A27017:835
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 3 › Section 3
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.
Or if one had asked Ahab, when he had received his wound, and turned out of the battle to die; what think you now of the Prophecy of Micaiah? will you release him out of prison? do you now hope to return in peace? Why, such a sudden overthrow of their hopes will every unregenerate sinner receive. While they were upon earth, they frustrated the expectations (as I may say) of God and man: ⟨p. 306⟩God sent his messengers to tell them plainly of their danger, and said, It may be they will hear, and return and escape: but they stiffened their necks and hardened their hearts: The Minister studied, and instructed and persuaded, in hope: And when one Sermon prevailed not, he laboured to speak more plainly and piercingly in the next, in hope that at last they would be persuaded and return: till their hopes were frustrate, and their labour lost, and they were fain to turn their exhortation to lamentation, and to sit down in sorrow for mens wilful misery; and take up the sad exclamation of the Prophet, Isai. 53.1. Who hath believed our report? And to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? So did godly parents also instruct their children in Hope; and watch over them, and pray for them, hoping that at last their hearts would turn to Christ. And is it not meet that God should frustrate all their hopes, who have frustrated the hopes of all that desired their welfare? O that careless sinners would be awaked to think of this in time? If thou be one of them, who art reading these lines, I do here as a friend advise thee from the word of the Lord, that, as thou wouldst not have all thy Hopes deceive thee when thou hast most need of them, thou presently try them whether they will prove currant at the touchstone of the Scripture; and if thou find them unsound, let them go, what sorrow soever it cost thee. Rest not till thou canst give a reason of all thy hopes:1 till thou canst prove that they are the hopes which grace and not nature only hath wrought,2 that they are grounded upon Scripture-promises and sound evidences, that they purify thy heart: that they quicken, and not cool thy endeavours in godliness; that the more thou hopest, the less thou sinnest; and the more painful thou art in following on the work; and not grow more loose and careless by the increasing of thy hopes: that they make thee set lighter by all things on earth, because thou hast such hopes of higher possessions: