N17286:201
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
Part 2 › Chapter 2: The Aggravation of the Loss of Heaven to the Ungodly.
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.
3. And as the damned will have deeper apprehensions of the happiness they have lost, so will they have a closer application of this doctrine to themselves, which will exceedingly tend to increase their torment. It will then be no hard matter to them to say, this is my loss, and this is my everlasting misery. The want of this is the main cause why they are now so little troubled at their condition; they are hardly brought to believe that there is such a state of misery, but more hardly to believe that it is like to be their own. This makes so many sermons to be lost, and all threatenings and warnings prove in vain. Let a minister of Christ show them their misery never so plainly, they will not be persuaded that they are so miserable. Let him tell them of the glory they must lose, and the sufferings they must feel, and they think it is not they whom he means. We find in all our preaching, by sad experience, that it is one of the hardest things in the world to bring a wicked man to know that he is wicked; a man who is in the way to hell, to know that he is in that way; or to make a man see himself in a state of wrath and condemnation: how seldom do we hear men, after the plainest discovery of their condemned state, cry out, I am the man! or to acknowledge, that if they die in their present condition, they are undone for-ever.
3. And as the damned will have deeper apprehensions of the happiness they have lost, so will they have a closer application of this doctrine to themselves, which will exceedingly tend to increase their torment. It will then be no hard matter to them to say, this is my loss, and this is my everlasting misery. The want of this is the main cause why they are now so little troubled at their condition; they are hardly brought to believe that there is such a state of misery, but more hardly to believe that it is like to be their own. This makes so many sermons to be lost, and all threatenings and warnings prove in vain. Let a minister of Christ shew them their misery never so plainly, they will not be persuaded that they are so miserable. Let him tell them of the glory they must lose, and the sufferings they must feel, and they think it is not they whom he means. We find in all our preaching, by sad experience, that it is one of the hardest things in the world to bring a wicked man to know that he is wicked; a man who is in the way to hell, to know that he is in that way; or to make a man see himself in a state of wrath and condemnation: how seldom do we hear men, after the plainest discovery of their condemned state, cry out, I am the man! or to acknowledge, that if they die in their present condition, they are undone for-ever.