A27017:667
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 7 › 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.
SECT. III.1
- 1§. 3.
3. IT is manifest also by the devils Possessing and Tormenting the bodies of men; for if it were not more for the sake of the soul then the body, why should he not as much possess or torment a beast? Certainly it is not chiefly the outward torment of the person that he regardeth, (though he desire that too) for then he would not labour to settle his Kingdom generally in peace and prosperity, and to make men choose iniquity for its worldly advantages. Yet, it may perhaps be the souls of others, more then the possessed persons themselves, that the devil may hope to get advantage on.1 So among the Papists, it hath brought their Exorcisms into singular credit, by their frequent dispossessing the devil: I confess, there have been many counterfeits of this kind; as the Boy at Bilson by Wolverhampton, hired by the Papists, and discovered by the vigilant care of Bishop Morton, and divers others. But yet if any doubt whether there is any such thing at all, credible History, and late experience may sufficiently satisfy him. The History of the dispossession of the devil out of many persons together in a room in Lancashire, at the prayer of some godly Ministers, is very famous; for which these Ministers, being Nonconformists, were questioned in the High Commission Court, as if it had been a device to strengthen the credit of their cause. Read the Book and Judg. Among the Papists, Possessions are common; (though I believe very many of them are the Priests and Jesuits delusions.)
3. IT is manifest also by the devils Possessing and Tormenting the bodies of men; for if it were not more for the sake of the soul then the body, why should he not as much possess or torment a beast? Certainly it is not chiefly the outward torment of the person that he regardeth, (though he desire that too) for then he would not labor to settle his Kingdom generally in peace and prosperity, and to make men chuse iniquity for its worldly advantages. Yet, it may perhaps be the souls of others, more then the possessed persons themselves, that the devil may hope to get advantage on.