A27017:616
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.
How contrary to all this is the course of the great Commanders of the world, when they would enlarge their Dominions, or procure themselves followers? They have no course but to force men, or to flatter them. How contrary was Mahomets course in propagating his Kingdom? He levieth an Army, and conquereth some adjoining parts; and as his success increaseth, so doth his presumption; he enticeth all sorts to come to his Camp; he maketh Laws that would please their fleshly lusts; he promiseth them beautiful sights, and fair women, and such carnal delights in another world: In a word, as his Kingdom was planted, so hath it been preserved, by no other ⟨p. 225⟩ways, but force and flattery. But Christ hath not one word for either of these: His compelling men to come in, is but rational persuading.
How contrary to all this is the course of the great Commanders of the world, when they would enlarge their Dominions, or procure themselves followers? They have no course but to force men, or to flatter them. How contrary was Mahomets course in propagating his Kingdom? He levieth an Army, and conquereth some adjoyning parts; and as his success increaseth, so doth his presumption; he inticeth all sorts to come to his Camp; he maketh Laws that would please their fleshly lusts; he promiseth them beautiful sights, and fair women, and such carnal delights in another world: In a word, as his Kingdom was planted, so hath it been preserved, by no other ⟨p. 225⟩ways, but force and flattery. But Christ hath not one word for either of these: His compelling men to come in, is but rational perswading.
2. Nay, yet more then this, he makes his Church to grow by sufferings; when others increase their Dominions by the destroying of their enemies, he increaseth his, by suffering them to kill his subjects; An unlikely way one would think, to make the world either love or serve him. There have been few Ages since the first appearing of the Gospel in the world, wherein the earth hath not drunk in the blood of Believers. In the beginning it was a rare case to be a faithful Pastor, and not a Martyr: Thirty, Three Roman Bishops successively were Martyred; thousands, yea ten thousand slaughtered at a time; In so much that Gregory and Cyprian cry out, that the witnesses who had dyed for the Truth of the Gospel were to men innumerable, that the world was all over filled with their blood, and they that were left alive to behold it, were not so many as those that were slain, that no war did consume so many: And the Histories of the Enemies acknowledge almost as much.