A27017:923
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 5
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.
4. And even the godly themselves deserve this Reproof, for being too lazy seekers of their everlasting Rest. Alas, what a disproportion is there betwixt our Light and our Heat? our Professions and Prosecution? who makes that haste, as if it were for heaven? How still we stand! how idly we work! how we talk, and jest, and trifle away our time! how deceitfully we do the Work of God! how we hear, as if we heard not, and pray, as if we prayed not, and confer, and examine, and meditate, and reprove sin as if we did it not, and use the Ordinances as if we used them not,1 and enjoy Christ, as if we enjoyed him not, as if we had learned to use the things of heaven, as the Apostle teacheth us to use the world! Who would think that stood by us, and heard us pray in private or public, that we were praying for no less then everlasting glory? should heaven be sought no more earnestly then thus? Me thinks we are none of us all in good-sadness for our souls. We do but dally with the Work of God, and play with Christ, as children, we play with our meat when we should eat it, and we play with our clothes, and look upon them, when we should put them on and wear them; we hang upon Ordinances from day to day, but *we stir not up our selves to seek the Lord: I see a great many very constant in hearing and Praying, and give ⟨image 204⟩[…] ⟨p. 346⟩[…] ⟨image 205⟩us some hopes that their hearts are honest, but they do not hear and pr•y as i• it were for their lives: O, what a frozen stupidity hath benumbed us! The judgment of Pharaoh is among us, we are turned into Stones and Rocks, that can neither feel nor stir; The plague of Lots wife is upon us, as if we were changed into lifeless, unmoveable Pillars: we are dying▪ and we know it, and yet we stir not; we are at the door of eternal Happiness or Misery, and yet we perceive it not: Death knocks and we hear not, Christ calls and knocks, and we hear not, God cries to us, To day if you will hear my voice, harden not your hearts; work while it is day, for the night cometh, when none shall work; Now ply your business, now labour for your lives, now lay out all your strength and time, now do it, now or never, and yet we stir no more then if we were half asleep; What haste doth Death and Judgment make? how fast do they come on? they are almost at us, and yet what little haste make we? what haste makes the Sword to devour, from one part of the Land to another?