A27017:780
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 4
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.1
- 1§. 4.
4. Again, as the Understandings and Consciences of sinners will be strengthened against them, so also will their Affections be then more lively and enlarged then now they are: As ⟨p. 282⟩Judgment will be no longer so blinded, nor Conscience stifled and bribed, as now it is; so the Affections will be no longer so stupefied and dead. A hard heart now makes Heaven and Hell to seem but trifles; And when we have showed them everlasting Glory and Misery, they are as men half asleep, they scarce take notice what we say, our words are cast as stones against a hard wall, which fly back in the face of him that casteth them, but make no impression at all where they fall We talk of terrible astonishing things, but it is to dead men, that cannot apprehend it: We may rip up their wounds, and they never feel us; we speak to Rocks rather then to men, the earth will as soon tremble as they: O but when these dead wretches are revived, what passionate sensibility! what working Affections! what pangs of horror! what depth of sorrow will there then be! How violently will they fly in their own faces! How will they rage against their former madness! The lamentations of the most passionate wife for the loss of her husband, or of the tenderest mother for the loss of her children, will be nothing to theirs for the loss of heaven. O the self-accusing, and self-tormenting fury of those forlorn wretches! How they will even tear their own hearts, and be Gods Executioners upon themselves! I am persuaded, as it was none but themselves that committed the sin, and themselves that were the only meritorious cause of their sufferings, so themselves will be the chiefest executioners of those sufferings: God will have it so for the clearing of Justice, and the aggravating of their distress: even Satan himself, as he was not so great a cause of their sinning as themselves, so will he not be so great an instrument as themselves of their torment. And let them not think here, that if they must torment themselves, they will do well enough, they shall have wit enough to ease and favour themselves, and resolution enough to command down this violence of their passions: Alas poor souls, They little know what passions those will be! and how much beyond the power of their resolutions to suppress! Why have not lamenting, pining, self-consuming persons on earth so much wit or power as this?