N17286:106
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: extracted from the works of Mr. Richard Baxter, by John Wesley, M.A. late fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford.
Philadelphia: printed by Prichard & Hall, 1790
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.
1. To our natures. If suitableness concur not with excellency, the best things may be bad to us: for it is not that which makes things good in themselves, to be good to us. In our choice of friends, we oft pass by the more excellent, to choose the more suitable; every good agrees not with every nature. The choicest dainties which we feed upon ourselves, would be to our beasts, as an unpleasing, so an insufficient sustenance.
1. To our natures. If suitableness concur not with excelleney, the best things may be bad to us: for it is not that which makes things good in themselves, to be good to us. In our choice of friends, we oft pass by the more excellent, to choose the more suitable; every good agrees not with every nature. The choicest dainties which we feed upon ourselves, would be to our beasts, as an unpleasing, so an insufficient sustenance.
Now here is suitableness and excellency conjoined. The new nature of the saints doth suit their spirits to this rest: and indeed their holiness is nothing else but a spark taken from this element, and by the spirit of Christ kindled in their hearts, the flame whereof, as mindful of its divine original, doth ever mount aloft, and tend to the place from whence it comes. Gold and earthly glory, temporal crowns and kingdoms, could not make a rest for saints. As they were not redeemed with so low a price, so neither are they endued with so low a nature. As GOD will have from them a spiritual worship, suitable to his own spiritual being; so will he provide them a spiritual rest, suitable to his people's spiritual nature.
A heaven of the knowledge of GOD, and his Christ; and a delightful complacency in that mutual love, and everlasting rejoicing in the fruition of our GOD, a perpetual singing of his high praises: this is a heaven for a saint: a spiritual rest, suitable to a spiritual nature. Then we shall live in our element. We are now as the fish in some small vessel of water, that hath only so much as will keep him alive: but what is that to the full ocean? We have a little air let into us to afford us breathing: but what is that to the sweet and fresh gales upon mount Zion? We have a beam of the sun to lighten our darkness, and a warm