A27017:464
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
THE SAINTS Everlasting REST. PART II. › Chapter 1 › Section 2
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. II.
Secondly,2 the Scripture tells us, that this Rest is Purchased, as well as Purposed for them; or that they are redeemed to this Rest. In what sense this may be said to be purchased by Christ, I have showed before, viz. Not as the immediate work of his sufferings (which was the payment of our debt, by satisfying the Law) but as a more remote, though most excellent fruit; even the effect of that power, which by his death he procured to himself. He himself for the suffering of death, was crowned with glory; yet did he not properly die for himself, nor was that the direct effect of his death.2 Some of those Teachers who are gone forth of late, do tell us, as a piece of their new discoveries, that Christ never purchased Life and Salvation for us, but purchased us to Life and Salvation*: Not understanding that they affirm and deny the same thing in several expressions. What difference is there betwixt buying liberty to the prisoner, and buying the prisoner to liberty? betwixt buying life to a condemned malefactor, and buying him to life? Or betwixt purchasing Reconciliation to an enemy, and purchasing an enemy to Reconciliation? But in this last they have found a difference, and tell us, that God never was at enmity with man, but man only at enmity with God, and therefore need not be reconciled: Directly contrary to Scripture, which tells us that God hateth all the workers of iniquity,4 and that he is their enemy. And though there be no change in God, nor any thing properly called Hatred, yet it sufficeth that there is a change in the sinners relation, and that there is something in God which cannot better be expressed or conceived, then by these terms of enmity and hatred: And the enmity of the Law against a sinner, may well be called the enmity of God. However, this differenceth betwixt enmity in God, and enmity in us; but not betwixt the sense of the forementioned expressions. So that whether you will call it purchasing life for us, or purchasing us to life, the sense is the same, viz. By satisfying the Law, and removing impediments, to procure us Title to, and Possession of this Life.