A27017:77
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
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. IV.
3. I Call it the estate of [a Christian] where I mean only the sincere,1 Regenerate, Sanctified Christian, whose Soul having discovered that excellency in God through Christ, which is not in the world to be found, thereupon closeth with him, and is cordially set upon him. I do not mean every one, that being born where Christianity is the Religion of the Country, takes it up as other fashions, and is become a Christian he scarce knows how, or why: Nor mean I those that profess Christ in words, but in works deny him. (I shall describe this Christian to you more plainly afterward.) It is an estate, to which many pretend, and that with much confidence, and because they know it is only the Christians; therefore they all call themselves Christians:2 But multitudes will at last know, to their eternal sorrow, that this is only the Inheritance of the Saints, and only those Christians shall possess it, who are not of the world, and therefore the world hates them; who have forsaken all for Christ, and having taken up the Cross, do follow him, with patient waiting, till they inherit the promised Glory.
3. I Call it the estate of [a Christian] where I mean onely the sincere,1 Regenerate, Sanctified Christian, whose Soul having discovered that excellency in God through Christ, which is not in the world to be found, thereupon closeth with him, and is cordially set upon him. I do not mean every one, that being born where Christianity is the Religion of the Country, takes it up as other fashions, and is become a Christian he scarce knows how, or why: Nor mean I those that profess Christ in words, but in works deny him. (I shall describe this Christian to you more plainly afterward.) It is an estate, to which many pretend, and that with much confidence, and because they know it is onely the Christians; therefore they all call themselves Christians: