A27017:44
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. I.
IT was not only our interest in God,1 and actual fruition of him, which was lost in Adams Covenant-breaking fall; but all spiritual knowledge of him, and true disposition towards such a felicity. Man hath now a heart too suitable to his estate: A low state, and a low spirit. And (as some expound that of Luk. 18.8.) when the Son of God comes with Recovering Grace, and discoveries and ⟨p. 2⟩tenders of a spiritual and eternal Happiness and Glory, he finds not faith in man to believe it. But as the poor man that would not believe that any one man had such a sum as an hundred pound, it was so far above what he possessed: So man will hardly now believe, that there is such a Happiness as once he had, much less as Christ hath now procured. When God would give the Israelites his Sabbaths of Rest, in a Land of Rest, he had more ado to make them believe it, then to overcome their enemies, and procure it for them: And when they had it, only as a small intimation & earnest of a more incomparably glorious Rest through Christ, they stick there, and will yet believe no more then they do possess, but sit down and say, as the Glutton at the feast, Sure there's no other Heaven but this. Or if they do expect more by the Messiah, it is only the increase of their earthly felicity. The Apostle bestows most of this Epistle against this distemper, and clearly and largely proves unto them, That it's the end of all Ceremonies and Shadows, to direct them to Jesus Christ the Substance; and that the Rest of Sabbaths and Canaan, should teach them to look for a further Rest, which indeed is their Happiness. My Text is his Conclusion after divers Arguments to that end; a Conclusion so useful to a Believer, as containing the ground of all his comforts, the end of all his duty and sufferings, the life and sum of all Gospel-promises, and Christian-privileges, that you may easily be satisfied why I have made it the subject of my present Discourse. What more welcome to men, under personal afflictions, tiring duty, successions of sufferings, then Rest? What more welcome news to men under public calamities, unpleasing employments, plunderings, losses, sad tidings &c. (which is the common case) then this of Rest?