A27017:442
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.
TO THE READER.
IT was far from my thoughts, when I first begun it, to have so enlarged this as to be a Part entire: Most of it dropped from my Pen, besides my first purpose. Had I intended to say so much of the Authority of Scripture, I should have stayed till I had the benefit of a Library, that I might have furnished it better with Humane Testimony, which I here insist on as so necessary. Though our History of the first and second Century be lamentably imperfect, yet much for the ends here mentioned may be produced. I would not have young Students begin with the large Volumes of later Fathers; but I could wish they would read betime the Writers of the three first Centuries, especially those that argue for the Christian Faith, or mix matters of Fact with their Doctrinals; as Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Origen against Celsus, Tertullians Apolog. &c. As Also Philo, Josephus, Eusebius, and others for History. Me thinks it is preposterous to see men study so long the meaning of Gods Word, before they know whether it be Gods Word, or not: As the Italians Melanchthon mentioneth, That would prove Christ was in the Bread, before they believed well that he was in Heaven. It is no questioning the Truth of Scripture, to persuade men to the rightest course, to be assured of its Truth. I confess my self much offended at some mens doctrine, who cry down ⟨image 106⟩Reason and Tradition here, as if they were enemies to God, and his Word; and cry up nothing but Scripture and the Spirit. Just like the Antinomians in the doctrine of Certainty of Salvation; who cry up the Witness of the Spirit, and cry down the trying by Signs and Evidences of Sanctification: As if these were contrary, which are co-ordinate! If I had wanted either Reason, Tradition, or the help of the Spirit, I should never have believed the Truth of the Scripture. I confess, for my part, I cannot boast of any such Testimony or Light of the Spirit (nor Reason neither) which without Tradition, would have made me believe, that the Book of Canticles is Canonical, and writ by Solomon; and the Book of Wisdom, Apocryphal, and writ by Philo (as some think;) or that Saint Pauls Epistle to the Laodiceans (which is in the end of Bruno, and others,) were not Canonical, as well as Johns second and third. Some men as soon as they hear talk of Reason and Tradition here, they zealously cry out, It is Socinianism and Popery.