeth to it the Divine prerogatives, and alloweth it the highest room in his soul; Or if ever he come to be convinced of misery, he flieth to it as his Saviour and supply. Indeed God and his Christ have usually the name; and shall be still called both Lord and Saviour: But the real expectation is from the Creature, and the work of God is laid upon it; (how well it will perform that work, the sinner must know hereafter.3) It is His Pleasure, his profit, and his Honour, that is the natural mans Trinity; and his Carnal self, that is these in unity. Indeed it is that Flesh that is the Principal Idol; the other three are deified in their relation to our selves. It was our first sin, to aspire to be as Gods; and its the greatest sin that runs in our blood, and is propagated in our nature from Generation to Generation. ⟨p. 150⟩When God should guide us,4 we guide our selves; when he should be our Sovereign, we rule our selves. The Laws which he gives us, we would correct and find fault with; and if we had the making of them, we would have made them otherwise: When he should take care of us, (and must, or we perish) we will care for our selves; when we should depend on him in daily receivings, we had rather keep our stock our selves, and have our portion in our own hands; when we should stand to his disposal, we would be at our own; and when we should submit to his providence, we usually quarrel at it; as if we knew better what is good, or fit for us, then he; or how to dispose of all things more wisely: If we had the disposal of the events of Wars, and the ordering of the affairs of Churches and States, or the choice of our own outward condition, it would be far otherwise then now it is; and we think we could make a better disposal, order and choice, then God hath made. This is the Language of a carnal heart, though it do not always speak it out. When we should study God we study our selves; when we should mind God, we mind our selves;