A27017:918
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 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.
1SECT. IV.
- 1§. 4.
3. The third sort that fall under this Reproof, are those self-cozening, formal, lazy Professors of Religion, who will be brought to any outward duty, and to take up the easier part of Christianity, but to the inward work, and more difficult part, they will never be persuaded: They will Preach, or hear, or read, or talk of heaven, or pray customarily and constantly in their Families, and take part with the persons or causes that are good, and desire to be esteemed among the godly, but you can never bring them to the more spiritual and difficult duties, as to be constant and fervent in secret Prayer, to be conscionable in the duty of self-examination, to be constant in that excellent duty of Meditation, to be heavenly minded, to watch constantly over his heart, and words, and ways; to deny his bodily senses their delights, to mortify the flesh, and not make provision for it to fulfil its lusts, to love and heartily forgive an enemy, to prefer his brethren heartily before himself, and to think meanly of his own gifts and worth, and to take it well of others that think so too, and to love them that have low thoughts of him, as well as those that have high; to bear easily the injuries or undervaluing words of others against him, to lay all that he hath at the feet ⟨p. 345⟩of Christ, and to prefer his Service and Favour before all; to prepare to die, and willingly to leave all, to come to Christ, &c. This outside Hypocrite will never be persuaded to any of these. Above all other, two notable sorts there are of these Hypocrites. First, The superficial, opinionative Hypocrite.1 Secondly, The worldly Hypocrite. First, The former entertaineth the Doctrine of the Gospel with Joy, but it is only into the surface of his soul, he never gives the seed any depth of earth; It changeth his opinion, and he thereupon engageth for Religion, as the right way, and sides with it as a party in a Faction, but it never melted and new moulded his heart, nor set up Christ there in full Power and Authority; but as his Religion lies most in his Opinion, so he usually runs from Opinion to Opinion, and is carried up and down with every wind of Doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness whereby they lye in weight to deceive; and as a child is tossed too and fro; for as his Religion is but Opinion, so is his Study, and Conference, and chief business all about Opinion: