A27017:759
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 6
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. VI.1
- 1§. 6.
Fourthly, They shall also be deprived of the Blessed society of Angels, and glorified Saints. Instead of being companions of those happy spirits, and numbered with those Joyful and Triumphing Kings; they must now be members of the corporation of hell, where they shall have companions of a far different nature and quality. While they lived on earth, they loathed the Saints; they imprisoned, banished them, and cast them out of their societies; or at least they would not be their companions in labour, and in sufferings: And therefore they shall not now be their companions in their Glory. Scorning them, and abusing them, hating ⟨p. 274⟩them, and rejoicing in their calamities, was not the way to obtain their blessedness. If you would have shined with them as Stars in the Firmament of their Father, you should have joined with them in their holiness, and faith, and painfulness, and patience: you should have first been engrafted with them into Christ, the common stock, and then incorporated into the fraternity of the members, and walked with them in singleness of heart, and watched with them with oil in your Lamps, and joined with them in mutual exhortation, in faithful admonitions, in conscionable reformation, in prayer, and in praise; you should have travelled with them out of the Egypt of your natural estate, through the Red Sea, and Wilderness of humiliation and affliction, and have cheerfully taken up the Cross of Christ, as well as the name & profession of Christians, and rejoiced with them in suffering persecution, and tribulation: All this, if you had faithfully done, you might now have been triumphing with them in glory, and have possessed with them their masters joy. But this you could not, you would not endure: your souls loathed it, your flesh was against it, and that flesh must be pleased, though you were told plainly and frequently what would come of it: and now you partake of the fruit of your folly, and endure but what you were foretold you must endure; and are shut out of that company, from which you first shut out your selves; and are separated but from them, whom you would not be joined with. You could not endure them in your houses, nor in your Towns, nor scarce in the Kingdom;