A27017:808
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 14
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. XIV.
- 1§. 14.
Ninthly, Yet much more will it add unto their torment, when they consider that all this-was their own doings, and that they most wilfully did procure their own destruction: Had they been forced to sin whether they would or no, it would much abate the rage of their consciences; Or if they were punished for another mans transgressions; or if any other had been the chiefest author of their ruin; But to think, that it was the choice of their own will; and that God had set them in so free a condition, that none in the world could have forced them to sin against their wills, this will be a griping thought to their hearts. What (thinks this wretched creature) had I not enemies enough in the world, but I must be an enemy to my self? God would neither give the devil nor the world so much power over me, as to force me to commit the least transgression: if I had not consented, their temptations had been in vain, they could but entice me, it was my self that yielded, and that did the evil; and must I needs lay hands upon mine own soul? and imbrue my hands in my own blood? who should pity me, who pitied not my self, and who brought all this upon mine own head? When the enemies of Christ did pull down his Word and Laws, his Ministry and Worship, the news of it did rejoice me; when they set up dumb, or seducing, or ungodly Ministers, in stead of the faithful Preachers of the Gospel, I was glad to have it so; when the Minister told me the evil of ⟨p. 295⟩my ways, and the dangerous state that my soul was in, I took him for mine enemy, and his Preaching did stir up my hatred against him and every Sermon did cut me to the heart, and I was ready to gnash my teeth in indignation against him. If a drunken Ceremonious Preacher did speak me fair, or read the Common Prayer, or some toothless Homily instead of a searching plain-dealing Sermon, why, this was according to my own heart; never was I willing of the means of mine own welfare; never had I so great an enemy as my self; never did God do me any good, or offer me any for the welfare of my soul, but I resisted him, and was utterly unwilling of it: he hath heaped mercy upon me, and renewed one deliverance after another, and all to entice my heart unto him, and yet was I never heartily willing to serve him: