N17286:782
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 3 › Chapter 8: Some Advantages and Helps, for raising the Soul by Meditation.
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.
6. Compare the things which thou shalt enjoy above, with the excellency of those admirable works of Providence, which GOD doth exercise in the church, and in the world. What glorious things hath the LORD wrought! And yet we shall see more glorious than these. Would it not be an astonishing sight, to see the sea stand […] a wall on the right hand, and on the left, and the people of Israel pass safely through, and Pharaoh and his people swallowed up? If we had seen the rock to gush forth streams, or manna or quails rained down from heaven, or the earth open and swallow up the wicked; would not all these have been wondrous, glorious sights? But we shall see far greater things than these. And as our sights shall be more wonderful, so also they shall be more sweet: there shall be no blood or wrath intermingled; we shall not then cry out as David, who shall stand before this holy Lord God? Would it not have been an astonishing sight to have seen the sun stand still in the firmament? Why, we shall see when there shall be no sun to shine at all; we shall behold for-ever a sun of more incomparable brightness. Were it not a brave life, if we might still live among wonders and miracles; and ⟨p. 362⟩all for us, and not against us? If we could have drought or rain at our prayers, as Elijah; or if we could call down fire from heaven, to destroy our enemies; or raise the dead to life, as Elisha; or cure the diseased, and speak strange languages, as the apostles: alas, these are nothing to the wonders which we shall see and possess with GOD, and all those wonders of goodness and love! We shall possess that pearl and power itself, through whose virtue all these works were done; we shall ourselves be the subjects of more wonderful mercies than any of these. Jonah was raised but from a three day's burial, from the belly of the whale in the deep ocean; but we shall be raised from many years rottenness and dust, and that dust exalted to a sun-like glory, and that glory perpetuated to all eternity. What sayest thou? Is not this the greatest of miracles or wonders? Surely, if we observe but common providences, the motions of the sun, the tides of the sea, the standing of the earth, the warming it, the watering it with rain as a garden, the keeping in order a wicked confused world, with multitudes of the like;
6. Compare the things which thou shalt enjoy above, with the excellency of those admirable works of Providence, which GOD doth exercise in the church, and in the world. What glorious things hath the LORD wrought! And yet we shall see more glorious than these. Would it not be an astonishing sight, to see the sea stand a wall on the right hand, and on the left, and the people of Israel pass safely through, and Pharaoh and his people swallowed up? If we had seen the rock to gush forth streams, or manna or quails rained down from heaven, or the earth open and swallow up the wicked; would not all these have been wonderous, glorious sights? But we shall see far greater things than these. And as our sights shall be more wonderful, so also they shall be more sweet: there shall be no blood or wrath intermingled; we shall not then cry out as David, who shall stand before this holy Lord God? Would it not have been an astonishing sight to have seen the sun stand still in the firmament? Why, we shall see when there shall be no sun to shine at all; we shall behold for-ever a sun of more incomparable brightness. Were it not a brave life, if we might still live among wonders and miracles; and