A27017:913
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 5 › 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.
yet these men will rather venture to be an eternal prey to that roaring Lyon that seeks to devour them, then they will be at the pains thus to seek their safety. You may hear in their houses two oaths for one prayer. Or if they do any thing this way, it is usually but the running over a few formal words, which they have got on their tongues end, as if they came on purpose to make a jest of prayer, and to mock God and their own souls. If they be in distress, or want any thing for their bodies, they want no words to make known their mind; but to a Physician when they are sick, to a griping Landlord when they are oppressed, to a wealthy friend when they are in want, they can lay open their case in sad complaints, and have words at will to press home their requests: Yea every beggar at their door can crave relief, and make it their daily practice and hold on with importunity, and take no denial; necessity filleth their mouths with words, and teacheth them the most natural prevailing Rhetoric: These beggars will rise up Judgment against them and condemn them. Doubtless if they felt but the misery and necessities of their souls, they would be as forward to beg relief of God, and as frequent, as fervent, as importunate, and as constant till they were past their straits. But, alas, he that only reads in a book that he is miserable, and what his soul stands in need of, but never felt himself miserable, nor felt particularly his several wants, no wonder if he must also fetch his prayer from his book only, or at furthest from the strength of his invention or memory. Solomons request to God was, That what prayer or Supplication soever should be made by any man, or by all the people, when every man shall know his own sore and his own grief, and shall spread forth his hands before God, that God would then hear and forgive, &c. 2 Chron. 6.29, 30. If these men did thus know and feel every one the sore and the grief of his own soul, we should neither need so much to urge them to prayer, nor to teach them how to perform it, and what to say: Whereas now they do invite ⟨p. 343⟩God to be backward in giving, by their backwardness in asking; and to be weary of relieving them▪ by their own being weary in begging relief; and to be seldom and short in his favours, as they are in their prayers;