A27017:881
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 4 › Section 9
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.
What sayest thou now to all this? Wilt thou not yet believe? If thou wilt not believe Christ, I know not whom thou wilt believe: and therefore it is in vain to persuade thee any further: Only let me tell thee the time is at hand when thou wilt easily believe, and that without any preaching or arguing: when thou seest the great and terrible day, and hearest the condemning sentence past, and art thy self thrust down to Hell (as Luk. 10.15.) then thou shalt believe, and never doubt again: And do not say but thou wast told so much. Surely he that so much dissuades thee from believing, doth yet believe and tremble himself. Jam. 2.19.
What sayest thou now to all this? Wilt thou not yet believe? If thou wilt not believe Christ, I know not whom thou wilt believe: and therefore it is in vain to perswade thee any further: Only let me tell thee the time is at hand when thou wilt easily believe, and that without any preaching or arguing: when thou seest the great and terrible day, and hearest the condemning sentence past, and art thy self thrust down to Hell (as Luk. 10.15.) then thou shalt believe, and never doubt again: And do not say but thou wast told so much. Surely he that so much disswades thee from believing, doth yet believe and tremble himself. Jam. 2.19.
And whereas thou thinkest that God is more merciful; why sure he knows best his own mercifulness. His mercy will not cross his Truth. Cannot God be infinite in mercy, except he save the wilful and rebellious? Is a judg unmerciful for condemning malefactors? Mercy and Justice have their several objects: Thousands of humble, believing, obedient souls shall know to their eternal comfort that God is merciful, though the refusers of his grace, shall lye under Justice. God will then force thy conscience to confess in Hell, that God who condemned thee was yet merciful to thee. Was it no mercy to be made a reasonable creature? And to have Patience endure thy many years provocations, and wait upon thee from Sermon to Sermon, desiring and entreating thy repentance and return? Was it no mercy to have the Son of God, with all his blood and merits freely offered thee, if thou wouldest but have accepted him to govern and to save thee? Nay when thou hadst neglected and refused Christ once, twice, yea a hundred times, that God should yet follow thee with invitations from day to day? And shalt thou wilfully refuse