The saints everlasting rest, or, A treatise of the blessed state of the saints in their enjoyment of God in glory wherein is shewed its excellency and certainty, the misery of those that lose it, the way to attain it, and assurance of it, and how to live in the continual delightful forecasts of it and now published by Richard Baxter ...

* 1.1SECT. IV.

SEcondly, But the great loss of the damned, will be their loss of God, they shall have no comfortable relation to him: Nor any of the Saints communion with him: As they did not like to retain God in knowledg;* 1.2 but did him, Depart from us, we de∣sire not the knowledg of thy wayes; So God will abhor to re∣tain them in his houshold, or to give them entertainment in his Fellowship and Glory. He will never admit them to the inheri∣tance of his Saints, nor endure them to stand amongst them in his presence; but bid them, Depart from me, ye workers of iniqui∣ty, I know you not. Now these men dare belye the Lord, if not blaspheme, in calling him by the title of Their Father; How bold∣ly and con••idently do they daily approach him with their lips, and indeed reproach him in their formall prayers; with that appella∣tion, Our Father? As if God would Father the Divels children; or as if the slighters of Christ, the pleasers of the flesh, the friends of the world, the haters of godliness, or any that trade in sin and de∣light in iniquity, were the Off-spring of Heaven! They are ready now, in the height of their presumption, to lay as confident claim to Christ and heaven, as if they were sincere believing Saints. The

Swearer, the Drunkard, the Whoremaster, the Worldling, can scornfully say to the People of God, What, is not God our Father as well as yours? Doth he not love us as well as you? Will he save none but a few holy Precisians? O, but when that time is come, when the case must be decided, and Christ will separate his followers from his foes, and his faithfull friends from his deceived flatterers, where then will be their presumptuous claim to Christ? Then they shall finde that God is not their Father, but their re∣solved foe; because they would not be his people, but were re∣solved in their negligence and wickedness: Then, though they had preached, or wrought miracles in his name, he wil not know them: And though they were his Brethren or sisters after the flesh, yet will he not own them▪ but reject them as his enemies: And even those that did eat and drink in his presence on earth,* 1.3 shall be cast out of his heavenly presence for ever; And those that in his name did cast out Divels,* 1.4 shall yet at his command be cast out to those Divels, and endure the torments prepared for them. And as they would not consent that God should by his Spirit dwell in them, so shall not these evil doers dwell with him: the Taberna∣cles of wickedness shall have no fellowship with him:* 1.5 nor the wicked inhabit the City of God. For without are the Dogs; the Sorcerers, Whoremongers, Murderers, Idolaters, and whatsoever loveth and maketh a lye. For God knoweth the way of the righ∣ous, but the way of the wicked leads to perishing.* 1.6 God is first enjoyed in part on earth, before he be fully enjoyed in Heaven. It is only they that walked with him here, who shall live and be happy with him there. O little doth the world now know what a loss that soul hath, who loseth God! VVhat were the world, but a dungeon, if it had lost the Sun? What were the body, but a loath∣some carrion, if it had lost the soul? Yet all these are nothing to the loss of God, even the little taste of the fruition of God which the Saints enjoy in this life, is dearer to them then all the world. As the world when they feed upon their forbidden pleasures, may cry out with the sons of the Prophets,* 1.7 There's death in the pot; So when the Saints do but taste of the favor of God,* 1.8 they cry out with David, In his favour is life. Nay, though life be naturally most dear to all men;* 1.9 yet they that have tasted and tryed, do say with David, his loving kindness is better then life. So that as the enjoyment of God, is the heaven of the Saints; so the loss of

God, is the hell of the ungodly. And as the enjoying of God is the enjoying of all; So the loss of God is the loss of All.

Notes

• * 1.1

  §. 4.
• * 1.2

  Rom. 1.28. Job. 21.14. D••cem mill••a quis ponat Ge¦hennas, nihil tal•• dicet quale est a beat â glo∣ri•• exc••dere, a Christo audire, Non n••vi vos. Chrys. in Mat. Hom 33. Multi Gehen∣nam abhorrent; ego autem ca∣sum illius glo∣ria multo ama∣riorem gehennae paenâ ••••o. Gre∣gor.
• * 1.3

  Mat. 7.22.
• * 1.4

  Mat. 25.41.
• * 1.5

  Psal. 94.20. & 132.3. Rev. 22.15.
• * 1.6

  Psal. 1.6, 7.
• * 1.7

  2 King. 4.40.
• * 1.8

  Psal. 30.5.
• * 1.9

  Psal. 63.3.