A27017:770
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 2 › 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.
1. Then, That this loss of heaven will be then most tormenting, may appear by these considerations following.
First,1 The Understandings of the ungodly will be then cleared, to know the worth of that which they have lost. Now they lament not their loss of God, because they never knew his excellency, nor the loss of that holy employment and society, for they were never sensible what they were worth: A man that hath lost a Jewel, and took it but for a common stone, is never troubled at his loss; but when he comes to know what he lost, then he lamenteth it: Though the understandings of the damned will not then be sanctified (as I said before) yet will they be cleared from a multitude of errors which now possess them, and mislead them to their ruin; They think now that their honour with men, their estates, their pleasures, their health and life, are better worth their studies and •••our, then the things of another world which they never saw; but when these things which had their hearts, have left them in misery, and given them the slip in their greatest need, when they come to know by experience the things which before they did but read and hear of, they will then be quite in another mind. They would not believe that water would drown, till they were in the sea, nor that the fire would burn, till they were cast into it; but when they feel it they will easily believe: All that error of their mind which made them set light by God, and abhor his worship, and vilify his people, will then be confuted and removed by experience; their knowledge shall be increased,2 that their sorrows may be increased: as Adam by his fall did come to the knowledge of Good and Evil, so shall all the damned have this increase of knowledge: As the knowledge of the excellency of that Good which they do enjoy, and of that Evil which they have escaped, is necessary to the glorified Saints, that they may rationally and truly enjoy their glory, so is the knowledge of the greatness of that good which they have lost, and of that evil which they have procured to themselves, necessary to the tormenting of these wretched sinners; for as the joys of heaven are not enjoyed so much by the bodily