N17286:84
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 1 › Chapter 4: The four great Preparatives to our Rest.
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.
What inexpressible joy may this afford a believer? Our dear LORD shall be our judge. Will a man fear to be judged by his dearest friend, by a brother, by a father, or a wife by her own husband? Did he come down, and suffer and weep, and bleed, and die for thee; and will he now condemn thee? Was he judged and condemned, and executed in thy stead, and now will he condemn thee? Hath it cost him so dear to save thee? and will he now destroy thee? Hath he done the most of the work already, in justifying, preserving and perfecting thee? and will he now undo all again? O what an unreasonable sin is unbelief, that will charge our LORD with such absurdities! Well then, fellow-christians, let the terror of that day be never so great, our LORD can mean no ill to us in all. Let it make the devils tremble; and the wicked tremble; but it shall make us leap for joy. And it must needs affect us deeply with the sense of our mercy and happiness, to behold the contrary condition of others. To see most of the world tremble with terror, while we triumph with joy: to see them thrust into hell, when we are proclaimed heirs of the kingdom; to see our neighbours that lived in the same towns, came to the same congregations, dwelt in the same houses, and were esteemed more honourable in the world than ourselves; now so differenced from us, and by the searcher of hearts eternally separated. This, with the great magnificence and dreadfulness of the day, doth the apostle pathetically express, in 2 Thes. i. 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. It is a righteous thing with GOD to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you; and to you who are troubled, rest with us; when the LORD JESUS shall be revealed from heaven with his ⟨p. 40⟩mighty angels, in flaming fire, taking vengeance on the•• that know not GOD, and obey not the gospel of our LORD JESUS CHRIST; who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the LORD, and from the glory of his power. And now is not here enough to make that day a welcome day, and the thoughts of it delightful to us? But yet there is more. We shall be so far from the dread of that judgment, that ourselves shall become the judges. Christ will take his people, as it were into commission with him; and they shall sit and approve his righteous judgment.