A27017:555
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 4 › Section 3
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.
First, Consider, it is of matter of Fact: (for the Doctrine we are not now mentioning, except de facto, that this was the Doctrine attested.) 2. They were the substances of the actions that they chiefly related, and that we are now enquiring after the certainty of. Though men may mistake in the Circumstances of the fight at such a place, or such a place, yet that there were such fights we may certainly know. Or though they may mistake in smaller actions, circumstances or qualifications of Henry the eight, of William the Conqueror, &c. yet that there were such men we may certainly know. Now the thing we enquire after, is, Whether such Miracles were wrought or no? 3. They were aActions then famous through the world, and made great alterations in States▪ They turned the world upside down; Cities were converted, Countries, and Rulers were turned Christians. And may not the Records in eminent Actions be certain? We have certain Records of Battles, of Sieges, and of Successions of Princes among the Heathens before the coming of Christ, and of the great alterations in our own State for a very long time. 4. It was a formed bRecord in the very words of the first Witnesses in Writing, which hath been delivered to us, and not only an unwritten Testimony; so that mens various Conceivings, or Expressions could make no alteration. 5. These Records which we call the Scripture, have been kept publicly in all these Ages; so that the most negligent enemy might have taken notice of its depravation. Yea, God made it the office of his Ministers to publish it whatever came of it to all the world, and pronounced a woe to them if they Preach not this Gospel; which Preaching was both the divulging of the Doctrine and Miracles of Christ, and all out of these authentic Records; And how then is it possible, there should be an universal depravation, and that even in the narration of the matters of Fact, when all Nations almost, in all the Ages since the Original of the History, have had these Heralds, who have proclaimed it to the death. 6. And it is most apparent that the Keepers and Publishers of these Records, have been men of most eminent Piety and Honesty. The same Testimony which I gave before for to prove the honesty of the first Witnesses, will prove ⟨p. 201⟩theirs, though in a lower degree: A good man, but a Christian, was the Character given them by their very foes. 7.