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 ...

SECT. IX.

[ 9] BUt I know if it be a sensuall unbeliever that readeth all this, he will cast it by with disdain,* 1.1 and say, I will never believe that God will thus Torment his Creatures: What, to delight in their tor∣ture! And that for everlasting! And all for the faults of a short time! It is incredible: How can this stand with the infiniteness of his mercy? I would not thus Torment the worst enemy that I have in the world, and yet my mercifulness is nothing to Gods. These are but threats to awe men: I will not believe them.

* 1.2Answ. Wilt thou not believe? I do not wonder if thou be loath to believe so terrible tidings to thy soul as these are; which if they were believed and apprehended indeed according to their weight, would set thee a trembling and roaring in the anguish of horror day and night:* 1.3 And I do as little wonder that the Devil who ruleth thee, should be loath, if he can hinder it, to suffer thee to believe it: For

if thou didst believe it, thou wouldest spare no cost or pains to escape it. But go to: If thou wilt read on, either thou shalt believe it be∣fore thou stirrest, or prove thy self an Infidel or Pagan. Tell me then, Dost thou believe Scripture to be the word of God? If thou do not, thou art no more a Christian then thy horse is, or then a Turk is: For what ground have we besides Scripture to believe that Jesus Christ did come into the world, or dye for man? If thou believe not these, I have nothing here to do with thee, but refer thee to the second part of this book, where I have proved Scripture to be the word of God. But if thou do believe this to be so, and yet dost not believe that the same Scripture is true, thou art far worse then either Infidel or Pagan: For the vilest Pagans durst hardly charge their Idol Gods to be lyars: And darest thou give the lye to the God of Hea∣ven? And accuse him of speaking that which shall not come to pass? and that in such absolute threats, and plain expressions? But if thou darest not stand to this, but dost believe Scripture both to be the word of God, and to be true; then I shall presently convince thee of the truth of these eternall Torments. Wilt thou believe if a Prophet should tell it thee? Why read it then in the greatest Prophets, Moses, David, and Isaiah, Deut. 32.22. Psal. 11.6. & 9, 17. Isai. 30.33. Or wilt thou believe one that was more then a Prophet? Why hear then what John Baptist saith, Mat. 3.10. Luk. 3.17. Or wilt thou believe if an Apostle should tell thee? Why hear what one saith, Jud. 7.13. where he cals it the vengeance of eternall fire; and the blackness of darness for ever. Or what if thou have it from an Apostle that had been rapt up in Revelations into the third Heaven, and seen things unutterable? Wilt thou believe then? Why take it then from Paul, 2 Thess. 1.7, 8, 9. The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from Heaven, with his mighty Angels, in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that 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 2 Thess. 2.12. That they all might be damned, who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in un∣righteousness. So Rom. 2.5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Or wilt thou believe it from the beloved Apostle, who was so taken up in Revelations, and saw it, as it were, in his visions? Why see then, Rev. 20.10, 15. They are said there to be cast into the lake of fire, and tormented day and night for ever. So Rev. 21.8. So 2 Pet. 2.17. Or wilt thou believe it from the mouth of Christ himself the judg? Why reade it then,

Mat. 7.19. & 13.40, 41, 42, 49, 50. As therefore the Tares are gathered and burnt in the fire, so shall it be in the end of this world: the Son of man shall send forth his Angels, and they shall gather out of his Kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; and shall cast them into a furnace of fire; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, &c. So Mat. 18.8, 9. So Mark 9.43, 44, 46, 48. Where he repeateth it three times over, Where their worm ne∣ver dyeth, and their fire is not quenched. And Mat. 25.41, 46. Then shall he say to them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into ever∣lasting fire prepared for the Devil and his angels: For I was, &c. And these shall go away into everlasting punishment, and the righteous in∣to life eternal.

What sayest thou now to all this? Wilt thou not yet believe? If thou wilt not believe Christ, I know not whom thou wilt believe: and therefore it is in vain to perswade thee any further: Only let me tell thee the time is at hand when thou wilt easily believe, and that with∣out any preaching or arguing: when thou seest the great and terrible day, and hearest the condemning sentence past, and art thy self thrust down to Hell (as Luk. 10.15.) then thou shalt believe, and never doubt again: And do not say but thou wast told so much. Surely he that so much disswades thee from believing, doth yet believe and tremble himself. Jam. 2.19.

And whereas thou thinkest that God is more merciful; why sure he knowes best his own mercifulness. His mercy will not cross his Truth. Cannot God be infinite in mercy, except he save the wilful and rebellious? Is a judg unmerciful for condemning malefactors? Mercy and Justice have their several objects: Thousands of humble, believing, obedient souls shall know to their eternall comfort that God is merciful, though the refusers of his grace, shall lye under Justice. God will then force thy conscience to confess in Hell, that God who condemned thee was yet merciful to thee. Was it no mercy to be made a reasonable creature? And to have Patience en∣dure thy many yeers provocations, and wait upon thee from Sermon to Sermon, desiring and intreating thy repentance and return? Was it no mercy to have the Son of God, with all his blood and merits freely offered thee, if thou wouldest but have accepted him to go∣vern and to save thee? Nay when thou hadst neglected and refused Christ once, twice, yea a hundred times, that God should yet follow thee with invitations from day to day? And shalt thou wilfully re∣fuse

mercy to the last hour, and then cry out that God will not be so unmercifull as to condemn thee? Thy conscience will smite thee for this madness, and tell thee, that God was merciful in all this, though such as thou do perish for your wilfulness. Yea the sense of the great∣ness of his mercy, will then be a great part of thy torment.

And whereas thou thinkest the pain to be greater then the offence, that is because thou art not a competent Judg; Thou knowest what pain is, but thou knowest not the thousand part of the evil of sin; shall not the righteous Judg of the world do justly? Nay, it is no more then thou didst chuse thy self: Did not God set before thee Life and Death? and tell thee, If thou wouldest accept of the Go∣vernment of Christ, and renounce thy Lusts, that then thou shouldest have eternal Life? And if thou wouldest not have Christ▪ but the World or Flesh to rule over thee, thou shouldest then endure eter∣nal torments? Did not he offer thee thy choice? and bid thee take which of these thou wouldest? yea, and intreat thee to chuse aright? And dost thou now cry out of Severity, when thou hast but the con∣sequents of thy wilful choice? But it is not thy accusing God of cru∣elty that shall serve thy turn; in stead of procuring thy escape, or the mitigation of thy torments, it will but make thy burthen the more heavy.

And whereas thou saist that thou wouldest not so torment thy own enemy; I Answ. There is no Reason that thou shouldest: For is it all one to offend a crawling Worm of the earth, and to offend the eternal glorious God? Thou hast no absolute dominion over thine enemy, and there may be some fault in thy self as well as in him, but with God and us the case is contrary: Yet thou makest nothing of killing a Flea if it do but bite thee, yea a hundred of them though they did not touch thee, and yet never accusest thy self of cruelty: Yea, thou wilt torment thy Ox all his life time with toilsome labor, and kill him at the last, though he never deserved ill of thee, nor dis∣obeyed thee & though thou hast over him but the borrowed authori∣ty of a superiour fellow creature, and not the soveraign power of the absolute Creator: Yea, How commonly dost thou take away the lives of Birds and Beasts and Fishes? Many times a great many of lives must be taken away to make for thee but one meal? How many deaths then have been suffered in obedience to thy will from thy first Age to thy last hour? and all this without any desert of the creature? And must it yet seem cruelty, that the Soveraign Creator, who is ten

thousand times more above thee, then thou art above a Flea or a Toad, should execute his Justice upon such a contemner of his Autho∣rity? But I have given you some Reasons of this before.

Notes

• * 1.1

  Object.
• * 1.2

  Answ.
• * 1.3

  Credunt Judaei quod ex Israel∣itis solis tria genera mortuorum in die judicij sint resuscitanda: quorum unum futurum sit Israelita∣rum probissimorum: alterum improbissimorum & impijssimorum, tertium mediocrium qui non mi∣nus benè quam malè operati ••uerint. Probos illos è vestigio ad vitam aeternam inscriptum obsigna∣tumque, improbos autem in G••hennam, sive ignem insernalem abjectum iri dicunt: Mediocres vero istos peccatores per spatium Chadaschim sive mensium tantummodo duodecim pro peccatis ipsorum in inferno torquebuntur; deinde corpora eorum consumentur, ventusque cineres eorum d••fflando dis∣perget subter plantas pedum justorum, &c. Sic Rabbi Pechal è Talmudo magno, ut Buxtorfius Synag. Judai. cap. 1. p. 25.26.27. Ad hanc haer••sia appropinquat doctrina Papistarum.