A27017:751
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. III. › Chapter 1 › 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.
1SECT. III.
- 1§. 3.
First, The ungodly in their loss of heaven, do lose all that glorious personal perfection, which the people of God do there enjoy. They lose that shining lustre of the body, surpassing the brightness ⟨p. 269⟩of the Sun at noon day. Though perhaps even the bodies of the wicked will be raised more spiritual incorruptible bodies, then they were on earth, yet that will be so far from being a happiness to them that it only makes them capable of the more exquisite torments, their understandings being now more capable of apprehending the greatness of their loss, and their senses more capable of feel•ing their sufferings.1 They would be glad then if every member were a dead member, that it might not feel the punishment inflicted on it; and if the whole body were a rotten carcass, or might again lye down in the dust and darkness. The devil himself hath an Angelical and excellent nature, but that only honoureth his skilful Creator, but is no honour or comfort at all to himself: The glory, the beauty, the comfortable perfections they are deprived of; much more do they want that mor•all perfection which the Blessed do partake of: Those holy dispositions and qualifications of mind; That blessed conformity to the Holiness of God; that cheerful readiness to do his Will; that perfect rectitude of all their actions; In stead of these, they have their old ulcerous deformed souls, that perverseness of Will, that disorder in their faculties▪ that loathing of good, that love to evil, that violence of passion, which they ha• on earth. It is true, their understandings will be much cleared, both by the ceasing of their temptations and deluding objects which they had on earth, as also by the sad experience which they will have in hell,