The saints everlasting rest

These were the terms on which they might ha•• joyed the kingdom. And was there any thing […] reasonable in all this? Was it a hard bargain to […] heaven upon these conditions?

These were the terms on which they might ha•• joyed the kingdom. And was there any thing 〈…〉 reasonable in all this? Was it a hard bargain to 〈…〉 heaven upon these conditions?

When the poor wretch shall look back upon these easy terms which he refused, and compare the labour of them with the pains and loss which he there sustaineth, it cannot be now conceived how it will rent his very heart! Ah, thinks he, how justly do I suffer all this, who would not be at so small pains to avoid it? Where was my understanding when I neglected thy gracious offer; when I called the LORD a hard master? and thought his pleasant service to be a bondage, and the service of the devil and my flesh to be the only freedom? Was I not a thousand times worse than mad, when I censured the holy way of GOD, as needless preciseness? And cried out on it, as an intolerable burden? When I thought the laws of Christ too strict; and all too much, that I did for the life to come? O, what had all the trouble of duty been, in comparison of the trouble I now sustain? Or all the sufferings for Christ and well-doing, in comparison of these sufferings that I must undergo for-ever? What if I had spent my days in the strictest life? What if I had lived still upon my knees? What if I had lost my credit with men? and been hated of all men for the sake of Christ? and borne the reproach of the foolish? What if I had been imprisoned, or banished, or put to death? O, what had all this been to the miseries that I now suffer! Would not the heaven which I have lost, have recompensed all my losses? and should not all my sufferings have been there forgotten? What if Christ had bid me do some great matter? as to live in continual tears and sorrow, to suffer death a hundred ⟨p. 102⟩