A27017:587
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 5 › 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.
Secondly,1 That no mere men were the inventers of Scriptures, I prove thus. If men were the devisers of it, then it was either good men, or bad: but it was neither good men nor bad: therefore none.
SEcondly,1 That no meer men were the inventers of Scriptures, I prove thus. If men were the devisers of it, then it was either good men, or bad: but it was neither good men nor bad: therefore none.
- 1Not of man.
Though goodness and badness have many degrees, yet under some of those degrees do all men fall. Now I will show you that it could be neither of these. And first, Good men they could not be. For you might better say that Murderers, Traitors, Adulterers, Parricides, Sodomites, &c. were good men, rather then such. To devise Laws and father them upon God: to feign Miracles, and father them upon God: to set themselves up in the place of God: to say their word is the word of the Lord; to promise eternal salvation to those that obey them: to threat damnation to those that obey them not: to draw the world into a course so destructive to all their worldly happiness, upon a promise of happiness in another world, which they cannot give; to endeavour so egregiously to cozen all mankind; If all this, or any of this, be consistent with common honesty, nay if it be not as horrible wickedness as can be committed, then I confess I have lost my reason. Much less then could such a number of Good men in all ages, till ⟨p. 216⟩[…] were finished, be guilty of such unexpressible crimes. […] will it here be any evasion, to say, they were men of a […] temper, partly good, and partly bad: for these are not […] of a middle nature, nor such as will stand with any remnts of ingenuity or humanity. We have known wicked persons, too many, and too bad: yet where or when did we ever know any that attempted any so more-then-Hellish an enterprise? False Prophets have sent abroad indeed particular falsehoods: But who hath adventured upon such a system as this?