A27017:52
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.
Therefore] i. e. It clearly follows from the former Argument [There Remains] 1. In order of speaking; As the Consequence follows the Antecedent, or the Conclusion the Premises; So there Remains a Rest, or it remains that there is another Rest. 2. But rather in order of being: As the bargain remains after the earnest, the performance after the promise, the Anti-type after the Type, and the ultimate end after all the means; so there remains a Rest: [To the People of God] God hath a two-fold people within the Church: One his only by a common vocation*, by an external acceptation of Christ, and covenanting, sanctified by the blood of the Covenant so far, as to be separated from the open enemies of Christ, and all without the Church, therefore not to be accounted common and unclean in the sense as Jews and Pagans are; but holy, and Saints in a larger sense, as the Nation of the Jews, and all Proselyted Gentiles were holy before Christs coming: These are called Branches in Christ not bearing fruit,2 and shall be cut off, &c. for they are in the Church, and in him, by the foresaid profession, and external Covenant, but no further. There are in his Kingdom things that offend,3 and men that work iniquity, which the Angels at the last day shall gather out, and cast into the Lake of fire: There are fishes good and bad in his net, and tares with wheat in his field: The son of Perdition is one of those given to Christ by the Father,4 though not as the Rest; these be not the people of God my Text speaks of. 2. But God hath a Peculiar People, that are his by special vocation, cordial acceptation of Christ, internal, sincere covenanting, sanctified by the blood of the Covenant, and Spirit of Grace, so far, as not only to be separated from open Infidels, but from all unregenerate Christians being Branches in Christ, bearing fruit; and for these remains the Rest in my Text.
Therefore] i. e. It clearly follows from the former Argument [There Remains] 1. In order of speaking; As the Consequence follows the Antecedent, or the Conclusion the Premises; So there Remains a Rest, or it remains that there is another Rest. 2. But rather in order of being: As the bargain remains after the earnest, the performance after the promise, the Anti-type after the Type, and the ultimate end after all the means; so there remains a Rest: [To the People of God] God hath a two-fold people within the Church: One his only by a common vocation