N17286:231
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 3: They shall lose all Things that are comfortable, as well as Heaven.
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.
Secondly, The soul departeth from the body suddenly, in a moment, which hath there delightfully continued so many years: just so doth the hope of the wicked depart.
Thirdly, The soul which then departeth, will never return to live with the body in this world any more; and the hope of the wicked, when it departeth, taketh an everlasting farewell of his soul. A miracle of resurrection shall again conjoin the soul and body, but there shall be no such miraculous resurrection of the damned's hope.
Methinks it is the most doleful spectacle that this world affords, to see an ungodly person dying; his soul and hopes departing together! With what a sad change he appears in another world! Then if a man could but speak with that hopeless soul, and ask it, are you now as confident of salvation as you were wont to be? Do you now hope to be saved as soon as the most godly? O what a sad answer would he return!
O that careless sinners would be awakened to think of this in time! If thou be one of them, who art reading these lines, I do here, as a friend, advise thee, ⟨p. 109⟩that as thou wouldst not have all thy hopes deceive thee, when thou hast most need, thou presently try them, whether they will prove current at the touchstone of the scripture; and if thou find them unsound, let them go, whatsoever sorrow they cost thee. Rest not till thou canst give a reason of all thy hopes; till thou canst prove, that they are the hopes which grace and not nature, hath wrought; that they are grounded upon scripture-promises; that they purify thy heart; that they quicken, and not cool thy endeavours in godliness; that the more thou hopest, the less thou sinnest, and the more painful thou art in following on the work, and not grown more loose and careless by the increasing of thy hopes; that thou art willing to have them tried, and fearful of being deceived; that they stir up thy desires of enjoying what thou hopest for, and the deferring thereof is the trouble of thy heart.