The saints' everlasting rest

Contents

Page.

Introductory Essay, . ■ .. . . 5

Dedication, 37

CHAP. I. The Introduction to the Work, with some account

of the Nature of the Saints' Rest, ..... 53

f* CHAP. II. The great Preparatives to the Saints' Rest, , 73

n ^ CHAP. III. The Excellencies of the Saints' Rest, . . 84

m CHAP. IV". The Character of the Persons for whom this

Rest is designed, 104

CHAP. V. The greatmisery of those who lose the Saints' Rest, 124

CHAP. VI. The misery of those, who, besides losing the Saints' Rest, lose the enjoyments of time, and suffer the torments of Hell, 141

CHAP. VII. The necessity of diligently seeking the Saints'

Rest, 158

CHAP. VIII. How to discern our title to the Saints' Rest, . 182

CHAP. IX. The duty of the people of God to excite others

to seek this Rest, . . , . . . . .206

IV CONTENTS.

CHAP. X. The Saints' Rest is not to be expected on earth, 230

CHAP. XL The importance of leading a heavenly life upon

earth, 253

CHAP. XII. Directions how to lead a heavenly life upon

earth, 277

CHAP. XIII. The Nature of heavenly Contemplation; with

the Time, Place, and Temper, fittest for it, . . . 301

CHAP. XIV. What use heavenly Contemplation makes of

Consideration. Affections, Soliloquy, and Prayer, . . 317

CHAP. XV. Heavenly Contemplation assisted by 'sensible

Objects, and guarded against a treacherous Heart, . . 337

CHAP. XVI. Heavenly Contemplation exemplified, and the

whole Work concluded, 358

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

We do not arrogate to ourselves so much as to suppose, that our commendation can add any thing to the authority of such a name as that of Richard Baxter. It is not to commend him, but to render our own series of practical divinity more complete, that we introduce his Saints' Everlasting Rest to our readers. He belonged to a class of men, whose characters and genius, now universally venerated, seem to have been most peculiarly adapted, by Divine Providence, to the circumstances of their age and country. We do not speak only of those who partook in Baxter's views of ecclesiastical polity ; but of those who, under any name, maintained the cause of truth and liberty, during the eventful period of the seventeenth century. They were made of the same firm stuff with the WicklifFs, and the Luthers, and the Knoxes, and the Cranmers, and the Latimers, of a former age. They formed a distinguished division of the same glorious army of reformation ; they encountered similar obstacles, and they were directed} 2

VI and supported, and animated, by the same spirit. The) 7 were the true and enlightened crusaders, who, with all the zeal and courage which conducted their chivalrous ancestors to the earthly Jerusalem, fought their way to the heavenly city ; and rescuing, by their sufferings and by their labors, the key of knowledge from the unworthy hands in which it had long lain rusted and misused, generously left it as a rich inheritance to all coming generations. They speak with the solemn dignity of martyrs. They seem to feel the importance of their theme, and the perpetual presence of Him who is the great subject of it. There are only two things which they seem to consider as realities, the favor of God, and the enmity of God ; and only two parties in the universe to choose between, the party of God, and the party of his adversaries. Hence that heroic and noble tone, which marks their lives and their writings. They had chosen their side, and they knew that it was worthy of all they could do or suffer for it.

They were born in the midst of conflicts civil and religious ; and as they grew up, their ears heard no other sounds than those of defiance and controversy. Thus life was to them, in fact and reality, that warfare, which is to many of us only its rhetorical emblem. To this is to be attributed that severity of rebuke, and sternness of denunciation, which we are sometimes almost sorry to meet with in their expostulations. But they were obliged to speak loud, in order to be heard in those troublous days. They were trained in the language of strife, as their mother tongue ; and they used that language even in deliver-

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Ing the message of peace. But they did deliver the message of peace, they declared the way of salvation, and they were highly honored, and invincibly supported by Him who sent them.

The agitated state of surrounding circumstances gave them continual proof of the instability of all things temporal ; and inculcated on them the necessity of seeking a happiness which might be independent of external things. They thus practically learned the vanity and nothingness of life, except in its relation to eternity ; and they declared to their fellow-creatures the mysteries of the kingdom of God, with the tone of men who knew that the lightest word which they spoke, outweighed in the balance of reason, as well as of the sanctuary, the value of all earth's plans, and politics, and interests. They were upon high and firm ground. They stood in the midst of that tempestuous ocean, secure on the Rock of Ages ; and as they uttered to those around them their invitations, or remonstrances, or consolations, they thought not of the tastes but of the necessities of men — they thought only of the difference between being lost and being saved, and they cried aloud, and spared not.

There is no doubt a great variety of thought, and feeling) and expression, to be met with in the theological writers of that class ; but deep and solemn seriousness is the common character of them all. They seem to have felt much. Religion was not allowed to remain as an unused theory in their heads ; they were forced to live on it as their food, and to have recourse to it as their only strength and comfort. Hence their thoughts are never given as abstract

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views ; they are always deeply impregnated with sea-* timent. Their style reminds us of the light which streams through the stained and storied windows of an ancient cathedral. It is not light merely, but light modified by the rich hues, and the quaint forms, and the various incidents of the pictured medium through which it passes. So these venerable worthies do not give us merely ideas, but ideas colored by the deep affections of their own hearts ; they do not merely give us truth, but truth in its historical application to the various struggles, and difficulties, and dejections of their strangely chequered lives. This gives a great interest to their writings. They are real men, and not books that we are conversing with. And the peace, and the strength, and the hope, which they describe, are not the fictions of fancy, but the positive and substantial effects of the knowledge of God on their own minds. They are thus not merely waymarks to direct our journeyings ; they seem themselves pilgrims travelling on the same road, and encouraging us to keep pace w 7 ith them. In their books, they seem thus still to journey, still to combat ; but O let us think of the bright reality ! — their contests are past, their labors are over ; they have fought the good fight, and they are now at rest, made perfect in Christ Jesus. They are joined to that cloud of witnesses, of whom the world was not worthy ; and their names are inscribed in the rolls of heaven ; yet not for their own glory, but for the glory of him who washed them from their sins in his own blood, and whose strength was made perfect in their weakness.

These were the great men of England, and ta

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them, under God, is England indebted for much of that which is valuable in her public institutions, and in the character of her people. They were, indeed, a noble army ; they were born from above to be the combatants for truth ; they were placed in the gap, and they held their ground, or fell at their posts.

In this army Richard Baxter was a standardbearer. He labored much, as well in preaching as in writing; and with an abundant blessing on both. He had all the high mental qualities of his class in perfection. His mind is inexhaustible, and vigorous, and vivacious, to an extraordinary degree. He seizes irresistibly on the attention, and carries it along with him ; and we assuredly do not know any author who can be compared with him, for the power with which he brings his reader directly face to face, with death, and judgment, and eternity ; and compels him to look upon them, and converse with them. He is himself most deeply serious, and the holy solemnity of his own soul seems to envelope the reader, as with the air of a temple. But on such a subject praise is superfluous, as it is easy 5 and we shall rather beg the attention of our readers to some observations on his manner of stating divine truth, and on the interesting subject of the work before us.

In the first place, then, there is perhaps, too little appearance of compassion, and too much detail in his descriptions of the punishments after death. The general idea is all that is given in Scripture, and even that is rarely insisted on, except by our Lord 2* himself; as if such a fearful denunciation could only have its right effect, when pronounced by the lips of him who is love itself; It is not to the statement of the doctrine that we object; but to the manner of doing it. Whatever men may think or feel on the subject, there can be no doubt, that the doctrine does stand in Scripture, and assuredly it does not stand there in vain. We must leave the difficulties with God. The light of the last day will dispel all darkness. In the mean time, it must be stated, but let it be stated in Scripture language. Let not man use his own words, and far less his own fancy, in describing the future punishments of the impenitent ; and above all, let him not speak of them as one at ease ; and let him not describe God as taking pleasure in the infliction. There can be no real advantage gained by agitating the imagination on such a subject. Even fear, to be useful, ought to have some calmness in it. And it ought to be remembered, that men are not made Christians by terror, but by love. It is the genial ray of the Sun of Righteousness, and not the storm of the divine wrath, which compels the sinner to lay down the weapons of his rebellion. The steady conviction that misery, intolerable, must be for ever connected with rejecting the offered mercy of God, is the true impression produced by the declarations of the Bible on this matter ; and this is a much more efficient and practically useful principle, than the terrors of an imagination worked up by a picture of the secrets of that prison-house. Our gracious Master, who suffered in our stead, and whose deep, and solemn, and

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tender interests in our welfare, could not be doubted, did, indeed, in his discourses, always set before men life and death, as the solemn alternatives of their choice ; but in his mouth it is still the language of affectionate, though urgent persuasion ; and he does not lift the veil, except in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus ; nor terrify the fancy, nor represent God as taking pleasure in the misery of his creatures. He does not even represent this punishment so much under the form of a positive infliction, as of the natural result of the operation of evil principles on the soul. " Their worm dieth not, their fire is not quenched." Whose ? Their own — the worm and fire within them. Thus also, in other parts of Scripture, the state of the wicked is represented as the reaping of what they had sown, as eating of the fruit of their own way, and being filled with their own devices. Gal. vi. 7, 8. Prov. iii. 31. And in Psalm Ixxxi. punishment is described thus, " He gave them up to their own hearts' lusts." The compassion of God for the miseries which sinners bring upon themselves, is also often strongly marked by the Bible : for example, in the tears shed by our Lord over the bloody city ; in the divine tenderness exhibited through the whole course of that remarkable history contained in the book of Jonah ; and in the duties of a watchman described in Ezekiel xxxiii. " I have no pleasure, saith the Lord, in the death of him that dieth ; wherefore turn ye and live." The threatenings of God are all expressions of love. They are the descriptions of the misery of being strangers to God ; given for this very purpose, that xii

we may be persuaded* to come into his family, and to become fellow-citizens with the saints, and members of the household of faith. God seemed to say in these threatenings, " I cannot bear to lose you, or that you should lose such happiness ; behold and see what you are rushing into — a soul at enmity with me must be miserable ; come then, and be my friend, and my child." Detailed and prolonged descriptions of future misery seemed calculated to injure our view of the Divine character ; or to agitate the imagination ; or, like violent stimulants to the bodily constitution, to lose their effect, and to deaden the sensibilities to calmer exhibitions of the truth.

But there is another and a more important charge which has been brought against the writings of this great and good man. It is alleged that he does not always mark with sufficient clearness, the distinction between the work of God, and the work of man, and that he even sometimes gives the idea, that we are called on to work out our own pardon, as well as our own salvation or spiritual healing. The close appeals which he so frequently makes to the consciences of his readers, may, perhaps, in some degree, have given rise to this accusation. A writer who presses so strongly as Baxter does, the necessity of a change of heart and character in the Christian, needs great caution and accuracy of language, in order to avoid expressions which may seem to attribute too much, in the work of salvation, to human effort. Just as a writer, whose great theme is the free grace of the Gospel, would need

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to be very much on his guard, if he would avoid the charge of Antinomianism. The nature of the subject treated on in the book before us, may also have assisted in giving this tone to his instructions. He connects pardon and everlasting rest so much together, that he sees them, and speaks of them as if they were one and the same thing. Now, though in truth they are parts of the same grand plan, yet the one is the commencement, and the other is the consummation of the plan — and the language which is suited to the one is not always suited to the other. Pardon is the starting point of the Christian course. The saints' rest is the goal. Pardon precedes the race, the saints' rest crowns it. The pardon is universally and freely proclaimed to all, without money and without price, without respect to character or condition, as the recompense of the atoning sacrifice of Christ. To this pardon man cannot add, and from it he cannot detract ; though he may bar himself from the benefit of it by refusing it admission into his heart. Whereas the saints' rest is entirely dependent on character : it is, in fact, only another name for a character conformed to the will of God. It is, in a sense, the natural reward of diligence in the cultivation of those principles which are implanted by a belief of the pardon. Diligence, therefore, and exertion, ought to be strenuously insisted on in pursuit of the saints' rest ; but we must beware of thinking such thoughts, or using such language with regard to the pardon. By doing so, we shall obscure our views both of the love of God, and of the evil of sin. Pardon is the

XIV medicine, the saints' rest is the cure accomplished s it is salvation perfected, it is spiritual health. We ought not then to think of laboring for pardon; for it is proclaimed as a thing already past and recorded in heaven ; but we ought to labor for the saints' rest; for it is a thing future, and depends on the perfection of principles which are perfected by labor. We ought not to labor for pardon, for it is a medicine already prepared, and freely bestowed, by the great physician of souls ; but we ought to labor for spiritual health, in which the saints' rest consists, by continual application to the medicine, and by using the Spirit, and the strength which it supplies to support us, amidst the events which befal us, and the duties which we are called to fulfil.

Now, though we are well persuaded, that all the parts of divine truth are so linked together, that if one part is taught to the soul by the Spirit of God, all the other parts will certainly follow ; and that, therefore, a partial obscurity or indistinctness of statement, in the midst of much surrounding light, and perspicuity, and power, may not materially impede the progress of a heart towards God ; yet we do regret that a greater prominency is not given in Baxter's Works to the doctrine of justification by faith ; because the peace of the mind, and the stability of its hopes, and the ardor and confidence of its love, must depend on the degree of fulness with which it can look on God as a Father, who hath forgiven all its iniquities, on a ground altogether independent of its own deservings.

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This doctrine is in truth the great centre of the Christian system, which gives to all the other parts their symmetry and just proportion. It, in fact, contains all the rest, and we only know them truly, when we know them in relation to it. This doctrine it is which constitutes the grand difference between the religion of God, and all the religions invented by men. Human systems always place pardon, or the divine favor, at the end of the race ; they would remove condemnation by just making men cease from sinning. Whereas God makes men cease from sinning, by first removing the condemnation. This is a stumbling-block to the world, and its philosophers. They argue, that as sin is the root from which the condemnation sprung, it would be more reasonable to lay the axe to it, than merely to lop the bitter fruit that has sprung from it — and that it is unwise to enfeeble the motives of exertion, by giving that in possession which ought to be reserved as the excitement and reward of diligence and obedience.

But the difficulty lies not in the thing itself, but in their ignorance of the signification of the terms employed. They do not know the meaning of sin, or punishment, or obedience, or reward. They consider them merely as external things. If we wish a porter to go a mile for us, we make much surer of his going, by promising him half-a-crown on his return, than by paying him beforehand. But if we wish to gain the confidence and affection of a man who has prejudices against us, we must begin by substantially proving to him that he may rely on our

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friendship and services. Now God desires and requires our confidence and affection. Nothing short of this can satisfy Him. It is His great commandment, that we should love him with all the faculties of our being ; and without this love, the most punctual external conformity to His external commandments, is a mere mockery and delusion. He is not obeyed by our going the mile, but by our going it out of love to Him. He, therefore, begins not merely by holding out to us a future happiness, though he does that too, but by proving himself worthy of all our confidence, and all our affection. Obedience then consists in active love. And this love can only proceed from a sense of God's excellence and amiableness in general, and of his favor in relation to ourselves. Without this belief in a higher or lower degree, of his favorable regard towards ourselves, there may be a solemn and distant respect, but there can be no filial love, and therefore no full obedience.

We are persuaded, that an erroneous view of the object of the ten commandments, has misled many as to the nature and extent of religious duty, in this respect particularly. It is true, that the ten commandments were given by God's voice from heaven ; and it is also true, that in the last of them the Legislator claims to himself the sovereignty over the thoughts and intents of the heart, as well as over the act of the hand, or the word of the lip ; but yet it is no less true, that they contain rather a list of prohibitions, and of the most prominent and overt acts of disobedience to the will of God, than a de-

XV11 claration of what that will absolutely is. In human governments, laws are considered as restraints upon natural liberty, and, therefore, every thing which is not forbidden by them is permitted. Thus a man may, without being amenable to the law, hate the king as much as he pleases, if he only avoid the commission of any of those acts which are, by statute, construed into high treason. It is certain, that the ten commandments are very often interpreted in the same way. They are often supposed to permit that which they do not expressly prohibit. And on this subject we are disposed to think, that the error does not so much consist in the misinterpretation of the commandments, as in mistaking th& purpose for which they were given, and in supposing that they were ever intended to convey a full and spiritual view of the duty of man to God. For it ought to be remembered, that the ten commandments, besides being a religious rule, formed also a part of a code of civil jurisprudence. Jehovah was not only the God of Israel, as well as of all the universe, he was also the political King of Israel ; and the law of Moses not only gives a view of the Divine character, but also contains the statutes of the state, according to which property was determined, and offences were judged and punished. Religion binds the mind, the law of the land binds the body ; God is the only judge of faithfulness or rebellion in the first; man can judge of obedience or disobedience to the second. In the Jewish government, these two principles were united — the spirit of religion breathes through the law, and yet the acts prohibited 3 are, with the single exception of the injunctions of the tenth commandment, such as the eye of man could judge of, and such as required to be proved or disproved before their courts, by the testimony of human witnesses.

This union, however, did not change or materialize the essence of religion. An Israelite who kept the ten commandments to the letter, was innocent and righteous in the eye of the law, and of God, considered as the political king of the nation ; but he might keep them most strictly to the letter, and yet stand under a heavy charge of guiltiness before God, as the spiritual judge of man. This important distinction between the spiritual religion and the material letter of their law, appears however to have been very generally overlooked by the Jews — they learned to limit their idea of sin, to the mere perpetration of the prohibited overt acts of disobedience — they looked to God only as their temporal king, and they became blind to the embracing universality of his claims upon them as their Creator and Spiritual Judge. And the same error is often committed amongst ourselves, without the same apology as the Jews had. There were positive miraculous blessings connected with external obedience, under the theocracy, which might naturally lead them to lay great stress on this outside righteousness. And God appeared to them as their national Lawgiver and Judge, requiring this external obedience, and expressing his approbation of it. But the temporal theocracy is no more. God reveals himself in the Gospel solely in his spiritual relation. And when we think of satisfying him by

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an external obedience, we do him dishonor, and we degrade his law down to a level with our own Acts of Parliament. The offences prohibited in the ten commandments, may be considered as the top branches of that tree of revolt, which grows naturally in the heart, and brings forth corresponding fruit more or less in the life of every man unrenewed by the Spirit of God. But these branches may be lopped or checked, and yet the strength of the poison may remain undiminished in the root, and in the trunk. The true and full law of God, is not only directed against this pernicious tree in its root, as well as its branches ; but it also requires that the soil should be occupied by another plant, which may bring forth fruit to the glory of God. " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart, and mind, and soul, and strength." This is the universal and spiritual law of God, and it was given to the Jews, though it does not make a part of their judicial code. It is contained in that solemn and touching recapitulation of mercies, and judgments, and obligations, and duties, which Moses makes to the generation which had been either born or brought up in the wilderness, a short time before his own death, and their entrance into the land promised to their fathers. In this address, the spirit of the future dispensation breaks forth more distinctly, than in that part which was, strictly speaking, their law.

Judaism was throughout a type of Christianity. The wondrous history of the chosen people — their deliverance from Egypt — their wanderings through xx the desert — their miraculous support during their long pilgrimage — their separation from other nations — their settlement in Canaan — their visible theocracy, were all material emblems of the spiritual kingdom of Christ, and of the spiritual history of the children of God, in their journey from this vale of sin and sorrow, to the rest prepared for them. Even so their law, in all its parts, not merely in its ceremonial, but even in its moral precepts, though it embraced and illustrated the principles of the succeeding dispensation, yet was in itself, to a great degree, literal, and material, and external ; and the law of the ten commandments bore to the spiritual law of love, a relation somewhat analogous to that which the sacrifices of the tabernacle bore to the perfect atonement of Christ. Those who saw in the sacrifices no more than a ceremonial purification from external pollutions, or a mode of deliverance from external evils, would see no more in the ten commandments than a rule of external obedience. Whilst those who saw under that veil of rites a manifestation of the combined mercy and holiness which constitute the spiritual character of God, in relation to sinners — those who saw under it the type of that great atonement, on the ground of which the divine justice is even glorified in the pardon of the offenders, such Israelites would also discover the spiritual law of love under the ten commandments, and would feel their hearts drawn to its observance. And in like manner, those who had found out that heart-love was the obedience which God required, would not rest satisfied until

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they had also discovered the true meaning of the sacrifices. They would feel assured, that the same principle in the mind of God, which prompted him to demand the hearts of his creatures, would prompt him also to make such a discovery of his own character as would draw their hearts, and make obedience easy and delightful. They would look for something else than mere authority, to enforce such a command ; and they would find it in the spiritual antitype of all these ceremonies. Christ came not to destroy the law and the prophets, but to fill them out. They were but sketches and cartoons. He came to fill up their shadowy outlines with all the substance of real action, and all the rich coloring of spiritual affections. The ten commandments, taking into account the Christian modification of the fourth, are as binding now as ever they were, because the duties contained in them spring out of the eternal relation between God and man ; but the most axact adherence to their letter will not defend us from the charge of spiritual delinquency before the Searcher of hearts.

When the law of God comes to a man only in the shape of prohibitions, he is apt to consider it as a hard and severe thing, and to count his own uneasy submission to it, an act of price and merit. He has unwillingly abstained from some indulgence, and he lays up this price of self-denial in his treasury, as something on which he may afterwards found a hope or a claim before God. But when the law makes a demand upon our heart, the matter is changed entirely. In the first place, it is evident that he who 3*