THE

SAINTS'

EVERLASTING REST.

BY THE

REV. RICHARD BAXTER.

ABRIDGED BY

BENJAMIN FAWCETT, A. M.

STEREOTYPED AT THE BOSTON TYPE AND STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY.

BOSTON:

PUBLISHED BY LINCOLN AND EDMANDS,

No. 59 Washington Street.

1828.

ADVERTISEMENT.

THE universal approbation, with which Baxter's Saints' Rest is received among all denominations of Christians, and the solici tude expressed by many persons to be furnished with a neat and portable edition, have induced the publishers to stereotype the work, with the hope of promoting a very extended circulation of so invaluable a treatise. Some confusion was apparent in the heads of chapters and sections of former editions, which is here removed, by rendering them simple and plain; and a few obsolete expressions are omitted or varied. The size and price of the present edition will enable benevolent persons to gratify their wishes in procuring the work for gratuitous circulation, and thus effectually advance the interests of real religion.

Boston, August, 1828..

3-5-34

EXTRACTS

FROM AN

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY,

BY THOMAS ERSKINE, Esq.

ADVOCATE.

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. 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, and supported, and animated, by the same spirit. They 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 labours, 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 favour of God and the enmity of God; and only two parties in the universe to choose betweenthe 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.

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 menthey 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 views; they are always deeply impregnated with sentiment. 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