A27017:611
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 6 › Section 1
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.
All the work therefore will lye in confirming the Minor: Where I shall show you; first, By what wonders of Providence God hath owned and fulfilled the Scriptures: And secondly, How it may appear that this was the end of such Providences.
All the work therefore will lye in confirming the Minor: Where I shall shew you; first, By what wonders of Providence God hath owned and fulfilled the Scriptures: And secondly, How it may appear that this was the end of such Providences.
1. The first sort of Providences here to be considered, are those that have been exercised for the Church universal. Where these three things present themselves especially to be observed: first, The Propagating of the Gospel, and raising of the Church: secondly, The Defence and continuance of that Church: thirdly, The improbable ways of accomplishing these.
And first, Consider, what an unlikely design in the judgment of man, did Christ send his Apostles upon? To bid a few ignorant Mechanics, Go, Preach, and make him Disciples of all Nations! To send his Followers into all the world, to make men believe him to be the Saviour of the world, and to charge them to expect salvation no other way! Why, almost all the world might say, They had never seen him: And to tell them in Britain, &c. of one crucified among thieves at Jerusalem, and to charge them to take him for their eternal King, this was a design very unlikely to prevail. When they would have taken him by force, and made him a King, then he refused, and hid himself. But when the world thought they had fully conquered him, when they had seen him dead, and laid him in his Sepulchre, then doth he rise and subdue the world. He that would have said, when Christ was on the Cross, or in the Grave [that within so many weeks many thousands of his Murderers should believe him to be their Saviour, or within so many years, so many Countries and Kingdoms should receive him for their Lord, and lay down their Dignities, Possessions, and Lives […] his feet] would have hardly been believed by any that had heard him: and I am confident they would most of them then have acknowledged, that if such a Wonder should come to pass; it […] needs be from the Finger of God alone. That the Kingdoms of the world should become the Kingdoms of Christ, was then a matter exceeding improbable.